Tue Dec 24 12:09:14 1996

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From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Re: Modelling early MS transmission
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On Sat, 30 Mar 1996, Timothy John Finney wrote:

Being away from my home computer in North Carolina for the holidays (I am
currently in Michigan), I cannot answer the questions raised in sufficient
detail with data, but the following points can be noted:

> Firstly, the critical time for development of variants is said to be the
> first two hundred years of transmission i.e. 100 to 300 AD.  We have a few
> MSS from this era, mainly papyri from Egypt. (On this point, while vellum
> is more durable than papyrus, papyri, nevertheless, can have a lifetime of
> far more than 30 to 40 years. Take P46 for example.) Is there historical,
> psychological and statistical data that can inform us of likely copying
> frequencies, practices and habits of that time? 

In the proper climate and with sufficient care, a papyrus book could
likely last 50-60 years with regular use, I would think. In some cases a
papyrus MS might even last more than a century, though I would suspect
this to be more doubtful.  The fragments of papyrus MSS which survive all
seem to have fallen apart or disintegrated some time before the possible
maximum life of such a MS, perhaps due to travel or less than optimum
preservation conditions.  Of course, if the surviving evidence is instead
taken as typical, then one is faced with a possible shelf/use life of
papyri for about 20-25 years. I tend to doubt this scenario.  Of course,
all this is speculation and unsupported by factual data, but I do seem to
recall some comments about old MSS (I know the colophon to the Martyrdom
of Polycarp speaks of finding an old copy which was almost totally worn
out from age and in poor condition, but the age implied there seems to be
more pushing the century mark than anything less).

> To finish, as far as I know, the only cases of extant copies of extant MSS
> are the two copies of Codex Claromontanus. This would indicate that we
> have but a small number of the total ever made surviving. 

With this I fully concur, of course (and probably most everyone else as
well).  There is an important point here, however, and that is that the
limited sample of MSS preserved from antiquity -- especially in the
pre-minuscule era -- might _not_ provide to us a statistically significant
representative sample of the _real_ state of affairs in MS transmission in
the period from century I-VIII, both due to the limited amount of material
preserved and the limited geographical area of MS preservation, especially
in the papyrus era. This of course has been part of my contention
continually in regard to the possibility that the Byzantine Textform may
well have been dominant even in the early centuries, both numerically as
well as geographically. 


> Assuming that
> copyists did not destroy their exemplars (remembering that a decree was
> once made that forbade the cleaning of Biblical MSS for other writings --
> another reference I should have written down), can you think of how to 
> arrive at an estimate of the total number of uncials from this fact?

The decree was made by the Council of Trullo, AD 692, and it specifically
concerned turning biblical MSS into palimpsests.  I suspect two major
things regarding this decree, and they are (1) that the destruction of
biblical MSS for re-use as palimpsests was widespread and problematic in
the period before AD 692, which caused the council even to consider a ban
on the practice; and (2) that the decree obviously was not effective,
since most of the known palimpsests we currently possess were made after
the 692 decree.  I suspect that, especially at the time of the conversion
from uncial to minuscule script, the conversion of most uncial MSS to
either scrap paper or palimpsest use was a dominant practice.


_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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