The
announcement of the papyrus' discovery and impending publication was
made by Craig Evans, professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity
College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Evans described the papyrus as a
fragment of the Gospel of Mark.
He
added that a combination of handwriting analysis (paleography) and
carbon dating led him and his team of researchers to conclude that the
fragment was written before 90 A.D. This would make it at least a decade
older than other early fragments of the New Testament and, thus, an
invaluable resource for biblical scholars and object of considerable
interest for Christians the world over.
The
fragment, according to Evans, was discovered when an Egyptian mummy
mask -- known as cartonnage -- was dismantled in a hunt for ancient
documents. Mummy masks were an important part of ancient Egyptian burial
practice, but only the very wealthy could afford examples made of gold.
The majority of mummy masks were made
from scraps of linen and papyrus, which were glued together into a kind
of ancient papier-maché. Dismantling these masks yields a trove of
ancient documents. Evans claims that in addition to Christian texts,
hundreds of classical Greek texts, records of business transactions, and
personal letters have been acquired. In the process, the mask itself is
destroyed.
Though it may be making headlines now, the claim that the "oldest known gospel" has been discovered is not new.
News
of the fragment first came to light in 2012 when its existence was
(perhaps inadvertently) announced by Daniel Wallace, founder of the
Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts at Dallas Theological
Seminary.
No one saw the text then, and
no one has seen it now; though it has been mentioned repeatedly by a
select group of people who evidently have been given access to it, its
planned date of publication has been consistently pushed back, from an
original plan of 2013 to 2015 and now, just this week, all the way to
2017.
Despite the seemingly explosive
quality of the news, therefore, it is important to take a step back and
consider what is actually being revealed here.
Some
people are saying they have this really old and important thing, and
they will show it to all the rest of us in a few years. (Essentially,
this papyrus is the scholarly equivalent of "my girlfriend who lives in
Canada.")
It is unclear why anyone
would start talking about a text like this, a year, indeed now at least
two years, in advance. The most important established fact about this
papyrus, at this point, is that it has not yet been published—which is
to say, only a small handful of individuals have seen the text and are
able to say anything at all about it.
As
Roberta Mazza, an ancient historian and papyrologist from the
University of Manchester in England, told us, the academic community has
not "been given access to firm information and images on the basis of
which could eventually say something."
In
other words, this sort of notice really serves mostly to remind us of
just how little we know about this purported discovery. Here, for
example, are five key, unanswered questions.
1. What is the actual text on the papyrus?
We are told that it is from Mark, but, after all, no one has seen it. Which part of Mark?
2. Is the handwriting consistent with the supposed dating?
Brice
Jones, a papyrologist at Concordia University, told us that dating a
text by handwriting, or paleography, "is not a precise science, and I
know of no papyrologist who would date a literary papryus to within a
decade on the basis of paleography alone."
3. Is the ink or papyrus itself consistent with the supposed dating?
According
to Jones, if paleography is inexact, "radiocarbon dating is equally
(and perhaps more) problematic, since one must allow for a time gap of a
century or more."
They say that these lab tests have all been done, but as no one has actually seen the reports, they are less than confirmatory.
4. Who owns the papyrus, or the mask from which it was taken, and from whom was it purchased, and when?
The
time and place of a text's discovery, known as its provenance, are
crucial for verifying its authenticity, especially in a period of
extensive looting of archaeological sites and museum theft.
According
to international law, if the mask was taken out of Egypt after 1970, it
is officially "unprovenanced," and is effectively prohibited from being
sold or published. Evans told us "I do not know the specifics" about
the provenance of this mask.
5. Who has seen the text, who has verified it, and who has studied it?
Evans
is not a trained papyrologist, but is rather a scholar of the New
Testament. To this point, none of the papyrologists, text critics or
other highly specialized experts, who must have worked on this text
before these claims could be made about it, have been identified or
spoken publicly about it.
These
questions are not necessarily challenges to the authenticity of the
text. They are, rather, a recognition that, until the scholarly world
has been granted access to this papyrus, the public statements made
about it are no more revelatory than if we announced that we had found
Moses' private copy of Genesis in a hummus container, and we'll show it
to you later.
There is, however, one
bit of information about this text and its discovery that can be
discussed now, without having even seen it: the fact that it was
uncovered by destroying an ancient Egyptian mummy mask.
Evans
said the cartonnage destruction was acceptable because "we're not
talking about the destruction of any museum-quality piece."
We
are, however, talking about the destruction of 2,000-year-old Egyptian
antiquities: funeral masks, painted with representations of people who
lived and died and were commemorated by their families.
We
might wonder, at the very least, who it is that gets to determine which
masks are worth preserving and which aren't. Evans told us that such
decisions "are based on expert opinion," but as to who exactly makes
that determination, he said, "I do not know specifically."
Evans has said, "We dug underneath somebody's face, and there it was."
He
has since clarified that he was not personally involved in the
destruction of the mask. But it is unclear precisely which individuals
did the dirty work.
Evans' language of
"digging" makes the dissolving of mummy masks sound like archaeology,
but some would characterize it, and some have, as cultural vandalism.
There
is an implicit sense that the discovery of a rare Christian piece
outweighs the preservation of a relatively common Egyptian artifact. And
this may be so, but surely the optics would be better if this were
announced by someone from, say, the Egyptian Ministry of State for
Antiquities.
"The destruction of mummy
masks, though legal, falls into an ethically gray area right now
because of the difficult choices scientists have to make in the lab when
working with them," said Douglas Boin, a professor of history at St.
Louis University.
"We have to ask
ourselves, do we value the cultural heritage of Egypt as something worth
preserving in itself, or do we see it simply as vehicle for harvesting
Christian texts?"
Even if one agrees
that these masks can be taken apart — archaeology is, by its very
nature, a destructive process — it should be remembered that the process
is a crapshoot: If a mask contains no texts, then the equation changes,
and even a relatively unimportant cultural piece has been destroyed for
nothing.
Mazza also reminded us that
"you do not need to completely destroy masks for getting out texts if
you use methods developed and improved by papyrologists since 1980."
If
a mask is to be destroyed, surely that process should be documented
thoroughly, with constant photography and annotation, rather than
undertaken as a classroom project with undergraduates using a bottle of
Palmolive and a little elbow grease.
It
is possible that the earliest text of the Gospel of Mark has been
discovered. But until the world is given access to the papyrus through
its publication, there is no story here, except that ancient Egyptian
mummy masks are being destroyed in the ongoing search for Christian
relics.
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