Craig Evans was recently interviewed by the Veracity Hill program and in it he tells his side of the story about P.Oxy. 5345 (formerly “First-century Mark”). In terms of new info (at least I think it’s new), he says that his info on it came by way of Dan Wallace [update: he misspoke] and he doesn’t know what all the “hubub” is about. It’s just a case of a papyrologist changing his mind and anyway a 2nd/3rd-century fragment of Mark is still the earliest for Mark and that’s great.
He also responds to “two or three smart alecks” in the blogosphere who have critiqued his view of autograph survival and mentions in passing that he’s working on a book on Jesus and the manuscripts. The discussion of manuscripts starts after the 46 minute mark with the pericope adulterae and the ending of Mark.
He also responds to “two or three smart alecks” in the blogosphere who have critiqued his view of autograph survival and mentions in passing that he’s working on a book on Jesus and the manuscripts. The discussion of manuscripts starts after the 46 minute mark with the pericope adulterae and the ending of Mark.
He claimed it had been dated to the 80's, and that it came from a mummy mask. He now ignores those points, and purports to be surprised that people have found fault with him. The interviewer just lets it slide and doesn't even ask about the non-disclosure agreements. What a pity. https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/mark-strikes-back-mummy-cartonnage-and-christian-apologetics-again/
ReplyDeleteNot a surprise that Evans's source was Wallace. It's possible (and I think probable) that Wallace was told by someone that the fragment was found in a mummy mask, and Evans simply repeated this. The question remains, who told this to Wallace?
ReplyDeletei think you might find an answer to your question regarding wallace here : http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2018/06/update-on-p137-poxy-835345.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FABBYJ+%28Evangelical+Textual+Criticism%29
DeleteI find it very difficult to believe that Wallace was Evans' source. Wallace has consistently refused to tell anyone anything about the fragment because of his non-disclosure agreement, and we are to believe he violated that for Evans in private while his public reputation suffered for his refusal to say anything? Additionally, Wallace has been one of the few people who opened up and said everything he could once the fragment was published. Surely he would have admitted to being Evans' source were that the case.
DeleteElijah,
DeleteHowever, it does seem that Wallace was more "loose-lipped" in Feb. 2012. Consider his interview with Hugh Hewitt (link below) where he divulges some interesting information publicly. Wallace seemingly didn't sign the NDA until October 2012. In the same Feb. 2012 interview, Wallace shares that the fragment came from Egypt, so there's reason to believe that Wallace was told that it came from mummy cartonnage. Possible that he shared this with Evans between February and October.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/new-testment-scholar-daniel-wallace-on-the-gospel-of-mark-discovery-and-other-biblical-papyri-with-it/
"Wallace shares that the fragment came from Egypt, so there's reason to believe that Wallace was told that it came from mummy cartonnage." What would that 'reason' be? Not sure I follow. Wouldn't the fact that he doesn't say anything about a mummy rather suggest that he hadn't heard anything about a mummy?
DeleteA couple of the things Evans says suggest that he's referring to things Wallace said after signing the NDA, namely the fact that he claims Wallace told him he had seen it and the fact that Wallace at that time told him it had a date range of first to second century, as opposed to strictly first century, which Wallace insists he was initially told.
DeleteHowever, in an informal question and answer session like this, where Evans is speaking about conversations from 6-7 years ago, he could easily misremember details like those, or mix together things from those older conversations with things he learned later.
I think Wallace was *a* source of Evans's. But I doubt that he was the source for the mummy mask claim. I think that when Evans made that mummy mask claim he was mixing together things that he had learned second-hand from more than one source.
"All in all, I—and a whole slew of other scholars—am baffled as to how this article, full of faulty assumptions and claims, came to see the light of day. Its publication in the Bulletin of Biblical Research demonstrates that this journal’s editorial and peer-review standards seriously need to be reevaluated."
ReplyDeleteSo papyrologist Brice Jones at https://www.bricecjones.com/blog/craig-a-evans-on-the-new-testament-autographs-a-response . Does anyone on this blog know whether the Bulletin made any changes to its procedures following the Evans affair?
I might be able to add a little something here. Dr. Wallace and I went to Greece together the summer of 2017. He allowed me to help him prepare manuscripts for photography. During that 8 day trip we were together for many, many hours and I asked him privately about the Mark document. He simply said that he could not tell me. If he wouldn't tell me when we are sitting in the hills of Greece totally by ourselves, I am very confident that Dr. Wallace did not violate the agreement that he had signed. I am certainly willing to go on record as believing that Wallace did nothing wrong and was simply caught up in a very bad situation.
ReplyDeleteI was not the source of information for Craig Evans. He was mistaken. Honest mistake on his part, but as he told me via email yesterday (Sep 1, 2018) "I am probably conflating conversations from different times (and perhaps different people!)." He added that he knew I have been diligent to keep my word on the gag order. His main point in the podcast was that he was not the source for the dating or for breaking the story.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clarifying that, Dan. I’ll make a note in the post.
DeleteAlso, this means we still don’t know where he got his info from.
DeleteDr. Wallace,
DeleteAt any point will you be free to discuss what you were told regarding the provenance of the text and who conveyed it to you?
Me a "smart aleck"? No, just a "wise guy." ;)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Evans does not argue that mss last for 100-300 years as he states in the interview. Rather he argues that "autographs and first copies" lasted 100-300 years as he states in his BBR article. That's a big difference.
DeleteCould anyone provide specifics on what scrolls from Herculaneum Dr. Evans is describing?
DeleteDetails in the article linked here: http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2015/05/new-article-evans-on-books-autographs.html
DeletePeter M. Head,
DeleteExcept there is no mention of Herculaneum in that post; nor are there any specifics about the age of the scrolls, or their contents. So, again ... could anyone provide specifics on what scrolls from Herculaneum Dr. Evans is describing?
Not the post, "the article linked" in the post. As I just said.
DeletePeter M Head,
DeleteOkay; there's some sort of "Not Secure" problem with the linked-to article but I know the material you're referring to, and Anonymous further pointed out some additional data in Houston's "Roman Libraries" book.
Evans' case for autograph-preservation depends on some generous assumptions, to put it mildly. For one thing, Christian literature was contraband; books by Epicurean philosophers weren't.
Why is it wrong to think an autograph manuscript *could* last 300 years when we have many manuscripts that have, in fact, lasted 2,000 years? This seems the least problematic part of his thesis.
DeleteIt's possible. But, Evans builds an entire thesis on the basis of a mere possibility, and that is problematic. More egregious is the claim in Evans' book, "God Speaks," where he says: "This means that when these copies were made, *the original writings were still available for study, comparison, and copying*" (emphasis his). Evans is here presenting this as a historical fact ("were still available") and not a historical possibility.
DeleteAnd just before the quoted part he says 150 years is 'the minimum longevity'! See https://books.google.com/books?id=qkw1CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&lpg=PT27 .
DeleteThe earlier section is also interesting. Evans seems to think that to insist on the straight-forward historicity of John's gospel is obscurantist fundamentalism. He treats it like a wisdom parable.
ReplyDeleteCould you say around what time in the video that is?
DeleteKudos again to Dan Wallace for his straightforward approach to setting things right.
ReplyDeleteCraig Evans in 2014 (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kPgACbtRRs ) : "It was from one of these masks that we recovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that is dated to the 80s."
ReplyDeleteCraig Evans 2018: "We don't know where Mark came from; there was confusion about that Mark fragment."
And who contributed significantly to that confusion?? Dr. Craig Evans did!
I think that is undoubtedly true. Clearly he didn't know what he was talking about. But to be able to speak with such confidence when you really don't know what you are talking about, that is worrying - not only for the scholar concerned, but for what it communicates to students.
DeleteAlso , for myself I don't like this ambiguous and misleading use of "we". I set myself against using such a presumptious and false way of speaking.
An hour into the interview, Dr. Evans says that we have, among the carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum, dozens of scrolls that were 200, and even 300 years old, at the time Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Can anyone here confirm this?
ReplyDeleteTry https://books.google.com/books?id=z0KbBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA121&lpg=PA122&redir_esc=y (stage one).
DeleteAnonymous,
DeleteThanks. So, on page 123, Houston states (in Inside Roman Libraries) that among the scrolls at Herculaneum, three were copies in the third century B.C., six were copies in the third or second century B.C., and 23 copies were produced in the second century B.C.
So reckoning that a scroll that was 300 years old in A.D. 69 would have to have been made in 231 B.C. or earlier, it seems that the claim that we have dozens of 300-year-old scrolls at Herculaneum is wrong.
Dr. Craig Evans, Sept. 2018, re: Mk. 16:9-20: "I really don't know; I suspect Mark did not originally end at 16:8. I suspect that verses 9-20 do represent a later construction. But those verses may contain parts of an original conclusion, and how that original conclusion got lost, I don't know. So, see, I don't have a real simple, straightforward answer for this one."
ReplyDeleteCraig Evans, May 2018, re: Mk. 16:9-20 and Jn. 7:53-8:11: "“There are only two passages of any length where there is any doubt. But there is no doubt, because the manuscript evidence is so substantial and so early, we can identify them as ringers; they don’t really belong in the text.”
Granting that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, who wants to build on that? And what he claimed about Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and their formatting at the end of Mark is not right; Vaticanus has a blank column but Sinaiticus does not; much of the last column after 16:8 in Sinaiticus is blank but it was the copyists' normal practice to leave blank space below the end of a book before starting the next book at the top of a new column. Sinaiticus' unusual anomalous feature is not a fully blank column (as anyone glancing at the relevant page can see); it is that the scribe who made the cancel-sheet that contains Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 make a special effort to avoid leaving a blank column (as I explain at http://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2015/09/codex-sinaiticus-and-ending-of-mark.html ).