the problem with P-52 . . .

Posted by Quixie at 7:24 PM Read our previous post

I have a cousin named Miriam. She has had a distinctive handwriting for as long as I can remember. She has the prettiest writing I have ever seen. She obviously takes pride in her flawless penmanship. It's not excessively ornate, per çe. Rather, what makes it beautiful and memorable is her use of crisp and clean lines, her consistently sized letters, her careful attention to spacing and symmetry. She's in her early fifties now, but like the rest of us, she learned how to write sometime around age 5 or so. What makes some people meticulous scribes and other not-so-meticulous?

Me, I write like a barbarian.
Miriam's script is lovely.

I doubt that her style has changed much if at all in all the ensuing years.

I wonder: If she had been asked at age 8 and then at her present age, to make two copies of the preamble to the U.S Constitution, let's say, or even of the Gospel of John, would I be able to tell which copy was done in the sixties and which today? Would her style be useful to me in discerning this?

A further question ... a bit more abstract: Was her style influenced perhaps by a former stylist's own flair for symmetry (her first grade teacher, for example—we tend to stress our own peeves in our students)?

And another: Might Miriam not herself influence a younger scribe so that her distinctive style would show up later . . . say in the coming decade or two? In other words . . . might Miriam's script not look similar to both her teacher's AND her student's? How many years would be the range of this style? 

Ok, now go back 1900 years or so . . .

Above and to the right is a fotograf of P52 (Rylands Library Papyrus P-52). It's a piece of papyrus that measures about 3½ inches by 2½ inches. It is inscribed with some Greek writing. One side reads (roughly):

"... the Jews for us ...
... anyone so that the word ...
... spoke signifying ...
... to die entered ...
... rium Pilate ...
...and he said ...
... Jews ... "

the other side reads:

"... this I have been born ...
... world so that I would ...
... of the truth ...
... said to him ...
... and this ...
... the Jews ...
... not one ..."

As we can clearly see, there's a top margin there—a left margin too. What we see here is therefore the verso side of a top outside corner of a page of a codex. We can calculate from all this that it is in fact a chunk of a page from the Gospel of John (verso: 18:31–33, where Pilate is compelled to interrogate Jesus by the Jews, and the recto side: 18:37–38, the bit where Pilate finally asks his perennial question, "What is truth?", respectively).

Paleographers who have examined the fragment have identified the style of Greek as Hadriatic. It's the only kind of dating that has been done on it.  Based on this paleographical verdict, a date range of 117–138 CE has been proposed. The dating process basically consisted of comparing and contrasting this specimen with other known samples of ancient writing (you'd be surprised to know how precious few there actually exist). It was subsequently placed on what they speculate is an appropriate place on a historical time-line. It is thus hailed as the earliest extant manuscript of any New Testament text that we have anywhere. This date range has been repeated so often that it has become almost axiomatic; scholars take it for granted these days. Most people in fact just round it off and say 125.

But it seems problematic to me that ONLY the comparative-paleography method was used to date this fragment.   Such a subjective, semi-tangible criterion does not  necessitate that the stylistic idiosyncrasies of individual scribes can be isolated and narrowed down accurately to such a fixed date. Paleographic dating is not as conclusive as that. It's no better than an educated guess. 

While I recognize the value that such a method would have as a secondary form of verification of a date, by itself the method lacks the empirical precision that would be required for the kind of certitude that is bestowed on the dating of this fragment by scholarship in recent years. It seems to me that a wider window is likely needed, given this intrinsic subjectivity. Perhaps from 100-160 (adding a couple of decades to each end of the scale). This is not an insignificant difference. 

Should we not perhaps radiocarbon date the fragment?

I realize that some folks would be up in arms about destroying a portion of such an old fragment of a gospel in the process (it's pretty tiny to begin with, it's true), but i think it is far more important for the furthering of our understanding of these texts to precisely date this manuscript, than it is to revere it to the point where we preclude any further scholarly examination of it.

I mean, we already KNOW what the Gospel of John says (right?) —it's not like it's the only piece we have. Besides, if we only use a small section of margin, the text will still be intact.

I know that this will probably never take place, but until it does, I will take the consensus on the dating of P-52 with a grain of salt.

Ó

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