Thiede & Mack (More than you wanted to know about uncials)
D.R. Edwards dedwards@bae.uky.edu
Wed, 7 Apr 1999 10:57:56 -0400 (00923515076, 000701be8107$056c7260$2ec5a380@guido2.bae.uky.edu)
>RAY
>He makes a good argument I think but one factor I simply do not understand.
>Mack says Thiede bases much of his argument on the fact that "these
>fragments are were written in uncial script (upright, block letters), a
>practice that was generally abandoned during the course of the first
>century" (pg 9). He then argues that this script was still used during the
>time the conventional date for Matthew (about 85 C.E.) was written. He then
>says the late second century is a good date for these fragments.
>
>EDWARDS
>Uncials were used in copying the NT for considerably later than the 1st
>century. In fact, the "great uncial manuscripts" (including Vaticanus,
>Sinaiticus and Bezae) are all written in this style. I believe that Thiede
>based some of his argument on the reconstructed use of nomina sacra -
>abbreviations for words with special significance such as "Lord" and
>"Jesus", which were contracted with a line drawn above the contraction.
For
>example, "Jesus" was often represented as an "IS" with a line over the top.
>These contractions were used in early manuscripts; this, together with
>Thiede's views regarding the paleography, suggested a relatively early
date.
>
>RAY
>My problem is why does the fact that the originals could have been written
>using these uncials mean anything? Did copyists sometime copy using the
>script they were copying even though it had gone out of style? How do
>people date these manuscripts using style of writing if they don't assume
>the script in style was used by the copiest?
>
>EDWARDS
>I'm not sure that the fact that the originals could have been written in
>uncial is the key issue here. It's probably to be presumed that the
>originals would have been written in uncial. What's available to me at the
>moment suggests that uncial script was used in copying biblical texts even
>after that style of writing was no longer as popular, with miniscules
>becoming dominant around the 9th century or so (perhaps in part to the
>relative speed with which the text could be copied). The key issue seems
to
>me to be (and it's very possible I've missed your point here) how one
>assigns dates to different manuscripts, each written in uncial script. The
>short answer is that script changes over time, and these changes have been
>documented. The handwriting from the days of Abraham Lincoln, for example,
>looks "different" from handwriting of today, even though both are nominally
>the same type of script. It's basically the same when assigning dates to
>uncial manuscripts - relatively subtle differences in the ways certain
>letters are written offer clues as to the date the document was produced.
>There's an example of this type of thing at
>
>http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/UncialScript.html#Introduction
>
>Hope this was somewhat related to your question.
Ray to Edwards:
Thanks, this was exactly what I was looking for. Clearly I did attract an
expert. I had been confused because although I have read Metzger and
thought that Uncial script was used for essentially all the manuscripts
like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, there might be some difference in this
particular script. Mack didn't mention that this was the same as used for
all these others however, except to say these fragments fitted well with
other late 2nd century manuscripts. That is apparently what he meant but it
was not to clear to me. It appeared as if he discounted the claim (based on
script type) just by saying the original could easily have been written
that way. If he had said that this was the same script as used in these
other manuscripts (most from the 4th and later centuries), I wouldn't have
bothered anyone with the problem. When one is not an expert, little things
can put you off.
EDWARDS
Thanks for the kind words, but don't be too swift to annoint me as an
"expert." I had a little trouble following Mack's argument when you
summarized it a few weeks ago. After reading those pages in his book last
night, and checking with other sources (including participants on another
list-server) I still had lots of trouble fitting Mack's argument into the
issues surrounding the dating of P64/67. The long and short of that issue
is that Mack might have misstated some of the issues.
First, I need to "clarify" (in the Orwellian sense) a few items from the
last post. There was a running (cursive) Greek script prior to the
miniscule. This script would have been used for ordinary correspondence
(e.g., autographs of Paul's epistles). Literary works and perhaps official
correspondence would normally have been written in a different script. From
about 200 BCE to 200 CE, this different script would have been the classic
squared letters, similar to the script on the Rosetta Stone. This script is
commonly referred to as "uncial", but there is some disagreement among
paleographic experts as to whether the term is appropriate ("uncial"
originally referred to a Latin script). Proper uncial script in the context
of the Greek alphabet seems to have developed in Egypt approximately 200 CE.
In comparison to the classic Greek script, uncial script has relatively
rounded letters (e.g., epsilon and upsilon) and represents some letters
altogether differently (e.g., sigma and omega). Use of parchment in
preference to papyrus probably promoted the dominance of the uncial script,
since it would have facilitated the rounded pen strokes. P64/67 appears to
demonstrate a transition from classic to uncial script - you can see some of
this for yourself from the photos at
http://www.christianchristian.com/jesuss.htm - suggesting a date of around
200 CE based on paleography alone. Other factors support this dating, such
as the fact that P64/67 (containing Matthew) and P4 (containing Luke) are
thought to be from the same codex, and multi-gospel codices are unknown
prior to about 175-200 CE. Theide has apparently tried to make the case
that the type of script represented by P64/67 (he worked only w/ P64, I
believe) was in use prior to 200 CE and used papyrus from various locations
to make his point.
Now, how does all this relate to Mack's argument? It appears to me (as
another list participant suggested) that he misused some terms in his
argument. The issue in the context of paleography appears never to have
been one of uncial vs. non-uncial per se, but one of small differences in
how some of the uncial letters were written. One list participant noted
that Mack has no established research credentials in the area of
paleography. The same participant also noted (as you probably already knew)
that Thiede has been found "methodologically inept in this argument by
competent palaeographers in the relevant scholarly journals."
It's hard to say how this relates to originals. The presumption seems to be
that Paul's epistles would have originally been written in running script
rather than block letters, because they would not have constituted literary
works. In the case of the gospels, however, the picture is a bit murkier,
because P52 (which can't be much more than 30 years removed from the
original) is not in running script; thus, the gospels (at least John) might
originally have been written in classic script. This would be more-or-less
in line with the principle that classic/uncial script was used for literary
works and would suggest that people recognized John, at least, as a literary
work at a relatively early date.