CX

Recently I've been thinking about the actual manuscript evidence for the texts of the NT. What got me thinking about it was a rehash of the apologetic about 24,000 manuscripts all in perfect agreement as early as 30 years after the originals etc. etc. I'm not really interested in pursuing a discussion of that, but rather I'm wondering if anyone knows of a comprehensive summary outlining the percentages of the NT supported by manuscripts from various eras and text types. My preliminary observations are as follows:

Manuscripts prior to 200 C.E.:

P52 ca. 110-125 C.E. contains 7 partial verses of GJn

P90 2nd century contains 11 verses of GJn 3 of which overlap with P52

P98 Possibly 2nd Century conatins 7 verses of Revelation

Manuscripts from the turn of the 3rd century:

P46 ca. 200 C.E. contains partial to substantial copies of 9 Pauline epistles

P66 ca. 200 C.E. contains partial copy of GJn (more substantial than P52 or P90)

P77 ca. 2nd or 3rd century contains 9 verses of GMt (first attestation of this gospel outside church fathers)

Manuscripts from the 3rd century:

P1 GMt Partial
P4 GLk Partial (first attestation to this gospel)
P5 GJn Partial
P9 1Jn Partial
P12 Hebrews 1 verse
P15 1Cor 26 verses
P20 James 17 verses
P27 Romans Partial
P28 GJn 11 verses
P29 Acts 3 verses (first attestation for Acts)
P30 1Thess 4 verses & 2Thess 12 verses
P39 GJn 9 verses
P40 Romans Partial
P45 GMt-Acts (all partial; first attestation for GMk)
P47 Revelation Partial
P48 Acts 12 verses
P49 Ephesians Partial
P53 GMt 11 verses & Acts 11 verses
P65 1Thess Partial
P69 GLk 9 verses
P70 GMt Partial
P75 GLk Partial & GJn Partial
P80 GJn 1 verse
P87 Philemon 5 verses
P91 Acts 12 verses
P95 GJn 7 verses

So we have 3 MSS total prior to the 2nd century. 6 MSS total prior to/in the of beginning the 3rd century and 34 MSS total prior to the 4th century which are used for the current critical text.

Basically in the first 170 years or so after Jesus' death we have a grand total of about 3-6 very fragmentary copies of NT Texts representing as few as 22 verses total (for the 3 earliest MSS).

Note: The list for the 3rd century MSS is not exhaustive and includes only those cited by NA27

There is no complete version of the NT prior to Aleph in the 4th century. Has anyone ever done the math to see what the percentages actually are? Also has anyone ever analysed what parts, if any, of the NT are nowhere atttested until Aleph?

[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]

[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]</p>

Iasion

Greetings CX,

Yes, your comments about the lack of early manuscripts is quite correct - and yes, there is much mis-information about - e.g. that false 24,000 manuscripts furphy.


Here are some pages about manuscripr dating:

http://www.bibletranslation.ws/manu.html

http://www.wls.wels.net/Publications/WLQ/mss.htm

http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache...hl=en&start=19


Here is a page about the manuscript transmission and variants :
http://members.aol.com/PS418/manuscript.html


P52 is controversial, it has been variously dated anywhere from early 2nd century to late 2nd century.

Generally a manuscript can only be dated using paleography to a margin of about 50 years or so.

Thus, P52 should probably be dated 100-150, although some authorities claim more accurate datings, and some suggest late 2nd century.

QuentinJ

not a theist

These may be useful to you:

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/TextTypes.html" target="_blank">Text Types And Textual Kinship</a>

<a href="http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/extras/Robinson-list.html" target="_blank">New Testament Greek continuous-text MSS ordered by century</a>

Alexis Comnenus

CX, ignoring the apologetics stuff, I think we can agree that the NT documents are better attested than any other ancient work excpet something like the Res Gestae of Augustus (and let's face it, we don't believe much of that either!)

Consequently, I think that pointing towards the gap between complete manuscripts in the 4th century and the original authors is as weaker argument as the apologists going on about their 10,000 odd. Yes, there are interpolations etc which textual critics can work on but it does seem we have a fairly high degree of confidence in the texts and that they are not the issue. The issue is do we have any confidence in what the texts say?

While the papyri screw up some arguments for very late Gospel dating (as Iasion is struggling with - I've never heard of P52 dated later than 150AD), I don't think they have very much more bearing on historical questions about Jesus.

Regards

Alex

PS: Iasion, open a thread on you dating the Gospels to the second century. You'll need to do a lot better than the lack of surviving papyri and paupacity of quotations. You'll need internal evidence to show that the Gospels address second century concerns and have a christology and theology consistant with that date.

Haran

CX,

I'm still a little unclear on what you are asking... However, if you are asking why a complete MS doesn't appear until the 4th century, I would say the Diocletian and other Christian persecutions. These, especially the Diocletian persecution, are mentioned by the Alands in their Intro to Textual Criticism.

In other words, the older MSS either weathered away or were mostly destroyed in the persecutions. Constantine ordered copies of the NT to be produced which led to nice bound codeces being preserved from the 4th century on.

The Alands and the Munster Institute have done lots of studies of the early MSS. I wish I could remember the names - Text und Textwerks? (in German though...).

If you want real answers to your question, I would suggest asking it at the TC List. I'm a member of the list and would be interested to see the replies as well.

(P.S. - I know you already know this, but don't listen to Iasion, he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about - especially on the issue of Textual Criticism ).

Haran

[ April 17, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alexis Comnenus:
CX, ignoring the apologetics stuff, I think we can agree that the NT documents are better attested than any other ancient work excpet something like the Res Gestae of Augustus (and let's face it, we don't believe much of that either!)

Not correct. Both the Taoist and Buddhist canons, in Chinese, were carved in stone periodically in China, first time second or third century, permitting character by character comparisons of changes over the centuries. Additionally, original wooden blocks for printing the Buddhist scriptures that are centuries old may be found in Korea and China. This does not take into account the early development of printing in those cultures, and the attestation of manuscripts that is much richer. Recall that serious text criticism began much earlier in the East than in the West....

The most you can say is that the NT manuscripts are well-attested after the fourth century, which is to say that there are a lot of copies of documents that were already nearing their final edited form by that time....like slamming the barn door after the horse is gone...

Yes, there are interpolations etc which textual critics can work on but it does seem we have a fairly high degree of confidence in the texts and that they are not the issue.

The very word "interpolation" is loaded. By using the word interpolation to describe editing activities, one implicitly separates the manuscript into the "true" version and the interpolated version. In truth both are fictions, one just has more authors.

While the papyri screw up some arguments for very late Gospel dating (as Iasion is struggling with - I've never heard of P52 dated later than 150AD)

Me neither. Do you have an academic cite, Iasion?

beachbum

OK, I am bothered. Not being a student of early manuscripts I ask for your indulgence since my questions will appear as those of a dullard.

MMS what does this represent?

The lists I have browsed show some of the NT but not the whole thing by any means. Where did the rest come from? Or was it found in tact and not listed here because it is known by everyone (except me) to be complete and factual?

Thanks for your patience.

Stan the inquisitive beachbum

Alexis Comnenus

Tortonm,

Actually, the Res Gestae is carved around the base of Augustus's altar of victory in Rome and is also extant on some temples in Turkey so I think we mean the same thing. Interesting to hear texts are frequently rock carved in the East. Obviously this is rarer in the West.

My point is simply that although we have a contemporary copy of the Res Gestae and a thousand year late one of nearly everything else, this makes precious little difference to how we use each to do our Roman history. The question is not 'is Caesar's writing accurately transmitted?' but 'is Caesar accurate?'.

For the NT texts we should be asking the same questions and their comparatively early manuscript attestation only reenforces that point. Note, I am not disagreeing that the Gospels are substantially fictions but rather making clear that the date of manuscript attestation is not in itself a strong argument for this.

Regards

Alex

CX

Actually I'm only curious what the percentages are for attestation of NT Texts in various time frames. (i.e. .45% of the text is attested prior to the 3rd century, just to pull a number out of thin air) I didn't really have any atheological motive as seems to be implied by some people here. I'm just curious and was going to find out if such an analysis had already been done before I went to the trouble of doing it myself. I suppose the reason for my curiousity is that we may be able to correlate the reliability of a given text fragment based on MSS attestation and get a feel for the stability of the NT as a whole. It was really nothing more than that.


Agreed.

CX

I think you mean MSS. That's an abbreviation for "manuscripts". I haven't done the analysis yet, but it seems clear that a nontrivial portion of NT texts are first available in (also called Codex Sinaiticus) in the 4th century