Quantitative Literary Picture at end of 2nd Century

[gmx]

Obviously this question is highly speculative, however scholarship has probably had a good stab at the probabilities...

If the Muratorian Canon is mid-second-century, as is suggested, then most NT documents were known (assumedly in final form) by this date. So the question is... how many copies of the gospels, in how many languages, and over what geographic spread, existed by the end of the 2nd century?

[Ben C. Smith]

Obviously this question is highly speculative, however scholarship has probably had a good stab at the probabilities...

If the Muratorian Canon is mid-second-century, as is suggested, then most NT documents were known (assumedly in final form) by this date. So the question is... how many copies of the gospels, in how many languages, and over what geographic spread, existed by the end of the 2nd century?

Middle of century II? That is when Pius presumably held sway in Rome, but not when the Muratorian canon had to be written. The date generally depends on this line from the canon:

But Hermas wrote The Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after their time.

The question is: how recently does "very recently" have to be? Dates of anywhere from 160 to 200+ are out there, and even a rogue date in century IV (which I do not find persuasive).

Ben.

[Peter Kirby]

BTW, the 4th century "rogue date" sees the text as being either a literary exercise (representing what someone thinks an early church leader would have written on the canon) or a deliberate pseudepigraph (meant to enhance the authority of the document by giving it greater implied antiquity).

I also didn't credit it much and am not yet convinced by it, but I am intrigued by it. It's not obviously wrong.

[Ben C. Smith]

BTW, the 4th century "rogue date" sees the text as being either a literary exercise (representing what someone thinks an early church leader would have written on the canon) or a deliberate pseudepigraph (meant to enhance the authority of the document by giving it greater implied antiquity).

I also didn't credit it much and am not yet convinced by it, but I am intrigued by it. It's not obviously wrong.

I completely agree that it is not obviously wrong. And I completely stand by my statement that I find it unpersuasive.

[MrMacSon]

Here is a 1995 paper discussing the then state of play in published articles about the the Muratorian Fragment -

C. E. Hill, “The Debate Over the Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon,” Westminster Theological Journal 57:2 (Fall 1995): 437-452.

-- http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/pdf/fragment_hill.pdf

eta:

Jonathan J. Armstrong claims the Muratorian Fragment was written in the mid-late 3rd century by Victorinus of Pettau

Armstrong, JJ (2008)Victorinus of Pettau as the Author of the Canon Muratori Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 62, No. 1; pp. 1-34

The abstract is here - http://www.jstor.org/stable/20474843?se ... b_contents

[MrMacSon]

I thought this was an interesting commentary in Hills paper relevant to the title of this thread -

Albert C. Sundberg ..is said to have shown that the Christian church received from Judaism not a closed OT canon but a “looser collection of sacred writings” (p. 1)*. According to Sundberg, the process of fixing even an OT canon in the church did not begin until the third century and was not completed until the fourth. It was this struggle to define the OT canon which in turn became the major catalyst for the church also to firm up its own collection of authoritative Christian documents. Before this time, an undefined number of writings had indeed been used with religious authority as Scripture, but the church had been content to leave the boundaries of this collection quite undefined and open. The process of NT canon formation then also has to be shifted correspondingly farther down the timeline. The MF, as traditionally dated, stood in the way of this shift, for it represents a situation far more advanced than the present theory allows for the late second or early third century.

C. E. Hill (1995) “The Debate Over the Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon,” Westminster Theological Journal 57:2; 437-452.
http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/pdf/fragment_hill.pdf

* Sundberg, Albert C, Jr. (1973) Canon Muratori: A Fourth-Century List The Harvard Theological Review Vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 1-41

[Peter Kirby]

BTW, the 4th century "rogue date" sees the text as being either a literary exercise (representing what someone thinks an early church leader would have written on the canon) or a deliberate pseudepigraph (meant to enhance the authority of the document by giving it greater implied antiquity).

I also didn't credit it much and am not yet convinced by it, but I am intrigued by it. It's not obviously wrong.

I completely agree that it is not obviously wrong. And I completely stand by my statement that I find it unpersuasive.

Of course.

Didn't intend to be annoying...

Didn't mean that you should change your mind.

But I do believe the question is an open one, and that's important, especially if someone is using the Muratorian as an early witness.

[Ben C. Smith]

BTW, the 4th century "rogue date" sees the text as being either a literary exercise (representing what someone thinks an early church leader would have written on the canon) or a deliberate pseudepigraph (meant to enhance the authority of the document by giving it greater implied antiquity).

I also didn't credit it much and am not yet convinced by it, but I am intrigued by it. It's not obviously wrong.

I completely agree that it is not obviously wrong. And I completely stand by my statement that I find it unpersuasive.

Of course.

Didn't intend to be annoying...

Didn't mean that you should change your mind.

But I do believe the question is an open one, and that's important, especially if someone is using the Muratorian as an early witness.

That is actually a very important point. I have written recently in terms of "moving pieces". Some data are pretty solid (we probably should not completely ignore carbon dated artifacts and epigraphic evidence, for instance), but most of the data we handle is pretty flexible. Make a few adjustments, not even major ones but relatively minor, and the landscape can change pretty dramatically: most of the pieces are movable. I like to keep a running tally in my brain of just which of the "facts" that I accept are immovable and which are movable (and of course that is a spectrum). Sometimes after making careful and closely argued points in support of a particular conclusion it can be tempting to take that conclusion as one of the immovable pieces, simply because of all the hard work we have invested in it. You may have seen some of that in my own reaction to your stylometric conclusion that the Pastorals and the rest of the Paulines were similar; I admitted it would take a great deal to make me think that Paul wrote the Timothies and Titus. And yet... how firm is that conclusion of mine (shared by critical scholarship virtually across the board), really? Is it one of the unmovable pieces? Or is it really a pretty soft consideration after all?

Ben.

[MrMacSon]

Jonathan J. Armstrong claims the Muratorian Fragment was written in the mid-late 3rd century by Victorinus of Pettau -

Armstrong, JJ (2008) 'Victorinus of Pettau as the Author of the Canon Muratori' Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 62, No. 1; pp. 1-34

The abstract is here - http://www.jstor.org/stable/20474843?se ... b_contents