One should take that into account. But a majoritarian position must not as such convince. It, I think, must be suspected one way or another, maybe more than a single one. "Suspected" here means a bigger examination. That is my method.
I think we agree.
What you mean exactly by "codified"?
When the consonantal skeleton finally reached closure and the corpus no longer was open to further editions—that is, the date of the Qurʾān’s codification and the establishment of the
ne varietur text.
CCP is a codex. That different folios, reunited or not from different provenances can be reunited in an artificial Utmanic codex is another thing. I'm not even sure of that... You have sources?
I think we do agree on this point as well. What I was trying to say was that we do have complete manuscripts but no
complete codex—that is, a complete Quran, earlier than the third/ninth century (Jonathan E. Brockopp, “Islamic Origins and Incidental Normativity,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84 [2016], p. 35; accepted by all textual critics.). Keywords:
complete and
codex. For sake of clarity, take H.S. 44/32 as an example. H.S. 44/32 is a proper
codex. However, it is only 99% complete. This does not mean that there were no complete Quran before H.S. 44/32 or that the missing portions did not exist. But the Quran as compiled in a codex was achieved under Abd al-Malik, for instance.
For me, nor codicological and nor palaeographical patterns can indicate really something about a manuscript/codex date, apart end of this century or middle of that century.
If I understood you correctly, you are only claiming that one cannot date a manuscript precisely, in terms of giving exact years, via codicology and paleography, apart from general remarks such as the beginning or end of the seventh or eighth century. I don't think I have something specific to say apart from that I one might perhaps give a broad time window.