On dating the Gnostic literature after 325 CE

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: On dating the Gnostic literature after 325 CE

Post by Peter Kirby »

Leucius Charinus wrote:
However, several manuscripts have been classified incorrectly as non-codices.

II - P. Oxy 4009 (codex, Gospel of Peter)
beg. III - P. Ryl. 3.463 (codex, Gospel of Mary)
early III - P. Oxy. 1 (codex, Gospel of Thomas)
III - P. Schoyen 21 (codex, Acts of Paul and Thecla)
III (IV?) - P. Bodmer 5 (codex, Protevangelium of James)
III (IV?) - P. Bodmer 10 (codex, 3 Corinthians)
III/IV - P. Berl. 13893 (codex, Acts of Paul)
III/IV - Hamburg, Pap.bil. 1 (codex, Acts of Paul)
beg. IV - P. Cair. VH 602 (codex, Protevangelium of James)
early IV - P. Kell. 97 A (codex, Acts of John)
early IV - P. Oxy 849 (codex, Acts of Peter)
early IV - P. Oxy. 1081 (codex, Sophia Jesu Christi)

If these were added to the left-hand column, there would then show 13 "Ante-Nicene Codices" and 21 "Post-Nicene Codices."
You have indicated here that you are happy to treat both a 100 page codex and a small papyri fragment as equivalent
units of the discovered evidence, but I dont think that is fair or objective enough.
Could you have instead explained why they need to be treated the way that you treat them, for the purposes that you treat them?

In case you'd forgotten, your purposes -- the purposes for which you are here considering the manuscripts as evidence of anything -- are the purposes of finding some indication of the dating of the original texts involved behind the manuscripts.

Your use of the words "happy," "fair," and "objective" in this context do little more than try to hide the methodological weakness in your position by attempting to shift the conversation in the direction of a discussion of bias (from which, due to your own self-delusion, you think you are relatively free).

I have indicated that it is correct and methodologically sound. It is correct because they are codices. You're the person who uses terminology incorrectly and then expects everyone to know what he really meant. It is, moreover, methodologically sound. The codex versus non-codex distinction was a distraction in this context anyway. We really need to be back to counting manuscripts, whether roll or codex. And, yes, counting larger fragments the same as smaller fragments. Because that's what is methodologically sound in a discussion of the dating of the texts represented by the manuscripts.

Your failure to recognize this as methodologically sound (and your failure to recognize that your own approach is not methodologically sound) proves your own bias and/or incompetence and/or lack of integrity, as if we needed more evidence of that.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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