Here I give a post from 2015, some three years after it was announced that we now have a first-century fragmentary  copy of Mark.  At this point we still had not SEEN the manuscript and no one would give us any reliable information about it.  And I began to wonder, how much difference would it make in how we understand things, assuming it really was a first-century fragment.  Here are my musings at the time.

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Assuming, as it is *relatively*, but not absolutely probable that we should, that the fragment in question is simply of a few verses in the middle of Mark’s Gospel that do not vary significantly from what we already have, I’m still obsessing with the question of why evangelical scholars would be so bound and determined to get their hands on it.   I’ll deal with that question first.

It may not be obvious why it is a puzzle.  Here is why.

As a rule (a rule to which I do not know a single exception), evangelical scholars of the New Testament who are either slightly or deeply knowledgeable about the manuscript tradition of the NT (the thousands of manuscripts that survive and the hundreds of thousands of variants that they contain), are absolutely convinced – or at least they claim they are – that in virtually every single instance of importance as well as in almost every instance that is *not* particularly important, that is, in nearly every instance whatsoever, we already can rest assured that we have the “original” text of the New Testament – that is, the text of the writings of the New Testament as they were originally written by their original authors.  [That, by the way, is the single longest sentence I have ever written in my life.]

If you don’t think that’s what evangelical scholars think, simply listen to any of my debates on the matter with one of their leading spokespersons, Dan Wallace.  They are available on Youtube.  In these debates Dan insists repeatedly that we are far, far, far, far better informed about the text of the NT than of any other ancient writing (a point that I myself have made roughly seventy- nine zillion times), and that among the significant differences not a single one affects any major Christian doctrine, and that we can wholeheartedly trust that we have the text as produced by the original authors (for him, the divinely inspired authors).   And if you don’t want to take simply his word for it, read any of the many responses to my book Misquoting Jesus by conservative evangelicals.  There were three entire books written against it, showing that I didn’t know what I was talking about, or at least that I was seriously misleading in what I had to say; that is not to mention scores of comments in books and articles about the book.  Every one of these evangelical scholars appears to be completely confident that you too can be completely confident that with complete confidence we can be confident that we have the original New Testament.  We have so many manuscripts!!  They are so early!!  And so on.

And so here is my puzzle.   If we already KNOW that we have the original text of the New Testament, that new discoveries are not going to change what we already know about this original, that our evidence is already fully sufficient to establish this original – if all that is true, WHY DOES IT MATTER IF NEW MANUSCRIPTS ARE DISCOVERED???   Why do you need to destroy other antiquities to get your paws on them?  What will a first century copy of Mark – even if it were *more* than a few verses – tell you that you don’t already know?  Why are you so UNBELIEVABLY EAGER to get hold of older manuscripts, if what you continually insist about having the original text is true?  And you believe it’s true?

So, here’s the reality that explains the puzzle.   My sense is that evangelical scholars who claim that we have the original text already realize that we simply don’t know if that’s the case or not.  And so they DESPERATELY want evidence for what they are telling everyone.   And they think that if they can get hold of a first-century copy of Mark – even if it’s a scrap the size of a credit card – then they will have PROOF!!!   See!  We have a first century copy!  HA!!! Take *that*, you skeptics…..

Of course, as I’ve pointed out, unless this first century copy happens to be the original (!), it’s not going to give them the evidence that they want, unless it’s a rather full copy (say, a chapter or more) that does not have a single difference from our currently reconstructed Mark.  That would be significant.  That would be good.  That would be absolutely great!  If that’s what they have, we’re all extremely eager for it.  But if in fact it’s a fragment with a few verses, or possibly a couple of fragments with a few verses, then it’s hard to see how it will give either them or their opponents any solid evidence.  If the fragment is just like the Mark we have now, it will give us evidence that what we think is the oldest form of the text probably is the oldest form of the text. (Since we already think this, the discovery won’t change anything).  If it is pretty much like the Mark we now have, it will show that scribes sometimes changed things – which is also what we already think.  If it is completely unlike the Mark we have now, they will say (or would have said) that it’s from a different Gospel, not Mark.

On the other hand – here are my scenarios — there are a couple of things the fragment could be that would be virtual game changers.

• If it is the very beginning of the Gospel, and it has a Gospel title on it (“According to Mark”), and it can be dated to the end of the first or the early second century, that would be HUGE!   Otherwise, we don’t have solid evidence that the Gospel (our Gospel of Mark) was called Mark until the end of the second century.
• Or if it has the end of the Gospel of Mark and shows that 16:8 was followed by the longer ending in which Jesus actually appears to his disciples after his resurrection (the ending not found in what are now our oldest and best manuscripts, and that is considered to be a later addition by most scholars), that too would be huge.

So let’s hope the fragment gives us something of that order.  Otherwise, our evangelical friends are simply going to use it to “prove” something they already believe when in fact it won’t prove anything of the sort, since whether it is just like our current Mark or a bit different from our current Mark or really different from our current Mark – we already *think* there were manuscripts like that (like each option) in the first century.  So discovering one won’t tell us anything new.

Despite all that, I myself am OH SO EAGER to see it.  It would be really exciting for NT scholars.  Even if turns out  NOT to be front page news….