Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - RE: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>
  • To: M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk, Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?
  • Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 17:30:19 -0500

At 12:16 AM 2/26/03 -0000, Mark Goodacre wrote:
>On 25 Feb 2003 at 19:04, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>> P46 is a defective MSS, missing the end, and the scribe's handwriting got
>> progressively smaller. Therefore, I am not so confident that we can
>> conclude
>> that the Pastorals were in fact missing from P46. It's best to leave a big
>> question mark over this.
>
>And in this connection, cf. Jeremy Duff, 'P46 and the Pastorals: A
>Misleading Consensus?', New Testament Studies 44 (1998), 578-590

Eldon J. Epp responds to Duff's piece among other things in
a chapter in the CANON DEBATE, acknowledging that one can no
longer be so definite about the Pastorals being missing but
finding Duff's reasons for inclusion nonetheless far-fetched.
On balance, however, I think that Duff has the slightly better
case, but no one should rely on P46 as evidence for or against
the Pastorals, either way.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
>From davidinglis2 AT attbi.com Wed Mar 12 12:03:53 2003
Return-Path: <davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>
Delivered-To: corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: from sccrmhc02.attbi.com (sccrmhc02.attbi.com [204.127.202.62])
by happyhouse.metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A6AA20005
for <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>;
Wed, 12 Mar 2003 12:03:53 -0500 (EST)
Received: from desktop (12-233-7-6.client.attbi.com[12.233.7.6])
by sccrmhc02.attbi.com (sccrmhc02) with SMTP
id <2003031217052600200t3ffde>; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:05:26 +0000
From: "David ATTBI" <davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>
To: "Corpus-Paul@Lists. Ibiblio. Org" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:03:26 -0800
Message-ID: <KNEPKCMPMKBCMMBMAHDBMELCCAAA.davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0)
Importance: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106
X-BeenThere: corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1
Precedence: list
Reply-To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Id: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/corpus-paul>,
<mailto:corpus-paul-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/corpus-paul>
List-Post: <mailto:corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/corpus-paul>,
<mailto:corpus-paul-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:03:54 -0000

On Fri, 07 Mar 2003 Stephen Carlson wrote:

>At 12:16 AM 2/26/03 -0000, Mark Goodacre wrote:
>>On 25 Feb 2003 at 19:04, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>>> P46 is a defective MSS, missing the end, and the scribe's handwriting
got
>>> progressively smaller. Therefore, I am not so confident that we can
conclude
>>> that the Pastorals were in fact missing from P46. It's best to leave a
big
>>> question mark over this.
>>
>>And in this connection, cf. Jeremy Duff, 'P46 and the Pastorals: A
>>Misleading Consensus?', New Testament Studies 44 (1998), 578-590
>
>Eldon J. Epp responds to Duff's piece among other things in
>a chapter in the CANON DEBATE, acknowledging that one can no
>longer be so definite about the Pastorals being missing but
>finding Duff's reasons for inclusion nonetheless far-fetched.
>On balance, however, I think that Duff has the slightly better
>case, but no one should rely on P46 as evidence for or against
>the Pastorals, either way.

According to Trobisch: "one may deduce that the seven missing outer leaves
[of P46] holding 14 pages of text at the beginning left room for 14
corresponding pages at the end. The remainder of 1 Thessalonians, 2
Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon cannot fit onto 14
pages of the size used by P46. A fair estimate lies somewhere close to 23
more pages necessary to hold all of the expected text."

My understanding is that the extant portion of P46 ends with 1 Thes 1:1,
1:9-2:3, 5:5-9, and 5:23-28. So, if we already have the end of 1 Thes, why
does Trobisch suggest that the missing 14 pages of text at the end of P46
need to contain "the remainder of 1 Thessalonians?" Is this because the
fragments containing vv. 5:5-9 and 5:23-28 are actually counted as part of
those 'missing' 14 pages? We need to know the exact point at which those 14
pages actually start, or to put it another way, do the 86 extant leaves of
P46 include the end of 1 Thes? Can anyone provide that information?

If we take Trobisch's estimate of 23 pages being required for everything
else as reasonably accurate (and I assume he is using a constant number of
characters per page when performing the calculation), then (ignoring for a
moment the 'remainder' of 1 Thes) we should expect the following
(approximate) space to be required:

Letter Characters Pages Total
2 Thes 4055 3.8 3.8
1 Tim 8869 8.2 12.0
2 Tim 6538 6.0 18.0
Titus 3733 3.5 21.5
Phm 1575 1.5 23.0

If this is the case then 14 pages leaves us curiously in the middle of
nowhere. If the end of P46 only included 2 Thes and Phm then there would
have been lots of 'white space' left (in which case why would the scribe
compress his writing so much at the end?), but on the other hand including,
say, 2 Thes and 1 Tim and leaving out everything else would seem a very odd
thing to do. So, are Trobisch's estimates out of line? How much of 1 Thes
should be counted as being on the missing 14 pages, and finally, can anyone
come up with a better calculation?

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



  • RE: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?, Stephen C. Carlson, 03/07/2003

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page