Friday, May 25, 2018

Definitive report on the “First Century Gospel of Mark”

Update: an earlier version of this article had noted that Brill Publishing played a role in establishing the identity of this manuscript fragment; it has been updated to note that the overseeing publisher is the Egypt Exploration Society. In addition, the image has been removed at the request of the publisher (via Mr. Hixson).

In addition, there is a large and growing comments thread at the Hixson blog post that offers far more relevant detail about the history and ownership of the fragment than I can provide here. In short:


The EES (Egypt Exploration Society) confirms that the Mark fragment comes from Grenfell and Hunt’s excavation at Oxyrhynchus, probably in 1903 (on the basis of the inventory number), and that it has never been for sale, whatever claims may have been made arising from individual conversations in the past.

* * *

Daniel Wallace and Elijah Hixson (and the publisher of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the Egypt Exploration Society) have confirmed that the papyrus fragment that has at various times in the past been reported as “the First Century Gospel of Mark” (by Wallace himself and Josh McDowell) has actually been confirmed to be a “(later) second or (earlier) third century” fragment of the Gospel of Mark.

From the Hixson article:
In summary, it looks very much like:
* FCM (the “First Century of Mark Fragment”) is finally being published as P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5345.
* The fragment is very small. It has only parts of six verses from Mark 1.
* The fragment tells us nothing about the famous textual variants in Mark 1:1, Mark 1:41 or the Ending of Mark.
There’s more intrigue in the articles, but a lot of the rest of it is not so spectacular.

While there is some disappointment that it’s not the first-century fragment that was reported, it is still the earliest (or one of the two earliest) fragments of the Gospel of Mark that is available.

16 comments:

  1. Interesting post, John.

    I also found this article which addresses the discovery of an early manuscript fragment of Romans:

    https://danielbwallace.com/2012/11/26/new-early-fragment-of-romans/

    The manuscript support for the New Testament documents alone is simply impressive.

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    1. Hi Jesse, yeah, if I recall, that Romans manuscript was also a part of that "Green Collection" of which this particular Mark fragment was a part.

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  2. I have to say, I have major problems with Wallace in regard to his interpretive scholarship (and the way he's tried to hide it and downplay its content), but I feel sorry for him over this. It really sounds like he got led down the garden path and left holding the baby (mixed metaphor alert).

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    1. I thought the role that Josh McDowell played in the whole thing (from what I've seen) was totally irresponsible. I can understand his enthusiasm, and his desire to make a big PR splash, but he really seems to have set the whole process back by quite a bit.

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    2. Was that who told Wallace to mention it in the debate? Wallace is pretty clearly trying to avoid telling who that person was, which isn't necessarily wrong.

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    3. If I recall correctly, yes. I saw videos of McDowell talking about the whole process of how they came across these particular manuscripts.

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  3. Here are some of my initial thoughts on the publication of Formerly-First-Century-Mark:
    http://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2018/05/first-century-mark-finally-but.html

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    1. What are Snapp's credentials?

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    2. I don't know, but Larry Hurtado linked to his article, here.

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  4. Replies
    1. Thanks James, I've fixed the spelling error.

      "The actual age of the pictured fragment is about an hour."

      Lol!

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  5. Brill has nothing to do with this piece. Yes that was part of an early announcement, but the publisher of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri is the Egypt Exploration Society. Also, we were asked to take down the excerpt of the edition of which you have a screenshot (nothing shady—nobody trying to cover-up anything). Would you be willing to take down your screenshot and replace it with something more recent?

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    1. Thanks Elijah, I’ll make these corrections.

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    2. Thank you very much! Thank you especially for taking down the image, and I am happy to report that the EES has made the edition (with images) available for free at the end of their statement here: https://www.ees.ac.uk/news/poxy-lxxxiii-5345.

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    3. Thanks Elijah -- that's a very cool document!

      Separately, where are you in the UK?

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