Papyrus 46 - Date

Date

As with all manuscripts dated solely by palaeography, the dating of 46 is uncertain. The first editor of parts of the papyrus, H. A. Sanders, proposed a date possibly as late as the second half of the 3rd century. F. G. Kenyon, editor of the complete editio princeps, preferred a date in the first half of the 3rd century. The manuscript is now sometimes dated to about 200. Young Kyu Kim has argued for an exceptionally early date of c. 80. Griffin critiqued and disputed Kim's dating, placing the 'most probable date' between 175-225, with a '95% confidence interval' for a date between 150-250.

Comfort and Barrett have claimed that 46 shares affinities with the following:

  • P. Oxy. 8 (assigned late 1st or early 2nd century),
  • P. Oxy. 841 (the second hand, which cannot be dated later than 125–150),
  • P. Oxy. 1622 (dated with confidence to pre-148, probably during the reign of Hadrian (117–138), because of the documentary text on the verso),
  • P. Oxy. 2337 (assigned to the late 1st century),
  • P. Oxy. 3721 (assigned to the second half of the 2nd century),
  • P. Rylands III 550 (assigned to the 2nd century), and
  • P. Berol. 9810 (early 2nd century).

This, they conclude, points to a date during the middle of the 2nd century for 46.

Read more about this topic:  Papyrus 46

Famous quotes containing the word date:

    “In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    “Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
    —Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    “Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, that I have not unfolded within myself. But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)