The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[Aractus]

So you're wrong, the earliest literary evidence is from the early second century, where there are not just references but direct quotes from many (but not all) of the NT books.

Okay... I'm wrong yet you repeat exactly what I claimed from the start? I said that none of the Gospels, insofar as we might be able to evaluate authorship, appear prior to the second century. Twice you've attempted to correct me... To then go on and say just that (with the possible exception of Clement).

You said "at least the second century" we have direct quotes from them at the very start of the second century. They therefore show up then at the latest.

I submit these men have better credentials than you.

http://vridar.org/2013/03/08/new-date-fo...pyrus-p52/

ABSTRACT. — The date of the earliest New Testament papyri is nearly always based on palaeographical criteria. A consensus among papyrologists, palaeographers and New Testament scholars is presented in the edition of NESTLE–ALAND, 1994. In the last twenty years several New Testament scholars (THIEDE, COMFORT–BARRETT, 1999, 2001 and JAROŠ, 2006) have argued for an earlier date of most of these texts. The present article analyzes the date of the earliest New Testament papyri on the basis of comparative palaeography and a clear distinction between different types of literary scripts. There are no first-century New Testament papyri and only very few papyri can be attributed to the (second half of the) second century. It is only in the third and fourth centuries that New Testament manuscripts become more common, but here too the dates proposed by COMFORT–BARRETT, 1999, 2001, and JAROŠ, 2006 are often too early.

The theologians have a vested interest in trying to push this shit back as early in time as they possibly can.  Are they serious "scholars" or serious "believers?"

The issue Min is that you're selectively misquoting what the scholars have to say. They are arguing in their article against the revision of dating towards earlier dates for some NT mss. They don't appear to dispute the dating of P66 and P75 in the main, and in their appendix they list all dates published for these works by the various groups involved in paleographic dating. Furthermore they don't argue against the use of paleographic dating, but rather note how difficult and imprecise a science it is. All the major bodies date P66 and P75 to within 50 years of 200AD - except Jaros for P66 which dated it to c. 100AD. You'll note though I didn't cite the outlier. There are only a couple of scholars who think that either P66 should be dated to the early-mid fourth century (yes early-mid, not 399AD), but they too are outliers at this time.

They don't talk about theologians in their article - obviously a theologian would be less than neutral in their assessment.

There are other reasons, besides paleography itself, to think these two particular texts are earlier than fourth century. As I mentioned earlier in fact, and that is the fact they represent an earlier text-type than other texts found in the fourth and fifth centuries. It doesn't make a fourth century date impossible, but it does make it less likely.