Dingy Harry after reconstructive surgery?
Posted on 01/23/2015 9:20:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Gospel of Mark has been discovered written on a tiny fragment of ancient papyrus, found within a mummy mask. During the era when the mask was created, papyrus was expensive, and the religious text was reused to create the decorative wear for the mummy.
This discovery could represent the oldest gospel text ever found by archaeologists. The oldest samples of Christian scripture date from the Second Century of the Common Era.
Pharaohs and wealthy individuals were often adorned with mummy masks made of gold and precious materials. Masks for people from lower economic classes were often manufactured from papyrus, glue, and paint.
Researchers have recently developed a method of disassembling these masks without destroying text written on fragments of papyrus. Hundreds of fragments and accompanying text have been recovered using the new technique, and are being analyzed by a team of around three dozen researchers. Copies of texts of Homer, philosophical works and other fragments have been found in the specimens.
"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," Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia said.
Business records, personal records, and other scraps of writing often contain dates, allowing archaeologists the ability to determine ages of other fragments found alongside the letters. Researchers also utilize carbon-14 dating, as well as handwriting analysis, to help date the remnants. This sample is thought to date from before the year C.E. 90.
(Excerpt) Read more at techtimes.com ...
I think what bothered me the most is that “CE” is now replacing “AD.” Can’t have “Anno Domini” in there anymore, now can we?
Fixed it.
I refuse to assimilate. I still use B.C. and A.D.
This sample is thought to date from before the year C.E. 90.
Well this more or less confirms what I read 30 years ago that Mark was the first Gospel written and that subsequent Gospels were basically expounding on Mark.
RE: subsequent Gospels were basically expounding on Mark.
John’s gospel seems to be quite different though, focusing a lot on Jesus’ WORDS.
Quite correct. John's gospel is not one of the synoptic gospels and specifically points out Jesus' divinity and authority as creator.
This is great news. Now maybe we can see if the text matches the current text. Is the missing verse there or if it is still missing? Is the order of the verses concurrent?........
This is a very modern theory, and unless one believes that some of the Gospels were written after 80, it doesn’t confirm much of anything with regards to order of writing—all it indicates is that by 90 a copy of Mark had been either used enough to be warn out and thought this an appropriate way to dispose of it or was owned by someone who either didn’t value it much or let it go to someone who didn’t value it much.
If anything, it confirms the general judgment of most of Church History, that if you have Matthew and Luke, Mark is a nice afterthought, but hardly essential.
Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptic (looking together) gospels. Mark was the first written, Matthew and Luke came a short time later and expanded on the story.
John was written much later, towards the end of the first century. It has a very different, more intimate, feel to it, probably because John was a member of Christ's inner circle.
John is also focused primarily on the time before and after the public Galilean ministry (only the tail end of chapter 4 through the beginning of chapter 7 fall into this period), and much more concerned with pre-Passion events in Jerusalem and Judea (chapter 5 falls into this category, along with 3, 8-11 and portions of 2, 4, and 7).
Erasmus was the first known individual to claim that the Hebrew version of Matthew was not first, so I would be cautious about following the two-source hypothesis very closely without examining what was unanimous for 1500 years.
Interesting article. It reminds me of a couple of books I read many years ago. The first is called “The First New Testament” by Estrada and White. I follows the discovery by a Spanish researcher who found what he claimed was part of the Gospel of Mark among some Qumran papyri. The fragment was dated to the middle of the first century. Although the book left the final confirmation up in the air, I don’t believe anyone has come up with an alternative explanation.
The other book was “Redating the New Testament” by John A.T. Robinson. Robinson’s main thrust was that one of the most momentous incidents of history, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, is not mentioned or even alluded to in the New Testament, leading to his contention that nearly the entire text of the NT was complete before 70 AD. Interesting because Robinson was quite a liberal scholar.
Thanks for posting this!
This is awesome
but that scholar bill maher says this is all bs?
A.D. is trickier. Maybe "after dat"?
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