I disagree Alan, I think this is a great overview. Not everyone who reads this blog moves in the same circles you do and maybe hears the rumors repeatedly. I didn't know a lot of the history of this story that's presented here ....
This has gone on long enough and enough people are rightly excited about it, I think. It's not as if it's going away -- not with the volume of the documents they're finding. Because we're not only talking about *one* early fragment of a Gospel -- we're talking about a treasure trove of ancient manuscript material, which may or may not provide a lot of textual evidence, but will provide a huge boatload of understanding about ancient document production and "lifecycles" -- from handwriting to methods of production to materials, etc. Even if what they find is "tons of Homer", that's going to go a long way toward fleshing out details or providing new details to what we know.
And there are responsible scholars dealing with it -- when guys like Dan Wallace and Craig Evans are outsiders, but Michael Holmes and David Trobisch are insiders -- and the fact that Brill is taking their time offers more rather than less reassurance. It's unfortunate that Josh McDowell did his little schtick, and some of the other false starts, but the rest of it has the makings of something that's very, very legit.
Snapp does not contribute anything to this saga, so not exactly sure how his post is helpful imho.
ReplyDeleteI disagree Alan, I think this is a great overview. Not everyone who reads this blog moves in the same circles you do and maybe hears the rumors repeatedly. I didn't know a lot of the history of this story that's presented here ....
DeleteThis has gone on long enough and enough people are rightly excited about it, I think. It's not as if it's going away -- not with the volume of the documents they're finding. Because we're not only talking about *one* early fragment of a Gospel -- we're talking about a treasure trove of ancient manuscript material, which may or may not provide a lot of textual evidence, but will provide a huge boatload of understanding about ancient document production and "lifecycles" -- from handwriting to methods of production to materials, etc. Even if what they find is "tons of Homer", that's going to go a long way toward fleshing out details or providing new details to what we know.
And there are responsible scholars dealing with it -- when guys like Dan Wallace and Craig Evans are outsiders, but Michael Holmes and David Trobisch are insiders -- and the fact that Brill is taking their time offers more rather than less reassurance. It's unfortunate that Josh McDowell did his little schtick, and some of the other false starts, but the rest of it has the makings of something that's very, very legit.
Thanks for posting this Jason.