A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.
Tonight I watched Kipp Davis’ new documentary about one of the most influential apologists in the US: “Josh McDowell: Manuscript Hunting and Mythmaking for Jesus” live in a webinar organized by the Lying Pen project at UiA, Kristiansand. My co-blogger Peter Head was there too I noticed. There was an introduction by Kipp, and brief responses by Roberta Mazza and Dana Ryan Lande. I only heard Roberta’s and then had to go.
If you want to watch the documentary, it was released simultaneously on YouTube. I think everyone ought to see it, but perhaps in particular those involved in Christian apologetics. I already lacked confidence in McDowell before watching the film, in particular after his wheelings and dealings with manuscripts, mummy masks and Palmolive (though I doubt he knew Carroll somehow faked these sessions), etc. But this documentary brings out a lot more about McDowell’s own “testimony” that is highly disturbing and tragic.
It looks like we are finally getting that First-Century Mark (henceforth, FCM) fragment everyone has been talking about for years. (By the designation “FCM” I am not implying that it actually dates to the first century. I don’t know the date yet. I only mean that “FCM” is probably the actual papyrus that has been reported to be the first-century Mark fragment.)
I have not yet seen the latest volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The Egypt Exploration Society’s website shows vol. LXXXII as the most current volume, at least as of today. However, Amazon informs me that volume LXXXIII was published last month. When I first saw it, there was only one copy available. It has since been sold. The description begins:
Volume LXXXIII of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri continues our publication of biblical texts, including what is only the second Egyptian witness to the Epistle of Philemon as well as further early witnesses to the text of Mark and Luke, and an amateur copy of excerpts from Ezekiel’s Exagoge.
Though it is also exciting for NT textual criticism that we will see fragments of Luke and Philemon, the key thing to notice here is that the description mentions an early fragment of Mark.
We can get a bit more information from the Oxford Faculty of Classics publications page:
Both the Mark (P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5345) and the Luke (P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5346) fragments are being edited by Daniela Colomo and Dirk Obbink. The reported publication date of 2017 is probably just a delay in publication, which would not be the first time we’ve encountered such a delay with this fragment. I can’t see a date assigned to the papyri yet (UPDATE: see below), but we can piece together a trail of breadcrumbs and arrive at the conclusion that P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5345 is probably the infamous First-Century Mark—even if the date is not given as first-century. Here is the trail:
Elijah Hixson has sent me a YouTube video that has Josh McDowell interviewing Scott Carroll about “First Century Mark.” The video is posted below to which I have added a partial transcript for reference. The video was uploaded on November 15, 2015, but the conference was in October, 2015 given what Carroll says in the video, it must be from before that.
The most important things we learn are that Scott Carroll has seen “First Century Mark” twice and that Dirk Obbink is indeed the unofficial source of its tentative date. So, we now have someone on record claiming to have actually seen it—twice. (Cf. PJW’s question here.) We are told that Obbink wrestled with dating it between AD 70 and 110/120. The former date has obvious reference to the destruction of the temple, but why 110/120 would be a sensible cutoff date, I have no idea. Obviously, we are hearing this from Carroll rather than from Obbink himself. So, caveat lector.
We also learn that Carroll does not seem to think it came from mummy cartonnage although he is not sure. (Papyrus can be cleaned of the signs of cartonnage, of course.) He tried to acquire it for the Green collection but wasn’t able to. An unnamed source now apparently owns it and is preparing it for publication. We continue to wait.
One other minor note. Carroll says he first saw the papyrus in 2012 and then again in 2013. His famous tweet, claiming that P52 was no longer the earliest known New Testament papyrus, was sent on December 1, 2011. So, my guess is that in the video Carroll has just rounded up to 2012. If so, this adds further confirmation that Carroll is the original source of the claim to a “First Century Mark” even though Dan Wallace was the first to announce it as such. This makes it a bit odd that Carroll refers to some stuff being “leaked.”
Over at Brice C. Jones’ blog there is more news about the alleged first-century fragment of Mark, and many other recently discovered manuscripts (a 38 page manuscript of 1 or 2 Corinthians, the oldest copy of Romans, etc). Apparently, all the information is disclosed in a video featuring evangelist Josh McDowell, who has been involved in working on this fantastic discovery and even in the process of extracting the manuscripts from Egyptian mummy masks(!).
It seems that the Markan fragment is soon to be published. McDowell assumed it would be in November last year. We certainly look forward to that.
