Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Photo purported to be first century Mark manuscript is indeed a hoax


Just updating something that came up a while ago here.

Daniel Wallace, Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, who announced to the world that a number of very old New Testament manuscript fragments have been found (including a first century fragment from the Gospel of Mark), recently confirmed a comment from Jason Engwer to the effect that the photograph floating around the internet was indeed a hoax). He says, in a comment on his blog, “Yes, this is a hoax. It’s not even a papyrus manuscript! It first surfaced when an atheist group displayed it as a way to discredit the real finding.”

5 comments:

  1. What is that, 10,11, 12 feet tall? Was it written for the Nephilim to read? [grin]


    P.S. No need to respond. I'm obviously joking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. John, my friend,

    first, how's your wife's recovery coming?

    second, when looking at that photo purported to be the first century Mark manuscript as God's "textual transmission" I think this way about "all" of God's "written" Words in the transmission of the text form.

    He is Eternal.

    When He speaks, every written Word reflects Him like one looking at oneself in a mirror; when He speaks Eternal Words though we natural persons reading them see Him by that form.

    When His Word is written down as the Bible witnesses giving testimony of His Eternal Nature, His Eternal Purpose about His Eternal Salvation and Redemption and damnation, His Eternal Word, when spoken and written, it will always be as much eternal in essence, no matter what language it is written or spoken in.

    Case in point, let me ask, why is Lycaonian a language the Bible was not written in from Genesis to Revelation?

    Act 14:11 And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, "The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!"

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Natamllc, thank you for asking. My wife is doing all right. She made it through some pretty nasty complications, and she got beat up pretty badly, but there is a nice picture of her and some of the kids at johnbugay.wordpress.com.

    She is moving out of the "acute" "graft-vs-host" phase, and into the "chronic" version of it. (Same general thing, but they've noticed that there is this breaking point between the two of them, with slightly different symptoms. We have a fairly important doctor's appointment tomorrow, and I hope to learn a good bit more.

    On balance, though, she is progressing along the path that she needs to be on in order to say that she's had a "complete cure". It takes about two years to get to that point.

    In answer to your second question, I can't say that I had considered it. Maybe the Lord chose Koine Greek because it was so precise a language and also so accessible to so many people of that day. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. What annoys me is I have never heard Lycaonian before! grrrrr

    Oh well, I guess I will have to find a time machine and go back there, then?

    Oh, what will be the language we speak in Heaven? Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Lycaonian, ???? :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. My guess is that we'll be fluent in all of them, and we'll pass seamlessly from one to the other.

    ReplyDelete