Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

outhouse wrote:

Diogenes the Cynic wrote:
I'm like 99% sure this will turn out to be bullshit.

.

Why?

Evans has done some great work in the past.

Let's see what the critical scholars say. I don't like this game of he and Wallace saying, "we have it but you can't see it."

I think--if it ever amounts to anything--evangelicals will argue that an 80ce date and Egyptian provenience for the manuscript will furnish grounds for antedating Mark much earlier than the standard dating in the 70's. It will have taken time to travel there, right? They did the same thing with p52.

Or, they may leap all over the report by Eusebius that Mark was sent to Egypt and perhaps composed the gospel there.

But to be fair, a few secular scholars date Mark to the 40's.

ericbwonder wrote:. It will have taken time to travel there, right?

.

I have my own little pet hypothesis that these people before the Temple fell, transferred information every Passover. From all over the Diaspora.

With the fall of the temple, traditions needed to be written down and preserved as information was now being shared differently.

Couple weeks walk should not make much difference.

The travel-time hypothesis is wrapped up with assumptions of genre and audience. There's an old scholarly dispute over whether the Gospels were originally created for their local communities (so Koester et al.) or whether some or all of them were instead meant for wider circulation from the start (so Bauckham et al.). If a text were intended to be known throughout the Christian world, you could, perhaps, expect every major metropolis (Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria at least) to have it within, say, a year.

Perhaps a better argument is that you don't use a brand spanking new text as mummy wrappings.

On the other hand, there is a lot we don't know. For example, is this manuscript part of a complete text of Mark or perhaps part of a magical talisman that quotes Mark? Or something else entirely? Lots of questions.

Diogenes the Cynic wrote:Let's see what the critical scholars say.

Fair enough.

I don't like this game of he and Wallace saying, "we have it but you can't see it."

Agreed.

Maybe they don't want to make azzes out of themselves. I don't know. Im out of that loop

outhouse wrote:I have my own little pet hypothesis that these people before the Temple fell, transferred information every Passover.

More often than that, both before and after. The "encyclical" and "festal letter" were Jewish conventions and kept the diaspora in (one-way) communication with Judea. (Of course you are speaking of 'oral tradition', and you've got a good point there.)

outhouse wrote:Maybe they don't want to make azzes out of themselves. I don't know. Im out of that loop

Maybe but it reminds me of the whole Jacobovici thing. Lots of buildup, big anticlimax.

Peter Kirby wrote:There's an old scholarly dispute over whether the Gospels were originally created for their local communities (so Koester et al.) or whether some or all of them were instead meant for wider circulation from the start

.

Isnt the modern stance a combination of both, more on the side of a wider audience then a pater familias or two ?


I just see these pieces as a waist for a small community and designed to be shared widely.


Its almost begs the questions, who would keep this kind of literature to themselves?

Maybe but it reminds me of the whole Jacobovici thing. Lots of buildup, big anticlimax.

If he lowers himself to that, id be done with him in a second. I hope not, I thought he was better then that.

(Of course you are speaking of 'oral tradition', and you've got a good point there.)

Just seems a logical was of getting ones message out and about.

Not sure it was always oral, but yes for the most part. sure.

Peter Kirby wrote:So who's taking bets?

I'll pay you $2 for your $1 that the dust settles and an early second century date is as plausible as a late first century one.

Yep. My prediction: It will be dated 120CE +/- 40yrs. Evangelicals will say it's from 80CE, the sensibles will say c.120CE, and skeptics will say 160CE. Hardcore evangelicals will say it actually predates 70CE and claim the methods for dating are flawed. Hardcore conspiracy theorists will say it's actually from the 4th century and claim the dating methods are flawed.

From a comment by Roberta Mazza on her blog post here:
https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/20 ... ics-again/

" .....2. there is not a single example of New Testament papyrus coming from mummy cartonnage so far,
3. the use of recycled papyrus for making mummy cartonnage ends in the Augustan era according to current scholarship and findings,
4. there is methodology developed in the 1980 that allows the extraction of fragments with minimal damages to the mummy cartonnage: "


From Roger Bagnall's book here:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9059.pdf
Chapter 1 "The Dating of the Earliest Christian books in Egypt"

p 9
"But letters datable to the second century with confidence are never securely Christian and letters with definite marks of Christianity are not firmly datable to the second century"