The earliest fragment of Mark’s Gospel has apparently been discovered. Dr. Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College says that a newly discovered fragment of the Gospel of Mark may be the oldest known fragment of a gospel. Dated sometime before 90 A.D., the fragment was recovered in a mummy’s mask. LiveScience first reported:
A text that may be the oldest copy of a gospel known to exist — a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that was written during the first century, before the year 90 — is set to be published.
At present, the oldest surviving copies of the gospel texts date to the second century (the years 101 to 200).
This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn by a mummy. Although the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs wore masks made of gold, ordinary people had to settle for masks made out of papyrus (or linen), paint and glue. Given how expensive papyrus was, people often had to reuse sheets that already had writing on them.
In recent years scientists have developed a technique that allows the glue of mummy masks to be undone without harming the ink on the paper. The text on the sheets can then be read.
The first-century gospel is one of hundreds of new texts that a team of about three-dozen scientists and scholars is working to uncover, and analyze, by using this technique of ungluing the masks, said Craig Evans, a professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
“We’re recovering ancient documents from the first, second and third centuries. Not just Christian documents, not just biblical documents, but classical Greek texts, business papers, various mundane papers, personal letters,” Evans told Live Science. The documents include philosophical texts and copies of stories by the Greek poet Homer.
The business and personal letters sometimes have dates on them, he said. When the glue was dissolved, the researchers dated the first-century gospel in part by analyzing the other documents found in the same mask.
In the video embedded below, Dr. Craig Evans explains:
Where did we find it? … We dug underneath somebody’s face, and there it was. Let me explain what’s going on here; this is very exciting. Mummy masks if you were the pharaoh, were made out of pure gold. If you were a wealthy person, it would be neatly carved, and then perhaps covered with gold leaf and a few jewels. But if you weren’t wealthy … the mummy mask that covered your face would be made out of paper mache … Paper was expensive, so you don’t take brand new papyrus and make a paper mache mask out of brand new paper. You use used paper. And that’s the best kind, if you’re a scholar, because we want to find old paper with writing on it. … And if you’re a pagan with no respect for the Christians, you use their writings as trash and you make papier mache masks out of their stuff. And their new stuff includes the New Testament… We could have a first century fragment of Mark for the first time ever!
In an e-mail correspondence with Dr. Ben Witherington, Dr. Craig Evans has made the following clarification of the facts:
Last summer I gave a presentation on the number, age, and reliability of New Testament manuscripts. In this lecture I described the effort under way in recent years to recover manuscript fragments, including biblical manuscripts, from ancient cartonnage, including mummy masks. All of these materials are from Egypt. Just over three years ago a fragment of Mark was recovered, which those studying it think dates to the 80s. If they are correct, this will be the first New Testament manuscript that dates to the first century. The fragment is to be published later this year (by E. J. Brill). Someone video-recorded my lecture and posted it on YouTube. Last week a reporter, Owen Jarus, from Live Science contacted me and I gave him an interview. What he wrote was posted on Sunday 18 January 2015 and is accurate. However, other journalists have made use of his story and/or the video on YouTube and have misunderstood some aspects of it, claiming incorrectly that I was myself the discoverer of the fragment of Mark or that research on the papyri recovered from the mummy masks is going on here in Nova Scotia. Some have also posted a photo of a mummy mask giving me credit for the photo. The photo is not mine. I have directed reporters who inquired to the person to whom the photo does belong. Unfortunately, not all reporters inquired. (Ben Witherington, “Earliest Fragment of Mark’s Gospel Apparently Found,” 1/20/2015).
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