That’s the claim Daniel Wallace made during his most recent debate with Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill. In his summary of the debate at Parchment and Pen, Wallace writes:
We have as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts (six of which were recently discovered and not yet catalogued) and a first-century manuscript of Mark’s Gospel! … Bart had explicitly said that our earliest copy of Mark was from c. 200 CE, but this is now incorrect. It’s from the first century. I mentioned these new manuscript finds and told the audience that a book will be published by E. J. Brill in about a year that gives all the data. … I noted that a world-class paleographer, whose qualifications are unimpeachable, was my source.”
Later he described the newly discovered manuscript as “just a small fragment.” Nevertheless, if this is a manuscript copy of Mark’s gospel, and if it can be reliably dated to the 1st century AD, this would be the greatest NT manuscript find to date, surpassing even p52 (a small portion of John’s Gospel, dated to ~125 AD)! We’ll have to wait and see.
UPDATE 2/16: Dr. Wallace has written specifically on this issue on the Dallas Theological Seminary website and added a tiny bit more information by saying “it was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century.” In the comments I have also quoted Dr. Ben Witherington III regarding the owner of the fragment, and a bit more detail about it. Witherington made it sound as if it is much more than a “small fragment.” I guess we’ll have to wait until next year to see how small is small.
February 15, 2012 at 11:28 pm
At http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2012/02/15/the-ripening-of-the-green-collection/, Ben Witherington had this to say about the possible 1st century fragment of Mark’s Gospel:
“It is possible that a very early copy of the Gospel of Mark in Greek, possibly the very earliest is a part of this collection [Green Collection]. An epigrapher from Oxford has already prepared to say that it is a first century copy! While I doubt this, and various eyes will need to go over the manuscript before any firm conclusion can be drawn, even if it were from the second-third century it would still be the earliest evidence of this size (it does not include the whole Gospel, sadly it does not include Mark 16) that we have.
…
“One interesting point made by Carroll was that there is evidence of a first century copy of a NT text in codex form, whereas various scholars thought Christians probably didn’t use this practice before the second century. Stay tuned for more.”
Jason
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February 16, 2012 at 5:00 am
[…] a first century fragment of Mark here and responses here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (please if I have missed your link add it to the comments as I would like to track all […]
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March 19, 2012 at 11:48 am
More info on this from http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=37273, based on an interview with Wallace on the Hugh Hewitt show:
Wallace provided a few more details on his website and then a few more during a Feb. 24 interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, saying the fragments and manuscripts were found in Egypt.
The significance of all the manuscripts, Wallace said, would be on par with the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Mark fragment is “a very small fragment, not too many verses, but it’s definitely from Mark,” Wallace said. “… To have a fragment from one of the Gospels that’s written during the lifetime of some of the eyewitnesses to the resurrection is just astounding.”
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The Mark fragment, Wallace said, will affirm what is already written in that portion of Mark’s Gospel.
The paleographer who dated it, Wallace said, is “one of the world’s leading paleographers.” Wallace previously said the paleographer is certain it’s from the first century. Still, Wallace told Hewitt, several more paleographers will look at the Mark fragment before the book is published.
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Also among the finds are second-century fragments from Luke and from Paul’s letters. Wallace did not state which letters were found.
“Up until now, our oldest manuscript for Paul’s letters dates about AD 200, [known as] P-46,” Wallace said. “Now we have as many as four more manuscripts that predate that.”
Read the transcript of the interview online at http://bit.ly/w7s2qe.
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May 23, 2012 at 10:17 am
[…] some early NT papyri manuscripts in a video interview with Michael Licona, one of which is the highly touted first century fragment of […]
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