Remember That First-Century Mark Fragment? Now it’s been published, there’s good news and bad news.

Six years ago, Dan Wallace announced in a debate with Bart Ehrman that a paleographer had dated a recently-found papyrus fragment of Mark to the first century. Since then, I’ve received many requests for updates, and I finally have one to give.

The fragment has now been published, and there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that its official date is late second or early third century. Dan Wallace has written a post explaining what happened and offering an apology. Here’s a brief excerpt:

In my debate with Bart, I mentioned that I had it on good authority that this was definitely a first-century fragment of Mark. A representative for who I understood was the owner of FCM urged me to make the announcement at the debate, which they realized would make this go viral. However, the information I received and was assured to have been vetted was incorrect. It was my fault for being naïve enough to trust that the data I got was unquestionable, as it was presented to me. So, I must first apologize to Bart Ehrman, and to everyone else, for giving misleading information about this discovery. While I am sorry for publicly announcing inaccurate facts, at no time in the public statements (either in the debate or on my blogsite) did I knowingly do this. But I should have been more careful about trusting any sources without my personal verification, a lesson I have since learned.

His warning is one we should all heed. Michael Kruger adds to this:

I suppose this whole affair is a good reminder about the nature of scholarship, particularly the study of ancient manuscripts. Any study of the ancient world needs to be approached with caution and patience, but particularly the study of ancient texts. A first impression of ancient manuscripts is just that, a first/preliminary impression. And sometimes further study and reflection can lead to different results.

A first-century fragment would certainly have been exciting, so obviously this news is disappointing in that sense, but Kruger notes good and bad reasons for being disappointed, saying that in terms of scholarly impact, “Given how fragmentary it is, it is unlikely to have changed the debate over the reliability of the text in any meaningful way.”

You can read more of Wallace’s explanation and apology here. He was prevented by a non-disclosure agreement from discussing any of this until now, and I’m sure it must have been maddening for him to not be able to set the record straight.

Having said that, the good news is that the Mark fragment has been dated to the late second or early third century! Larry Hurtado reminds us not to lose perspective on this find:

Though not now judged to be “first-century,” this fragment of Mark is still important, doubling the number of manuscript witnesses to GMark from before 300 CE (the only other one being the Chester Beatty Gospels codex, P45).

He adds in another post:

My note about the newly published items included in vol 83 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri [which included the Mark fragment in question] reminded me that to date, over 100 years after the excavations there, the vast hoard of papyri shipped to Britain by Grenfell & Hunt (in hundreds of metal boxes) remains stored and unpublished. This latest volume brings the number of published items well past 5,000. But by some estimates this leaves several hundred thousands of papyrus fragments, perhaps more, yet to be studied and published.

That only in this latest volume do we have a remarkably early fragment of the Gospel of Mark, as well as fragments of a couple of other NT writings, shows that gems continue to be found in that hoard. And who knows what else lies there?

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None of the original works of the NT were written in any language but Hebrew.

Mark’s gospel may actually be the third to be written, but was definitely not the first.

By Paul’s testimony in his epistle to the Romans, “the Oracles of Yehova are committed to the House of Judah.” (not to the Helenists that had been driven out of the land in the Maccabee revolt, centuries before the era of Yeshua and his disciples)

Revisionism and general rejection of the Word of Yehova are the fare of the “critics” and the rest of the Adversary’s bride.

“Koine Greek” is an accidental creation of the Pharisee scribes that translated the Hebrew NT writings into ‘Greek.’ It was never a language spoken by any peoples. This is the opinion of actual native Greek scholars.
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A useful analogy might be with Sir Winston Churchill and his Second World War series.. He was the only wartime leader to give a firsthand account of the war. Obviously, Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini could not do so. The Soviets settled for an atheistic version of hagiography. Thus, his narrative, which was published in 1952, is considered the most authoritative history of World War II. He had access to all British wartime records, due to an agreement with the successor Labour government.

Similarly, someone recorded the observations of the disciples, or perhaps someone actually recorded Jesus’s statements at the Sermon on the Mount, the Olivett Discourse, etc. It was from these sources, probably mainly in Aramaic, from which the Gospels derived.

The only question is the absence of any manuscripts from the 1st Century. Dr. Wallace thought he knew of one, but backed off from his claim when he found it was not.

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Judea is not in the “middle east,” but in the Near East.

The Middle East was populated with mostly non-Shemitic peoples, and lies beyond the Euphrates River, and eastward.

The Near East consists of Shemitic peoples, and those that have inter-bred with them in northern Africa, and Turkey.

The Helenists were driven out of the eastern Mediterranean by the Maccabee revolt, centuries before the era of Yeshua, and speaking their language marked one as a ‘lesser being’ (Goyim).

Nothing is known about who “Luke” really was, and what is offered about him is 100% conjecture. He had to have spoken fluent Hebrew, or he would not have been able to communicate so well with Peter, an uneducated man who spoke only his native tongue.

The Pharisees conversed with Pilate and his officers in Latin, obviously, since all of the Roman cities in the eastern Mediterranean had Latin names. ‘Greek’ had no ‘status’ with the Romans, and was spoken mostly by the Helenist officers and soldiers that had been conscripted into the Roman constabulary.

Koine Greek was the language of no one. (Greek scholars will gladly inform you of this fact) It was a written language only, created unintentionally by the Pharisee scribes that translated scriptures from Hebrew to Greek.
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