Subject: Re: Dating Gos. John

From: Jean VALENTIN <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 97 23:26:43 +0200

>>I don't remember who it was, but someone recently posted that the Gospel
>>of John can be dated as being no later than 125 C.E. What is the basis of
>>this date?
>
>I don't recall the situation, but I'm fairly sure of the reason.
>
>The oldest manuscript of John is the fragment p52. Most scholars
>date p52 c. 125. Therefore John must have been in existence in 125.
>Q.E.D.

That's also what I've always read (for example in B. Metzger's manual). 
But the fragment is so little... Are we really sure we are not facing 
with some source of Jn. or with some other lost Gospel that had this 
passage in common with it? Of course, this is pure vicious hypothesis, 
but... there are many such papyri in Egypt (like collections of logia 
etc...).

________________________________________________________________
Jean Valentin - 58/7 rue Van Kalck - 1080 Bruxelles - BELGIQUE
________________________________________________________________
email : [email-masked]   ***   netmail : 2:291/780.103
________________________________________________________________
Ce qui est trop simple est faux, ce qui est trop complique est 
inutilisable.
What's too simple is wrong, what's too complicated is unusable.
Wat te eenvoudig is, is verkeerd; wat te ingewikkeld is, is onbruikbaar.

---

From: "Gregory J. Woodhouse" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 14:08:57 -0800 (PST)

Thanks, I just happened to bring Metzger into the office with me today and
was able to look it up . A fascinating story. I now remember how surprised
I as reading the description of P52 when I first read it. 

---
[email-masked]    /    http://www.wnetc.com/home.html
If you're going to reinvent the wheel, at least try to come
up with a better one.

---

From: "John C. Hurd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 20:20:29 -0500

The pint of P52 is that it is a codex fragment, i.e., written on both
sides.  From the same amount of text one can calculate the average line
length and the average number of lines per page, and thus the number of
MS pages in the Gospel of John.  It would be vanishingly unlikely that a
source of the IV would be extensive enough to match the canonical text
as this fragment does.
What one does wonder about is how closely one can date a scribes hand. 
+/- 12.5 years seems rather more than one should expect.  Book hands are
more conservative than informal scripts.
--  John Hurd

-- 
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::  Prof. John C. Hurd            Internet: [email-masked]  ::
::  49 Wanless Ave.               Office tel.: (416) 485-2429    ::
::  Toronto, Ont.  M4N 1V5        Office fax:  (416) 485-7320    ::