UPDATE: No First Century Manuscript of the Gospel of Mark Update

February 24, 2014 by 55 Comments

UPDATE: I had an article (mentioned below) come to my attention today, and since I saw that the date was February 24th, I missed that it was February 24th 2012. So there is no new news – although we should still hope that the fragment will be published! Perhaps we should mark each anniversary of the promise of imminent publication, until it is realized?

ORIGINAL POST:

Many of us have been waiting for further news about the fragment of the Gospel of Mark which Daniel Wallace claims can be dated with confidence to the first century. There is now an update, in an interview he did with Hugh Hewitt. From what he says, it sounds like the book is still being worked on, and due diligence is being done in terms of consulting with paleographers to get second and third opinions about the date.

For now, all we can do is wait. But it is certainly something to keep an eye on, which will get a lot of discussion and analysis once the book is finally published.

Click through to read the interview and get more details.

Filed Under: Gospel of Mark Tagged With: , , , , 55 Comments

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  • Tim

    The date for that interview is February 24, 2012 and near the end of it Wallace refers to publications appearing in 2013. So I’m not sure we can find much value in it.

    • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

      You’re right. Somehow it came to my attention today, and I saw February 24th and missed the year. How embarrassing! Sorry! I will update the post to reflect this…

  • http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/ Lotharson

    I am not sure about Mark’s gospel but I think that a decent case can be made that Luke’s gospel and the act of the apostles were largely written before the destruction of the second temple (which does not preclude editing to have taken place afterwards.)

    Luke (or whoever the author was) wanted to build up the first Christian communities and paint the Jewish authority in a very negative light (which is certainly deplorable).
    It would have made a lot of sense for him to have reported the heroic deaths of Paul and Peter and the Jewish execution of James.

    This is of course a tentative conclusion, but it does not seem as far fetched as N.T. Wright attempts to defend a zombie apocalypse after the death of Christ.

    • http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/ VinnyJH

      Before you can base an argument on Acts failure to mention Peter and Paul’s heroic deaths, you would need reliable evidence that Peter and Paul actually died heroic deaths.

      • http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/ Lotharson

        Unless you take the Conservative view that the author of the acts always sticked to facts, the heroic character of their death as martyrs is irrelevant.

        If Luke embellished many things to build up the faith of the early Christians, he could have done as well towards the end of the two most prominent apostles.

        • http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/ VinnyJH

          Of course he could have invented heroic deaths for Peter and Paul. He could have invented heroic deaths for all the apostles. However a dating argument based on failure to invent stories is not as strong as one based on failure to report facts.

          • Matthew Jenkins

            Why would Luke do that? This is merely just a false assumption that is not based upon historical evidence but another “Conspiracy” Theory that Mythicists like to deny.

            Pluse we have early church fathers who affirm some or most of the apostles death.

            Also, I don’t understand your previous comments were you call Gary Habermas survey of the NT scholarship consensus on the 4 facts leading up to Jesus resurrection “bull****”. If you want to deny facts and evidences that’s fine, but facts trump skeptical belief. That’s why I’m not an atheist because atheism is a lie.

            • http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/ VinnyJH

              Embellishing the deaths of one’s heroes is so common (e.g., Pat Tilman) that the details of such noble deaths must always be taken with more than a grain of salt. The traditions regarding the deaths of the apostles are late and unreliable. Peter’s upside down crucifixion is first reported in the apocryphal Acts of Peter which is universally regarded as spurious.

              I’m not sure to which of my comments concerning Habermas you are referring, but his entire minimal facts approach to the resurrection is nothing but apologetic smoke and mirrors for many reasons.

              Facts can be no more secure than the evidence upon which they are based, and the evidence here consists primarily of anonymous writings based on unidentified sources which are themselves removed an unknown number of times over decades of oral tradition from the originators of the stories who may or may not have been eyewitnesses to any of the events described. The quality of the evidence is not improved by the number of scholars who look at it.

              There is no logical justification for cherry picking a handful of facts and declaring them to be the only ones that need explanation. It is overwhelmingly agreed by scholars of science and history that dead people stay dead and the evidence supporting this fact is infinitely stronger than that which supports any of Habermas’ minimal facts. Habermas arbitrarily ignores that which is inconvenient for his thesis.

              There is no logical justification for limiting a historical explanation to those facts upon which scholars agree. It is often the case that the dispositive issues are undetermined and an explanation that ignores these issues cannot claim to be valid.

              The “minimal facts” approach was invented for apologetic purposes. It’s use is not found among legitimate historians.

              • Matthew Jenkins

                I’m sorry that’s not true. Gary Habermas’s survey was conducted over 40+ years with over 1400 articles that were published among German, English, and French scholars and historians; both secular and non-secular, and they agreed with 1) The Empty Tomb 2) The Apperances of Jesus and 3) the origin of belief in disciples.

                Gary Habermas did not say that they believe in the Resurrection, but that they agree with the facts after Jesus crucifixion.

                What scholars and historians stil dispute is the best explanation of the facts.

                But nevertheless, they agree with the facts because the evidence is so strong.

                If you want to disagree with the 75% of scholars who agree with the empty tomb, and the 95% of scholars who agree with the apperances of Jesus and belief in disciples then you can, but Facts trump subjective opinion.

                The evidence is solid and not disputed.

                • http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/ VinnyJH

                  What’s not true? I cannot see where you have contravened anything I said. No legitimate historian uses anything like the “minimal facts” approach in any other area of inquiry. Habermas contrived it specifically for apologetic purposes to bootstrap the highly problematic nature of the sources. What is the logical justification for cherry-picking four facts? What is the logical justification for explaining only those “facts” upon which there is agreement?

    • Andrew Dowling

      Painting the Jewish authorities in a negative light and the entire Jewish people in a negative light are two different things, and Luke certainly doesn’t do the latter. Makes much more sense that Luke is writing a piece seeking to harmonize the Jewish and Gentile traditions of Christianity. It would make no sense for Luke to write about Paul’s death as a) it’s implied and b) the story ends with him continuing to spread the Gospel under persecution, which is what Luke is inviting his readers to do (not necessarily get executed)

      • http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/ Lotharson

        I agree that Luke certainly did not think of the Jews (in general) as Christ’s killer.

        However, I find your claim that it would have made no sense for him to have reported Paul’s death really unwarranted.
        A more modest assertion would be that he might as well have had good reasons to leave this event unreported.

        The implication of his death is far from being an established fact.
        What is more, Luke would have had many other ways to convey the same invitation while also mentioning Paul’s death.

        Otherwise, why would he make such an effort to describe the Jewish execution of a relatively insignificant figure such as Steven while not mentioning that of James who was undoubtedly a pillar of the early Church?

        Like in all historical endaveor, we are not talking about certainty but about likelihood.

        In probabilistic terms, I would expect a far greater amount of writers in Luke’s situation (and with the same goal in mind) to mention the events than not doing it.

        • Andrew Dowling

          -You’re assuming Steven is a historical character at all. He could just as well be a literary archetype/construct.

          -If the author (as I contend) is rewriting history to make the Jewish and Christian factions of Christianity appear more harmonious than they were, why would he focus on James? By the other accounts of the Jerusalem leader, his Christianity would’ve been considered too ‘Jewish’ for Luke’s apologetic tastes and thus James’s role is completely minimized in Acts although he was clearly the most prominent Christian leader of the the movements first few decades.

          -Again, if I’m writing about MLK and I end the story after the March on Washington, it doesn’t mean I don’t know that he got assassinated. It means I don’t want to end on that note.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship Censored

    When computer companies do this, it’s called vaporware.

    Moreover, I don’t understand why there is so much secrecy about this “manuscript.” Why NOT tell us where it was found, who found it, how extensive it is, who has examined it, what his grounds for dating it were, whether his views have been independently corroborated? Is it so more people will buy the book when it comes out? Is this secrecy driven by a profit motive? If not, why the secrecy?

    Dan has been repeatedly asked for more information, and he will not give it. I don’t know if he owns the manuscript, if he has seen the manuscript, if it is his book that will contain information about the manuscript, or anything else. The one piece of information that I have been able to gather is that we are not talking about a large manuscript with lots of text on it (say, several chapters, let alone all of the Gospel of Mark). It appears to be a scrap of papyrus with parts of a few verses on it.

    The other thing I will say about this entire business is that publishing such a scrap as a book rather than in an academic journal where claims can be evaluated and reassessed by real scholars in the field is a very poor way to promote scholarship.

    Bart Ehrman
    First-Century Copy of Mark? – Part 1
    April 6, 2012
    ehrmanblog.org/first-century-copy-of-mark-part-1/

    • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

      Secrecy and caution are not uncommon. Profit may be one motive, but caution not to have someone else beat you to publication, or to have people prejudge the issue even before publication, are legitimate concerns. And rest assured, academics discuss books every bit as much as journal articles, so that is not something you need worry about!

      • beau_quilter

        The problem in this case is that Daniel Wallace is prejudging the issue himself, making grandiose claims about the manuscript, long before his claims can be academically validated.

        It’s great that academics discuss books. Unfortunately, they can’t test the legitimacy and merit of books that haven’t even been published. This doesn’t stop Wallace from using his “book” for apologetic purposes.

        • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

          That is a fair point, although given how grandiose and seemingly incredible the claim is, I have to say that I have often seen less spectacular claims trumpeted with more pomp than Wallace has been offering.

          • beau_quilter

            True – let’s just call it (as someone already has) a cheap debate trick.

        • James M

          “Unfortunately, they can’t test the legitimacy and merit of books that haven’t even been published.”

          ## Not always so. It’s quite common for scholar X to acknowledge the kindness of scholar Y in making unpublished conclusions or other ideas available to scholar X, even before publication of Y’s book/monograph/Festschrift/translation/edition. This happens all the time in Assyriology, & in OT scholarship.

          • beau_quilter

            That doesn’t seem to be the case, here.

      • Tim

        Different Tim here: Yeah, it would seem as though the fragment(s) could be dated anywhere within the century with a margin of error of 50 years. The only thing he did say about it’s origin is that it was found in Egypt.

      • No Way

        This isn’t secrecy and caution. It has been two years. The manuscript most likely was found to be a forgery. This is common.

    • No Way

      It seems like Bart is being overly kind and respectful here. The most likely explanation for the lack of information here is that the fragment was found to be a fraud. Dr. Wallace should not have mentioned the fragment in the debate. He was excited about the document, and it slipped out it seems. I am sure that he did not expect his comments regarding it to become a permanent part of the internet. He said at the time that it was not verified and it seems now that it failed in being verified. This happens all the time in christian circles. How many times has the ark been found? I think Wallace made an honest mistake mentioning the fragment, but I think the manuscript is most likely another case of a huckster getting the best of over anxious religionists.

  • stuart32

    There seems to be a bit of confusion about the exact date. He is asked whether he can pin it down to the nearest decade, which he says is impossible. He then says that it can only be estimated to the nearest fifty years, but that it is definitely first century. The interviewer then concludes that it can’t be any later than 51.

    • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

      And that is obviously dubious. Handwriting styles do evolve, but not in a way that changes dramatically according to calendar periods!

      • stuart32

        Yes, I thought that seemed odd. The interviewer seemed to be taking the fifty year margin of error and concluding that it must look as if it was from around the mid-first century in order to be definitely within the first century.

      • arcseconds

        I think we should all decide to make huge and arbitrary changes to the way we do things at the turn of every century, just to mess with (or make things convenient for) future historians!

        • JenellYB

          wonderfully clever idea!

  • Just Sayin’

    Didn’t Carsten Peter Theide already find one?

    • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

      He thinks he did (among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I used it as the image in the post, since we do not yet have a photo of Wallace’s fragment). Few are persuaded by Thiede.

      • WAWoWAW

        IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO RECONSTRUCT BACK TO ORIGINAL WORDS HENCE MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL AUTHORS

        Crack open a nestle aland greek new testament and look at its critical apparatus there is an A,B,C,D probablity grading for the variant readings… But even majority christian scholars except evangelicals state it is only possible to reconstruct back to an erroneous copy.

        MARK bro you realize that 5,600 manuscript approx 94 come after the 8th century.

        the earliest manuscripts complete we have in the 4th century is Codex Sianaticus and Vaticanus

        in the 2nd century we have a scrap known as p52 which is like a post it stamp size..

        • stuart32

          I’m not quite sure what your point is. Are you saying that the idea of the resurrection is a late invention and that the documents were altered to make it look as if it arose at an early stage?

  • No Way

    This is such a cheap trick. Even with the disclaimer here it looks like this fragment is still out there somewhere. Dr. Wallace mentioned this in a debate with, I think, Bart Ehrman two years ago. During the debate he said to expect more information within the year. It is now two years and not a word has been published about it. Dr. Wallace is under a non-disclosure agreement regarding it and the most likely conclusion is that the fragment was a forgery. That doesn’t make any difference to a great deal of christians who are happy to refer to the non existent (as far as we know) document.

    • http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/ VinnyJH

      I think it is somewhat inaccurate to say that “This is such a cheap trick.” This was such a cheap debating trick. Wallace made a completely unverifiable claim in a debate in order to distract the audience and steer the discussion away from the points that Ehrman was making. It is the kind of thing that William Lane Craig does to great effect.

      Personally, as far a debating tactic goes, I wouldn’t judge Wallace too harshly for trying to get Ehrman to chase that rabbit. Unfortunately, Wallace has academic standing outside the world of Christian apologetics and he can’t count on his unverifiable claims being ignored the way Craig’s are.

      • No Way

        When I said it was a cheap trick I was referring to the blog post here. I understand a mistake was made by the author regarding the date, but that mistake gets this whole thing going again. When people repeat this story in Sunday school or from the pulpit the manuscript will almost invariably be verified and more “proof” of the bauble.

        • http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/ VinnyJH

          OK.

  • Ryan Hite

    Mark is the first of the gospels that the bible has as well. It is what brings the authenticity of the historicity of Jesus as well from the perspective of people who do not believe in the story of Jesus.

    • stuart32

      Maurice Casey makes a very early date for Mark a centrepoint of his argument for historicity. I don’t know whether this is wise, given that he is going against the consensus.

      • Matthew Jenkins

        Hmmm. How early is Maurice Casey’s date? From what I’ve heart, most NT scholars hold that Mark wrote his gospel in mid 60 just prior to 70 AD. However, I think most NT scholars agree that the Passion narrative was at least prior to 55 AD(If I’m not mistaken)

        • stuart32

          He follows James Crossley in dating it around 40. If he’s right this would demolish the mythicist case because it depends on arguing that when Paul was writing no one had any biographical information about Jesus. The only problem is that you can’t use it against mythicists because they can say that the early date is rejected by most scholars. Of course, the consensus on this might change.

          More interesting, I think is Casey’s point about Aramaic sources. Casey is the expert in this field, and he argues that certain passages in the Gospels can only be understood if the Gospel writers misread a written Aramaic source while they were translating it. This refutes an argument that Richard Carrier made. According to Carrier, if there is evidence of an Aramaic influence it could just be that Mark, for example, was an Aramaic speaker for whom Greek was a second language and that he simply translated from one language to the other in his own head.

          Because, as I said, the mythicists argue that in Paul’s time no one had any biographical information about Jesus, any evidence of sources earlier than Mark is a problem for them.

          • Gary

            Just a quick question. How could most scholars think Mark was written around 60AD or earlier? Seems rather obvious with…
            “2And Jesus said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down.”
            That at least that part was added after 70AD.

            • stuart32

              I’m no authority, so I’ll just pass on what Casey said. He thinks there was a genuine prediction of the destruction of the Temple, and that it was the kind of thing that could have been predicted, given the political situation at the time. Also, the Temple was actually burnt down and, according to Casey, a pseudo-prediction made after the event would have included this detail.

              • Gary

                I’m no authority either. Can’t burn stones, at least not with a wood fire. So I still personally think that part was written after 70 AD. And I tend to believe Josephus, when he says Vespasian and Titus didn’t want to totally destroy Jerusalem and the temple. Can’t tax a totally destroyed economy. And can’t predict zealots holding the temple. The priests had it pretty good under the Romans. So I don’t buy a pre-70 date, with predictions.

                • stuart32

                  Yes, the argument obviously hasn’t convinced the majority of scholars. Another problem is that if Casey is also arguing for written sources preceding Mark’s Gospel then a date as early as 40 CE doesn’t leave much time.

          • Matthew Jenkins

            That’s a very good arguement that Casey uses. I hope that in the upcoming debate Zeba Crook might bring up Mark.

            Also the Passion Narrative would seem to be the 2nd earliest source in the NT next to Paul’s epistles ex: 1 Cor. 15″.

            Whomever Mark got his info from was a very early source that had to be around 50 AD.

            This puts Christ’s execution at 20+ years! That would be the equivalent of the Gulf war from 1991 to today.

            • stuart32

              Yes, I don’t see how the mythicist case can work. The mythicists need to argue that the historical Jesus was invented in between Paul’s letters and Mark’s Gospel. The margin is alreay very tight because Paul’s last letter was in the early 60s, and that is if you grant that Mark was written around 70. Any evidence of written sources before Mark and the whole thing falls apart.

              • Matthew Jenkins

                Good point…lol. Considering the fact that all evidence points towards reliable. oral tradition + source material, I think the biggest battle for the mythicists is these 2.

                As well as Paul’s encounter with James in Jerusalem where he spent 2 weeks gathering info. about Jesus resurrection.

                The Gap is so so so tight that it would be virtually impossible for Jesus to be invented and passed on as a legend with a few decades.

                In fact, I think that the Forged gospels like the Gospel of Thomas,Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Phillip,etc… can show the credibility of just how early and reliable the 4 gospels are.

                If Mythicism is true, then why don’t all 4 gospels appear to be written like the forgeries? Why don’t they develop over 2-3 centuries?

                The forged gospel narratives are filled with motif’s and narratives that are legendary, and that’s what we would expect from something written and classified as a genre of fiction.

                These forgeries would show that all 4 gospels had to have been written within the 1st century when all the apostles and second hand sources were alive.

                I think Carrier and mythicists are going to have a hard time when pressed with this kind of extraordinary documentation.

                It’s amazing that Jesus has just as much, if not more doc. than any other figure. What’s even more amazing is that it happened within a 150 years:)

                • stuart32

                  I think I can offer a reasonable summary of Richard Carrier’s theory:

                  At the time when Paul was writing (mainly in the 50s) there were numerous Christian groups scattered across the empire. All of them believed that Jesus was a celestial being. In AD 70 Mark decided to write an imaginary life of Jesus which placed him on earth. Although everyone had thought of Jesus as a celestial being up to that time Mark’s story immediately converted people to the belief that Jesus was an actual historical person.

                  We can see this because Matthew and Luke, who copied Mark, clearly show that they think of Jesus in this way. The transition from believing that Jesus was a celestial being to believing that he was a historical person was so rapid that there is no trace of it whatsoever. Although we have evidence of numerous disagreements in the early church, in this case if there was any disagreement, any evidence of it has mysteriously disappeared.

                  • Matthew Jenkins

                    Hmmmm….. So Carrier can prove that there were these groups who quote on quote “Thought or belived Jesus as a celstial being?”

                    Then he somehow thinks that they had influenced Mark to write about Jesus as this celestial being….

                    Something as common as a crucifixion would be recorded by Roman authorities, but that’s still not evidence for Carrier because of course if you can make Jesus a celstial being, then crucifixion wouldn’t matter because there was no such thing in this celestial world.

                    LOl… Disagreements were over Jesus and his relationship to the Father, not whether he existed as a historical person.

                    Gosh… where does Carrier get this junk? This is psuedo-scholarship at it’s finest.

                    The best thing we can do is pray for Richard Carrier that he’ll stop lying to his bloggers and “Fans”. And that he’ll come to know that Jesus is the Son of God.

                    • Patrick

                      I think Luke definitely would have mentioned the martyrdom of James and the destruction of the temple. Since he didn’t, I conclude Acts precedes 62 AD.

                      There is simply no chance he would not have documented both, even the temple more than James. That happening would have been the most impirical of evidences Jesus was at the very least a true Jewish prophet who every Jew should give serious consideration to.

                    • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

                      Luke’s rewriting of Mark 13 doesn’t look to you like it reflects knowledge of the destruction of the temple?

                    • Patrick

                      James,

                      Sorry for the delay.

                      No, Luke looks to me like he has access to a little different oral tradition is all. I’m in the James DG Dunn camp on oral traditions and the synoptic problem.

                      If the temple had gone down , Luke would have crowed about that in Acts worse that a modern BB player does after a dunk! It is the most significant activity other than the resurrection concerning the validity of Christ’s comments, IMO.

                    • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/ James F. McGrath

                      Just citing “oral tradition” does not help your stance. You would need to show that that tradition likely went back to before 70 CE. Of course, John A. T. Robinson has made that case, and would be a place to start if you were going to try to develop an argument.

                      Where would Luke have “crowed” about the destruction of the temple in a work which does not cover the time period when that happened, if not in Jesus’ prediction about the destruction? And given that Luke depicts Christians as participating in the worship of the temple, what makes you think he would have crowed about it at all?

                    • Andrew Dowling

                      Luke’s “Little Apocalypse” clearly infers the destruction of the Temple . . .”armies surrounding Jerusalem”?

                      Why would he mention James . . Luke clearly diminishes the role of James in Acts.

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