On The Longest Possible Timeline The Survival Rate Of Difficult Markan Readings Goes To Zero. First Rule Of Text Club

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JoeWallack
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Charles Wilson wrote: Fri Apr 20, 2018 6:50 am PS, re: Atzmon: When did Hatred of Jews become a requirement for NT Studies? Oh...Wait a minute...
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Stuart
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Re: On The Longest Possible Timeline The Survival Rate Of Difficult Markan Readings Goes To Zero. First Rule Of Text Clu

Post by Stuart »

I very seriously doubt we have any manuscripts or fragments from before the Great Diocletian Persecution.

The reasoning is simple. Most manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed. The few survivors were copied into oblivion (heavy handling) in the 4th century. We have Canon lists because the question facing the church was, "what documents do we spend precious resources copying and placing in each church?" The battles of the 4th century not doubt had further sporadic destruction up to the death of Julian. The likelihood of a document surviving from prior to the Great Persecution is not a linear decay to one after. It's almost a KT boundary.

Those dated prior, such as the P52 scrap, are typically dated on hand writing sample, and applying an early range (well similar early bounds are often given carbon dates as well). But depending on which study one looks at there are samples that share characteristics with P52 which are 5th and even 6th century. As a result the "accepted" date has drifted up to around 200 CE. But that is more a generalized safety date to put the debate to rest than a solid date of anything.

I have postulated that the reason we see text types instead of a smooth spectrum of text readings is because of the Diocletian Persecution. What survived to be copied was a handful of scattered manuscripts, perhaps a couple hundred. Bundling into collections became popular in this reconstruction effort as well. The odds of finding any scraps of pre-Diocletian manuscripts is somewhere between slim and none. This is something we just have to accept and work with.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
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