Subject: Ms half-lives

From: Timothy John Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:42:30 +0800 (WST)

I have been away for the last few days, so I have not answered some 
questions generated by my post concerning ms half-lives.

James Adair said that the analogy can't be pushed too far, and that
persecutions and technological changes would affect the decay rate. I
agree. The 250 year half-life that falls out of the assumption of
exponential decay given Duplacy's 4th C. estimate of ms numbers is a first
order approximation, and is probably very rough. To answer your question
about boundaries, James, I was looking at the times and places where Greek
NT mss were produced and used, but mainly at the first few centuries of 
NT ms production.

By the way, I would also like to thank you for the tc list! 

Larry Hurtado said that economic crunches would have affected things. I 
agree with that also. Once again, the effect would be to change the decay 
constant in the exponential equation. So it would no longer be a decay 
constant like in nuclear decay, but a decay variable that is a function 
of just about everything imaginable.

Bob Waltz said that as numbers are low, the decay curve is not very well
modelled by a continuous curve. This is precisely right. But you can do a
Monte Carlo simulation of the growth of the number of mss. This is why I
want these strange parameters -- so that I can make a better simulation of
Greek NT ms copying in the first three centuries. 

I am glad that Maurice Robinson agrees with the need to come up with some
estimate of a ms lifespan. I like his assertion that the scribes who wrote
the Greek NT papyri were not necessarily professionals.  Two of the more
extensive papyri I have looked at are P13 and P46. P13 is written on the
back of a roll -- was that something that a professional scribe would do?
P46 shows signs of having been written in a controlled environment,
perhaps a scriptorium. Zuntz gives some reasons for believing this in his
_Disquisition upon the Corpus Paulinum_ (1946 Schweich lectures, publ.
1953).

Mark E. Burrill wrote:

> On a related topic and purely as a matter of curiosity on my part, could
> anyone happen to tell me what the oldest mss are that are believed to
> have existed throughout their lives in the regions west of Palestine and
> North of Egypt?

That's in the Mediterranean isn't it? Sorry, I couldn't resist that. Off
the top of my head, the oldest candidates for being non-Egyptian mss would
be the uncial fragments dated to the third C, but I suspect that they are
from Egypt. Does anyone know where they were found? Besides them, there
are 01 (Codex Sinaiticus) and 03 (Codex Vaticanus). There is evidence to
suggest that 01 was made at Caesarea. 03 might also be from there or
Southern Italy, but my bet is Egypt. 

> Given favorable political conditions, what would be the likelihood that 
> a ms of similar age would have survived near the supposed area of
> composition or anywhere in the Asia Minor or Southern Europe area?

I would say that the probability of the (papyrus?) autograph of the Gospel
of John surviving is about 1 in a zillion. If it lived in Ephesus it would
not be in a dry climate, so would be very unlikely to survive. Besides
this, it would have been at risk of being pulled to bits to supply holy
relics. Everyone would have wanted to touch it and read it. It might have
been carried about so that people could compare their copies with it. 
Other things being equal, of all the mss the autographs would be among the
least likely to survive. Of very early non-Egyptian NT mss in general,
perhaps someone will find one (carbonised) at Herculaneum or Pompei...

> If it were sealed in a jar and put in a cave like the DSS, would it have
> survived?

If it were kept somewhere extremely dry like the Judean desert or sands 
of Oxyrhynchus, I would give it a good chance of survival.

Best regards,

Tim Finney

[email-masked]
Baptist Theological College
and Murdoch University
Perth, W. Australia

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:02:41 -0700

>Southern Italy, but my bet is Egypt.

Minor point of information:

I believe that the oldest "biblical" manuscript found outside Egypt,
apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other OT fragments, is 0212 --
the Diatessaron fragment from Dura. It's dated III. But one uncial --
and it not a true NT fragment -- doesn't tell us much.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                            Robert B. Waltz
                         [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A very rough draft of part of the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)