On Thursday, the Oxford-based Oxyrhynchus Society announced the discovery of a second-century piece of the Gospel of Mark from a dig in an Egyptian garbage dump.
In 1896, two young archaeologists, Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt, began to excavate the ancient garbage dump at Oxyrhynchus (modern Al-Bahnasa) in Egypt. Their task was not to dust off the columns of monuments, unearth pottery, or trace the layout of ruined building; but to look for papyri in ancient towns in a pile of refuse.
What might seem to be a rather demeaning task to Indiana Jones yielded one of the most significant and surprising finds in archaeological history: thousands of fragments of texts, including some of the oldest fragments of the New Testament and other early Christian writings. In fact, in the very first volume of Oxyrhynchus Papyri (1898), Grenfell and Hunt revealed the first fragment of a previously unknown collection of apocryphal sayings of Jesus (now known to be the Gospel of Thomas). Over the past century, scholars have been slowly combing through these fragments.
Yesterday, the Egyptian Exploration Society, the nonprofit organization that acts as curators of the Oxford-based Oxyrhynchus Society, announced a new discovery: a late second- or early third-century CE fragment of the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, just published in The Oxyrhynchus Papryi Volume 83 (2018), edited by distinguished Oxford academics Daniela Colomo and Dirk Obbink. In what must be the archetypical example of the expression “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” this pile of ancient refuse has produced one of the oldest fragments of the oldest Gospel story (Mark is believed by scholars to be the earliest Gospel.) This makes it a substantial and significant discovery for those interested in the history of Christianity, the evidence of the dating of the books of the Bible, and the history of book-making. But it also comes with a substantial mystery surrounding its origins, its dating, and its potential connection to the ubiquitous Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby and the founders of the Museum of the Bible.
Despite its publication having just been announced this is not the first time that scholars have heard about the existence of this early copy of Mark. Rumors of this fragment have circulated since February 2012 when, in a debate with well-known agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman, evangelical text critic Dan Wallace announced that he had seen a “first-century Mark fragment.” Wallace indicated that his source for the dating of the manuscript was “a high ranking papyrologist.” Given that almost all (if not all) our other New Testament papyri date to the second century or later, this would be a huge discovery. Naturally, other scholars wanted to see the text, but Wallace was unable to comment further, stating shortly after the debate that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Over the following years other evangelical scholars would occasionally mention this text, always with the first-century date and almost always with the caveat that they too were unable to discuss it further. At one point it was suggested by the scholar Craig Evans, again in the context of an evangelical conference, that the papyrus had been extracted from the cartonnage (papier-mache filling) of an ancient Egyptian funerary mask. This claim was eventually walked back, and many scholars, in the evangelical community and beyond, came to believe that either the first-century Mark was grossly misdated or, perhaps, did not really exist at all.
The appearance of a very early Mark fragment in the recently published Oxyrhynchus volume, therefore, immediately raised eyebrows, and it was not long before Dan Wallace confirmed in his blog that, indeed, this was the very manuscript that he had been referring to back in 2012. The Egyptian Exploration Society has also stated that the new fragment is the same manuscript that was discussed on blogs over the past few years.
