Sheshbazzar

Now is that what I asked you aa? Please address the questions that I actually asked.

aa5874

I have answered your questions. It is completely mis-leading for mountainman to give the impression that Christian Theologians are the Only Palaeographers or that ONLY Christian Theologians examine ancient NT Manuscripts.

It is highly illogical that Only Christian Theologians are Palaeographers.

Sheshbazzar

NO aa5874 You most certainly HAVE NOT. You have avoided the questions that were being asked of you. As anyone that can read can see.

QUESTION 1.
This question I asked doesn't have a damn thing to do with mountainman. I am not asking here for your opinions on mountainman.

It is a question to YOU regarding your views on the trustworthiness of Christian Theologians.

Do you believe and profess that these Christian Theologians go about their business free from any Christian biases?

QUESTION 2.
I DID NOT request an essay on c.14 dating, on Paleography, or on the faults of mountainman from you.

I -asked- you if it was YOUR position 'That the findings and decisions of trained Christian Theologians are to be accounted as being totally free from any bias ?'

That is NOT a question about mountainman, or c.14, or paleography.

It IS a question whether your position is 'that the findings and decisions of trained Christian Theologians are to be accounted as totally free from any bias ?'.

Do YOU believe that decisions made by Christian Theologians (or anyone else) about the age of, or the origins of, recovered texts are infallible aa ?

Is it your position aa, That 'authoritative' decisions and declarations about the genuineness, age, or origins of any ancient text should never be doubted, questioned, or disputed ?

.

mountainman

I am sorry aa5874. Please, Please, Please have a glass of water.





I think we need to discuss the emergence of the Christian related palaeographical claims in an historical sense from the early years of the 20th century.

This requires some research. Let us temporarily suspend judgement on this issue until we can see some of the history of these palaeographical CLAIMS. Who were the people who made the first series of palaeographical claims about the appearance of these papyri fragments? To whom did they make their report? Who considered their report and assessment and what institutions were involved in the process. If anyone can answer any of these questions off the bat please feel free ...

I think part of the story starts like this .....



Grenfell and Hunt employ local Egyptians at a few pence per day to gather up the fragments from over seventeen ancient rubbish dumps around the appalachian foothills the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus.




The fragments are then securely packed in biscuit tins and placed into a series of over 900 brief cases sized boxes and sent back to Oxford in the early twentieth century. Perhaps detailed academic analysis has made its way through at least 128 boxes by 2010.


But there have been other papyri sources outside of Oxy.


The Date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew (P. Magd. Gr. 17 = P64)




Revd. Charles ?



What?

aa5874

You seem to know a lot about P 64 but is it not dated to the 2nd-3rd century??

A theologian buys a some fragments of the supposed Gospel of Matthew which the Church claimed was composed before c 70 CE yet Palaeographers do NOT date the fragments to the 1st century.

Where is the bias?? By consensus, P64 is dated to the 2nd-3rd century.

The very Paleographers that you imply are Theologians have NOT corroborated the time of writings of any author in the Entire NT Canon.

But, there are not only Fragments that have been found and dated but hundreds of pages of New Testament Papyri which have NOT been dated to the 1st century by your supposed Theologians [Paleographers].

See Papyrus 45, 46, 66 and 75.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_66
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_46
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_45
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75

Sheshbazzar

They worked with what they had. Using the best of their paleographical skills they assigned these found texts to the 4th....er... changed their mind...to the 2nd and 3rd centuries. (that is unless they change their minds again )

BUT that certainly does not imply that any of these paleographers held that any of the the documents they were so DATING were the original monographs produced by the original authors, it was accepted as fact that all the NT materials so recovered were all only later copies of earlier texts.

You aa attempt to introduce the false premise that because these are the earliest copies to yet be recovered, 'Christianity' must have began near that late date, something that is NOT at all implied by the work of, or held as being an established fact by any of these Papyrologists/Palaeographers.

mountainman

I know very little about P64 other than it was dated to the 4th century by A.S Hunt.

The link quoted above reveals that ....

This must have been an earlier opinion of the date of P46.

But you have not answered my questions above:


Who were the people who made the first series of palaeographical claims about the appearance of these papyri fragments?

To whom did they make their report?

Who considered their report and assessment and

what institutions were involved in the process.

If anyone can answer any of these questions off the bat please feel free.

I don't know the answers to these questions and the research required looks substantial.

Does anyone know of a good - perhaps even old - history of the application of palaeography to the papyri fragments?

Sheshbazzar

Then Paleographers must not be infallible! Someone try to tell that to aa5874.

Wonder what DATING is correct, and exactly how it was arrived at so as to overturn the expert opinion of such a noteable papyrologist as the great Arthur Surridge Hunt.
What do they do? draw straws???

.

mountainman

I'd agree with this. People of any epoch can generally only work within the conceptual framework of that epoch.

Having said that I'd still like to research the answers to the above questions.

I have some gripes ....

Gripe #1

One of my main complaints about the early dating of these fragments is that the paleographical skills were nearly always used in conjuction with many other dating methodologies. This seems to be justified in others' remarks such as the following on the WIKI page about P52

The problem of course is that we do not have the luxury of other forms of chronological methodologies as evidence attesting to the early Christian Codex cult.

The paleographic methodology is running on its pat Malone.
It was never intended to do so. It was part of a set of methodologies.


Gripe #2

I say Christian codex cult because the majority of all papyri fragments came from codices and not rolls.

The codex became popular in the 4th century.

The early Christians were well ahead of their time.




Gripe #3

The city of Oxyrynchus underwent a massive population explosion in the mid 4th century.

The rubbish dumps from which the papyri were sourced must reflect these demographics.

Nobody seems to mention this fact.

Sheshbazzar

Which would only serve to make such text even more highly questionable, and subject to higher level of scrutiny and require far more solid evidence of its genuineness, because a forger would have the highest motive to place early dates within a forged text that he desired to pass off as being early.
It takes much more than the appearance of explicit early dates within a manuscript or fragment to establish the actual date or genuineness of the text.