Digging?
Papyrus DOES NOT LIE!!
We know from the first articles used to write on concerning river plants being dried out, glued, flattened, later were sewn, etc. But, we know specifically when the world itself was using these materials to write on. We know by how the process changed indicated a new way of doing things in the world, like it progressed (going from gluing the papyrus to now gluing and sewing)(later on it evolved into sewing more than just the seems). But we know specifically within a 20 year range when these were made and used.
And the Papyrus for Hebrews is 3rd Century.
So, how someone could quote something not yet written and be accepted by scholars is beyond me. But when I look at dates, I can see many theories have changed, including the views and opinions of scholars, since the Papyrus is accurate to within a 99.3% range in dating its factual age.
Beaty papyrus
Digging?
Papyrus DOES NOT LIE!!
We know from the first articles used to write on concerning river plants being dried out, glued, flattened, later were sewn, etc. But, we know specifically when the world itself was using these materials to write on. We know by how the process changed indicated a new way of doing things in the world, like it progressed (going from gluing the papyrus to now gluing and sewing)(later on it evolved into sewing more than just the seems). But we know specifically within a 20 year range when these were made and used.
And the Papyrus for Hebrews is 3rd Century.
So, how someone could quote something not yet written and be accepted by scholars is beyond me. But when I look at dates, I can see many theories have changed, including the views and opinions of scholars, since the Papyrus is accurate to within a 99.3% range in dating its factual age.
Speaking of papyrus;
Papyrus 46
The oldest manuscript of the letters of Paul usually is referred to as papyrus 46, abbreviated p46. Judging from the handwriting used in this manuscript, it is
dated around the year 200 and was produced in Egypt. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor acquired parts of this manuscript, but most pages belong to the Chester Beatty collection in Dublin, Ireland.
This manuscript is not only the oldest extant edition of the letters of Paul but it is at the same time one of the oldest manuscripts in book form known to exist. Up until the fourth century CE literature was copied almost exclusively on scrolls. There is some mystery about the origin of the codex, the Latin term for book in contrast to the scroll. Somehow the public use of the codex is closely connected to the formation of the New Testament. The Christians were apparently the first ones to depart from the scroll and to use the bookform as a medium.
This codex of the letters of Paul was made out of one single quire. That is to say, 52 papyrus leaves were put on top of each other and then folded in the middle; thus forming 104 leaves holding 208 pages of text.
If a codex is made out of one quire, the scribe must carefully calculate how much text the book will have to hold before he starts to write. Once he is past the middle page there is no way to correct a mistake, for any sheet of papyrus added at the end of the codex will give an empty first page.
You can imagine how difficult the calculation was. Consider, for example, the problem of the inner leaves. When you fold a heap of paper in the middle, the inner leaves will stick out and you will want to cut them so the book looks nicer. This is what was done to p46 before the scribe started writing. Now if you do that you should be aware that the inner pages are smaller than the outer ones and hold less text.
For some reason, the scribe of p46 made a mistake when he calculated the amount of paper he needed. After he had filled more than half of the book, he realized there would not be enough room for all the text he planned to copy. He started to write more characters in each line and gradually increased the 26 lines per page in the first half of the codex to 28, then to 30 and in the end to 32 lines per page.
Although the manuscript is in fairly good condition, the outer pages did not survive. The text starts with Rom 5:17, then runs through Hebrews 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians Ephesians Galatians Philippians Colossians and ends in 1 Thess 5:28. Because many pages still provide their original page numbers it is easy to see that the seven missing outer leaves holding 14 pages of text at the beginning left room for 14 corresponding pages at the end. There is no way to get the rest of 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon on 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. What the scribe decided to do, we do not know.
It is not necessary to assume that some of the missing letters were unknown to the scribe, although it could of course be possible. But the scribe evidently had difficulties with the length of the text. Two fragments of papyri codices contemporary to p46 have been found in the sands of Egypt, one of them, p32, preserving text from Titus, the other, p87, with text from Philemon, thus proving that these letters were known at the time and in the region, where p46 was produced.
What caused the unusual sequence of letters? Why is Hebrews put between Romans and 1 Corinthians and why does Ephesians precede Galatians?
I think the solution is very simple. It was crucial to a scribe properly to calculate the length of the text before he started to write a codex consisting of a single quire. Facing this situation it probably is a good idea to arrange the different parts according to the length of the text before you start to copy the text. For if you start out with the longest letters and end with the shorter ones, the chances are good you can finish the codex with the end of a letter even if your calculation was wrong. In this case all the scribe would need to do is produce an extra volume out of some additional leaves holding the missing letters. But if you start out with the short letters and end with the long ones the chances are much higher that you are right in the middle of a letter when you hit the last page. And who would want to use a book that ends in the middle of the text?
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