the older ancestor 100s claim for Vaticanus - with absurdites around P75 and Sinaiticus - ten generations

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

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This is all part of an ongoing textcrit shell game.
There is no real evidence that P75 is that early. Read carefully Brent Nongbri. The real range is something like 175-500 AD.

"Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament"
https://www.academia.edu/25759945/R...in_the_Textual_Criticism_of_the_New_Testament

"The evidence gathered in the present essay calls these conclusions into question by showing that both paleographically and codicologically, P.Bodm. XIV–XV fits comfortably in a fourth-century context, along with the bulk of the other “Bodmer papyri” with which it was apparently discovered."

And I would have to check, but my memory is that an accurate terminus ante quem would be quite a bit after the supposed date of Vaticanus. Brent normally allows that these can be as late as about 500 or later, unless there is some true external marker. We corresponded about this a few years back.

That alone ends all this hyper-speculation from Stephen Boyce, that he very possibly picked up from Wallace. Here is an account describing Wallace:

"Wallace then discussed the concrete example of the relation of P75 to Codex B. He noted that although B came 100-150 years later, it was not a copy of P75 because it frequently had older readings than those found in P75. This meant that, since these two manuscripts are very close in wording to each other, both had a much older ancestor."
https://web.archive.org/web/2016031...ker.com/articles/bart-ehrman’s-problem-part-2

And then you can have fun with the absurdities like "10 generations" blah blah. Textcrit absurdities everywhere, duping the lemmings.
Oh, yes, Vaticanus could easily be 400-600 (or even later) but the Hortian Fog rolled in and made it 350.
Btw, I have seen spots where Vaticanus and P75 agree 90%, supporting some sort of lineage connection, direct or shared, higher than the numbers given by Taylor. However, it is such a nothing-burger that I have little incentive to go that granular.
And I placed a short comment in the moderation queue.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

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Nazaroo
http://nttextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2011/01/bibleorg-busted-again.html

bible.org - Busted Again!

Who is this anonymous 'expert' at bible.org?
Well, he says here something quite remarkable:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010102...ut-thousands-variants-alexandrian-manuscripts

"when Aleph and B agree, their combined testimony must go back quite far. Westcott and Hort estimated that their agreement went back ten generations and must be located near the beginning of the second century."
Click to expand...

Again in another 'expert answer':
https://bible.org/question/i-have-r...-differences-between-vatican-and-sinaitic-man

"I would concur with Westcott and Hort that the common ancestor between these two MSS must be at least ten generations back. I hope this point is clear."
Click to expand...

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Bob Hayton quotes the Wallace nonsense

What Differences Between the Manuscripts Tells Us (2010)
https://web.archive.org/web/2012042...es-between-the-manuscripts-tells-us/#comments
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

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Burgon - Revision Revised in Quarterly Review

Quarterly Review (1882)
New Testament Revision - Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory
John William Burgon
https://books.google.com/books?id=vVgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA348

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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

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Steven Avery

Luke, I agree. Brent Nongbri has been pioneering in showing that papyri dating, when only by handwriting, is:

a) often too early
b) invariably too limited a date range.

And that early dating has a cascading effect, as the various papyri are often compared one to another.

Papers have discussed P52 and P66 with P75 planned.

Now there are times where there are external evidences. This papyrus is dated by the fact that such-and-such is mentioned in a specified way in the same papyri stash. (Such a reference will give a terminus post quem, and possibly a terminus ad quem.) In such cases it is possible for the dating to be fairly secure.

Apparently the 1st century dating mentioned in the ambush by Daniel Wallace was done by one palaeographic whiz. In such a case one is the loneliest number. And the first big question would be .. was that handwriting only? Or was there some external aspect to the date?

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Steven Avery

When I tried to get up to speed on this Galatians 2 fragment I came across these interesting comments from Christian Askeland, which relates to my comment above.

Please go to the page for the techie aspect.

=======================

Galatian Papyrus on Sale
Oct 30, 2012
https://evangelicaltextualcriticism...0BAxQY-rxae5uusrhHUczs7MvU-WAni_oxpROCO1GddGk

Christian Askeland
"You (Brice) have clearly offered the 4th-5th century as a "likely" date ... Your comparison with P66 75 is indicative of the core problem here. (1) We do not know the dates for P66 75 with any certainty. According to James Robinson, they were buried in the early 7th century -- which does not bode well for a 3rd century date ....

My mention of the 6th-8th centuries as a probability (within a larger range) in my previous comment reflects the mass of Coptic documentary documents extant from that period."

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SA
If I remember right from Brent Nongbri, this is really the terminus ante quem of P66 and P75, about 600 AD. Even if it is thought by a palaeographic expert that they are likely Ante-Nicene, the range of dates has to be many centuries, since they lack any external (to script and materials and text) dating component. And the fact of 7th century burial or discard emphasized by Christian must be seen as significant.

From the view of NT Scholarship (Worldwide)
🙂
... There is a **** big difference **** between a papyrus being somewhere between 200-625 AD and being called 225 AD or placed in the late second and early third centuires.

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Let's remember that the ultra-dubious insistence on early dating was made a major part of the theoretical argumentation. And not just for the vein of "look how early we have so much papyri" that has been used by Daniel Wallace, James White and others.

More significantly, we have had textline argumentation from gentlemen like Gordon Fee and Daniel Wallace. And it has been a case of error upon error.

First a papyrus like P75 is locked into an ultra-early date. How convenient. And this is followed up by a logically deficient theory discussing the supposed "common ancestor" or pointing to a text "ten generations" back (Daniel Wallace).

From this compounding of error, Vaticanus (which does have a decent affinity with P75, about 90% agreement on variants) is placed as close to the autographs. This has been a rather amazing type of back-door methodology used to rehabilitate the largely discarded theories of Hort. More precisely, the textual conclusions, rather than the discarded theory. The history of the Fee and Wallace textual shell game on this is available.

Your thoughts?

If I am missing anything here, I really would like to unmiss.

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Steven Avery
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

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Steven Avery
A big problem is that the optimistic early dating of P75 is under a dark cloud.
It may be 3rd-4th century, and possibly later than the dubious early date assigned to Vaticanus.
Brent Nongbri
Textus Received-Russian Academy
https://www.facebook.com/groups/467217787457422/permalink/1460619321450592/
Pure Bible Forum
the older ancestor 100s claim for Vaticanus - with absurdites around P75 and Sinaiticus - ten generations
https://purebibleforum.com/index.ph...ound-p75-and-sinaiticus-ten-generations.3833/

Steven Avery
Brent Nongbri legitimately argues that paleography allows broader date ranges, potentially placing Papyrus 75 in the late third or early fourth century. You can accept this revised date without weakening your position.
The physical age of the papyrus does not change its actual text. Word for word collations confirm P75 and Codex Vaticanus share a 97% agreement rate. If these manuscripts are contemporaneous rather than sequential, their nearly identical text proves they both faithfully copied from a strictly controlled, shared earlier archetype. This high fidelity still eliminates the theory of a major fourth century textual invention. The textual tradition itself was already stable.

Steven Avery
Is the theory applied anywhere else? Any other two manuscripts?

Ross Purdy
What difference is there between the text of these two mss that distinguishes them from any other text?



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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Now the P75 early arguments are totally defunct, redating P75 to the 4th century

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BCHF - "Construction and Date of P.Bodmer 14–15 (P75)..." (2026-09)
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15932

New discoveries and perhaps further study of known papyrus codices may reveal that the use of rolls with very long kollemata developed earlier than the fourth century. Pending such studies, however, the presence of very long kollemata should probably be taken as a reasonably strong indication of manufacture in the fourth century or later. The production of P.Bodmer 14–15 should now be assigned with some measure of confidence to the fourth century.”

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Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (2016)
brent nongbri
brent.nongbri@mq.edu.au
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
https://brentnongbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/nongbri-pbodmer-xiv-xv-jbl-2016-offprint.pdf

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