Friday, September 22, 2006

Jon Curry's False And Misleading Claims About The Textual Record

Jon Curry makes many false and misleading claims, and some of his worst have been about the textual record of the New Testament. Jon frequently accuses Christians of being unethical, yet he himself behaves unethically in the process, often giving us little or no evidence for his claims and often making claims that are misleading or false. As some of you may remember, Jon called James White's webcast earlier this year, and during his second call to the program he mentioned an argument for textual corruption made by Robert Price and made some misleading claims about the textual record himself. Elsewhere on this blog, Jon has written:

"The evidence is that copyists and others have a large tendency to modify the biblical texts and in other ways do unethical things to advance their own views. This is a unique situation that applies to Scripture and not to a lot of other ancient texts. I've heard it said that there are more textual variants in Scripture than there are words in the Bible....Clearly early Christians were not so ethical as to not put false documentation forward. You can start by looking at all the false gospels. Acts of Pilate. Gospel of Mary. Gospel of Thomas. Infancy Gospel of Thomas. You can look at the manuscript modifications as Bart Ehrman recently has put at the forefrunt of the discussion." (see here)

"This idea that we must assume the traditional authorship names because all manuscripts have it is simply not persuasive in my view. The first example of a text with the name would be something like 400 years after the fact. I am not of the opinion that changes can't occur without hard manuscript evidence in 400 years." (see here)

"There are Christian forgeries as far as the eye can see, and where we have a document that is not a forgery, in that case we have Christians modifying copies to suit their own ends." (see here)

I've already refuted the misleading claims Jon made about the textual record on James White's webcast. And I've refuted Jon's absurd suggestion that there are no gospel author names in the manuscripts until 400 years after the gospels. What I want to do in this post is address the more general issue of the transmission of the New Testament. (See the archives of this blog for more material on the subject, such as responses to Bart Ehrman.)

It should be noted that although Bart Ehrman gives a lot of attention to corruptions in the textual record, he also adds significant qualifiers and doesn't go as far in his conclusions as people who cite him, like Jon Curry, sometimes do. Ehrman has written:

"I do not think that the 'corruption' of Scripture means that scribes changed everything in the text, or even most things. The original texts certainly spoke at great length about Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. The issues involved in the corruption of the text usually entail nuances of interpretation. These are important nuances; but most of the New Testament can be reconstructed by scholars with reasonable certainty -- as much certainty as we can reconstruct *any* book of the ancient world." (cited here)

I suggest that people read other textual critics in addition to reading Ehrman, but even if we only read Ehrman's assessment, he makes many positive comments about the state of the New Testament text:

"Most of these [textual] differences are completely immaterial and insignificant....In fact, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple - slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another....when scribes made intentional changes, sometimes their motives were as pure as the driven snow....And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the 'original' text. This oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (very closely) related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the basis for our interpretation of his teaching....In a remarkable number of instances - most of them, actually - scholars by and large agree [about what the earliest attainable text said]....It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian texts was by and large a 'conservative' process. The scribes - whether non-professional scribes in the early centuries or professional scribes of the Middle Ages - were intent on 'conserving' the textual tradition they were passing on. Their ultimate concern was not to modify the tradition, but to preserve it for themselves and for those who would follow them. Most scribes, no doubt, tried to do a faithful job in making sure that the text they reproduced was the same text they inherited." (Misquoting Jesus [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], pp. 10, 55-56, 62, 94, 177)

Below are some comments from other sources.

"The New Testament grew in size from the earliest copies to the latest copies - fourteen hundred years later [from the first century to the sixteenth] - by about 2 percent. That is a remarkably stable transmissional process...Since the earliest texts that we have agree substantially with the later ones, if we were to project backward to the original, the changes from the original text to the earliest copies would be miniscule....Of the hundreds of thousands of textual variants, the majority are spelling differences that have no impact on the meaning of the text....The next largest category of variants consists of readings that do not affect translation or that involve synonyms. These are variants other than spelling and nonsense readings but nevertheless do not alter the way the text is translated - or at least understood....The next largest category consists of variants that impact the meaning of the text but are not viable. They are variants found in a single manuscript or group of manuscripts that, by themselves, have little likelihood of going back to the wording of the original text....The final - and by far the smallest - category consists of variants that are both meaningful and viable. Only about 1 percent of all textual variants fit this category. But even here the situation can be overstated. By 'meaningful' we mean that the variant changes the meaning of the text to some degree. It may not be terribly significant, but if the variant affects our understanding of the passage, then it is meaningful. To argue for large-scale skepticism because we cannot be certain about a very small portion of the text is a careless overstatement, yet this is just the impression given by Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar....The issues that textual critics face are, frankly, of such small importance to most other New Testament scholars that the latter often assume that there is nothing left to do in the discipline. The reality is that, although most of the text of the New Testament is not in dispute, some passages are....Only about 1 percent of the variants are both meaningful and viable. And, as we will see in our final chapter in this section, these do not affect foundational beliefs....whatever doubts we cast on the text of the New Testament must be cast a hundredfold on virtually any other ancient text. The New Testament manuscripts stand closer to the original and are more plentiful than virtually any other ancient literature. The New Testament is far and away the best-attested work of Greek or Latin literature in the ancient world....The smallest amount [of textual variants] (about 1 percent) deals with meaningful and viable alternative wording. But even here, the vast bulk of variants affect only minor issues related to meaning....The quotations by the church fathers of the New Testament number well over one million - and counting!...For the vast majority of the textual variants, there is simply no difficulty determining the original wording....Most New Testament scholars would say that there are far fewer textual problems in this category [viable and meaningful variants] than even 1 percent of the total....Most New Testament scholars would say that there are absolutely no places where [textual] conjecture is necessary....For the past forty-five years, the institute [the Institute for New Testament Textual Research] has been more influential than any individual, school, or group of scholars anywhere else in the world for determining the exact wording of the original New Testament. In short, they know their stuff. [quoting Kurt and Barbara Aland, the earliest directors of the institute] 'Every reading ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition is stubbornly preserved, even if the result is nonsense...any reading ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition, from the original reading onward, has been preserved in the tradition and needs only to be identified.'...Most in the discipline share their [Kurt and Barbara Aland's] views....The short answer to the question of what theological truths are at stake in these variants is - none. Most New Testament scholars are of the opinion that no doctrine, no teaching of the New Testament, is jeopardized by textual variants." (J. Ed Komoszewski, et al., Reinventing Jesus [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 2006], pp. 55-57, 59-61, 63, 70-71, 81, 83, 105-107, 109-110)

"One number that appears often in this context is 200,000 variants in the New Testament...Taking the number mentioned above, 200,000, we first note that these variants occur in only about 10,000 places....Westcott and Hort, the two men most vilified by KJV Only advocates, indicated that only about one eighth of the variants had any weight, the rest being 'trivialities'. This would leave the text, according to Westcott and Hort, 98.33 percent pure no matter whether one used the Textus Receptus or their own Greek text! Philip Schaff estimated that there were only 400 variants that affected the sense of the passage, and only 50 of these were actually important. He asserted that not one affected 'an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture teaching.' The great American Greek scholar, Dr. A.T. Robertson, whose familiarity with the most intimate details of the Greek text is abundantly verified by his massive 1,454 page A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, indicated that areas of real concern regarding textual variants amounted to but 'a thousandth part of the entire text.'...The reality is that the amount of variation between the two most extremely different manuscripts of the New Testament would not fundamentally alter the message of the Scriptures! I make this statement (1) fully aware of the wide range of textual variants in the New Testament, and (2) painfully aware of the strong attacks upon those who have made similar statements in the past. KJV Only advocates are quick to attack such statements, but I stand by it and will document its truthfulness throughout the rest of this book. The simple fact of the matter is that no textual variants in either the Old or New Testaments in any way, shape, or form materially disrupt or destroy any essential doctrine of the Christian faith. That is a fact that any semi-impartial review will substantiate....A person who would read Codex Sinaiticus and who would apply sound exegetical methods to its text would come to the very same conclusions as anyone reading a Byzantine manuscript written a thousand years later." (James White, The King James Only Controversy [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1995], pp. 38-40, 45)

"The text of the Gospels is the best transmitted in the whole of antiquity: about six Gospel papyri go back to the period around 200 or to the second century AD, and a further nineteen to the third century; of course most of them are only small fragments, but some contain larger parts of the text. Together with the great uncials since the fourth century, the numerous later manuscripts, and the early translations, the attestation of the original text is so strong that practically all the secondary alterations to the text and interpolations can be picked up in the unbelievably multiple textual tradition....Once again: no ancient text is as well attested as the Gospels." (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], pp. 28-29, 31)

9 comments:

  1. I've already refuted the misleading claims Jon made about the textual record on James White's webcast.

    Are you referring to when James White misunderstood what I meant and I attempted to clarify but time ran out? I've already shown that your denial that this was a misunderstanding makes no sense of the words I used. Now, if I were to treat you as you treat me I'd start talking about how you are dishonest, misleading, and you make false statements that have been refuted multiple times. But I know that you really believe what you say, even though it is nonsensical.

    I've refuted Jon's absurd suggestion that there are no gospel author names in the manuscripts until 400 years after the gospels.

    You offered some assertions from Hengel in the midst of your couple of dozen page reply that I haven't gotten to yet. That's "refutation" in your mind, but I don't think that's exactly what it is. I'd call it the fog machine in action. When your opponent talks about one issue you respond with about 4 or 5 and 4 or 5 times as much verbiage in an effort to bog the discussion down. We're pretty far from the small subject I tried to focus on a while back, which was that of Papias and the relevance he has to the Gospel of John. That's probably a success in your view.

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  3. Mr. Curry,

    Are you referring to when James White misunderstood what I meant and I attempted to clarify but time ran out? I listened to you on that DL. Dr. White certainly understood you, and he answered your claim from the text. Too bad you don't bother to check a standard commentary.

    Simply claiming that the gospels circulated with different titles prior to 400 ad does not constitute positive evidence for the claim that they circulated with different titles. That's an argument from silence, and that cuts both ways.

    So, you claim that there is allegedly no real positive evidence for the resurrection and this counts against the resurrection. On the other hand, on your view of the authorship of these gospels, you have no positive evidence for your theory and yet you make a positive claim for your theory.

    Further, you simply have no grasp of this issue. Let's take Matthew. NT scholarship of *both* the liberal and conservative schools universally asserts that there is NO POSITIVE EVIDENCE that the book EVER circulated without KATA MATTTHIAON as it's title. In fact, it is reasonably claimed that, if it did not originally come with that title, the title was reasonably affixed by no later than 125 AD. You're off by over 2 centuries. Don't believe me? Well, take a look @ J.H. Ropies,The Synoptic Gospels 1934, pp. 103f. See also N.B. Stonehouse, Origins of the Synoptic Gospels , 1963, p. 16; Also, G.D. Kirkpatrick, op.cit.

    Papias is very important because he does not cite an corroborating authority. Typically, if a claim was disputed, an AnteNicene Father would cite a corroborating source. Papias does not do so, ergo, this is positive evidence that the gospel, by his time was accepted at authentic without question. It is up to you to provide a positive textual record to the contrary against both his claim and the ascription KATA MATTHIAN itself.

    Iranaeus confirms this. Pantaneus, according to Eusebius, found that Matthew's gospel preceded him to India. It's often objected that Iranaeus and these others were repeating Papias' mistake. However, Iranaeus, Origen and the rest were all Greek speakers and they considered anything that alluded to Hebrew or Aramaic as suspect. They approve of Papias' assertion. Thus, we have positive evidence for Matthew's authenticity with respect to the ascription of authorship.

    Let's take Luke. The Muratorian Canon lists Luke as the author. Now, the MC dates from the 2nd century, even according to the majority of liberals. You're quite comfortable citing "the majority of scholars" when it favors you. Will you now disown them when they do not favor you? That's a far cry from ca. 400 ad. If you allege that this is unreliable because the copy we have is from the 7th century, then it's up to you to show a date from 400 later for this appellation, and that would also rule out the ascriptions of authorship for many a classical history text like Tacitus (earliest copy we have is 900 ad; Thucydides (900AD); Herodotus (900AD, and that's just for starters.

    To do that, at a bare minimum, you need an argument that this is a later appellation, and, in particular, you need to show that the ascription is either a later addition or the document is inauthentic, even though it mentions Bishop of Rome Pius, ca. 157ad.

    Remember, you're asserting, by your denial that one church or a small group at some point convinced all the others that a particular author wrote a particular gospel, but that gospel was not written by that person during a time for which, if a book's authorship was disputable, we have records of the disputes. You are doing this without a single piece of positive evidence.

    When your opponent talks about one issue you respond with about 4 or 5 and 4 or 5 times as much verbiage in an effort to bog the discussion down.

    Actually, short replies are generally in order when we're dealing with people that don't make multiple bad, muddled and error ridden claims because they know what they're talking about. The replies are lengthy for you because we have to unravel all the errors you make, not only the basic errors of fact but the errors in your argumentation itself. If you want to cry about the length of the replies we make to you, you have only yourself to blame for wading in far over your head.

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  4. Jon Curry said:

    "Are you referring to when James White misunderstood what I meant and I attempted to clarify but time ran out?"

    As I explained before, your "clarification" was different enough from what you said to make me doubt that it was just a clarification. I think you were changing your argument. But, regardless, even your clarification was false, as you later acknowledged. There was no third century rendition of Matthew 17 for you to cite, so your argument in response to James White was false even if we accept your "clarification".

    You write:

    "You offered some assertions from Hengel in the midst of your couple of dozen page reply that I haven't gotten to yet. That's 'refutation' in your mind, but I don't think that's exactly what it is. I'd call it the fog machine in action."

    I think Martin Hengel knows the textual record better than you do. I also cited Craig Keener. Both men cite sources. They name specific manuscripts. See, for example, this online image of P66:

    http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/tc_pap66.html

    And P75:

    http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/tc_pap75.html

    Daniel Wallace writes:

    "As with the other gospels, no MSS which contain John’s Gospel affirm authorship by anyone other than John. Once again, as with the others, this is short of proof of Johannine authorship, but the unbroken stream suggests recognition (or at least acknowledgment) of Johannine authorship as early as the first quarter of the second century. Indeed, John’s Gospel is unique among the evangelists for two early papyri (P66 and P75, dated c. 200) attest to Johannine authorship. Since these two MSS were not closely related to each other, this common tradition must precede them by at least three or four generations of copying. Further, although B and P75 are closely related, textual studies have demonstrated that P75 is not the ancestor of B—in fact, B’s ancestor was, in many respects, more primitive than P75. Hence, the combined testimony of B and P75 on Johannine authorship points to a textual tradition which must be at least two generations earlier than P75. All of this is to say that from the beginning of the second century, the fourth gospel was strongly attached to the apostle John." (http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1328)

    What I'm citing isn't "fog". I've given you sources. You're the one who's mistaken, as you've been mistaken in other discussions about the textual record.

    You write:

    "When your opponent talks about one issue you respond with about 4 or 5 and 4 or 5 times as much verbiage in an effort to bog the discussion down."

    It's easy for you to make false claims without documentation. It takes more space for me to interact with your false assumptions and bad reasoning and to offer documentation for my response. Your claim that I was only producing "fog" on the issue of gospel titles, for example, was easy for you to make. It only took a few sentences for you to make the accusation. It took more space for me to explain and document that your accusation is false. If you had known the evidence better in the first place, or had properly responded to the documentation I gave you from Hengel and Keener earlier, you could have prevented either of us from taking up more space in this thread. Whose fault is that?

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  5. Gene Bridges said:

    "In fact, it is reasonably claimed that, if it did not originally come with that title, the title was reasonably affixed by no later than 125 AD. You're off by over 2 centuries."

    Jon suggested that there were no author names in the manuscripts until "400 years after the fact". If the gospel of John was written in 90 A.D., for example, Jon's argument would place the first manuscript with an author name at about 490 A.D.

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  6. Simply claiming that the gospels circulated with different titles prior to 400 ad does not constitute positive evidence for the claim that they circulated with different titles.

    Since I haven't argued otherwise what is your point?

    So, you claim that there is allegedly no real positive evidence for the resurrection and this counts against the resurrection.

    What in the world are you talking about? I certainly have not said there is no positive evidence for the resurrection.

    On the other hand, on your view of the authorship of these gospels, you have no positive evidence for your theory and yet you make a positive claim for your theory.

    I've mentioned the universal style of heading, which fits well the view that these are added later as churches came into posession of multiple texts. I've pointed out that Mark according to Papias is "not in order." This doesn't sound like the Mark that we know. I've pointed out that he has Matthew being written in Aramaic (or a "Hebrew dialect" if you prefer). This is not the Matthew that we are familiar with according to scholarship. These evidences indicate their Matthew and Mark is not our Matthew and Mark. If they could attribute a different book to Matthew it seems unlikely that our Matthew had the title "Matthew" as originally written.

    Further, you simply have no grasp of this issue. Let's take Matthew. NT scholarship of *both* the liberal and conservative schools universally asserts that there is NO POSITIVE EVIDENCE that the book EVER circulated without KATA MATTTHIAON as it's title.

    I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "positive" evidence. Scholars do regard the titles as later additions, added when churches came in to posession of multiple different gospels. Clearly this means that most scholars do not believe that the books have always had the headings.

    In fact, it is reasonably claimed that, if it did not originally come with that title, the title was reasonably affixed by no later than 125 AD. You're off by over 2 centuries. Don't believe me? Well, take a look @ J.H. Ropies,The Synoptic Gospels 1934, pp. 103f. See also N.B. Stonehouse, Origins of the Synoptic Gospels , 1963, p. 16; Also, G.D. Kirkpatrick, op.cit.

    I'm sorry but I don't have either book. You're going to have to present the evidence as opposed to making a gratuitious assertion. As it stands I'm correct. Our first full manuscripts have the title, but these are something like 400 years after the fact, and thus are not too helpful.

    Papias is very important because he does not cite an corroborating authority. Typically, if a claim was disputed, an AnteNicene Father would cite a corroborating source. Papias does not do so, ergo, this is positive evidence that the gospel, by his time was accepted at authentic without question.

    So lack of evidence is evidence. I suppose that means that when Irenaeus cites disciples of John to show that he wrote the gospel, this shows that he's mistaken.

    Iranaeus confirms this. Pantaneus, according to Eusebius, found that Matthew's gospel preceded him to India.

    Eusebius is not so sure of this. He relates it as something that "is said." Also he says it is a Hebrew version of the text, which again we are fairly confident is not our Gospel of Matthew.

    Let's take Luke. The Muratorian Canon lists Luke as the author. Now, the MC dates from the 2nd century, even according to the majority of liberals. You're quite comfortable citing "the majority of scholars" when it favors you. Will you now disown them when they do not favor you? That's a far cry from ca. 400 ad.

    It seems you are confusing two different arguments. My argument about 400AD is about whether or not the gospels were anonymous as originally written. I'm not saying that nobody attributed a gospel to the traditional author prior to 400AD. Obviously Irenaeus is before 400 AD.

    Remember, you're asserting, by your denial that one church or a small group at some point convinced all the others that a particular author wrote a particular gospel, but that gospel was not written by that person during a time for which, if a book's authorship was disputable, we have records of the disputes. You are doing this without a single piece of positive evidence.

    Actually, I'm not doing this at all, because this is not my argument.

    The replies are lengthy for you because we have to unravel all the errors you make, not only the basic errors of fact but the errors in your argumentation itself.

    The replies are lengthy because Jason does not stick to the issues we are discussing, but discusses others.

    If you want to cry about the length of the replies we make to you, you have only yourself to blame for wading in far over your head.

    I'm not crying about it. I expect it from Jason. He's well known for it, as is Steve. These guys are the Energizer bunny. I just think it's worth pointing out when Jason talks about how I "leave discussions" and "don't answer him" and I'm "refuted" it has more to do with the length of his posts and not my inability to respond to his supposed devestating arguments. Dave Armstrong has a big long web page that discusses how Jason "left an argument" and how on Jason's reasoning this would prove that he's lost. But Dave knows as I do that this is really is not a reasonable conclusion, but it is a conclusion Jason repeatedly draws of others.

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  7. But, regardless, even your clarification was false, as you later acknowledged. There was no third century rendition of Matthew 17 for you to cite, so your argument in response to James White was false even if we accept your "clarification".

    I made it clear that I was just guessing. This is what you appeal to as a demonstration of my "false and misleading claims"?

    I think Martin Hengel knows the textual record better than you do.

    What's your point? Richard Carrier, Peter Kirby, and Robert Price know the textual record better than you do. Does this mean if I just drop down their assertions without any supporting arguments you should accept their claims?

    They name specific manuscripts. See, for example, this online image of P66:

    I truly do not understand this argument. Are you saying that these manuscripts contain the "Gospel According to John" heading? If so, I stand corrected. If not, what do these show?

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  8. Jon Curry writes:

    "I'm sorry but I don't have either book. You're going to have to present the evidence as opposed to making a gratuitious assertion."

    How is Gene's citation of a book as a source "gratuitous" as a result of your not having the book? If you think that he's misrepresenting what the books say, then explain why, but he isn't making "a gratuitous assertion".

    You write:

    "As it stands I'm correct. Our first full manuscripts have the title, but these are something like 400 years after the fact, and thus are not too helpful."

    Gene has cited sources against your claim. You haven't cited any sources to support yours. Yet, you tell us that "As it stands I'm correct." That doesn't make sense. Are you correct by default, even when your opponent cites books, as long as you don't have the books?

    I notice, also, that you're now shifting the discussion to "full manuscripts". But I'm the one who brought up the subject, so I know what was being discussed. I was addressing manuscripts, regardless of whether they were "full". The sources I cited were discussing manuscripts in general, not just complete manuscripts. Even if we limited ourselves to complete manuscripts, you would still be wrong.

    You write:

    "I just think it's worth pointing out when Jason talks about how I 'leave discussions' and 'don't answer him' and I'm 'refuted' it has more to do with the length of his posts and not my inability to respond to his supposed devestating arguments."

    You keep saying that, but when you have opportunities to prove it, you don't prove it.

    You write:

    "I made it clear that I was just guessing. This is what you appeal to as a demonstration of my 'false and misleading claims'?"

    A lot of your arguments are "just guessing" or "off the top of your head", as you put it earlier, but the fact remains that they're false. You aren't well prepared for discussions like these, yet you keep involving yourself in them.

    You write:

    "What's your point? Richard Carrier, Peter Kirby, and Robert Price know the textual record better than you do. Does this mean if I just drop down their assertions without any supporting arguments you should accept their claims?"

    If I was as ignorant of the textual record as you are, and you cited some credible New Testament scholars on the subject, it would be inappropriate for me to respond by saying:

    "That's 'refutation' in your mind, but I don't think that's exactly what it is. I'd call it the fog machine in action."

    If you know so little about the textual record and hadn't consulted either of the sources I cited, why would you respond by referring to "the fog machine in action"? I know what's in the works of Hengel and Keener, because I have them, so I know that the fog is coming from you, not from me or from Hengel or Keener.

    You write:

    "I truly do not understand this argument. Are you saying that these manuscripts contain the 'Gospel According to John' heading? If so, I stand corrected. If not, what do these show?"

    At the beginning of this thread, I gave three quotations of arguments you had used in previous threads. The second quote involves your denial that the gospel author names appear in manuscripts prior to "400 years after the fact". The manuscript images I linked you to contain author names, and I provided some of Daniel Wallace's comments on the subject.

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  9. The manuscript images I linked you to contain author names, and I provided some of Daniel Wallace's comments on the subject.

    OK. I was unaware that P75 or P66 had the heading. It looks like "evangelion kata lukan" or something like that. I can't make out the heading in P66. Could be an "evangelion kata" and then the "John" is shaved off. I was defintely wrong to say the first headings were 400 years after the fact.

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