Candida Moss and Joel Baden, professors of history at various universities, bring us an update on a fragment of the Gospel of Mark allegedly from the first century. TL;DR: turns out it’s from the 2nd to 3rd century and allegedly from a known (since 1903) papyrus haul.

thedailybeast.com

The existence of this fragment was announced at a debate between Dan Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary (evangelical) and Bart Ehrman (agnostic, UNC) in 2012. The announcement overshadowed the debate and somewhat took the air out of the room. Why, there might be some room for some of the evangelical beliefs about the Bible’s unique preservation and so on and so forth!

As the months and then years passed, the fragment didn’t make an appearance, and the rumors started flying. There was a story that the fragment may have been discovered by taking apart an Egyptian burial mask (cartonnage) in a manner inconsistent with preserving the mask, i.e., by dissolving the plaster of the mask in a sink full of water. This article from last year by Moss and Baden goes into that:

christiancentury.org

Earlier this week, an evangelical textual criticism blog announced that the fragment had surfaced as part of a volume of texts from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series. But questions remain, because the keeper of that fragment has allegedly been shopping it around for a number of years. But he can’t do that, because the P. Oxy fragments are owned by the Egyptian Excavation Society.

evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com

Even a second or third century Mark fragment would fetch an unbelievable price were it to go up for sale, because there is only one other fragment of Mark from the same period. The Green family of Hobby Lobby fame has been stocking up its new Museum of the Bible by buying up fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls (and we are talking tiny scraps of papyrus or parchment, no bigger than a sticky note). Scholars of this sort of thing now believe that any DSS fragment that has hit the market since 2003 (which encompasses the Green buying spree) is probably a forgery. It should be noted that Paige Patterson’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has a couple of DSS fragments; it is believed a donor paid $500,000 for one of the fragments. (item 16 on this list: lyingpen.com)

So here were have a fragment of Mark, but there are so many questions. I have to wonder if it’s truly a part of P.Oxy, or if it’s a fragment with a dubious provenance (read: looted) or a forgery that’s being inserted into the collection. And even if it’s legitimately part of P.Oxy, why would its keeper, Dirk Obbink, allegedly be shopping it around? He doesn’t own it. But Obbink had been working with the Green family.

So many questions about an issue that really shouldn’t be one, but given the influence of the Green family, their open wallet and their willingness to buy looted tablets and likely forged papyrus for their museum, the questions take on a larger significance.

Should I turn this into a Page? I find this stuff interesting and I could go into a discussion of the forged DSS fragments too.