Mummy Mask May Reveal Oldest Known Gospel

[SVPete]

Mummy Mask May Reveal Oldest Known Gospel
By Owen Jarus
news.yahoo.com
January 21, 2015 9:40 AM

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.

This article, further down, speaks to how the manuscripts are being dated. It's a combination of dates written on other documents (probably the regnal year of the current Roman Emperor), C-14 dating, and the style of the writing. This find pushes the date for the oldest manuscript fragment of a New Testament book back several decades, into the century in which the books of the NT were written. By way of contrast, the oldest manuscript of Homer's Iliad was written some 16 centuries after Homer, and the oldest manuscript of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars was written 9 or 10 centuries after Caesar wrote. So in just archaeological terms, this is an amazing find. Also pointed out in the article, the pieces of papyrus are like a grab-bag: fragments of classic texts (including some that may push back what we have of Homer and other authors quite a few centuries), legal documents, bills, and other fragments of the everyday lives of ordinary people. There is also some controversy, as the next article details some.

[SVPete]

Archaeologists May Have Found the Oldest Copy of One of the Gospels
by CHRIS QUEEN
pjmedia.com/tatler
2015/01/21

Lest you worry that scientists are destroying valuable antiquities, the discoveries in the papyrus fragments yield more thrilling finds than these particular mummies are worth.

Evans emphasized that the masks that are being destroyed to reveal the new texts are not high-quality ones that would be displayed in a museum. Some are not masks at all but are simply pieces of cartonnage.

Evans told Live Science, “We’re not talking about the destruction of any museum-quality piece.”

The technique is bringing many new texts to light, Evans noted. “From a single mask, it’s not strange to recover a couple dozen or even more” new texts, he told Live Science. “We’re going to end up with many hundreds of papyri when the work is done, if not thousands.”

Naturally, Bart Ehrman, the leftist “Biblical scholar” that Kurt Eichenwald cited in his hit piece on the Bible in Newsweek, expressed his disdain for the find.

This complete disregard for the sanctity of surviving antiquities is, for many, many of us not just puzzling but flat-out distressing. It appears that the people behind and the people doing this destruction of antiquities are all conservative evangelical Christians, who care nothing about the preservation of the past – they care only about getting their paws on a small fragment of a manuscript. Can there be any question that with them we are not dealing with historians but Christian apologists?

Archaeologists are finding not just biblical texts, but fragments of writings by Homer and other Greek writers, as well as documents that capture slices of everyday life in that time period. The destruction of some masks that are less than museum quality is a small price to pay for such rich discoveries.

There are several key facts that have to be kept in mind in considering the objections:

* These papyrus mummy masks are not, for the context, rare;

* The mask being taken apart are not museum quality, which means their great significance for study is not their form, but what can be learned from the individual sheets of papyrus that make up those masks;

* The documents that are being discovered and studied are far more than this one fragment of the Gospel of Mark;

* The documents that are being discovered will be studied by scholars everywhere, not just this group who are about to publish their findings;

* Some destruction is intrinsic to many archaeological activities; e.g, when a city has gone through multiple levels of occupation and destruction, sections of upper occupation levels are studied and destroyed in order to study underlying levels of occupation.

When these facts are kept in mind, I have to wonder whether the objectors are incredibly ignorant of archaeology and this work, or if their objections are disingenuous, and they have a very different agenda. Bart Ehrman's objections, which ignore pretty much all the facts I listed above, is particularly "off" to me. New Testament texts and textual criticism are a part of his experise, but instead of welcoming an amazing find in his field of study, he sniped at who was doing the work, misrepresented the scope of their work, and basically argued that the fragment of mark and other documents should have remained undiwcovered. What's up with that?!

My speculation is that Ehrman feels his published opinions are more likely to be threatened than enriched by this discovery. And as much or more so for other theologians he considers to be peers and friends.

Ehrman has made much of the many thousands of variants among extant New Testament manuscripts, claiming that we do not have a reliable text of the New Testament. This claim mountainizes mole hills into Himalayas. Most variants are mispellings, variations in spelling and abbreviations, minor things that do not bring into doubt what that part of the NT text actually is.  This discovery threatens to highlight Ehrman's mountainizing, discrediting him among a trusting general public who buy his books.

This discovery is even worse for Ehrman's friends on the more liberal end of the spectrum, the ones who claim the Gospels were written in the Second Century, long after eyewitnesses were dead, and incorporate legendary material. Finding a manuscript fragment that is dated to the 80s or earlier, in Egypt, destroys that theory where the Gospel of Mark is concerned. And it is very suggestive that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke - which many scholars believe were written soon after and draw from Mark - are of First Century vintage. That would be all the worse if the estimated date range for this manuscript is partially or entirely prior to 70AD destruction of Jerusalem. More generally, this First Century manuscript fragment of Mark shines light on such scholars', "It can't be true!" attitude toward the Gospels and how they make assumptions and claims founded on that attitude.

[SVPete]

I was going to edit this comment into my post, but the 24-hour time window for editing is past.

It's very revealing, IMO, that Bart Ehrman's argument against this manuscript amounts to, "We shouldn't have this manuscript!" IOW, objecting to destruction of a few already badly damaged mummy masks is a pretext, not a serious objection.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I'm hoping you'll cross-post this to Religious Discussions (I didn't want to Move it  as that would delete it from GD).

It's very revealing, IMO, that Bart Ehrman's argument against this manuscript amounts to, "We shouldn't have this manuscript!" IOW, objecting to destruction of a few already badly damaged mummy masks is a pretext, not a serious objection.

It does seem an curious protest. We obviously have plenty of confirmation about the existence of mummy masks but one would think being able to show the earliestt possible examples of a holy scripture might take precedence.