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Re: orion Cave 7 Fragments
Jim West wrote:
> >Have any of the fragments discovered in cave 7 been subject to C14 dating?
> >The predominantly Greek texts seem almost out of place amongst the finds in
> >the nearby caves. I do not think that O'Callaghan's claims of possible New
> >Testament fragments have been disproven yet and wonder if any scholar has
> >done any extensive research on the Cave 7 finds.
>
> O'Callaghan's claims have not been proven by him. It is not up to others to
> prove him wrong- it is up to him to prove himself right. A few words on
> small scraps do not a new testament document make. It is so extraordinarily
> unlikely that a NT document exists among the fragments that only C. Thiede
> and a couple of others (whose names are known) hold to such.
Jim is, of course, correct that the burden of proof is on O'Callaghan.
However, a couple of easy-to-access places to look for (compelling)
arguments why O'Callaghan's conjecture is almost certainly not correct are
the revelvant portions of the appendix to the 3rd edition of Metzger's
"Text of the NT" and Graham Stanton's _Gospel Truths_.
(Stanton also wrote an article for BR sometime around Dec of 1995 that
consisted primarily of excerpts from this book dealing this topic and an
equally thorough rebuttal of Thiede's claim concerning the Magdelene
fragment, which was a hot topic at that time.)
Nichael