How Many Books of the New Testament Did Paul Definitely Write?
Dating the Oldest New Testament Christian Manuscripts
Principles, Practices, and Pitfalls
Marek Dospěl August 16, 2021 1 Comments 24687 views
SOME BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS include short notes to the reader from the scribe who copied the manuscript. These so-called colophons may include a date, but dates only become common in Greek biblical manuscripts in the ninth century. This page with a colophon comes from an illuminated Arabic manuscript of the four Gospels (Walters MS. W.592, fol. 261b); it states the manuscript was copied by Ilyās Bāsim Khūrī Bazzī Rāhib in the year "7192 after Adam" (A.D. 1684).Photo: Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum
The New Testament that we read today in many different translations is not based on one single manuscript of the original Greek text. Why? There simply is no such thing as a complete text of the New Testament that we could date to the apostolic times, or even two or three centuries after the last of the apostles. Extant manuscripts containing the entire Christian Bible are the work of medieval monks. The modern scholarly editions of the original Greek text draw on readings from many different ancient manuscripts. As a result, the New Testament presented in any of our Bibles does not correspond to a single, authoritative ancient manuscript.
The oldest surviving examples of the New Testament come to us, instead, as fragments and scraps of papyrus excavated (mostly) in Egypt. How old are the oldest of these biblical fragments, and why does it matter whether they were written in the first or the fourth century? "Sometimes it's a big deal," states Brent Nongbri of the Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society in Oslo. Expert on early Christian manuscripts, Professor Nongbri offers insights into the critical issues of dating ancient biblical manuscripts in his article "How Old Are the Oldest Christian Manuscripts?" published in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
WHEN A LEAF OR A ROLL with dated documentary text is reused to copy an otherwise undated literary text, the document's date serves as the earliest possible date of the literary composition. This page of P.Oxy. 12.1444 concerns payments of grain from A.D. 248–249. The back side was later used to record some orations. How much later these orations are, we cannot know for sure. Photo: Courtesy of the Ghent University Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0
Although the New Testament as we know it is essentially a "collage" of various surviving manuscripts, it relies heavily on one particular, parchment manuscript—the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, or the Vatican Codex. In the mid-20th century, explains Nongbri, "most New Testament textual critics believed that the text of the New Testament preserved in the Codex Vaticanus was the result of an editorial revision that took place in the fourth century. Then in 1961, a papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke and John in Greek (P.Bodmer XIV–XV or P75 to specialists) was published. It is often called the most important New Testament papyrus so far discovered because it was dated, on the basis of its handwriting, to about A.D. 175–225, and its text agrees very closely with that of Codex Vaticanus."
AS HANDWRITING CHANGES from one generation to the next, palaeography, or the study of ancient forms of writing, can help in assigning dates to otherwise undated manuscripts. Just how precise a means of dating palaeography proves to be is a source of some discord. From E. M. Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, New York: Burt Franklin, [1965], p. 147
This discovery led many to argue that the text of the Vatican Codex must, too, have originated as early as the late second century and was then transmitted carefully (without corruption) until it was written down in the Vatican Codex, in the fourth century. This sounds logical, but there is one substantial flaw in such an argument—it is based on nothing but the supposed date of the Bodmer papyrus that has been established (or, shall we say, "guessed") by comparing the handwriting with other extant manuscripts. Palaeography, which is what the comparative study of handwriting is called, is just one of the possible ways to date ancient manuscripts, including the earliest examples of the Christian Bible.
To be sure, unlike the documents of everyday writing (contracts, wills, edicts, receipts, etc.), the earliest copies of Christian literature (including the Bible) are almost never dated explicitly, and scholars must rely on technical analyses and circumstantial evidence to establish probable dates. The resulting "informed guesses" can differ by centuries.
THIS FRAGMENTED PARCHMENT was found in an undisturbed context at Dura-Europos, in present-day Syria. It contains Greek gospel text which does not correspond to any one canonical gospel. Rather, it mixes elements of all four. Because we know that Dura-Europos was sacked in A.D. 256, the manuscript must date to that year or earlier. Photo: Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
To explore the uses, abuses, and caveats of the dating techniques, read "How Old Are the Oldest Christian Manuscripts?" published in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
MODERN TESTING TECHNOLOGIES include radiocarbon analysis. When Codex Tchacos (pictured here is p. 33, which contains the beginning of the Gospel of Judas) was first publicized, in 2016, it was claimed to date to around A.D. 280, plus or minus 60 years, based on radiocarbon analysis. What we didn't know back then was that the analysis included samples from the cover, whose material (used as stuffing) logically predates the writings. The codex more likely comes from the fourth century. Photo: Wolfgang Rieger, public domain
Subscribers: Read the full article "How Old Are the Oldest Christian Manuscripts?" by Brent Nongbri, in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.
This post first appeared in Bible History Daily in June, 2020
Read more in the Bas Library
Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.
How the Books of the New Testament Were Chosen by Roy W. Hoover
How did the Church decide which books to include in the New Testament? When was the decision made? By whom? The surviving evidence unfortunately does not provide answers in the detail we would like, but it does document a number of the developments that eventually produced the New Testament as we know it
How Old Are the Oldest Christian Manuscripts? by Brent Nongbri
The earliest Christian manuscripts are almost never dated explicitly, and scholars must rely on technical analyses and circumstantial evidence to establish probable dates. Learn about the uses and abuses of the dating techniques.
Why Is Sinaiticus Significant?
Codex Sinaiticus, written around the middle of the fourth century A.D., is arguably the earliest extant Christian Bible. It contains the earliest complete copy of the New Testament. Only one other nearly complete manuscript of the Christian Bible—the Codex Vaticanus—is of a similarly early date. The only Christian manuscripts of scripture that are definitely of an earlier date contain relatively small portions of the text.
How Many Books of the New Testament Did Paul Definitely Write?
Source: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/dating-the-oldest-new-testament-christian-manuscripts/
0 Response to "How Many Books of the New Testament Did Paul Definitely Write?"
Post a Comment