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  • From: "David Inglis" <david AT colonialcommerce.com>
  • To: <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did P46 once contain the Pastorals?
  • Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 11:41:01 -0800

On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Frank W. Hughes wrote re. Dave Inglis:
>>
>>>As a sidebar, I think it's a very long way from being certain that the
>>>scribe of P46 included 2 Thessalonians.
>>
>>Thank you for correcting me. I was overstating the case. However, IHMO
it is reasonable to state:
>>
>>He most probably included both 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and perhaps Phm, but
>>nothing else.
>>
>Dear Dave,
>
>I don't guess I could get you to say why you think the scribe of P46
>"most probably" included 2 Thessalonians, could I? The earliest quote
>or allusion to it is in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, where St.
>Polycarp also said that Paul wrote it to the Philippians. I am not
>aware of any other quotes of it that early.

Dear Frank,

I'm happy to try! Now, clearly, I have no MS evidence as to how P46 ended.
It really comes down to a balance of probabilities. We know that the outer
leaves of P46 are lost, and we know that if it finished with 1 Thes then
there would have been considerable blank space at the end. Given how the
scribe of P46 was compressing his writing towards the end, I consider that
it is most probable that P46 did *not* end with 1 Thes. The question then
is - what else did it contain? As I understand it, there could not have
been enough space to have included all of 2 Thes, Phm, and the Pastorals.
Is it at least possible that the scribe *could* have squeezed the writing up
even more on the leaves that have been lost? Yes, but for reasons
previously stated I regard this as improbable. So, we are left with
selecting what extra to include in P46 as a subset of five possibilities.
Actually, that's not strictly true. If we want to exhaust *all*
possibilities then we should consider other NT books. However, I regard
the possibility of P46 ever having included, e.g., one or more of the
catholics, as being remote, and IMHO we can safely reject this possibility.

My understanding is that Polycarp's letter was written c. 110-150 AD. We
also have Marcions use of 2 Thes, which must have occurred before Marcion
was excommunicated, and we have its inclusion in the Muratorian canon, and
in all three cases the evidence is that 2 Thes was at the time accepted as
having been written by Paul. So I'd say we have a good starting point for
saying that 2 Thes was known by the time that P46 was written, and therefore
P46 *could* have contained 2 Thes. Also, as it was accepted as a genuine
letter of Paul, it's inclusion in a collection of Paul's letters should come
as no surprise. Based on this and corresponding 'dating' evidence for Phm
and the Pastorals, I believe we can say that it is more probable that P46
contained 2 Thes than the Pastorals. Given both this and the issue of
limited space, I believe that P46 never contained the Pastorals.

This leaves us with 2 Thes and Phm as the most probable. How to chose
between 2 Thes and Phm? Well, I think the order of the books in the extant
portion of P46 is the best clue. The descending-size order makes 2 Thes
more likely than Phm.

So as I said, no MS evidence, but a lot of evidence pointing to 2 Thes as
being the most probable.

Dave Inglis
davidinglis2 AT attbi.com
3538 O'Connor Drive
Lafayette, CA, USA





  • Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did P46 once contain the Pastorals?, David Inglis, 03/01/2003

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