Posted: Apr 17, 2017 6:25 am
dejuror wrote:duvduv wrote:Does one have to be an atheist to question the origins of the books of the NT? Of course there is no evidence that a Luke or a GLuke etc. ever even existed in the 1st or even 2nd century. But the new regime of Constantine did have the means, motive and opportunity to create the new religion.
Manuscripts of gLuke [Papyri 4 and Papyri 75] are dated by Paleography to the late 2nd to early 3rd century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri#List_of_all_registered_New_Testament_papyri
The abundance of evidence show that stories of Jesus were already written at least a hundred years before the Roman Catholic Religion which was initiated in the 4th century.
The papyri evidence derives from about a dozen or more rubbish dumps surrounding the city of Oxyrhynchus, a city which went a massive population explosion of "monks" in the mid 4th century.
- OXYRHYNCHUS
Historia Monachorum
"The city is so full of monasteries
that the very walls resounded
with the voices of monks.
Other monasteries encircled it outside,
so that the outer city forms
another town alongside the inner.
Monks outnumbered the secular citizens.
In the mid 4th century we may naturally expect that these "monks" were practicing writing bits and pieces out of the Greek New Testament Bible and throwing stuff on to the mid 4th century rubbish dumps. We may also naturally expect that with such a large amount of "monks" (male and female) practicing writing the NT Bible there would be a great variety of handwriting styles and skills, and that at least some of them would be archaic.
It follows that manuscripts of the NT dated by Paleography to the 2nd & 3rd centuries may in fact be manuscripts written upon in the 4th century at which time the NT Bible became the source of inspiration for the entire Roman empire. Palaeography is not as accurate a dating methodology as has sometimes been advertised, as recent articles have argued. For example:
- The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P.Bodmer II (P66)
By Brent Nongbri, Macquarie University [2014]
Abstract
Palaeographic estimates of the date of P.Bodmer II, the well-preserved Greek papyrus codex of the Gospel of John, have ranged from the early second century to the first half of the third century. There are, however, equally con- vincing palaeographic parallels among papyri securely dated to as late as the fourth century. This article surveys the palaeographic evidence and argues that the range of possible dates assigned to P.Bodmer II on the basis of palaeography needs to be broadened to include the fourth century. Furthermore, a serious con- sideration of a date at the later end of that broadened spectrum of palaeographic possibilities helps to explain both the place of P.Bodmer lI in relation to other Bodmer papyri and several aspects of the codicology of P.Bodmer II.
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_071.htm
Consequently it is not necessarily true that that stories of Jesus were already written (according to palaeography) at least a hundred years before the Roman Catholic Religion of the 4th century.
These NT manuscript palaeographic dating estimates may in fact be perceived as a form of pareidolia or confirmation bias.