Garrick Allen, Professor at the University of Glasgow, published a paper in New Testament Studies in 2025 that suggests we "embrace palaeography as a practice akin to aesthetics, one that relies on observation and judgements about shapes to create new contexts for interpretation" (quoted from the Abstract). The article is open access and is available at the following link.
Garrick V. Allen, “Studies of Shapes: Subjectivity in Palaeography and Understanding.” New Testament Studies 71, no. 2 (2025): 231–42.
Its great when scholars have the resources to make their published articles open access, I appreciate that very much. The article begins by discussing Frederic Kenyon's approach to palaeography in his 1899 work The Palaeography of Greek Papyri. In this landmark handbook, Kenyon lays out a method that was, in his view, more akin to a hard "science" with "objective" criteria for assigning dates (Allen, pp. 231-232).
This is then contrasted with more recent discussions of the discipline from scholars such as Brent Nongbri who has suggested in his work God's Library, that the practice of assigning dates with palaeography "can devolve into little more than an exercise in wishful thinking" (Allen, p. 232). This subjectivity and uncertainty in the discipline has urged scholars to seek other more "'objective' measures, like ink analysis, radiocarbon dating, paratextual analysis, digitally-enhanced analytical tools and artificial intelligence to aid in palaeographic judgments" (Allen p. 233).
Instead of tackling the subjectivity by suggesting other objective criteria, Allen explores "the potential of palaeography as an explicitly subjective enterprise" (Allen, p. 233). He does this by placing palaeography in "conversation with" another discipline referred to as "aesthetic cognitivism" which is defined by Allen as "a philosophical discourse on the value of artworks and the relationship between aesthetics, concepts of understanding and knowledge" (Allen, p. 233). Basically, Allen suggests that paleographers don't have to run away from the inherent subjectivity of palaeography, because, just like when evaluating a piece of art, cultural knowledge and understanding can be gleaned from the shapes and forms of the letters used in ancient writing (Allen, p. 234). He argues that "[p]alaeography, at the very least, contributes to aesthetic cognitivism by pointing out that all literature is material. instantiated by human actors working under multifarious conditions" (Allen, p. 236).
I don't want to completely summarize Allen's article because it is freely available and it should be read in its entirety. I do think that Allen helpfully frames the ancient writing practice in terms of art and this helps scholars evaluate their own approach to these manuscripts beyond attempting to derive a date of production. In some ways, palaeographers have already been doing this, as Allen points to discussions around manuscripts such as P46 and P45 and the relationship of the ellagance or inelligance of their writing styles with the mechanical quality of the copied text (Allen, pp. 237-238). I think that Allen is write to take ques from the world of art, because, as anyone who has encountered these ancient books in person, they can be magnificent in their own right as pieces of art, apart from the text that they convey.
Allen is nowhere devaluing the desire, even need, to use palaeography to date a manuscript, this is important and should be pursued (Allen, p. 238). He seems to be moving beyond this and even suggesting that scholars can engage in "though experiments, which Baumberger describes as idealised 'fictions designed to afford epistemic access to matters of fact that are otherwise difficult or impossible to discern...fictions contrived to reveal what would happend if certain conditions were met'" (Allen, pp. 238-239). It is worth one final quote block quote from Allen so you can clearly see his thesis;
"Scholars have placed, based on palaeographic evidence (some more convincing than others), P46’s production anywhere between the first and fourth centuries ce.40 Instead of continuing to argue about the most likely point of production using new tools or approaches as one might be tempted to do, a gesture to aesthetic cognitivism creates space to consider the consequences of these conclusions. What pertains if P46 was composed in the first century as Young Kyu Kim has proposed?41 How and why do we value P46 differently if it was first produced around 200 or in the 320s? When were the copious corrections made, and what do they say about ancient views on this copy, the works it transmits and its actual uses in social situations? Playing out the consequences of these date ranges, even as hypothetical constructs, creates space for us to evaluate our own presuppositions and critical goals, to begin to explore the historical possibilities latent in contexts we assign to manuscripts." (Allen, p. 239)
I think that this is something that scholars of ancient manuscripts are already doing, they construct theories and postulate historical scenarios based upon when a manuscript may or may not have been produced. What Allen is doing here is basically giving permission to scholars that it is okay to not be completely certain about the date of a manuscript. Scholars can postulate historical scenarios and results and not have to keep getting bogged down in issues of objectively dating manuscripts. This is important because historical scenarios can themselves be dated through abduction. If a reconstructed historical model has explanatory power in itself this may help confirm other means of dating a manuscript, though, I don't think that is what Allen is suggesting here, it is one to consider.
