A First-Century Manuscript of the Gospel of Mark?
If this proves to be authentic, it is really an amazing find:
A New Testament professor is setting the world of Bible scholarship on fire with his claim that newly discovered fragments of early Christian writings could include a first-century version of the Gospel of Mark, from the same century in which Jesus and the apostles lived.
Daniel B. Wallace of the Dallas Theological Seminary made the stunning announcement during a Feb. 1 debate with Bart Ehrman at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today.
“If this Mark fragment is confirmed as from the first century, what a thrill it will be to have a manuscript that is dated within the lifetime of many of the original followers of Jesus!” Wallace said. “Not only this, but this manuscript would have been written before the New Testament was completed.”
Wallace says seven New Testament fragments written on papyrus had recently been discovered – six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. He expects further details to be published “in about a year.”
“These manuscripts now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts (all fragmentary, more or less) from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 40 percent of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.
“It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.”
Wallace’s interest is focused on the portion from Mark’s Gospel.
“Before the discovery of this fragment, the oldest manuscript that had Mark in it was P45, from the early third century. This new fragment would predate that by 100 to 150 years.”
Craig A. Evans, professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College, says the find may indeed be of very great importance.
“If authenticity and early date are confirmed, this fragment of the Gospel of Mark could be very significant and show how well preserved the text of the New Testament really is. We all await its publication,” Evans told the Christian Post.
Some people may remember the discovery some years ago, of the Qumran fragment 7Q5, from one of the caves containing the Dead Sea Scrolls, a first-century manuscript which was widely hailed as being the text of Mark 6:52-53, and just as widely dismissed by others.
To be more exact, the fragment which can be dated to 50 A.D. at latest, includes parts of several words, including what could be “Gennesaret,” a name which is of quite rare occurrence and is in the Marcan passage in question. However, the fragment is still very tiny, thirteen letters or so in all, not all of them completely legible, and the identity of some letters has been disputed. This text was a disappointment for those who hoped for a first-century text of Mark, one that would take us as close as possible to what the evangelist actually wrote.
All this makes the name of the scholar who announced the new discovery of particular interest. Daniel B. Wallace is one of the most respected textual scholars of the N.T., and and has also been critical of the identification of the Qumran fragment with Mark. So the new fragment is likely to be on firmer ground textually than 7Q5.
What can such a text tell us? Well it may convince some people that the Gospels are not late inventions and that they really were written in the first century. None of these people are likely to be actual scholars though.
Some people, overly impressed by the physical sciences, will claim that there is no evidence of the date of the Gospels unless there is a physical manuscript, preferably with the evangelist’s own signature on it. This isn’t the way textual scholarship works though. Scholars learn and accept a great many things about ancient writings by their internal characteristics. The language, the details about society, the underlying Aramaic and Hebrew characteristics of the New Testament writings, their obvious basis in eyewitness reports, are all ample evidence of when and by what kind of people they were written.
Methods based on internal evidence, and supporting external testimony is how we find out most of what we know about Homer or any other ancient writer and their works. That’s because for most ancient writers, the earliest manuscripts we can work with are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years later than the events recorded in them. With the Gospels we are extraordinarily lucky. We already have the John Rylands papyrus (P52) of John’s Gospel mentioned above, which brings us within 30-40 years of when John might have written. For other Gospels our earliest copies come from some 200 years after the events. With this new manuscript we may come within 10-20 years of the writing of the actual original manuscript.
The new manuscript won’t necessarily help us date Mark’s Gospel any more closely than we can right now. Usually paleographers give a range of dates. For instance the one working with the new manuscript might say the manuscript was written sometime between A.D. 50-100, this might not be of great help except to confirm what scholars of long thought from internal evidence and external supporting evidence about the date of Mark. And the date of the manuscript it will only tell us the latest date at which the Gospel could have been written.
The manuscript’s greatest value will lie in bringing us as close to the original text of Mark as possible. This means that we can correct the errors that have crept in through centuries of copying. And yet even these errors are not that great so far as we can trace from the latest ms. to about 200 A.D. when our papyrus copies begin. But it will likely clear up murky areas of the text and contested readings. Above all can provide one more confirmation of the general truth and accuracy of the New Testament.
I can’t wait to learn more about it.
