Chester Beatty Papyrii (P45) and the Gospel of Mark

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/dublin-biblical-papyri-and-guinness-the-way-god-made-it/

http://larryhurtado.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/p45-and-mark.pdf

The Chester Beatty Codex of the Gospels and Acts (Chester Beatty Papyrus I, more
widely known as P45) was a find of sensational importance for the textual history of the
New Testament.  Like a flare bursting over a night-time battlefield, it cast light upon the
previously darkened pre-Constantinian centuries of the textual history of the New
Testament, forcing revisions of scholarly views on several major matters.  In one giant
step, P45 brought scholarship on the text of the Gospels from the mid-fourth century
practically to the doorstep of the second century.  First made available to the scholarly
world in the 1933 edition by Frederic G. Kenyon, for New Testament scholars, P45 is the
jewel in the crown of the twelve Greek biblical manuscripts acquired by Chester Beatty
about 1930 (emphasis added).

My purpose here is to focus specifically on the relevance of P45 for the
textual history of the Gospel of Mark....