As I answered Jim Davila, an archaeological finding is dated after the youngest item found embedded in it, not by the oldest. Saying 272 BCE thus does not mean that every sentence is written after 272 BCE. However, Pyrrhus dates the "edifice" when seen in connection with the several other things that combine to present this Hellenistic date.
This is plain historiological methodology. It may be too harsh on much speculation among biblical scholars. Furthermore the arguments based on palaeography going back to Cross and his people has a long time ago been demonstrated to be shaky -- at least. And the idea that it would take perhaps considerable time to develop the variant manuscript tradition is very dubious as well. How long tiime? 100 years? 10 years? or a week? What do we really know about text production in those days? Did they work with only one basic document which was c opied, or did they get involved in mass production of manuscripts. Was it a secret text which they produced or something intended for a wider circulation?
But all of this is immaterial if you take the argument seriously: Three text elements (really four) point in the same direction, and one of them can be dated by a very precise terminus a quo. Get around that equation, and you may have an argument. Otherwise it is all embedded in speculation -- as usual.
As I answered Jim Davila, an archaeological finding is dated after the youngest item found embedded in it, not by the oldest. Saying 272 BCE thus does not mean that every sentence is written after 272 BCE. However, Pyrrhus dates the "edifice" when seen in connection with the several other things that combine to present this Hellenistic date.
This is plain historiological methodology. It may be too harsh on much speculation among biblical scholars. Furthermore the arguments based on palaeography going back to Cross and his people has a long time ago been demonstrated to be shaky -- at least. And the idea that it would take perhaps considerable time to develop the variant manuscript tradition is very dubious as well. How long tiime? 100 years? 10 years? or a week? What do we really know about text production in those days? Did they work with only one basic document which was c opied, or did they get involved in mass production of manuscripts. Was it a secret text which they produced or something intended for a wider circulation?
But all of this is immaterial if you take the argument seriously: Three text elements (really four) point in the same direction, and one of them can be dated by a very precise terminus a quo. Get around that equation, and you may have an argument. Otherwise it is all embedded in speculation -- as usual.