Elijah Hixson has sent me a YouTube video that has Josh McDowell interviewing Scott Carroll about “First Century Mark.” The video is posted below to which I have added a partial transcript for reference. The video was uploaded on November 15, 2015, but the conference was in October, 2015 given what Carroll says in the video, it must be from before that.
The most important things we learn are that Scott Carroll has seen “First Century Mark” twice and that Dirk Obbink is indeed the unofficial source of its tentative date. So, we now have someone on record claiming to have actually seen it—twice. (Cf. PJW’s question here.) We are told that Obbink wrestled with dating it between AD 70 and 110/120. The former date has obvious reference to the destruction of the temple, but why 110/120 would be a sensible cutoff date, I have no idea. Obviously, we are hearing this from Carroll rather than from Obbink himself. So, caveat lector.
We also learn that Carroll does not seem to think it came from mummy cartonnage although he is not sure. (Papyrus can be cleaned of the signs of cartonnage, of course.) He tried to acquire it for the Green collection but wasn’t able to. An unnamed source now apparently owns it and is preparing it for publication. We continue to wait.
One other minor note. Carroll says he first saw the papyrus in 2012 and then again in 2013. His famous tweet, claiming that P52 was no longer the earliest known New Testament papyrus, was sent on December 1, 2011. So, my guess is that in the video Carroll has just rounded up to 2012. If so, this adds further confirmation that Carroll is the original source of the claim to a “First Century Mark” even though Dan Wallace was the first to announce it as such. This makes it a bit odd that Carroll refers to some stuff being “leaked.”
For a helpful timeline of events, see James Snapp’s site. For ETC’s past discussions, see here.
The most important things we learn are that Scott Carroll has seen “First Century Mark” twice and that Dirk Obbink is indeed the unofficial source of its tentative date. So, we now have someone on record claiming to have actually seen it—twice. (Cf. PJW’s question here.) We are told that Obbink wrestled with dating it between AD 70 and 110/120. The former date has obvious reference to the destruction of the temple, but why 110/120 would be a sensible cutoff date, I have no idea. Obviously, we are hearing this from Carroll rather than from Obbink himself. So, caveat lector.
We also learn that Carroll does not seem to think it came from mummy cartonnage although he is not sure. (Papyrus can be cleaned of the signs of cartonnage, of course.) He tried to acquire it for the Green collection but wasn’t able to. An unnamed source now apparently owns it and is preparing it for publication. We continue to wait.
One other minor note. Carroll says he first saw the papyrus in 2012 and then again in 2013. His famous tweet, claiming that P52 was no longer the earliest known New Testament papyrus, was sent on December 1, 2011. So, my guess is that in the video Carroll has just rounded up to 2012. If so, this adds further confirmation that Carroll is the original source of the claim to a “First Century Mark” even though Dan Wallace was the first to announce it as such. This makes it a bit odd that Carroll refers to some stuff being “leaked.”
For a helpful timeline of events, see James Snapp’s site. For ETC’s past discussions, see here.
Video
Transcript
Carroll: I first worked with the papyrus in 2012. So, it was discovered earlier than that. It wasn’t discovered by me. Although the group that’s working on its publication did some [inaudible]. It’s very tempting. You get the press and they—you get Fox News and other press agencies are after it and want to get information on it and some stuff was leaked. And they contacted me, I think, about a year ago, wanting some definitive information on how it was extracted from a mummy covering. And I did not—I was not involved in that process. When I saw it, I can tell you that it was relaxed, which means it was flat. It had been extracted—if it was extracted from a context like that, there’s no evidence of it to me. It looks like it’s just a text that was just found.
Now, a lot of texts that come to light in this kind of a context—like if I went back to the picture and you looked at the pile, you could see that a lot of this stuff has white on it. That’s like the residue of the plaster. So, these things came from mummy coverings. Isn’t that interesting? [inaudible] And so, they [the MSS on screen] probably were [?] a burial setting or something like that and over time it just separated one from another. But we can look at if it was originally part of it.
Now, this Mark may have been in that kind of a context. I’m not sure. I saw it at Oxford University at Christ Church College and it was in the possession of an outstanding, well-known, eminent classicist. I saw it again in 2013.
There were some delays with its purchase and I was working at that time with the Green family collection which I had the privilege of organizing and putting together for the Hobby Lobby family and had hoped that they would at that time acquire it. But they delayed and didn’t. We were preparing an exhibit for the Vatican Library and I wanted this to be the show piece in that exhibit but it--
McDowell: Who wouldn’t?
Carroll: I know, wouldn’t that have been awesome? But it was just not the timing and so it was passed on, delayed. It has since been acquired. I can’t say by whom. It is in the process of being prepared for publication and what’s important to say—
McDowell: Who wouldn’t?
Carroll: I know, wouldn’t that have been awesome? But it was just not the timing and so it was passed on, delayed. It has since been acquired. I can’t say by whom. It is in the process of being prepared for publication and what’s important to say—
McDowell: What does that mean, “process of being prepared”? What does that mean?
Carroll: It’s a lengthy process, actually going through—especially with this because it’s going to get, it’s going go out there and there are going to be people immediately trying to tear it down, questioning provenance—so where it came from, what it dates to—especially with the date. And so they want an ironclad argument on the dating of the document so that it won’t be—I mean they have a responsibility to that. But this is going to be very critical [inaudible]. It will be a major flash-point for the news when this happens.
McDowell: Who’s the main person publishing it?
Carroll: Well, the most important person of note is Dirk Obbink who is [inaudible]. Dirk Obbink is an outstanding scholar. He’s one of the world’s leading specialists on papyri. He directs the collection—for students who are in here, you may remember hearing the word “Oxyrhynchus Papyri.” He is the director of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
I can’t speak to his personal faith positions and I don’t think he would define himself as an Evangelical in any sense of the word, but he is not—he doesn’t have a derogatory attitude at all. He’s a supportive person. He specializes in the dating of handwriting. And as he was looking at the—both times I saw the papyrus, it was in his possession. So, it was in Oxford at Christ Church, and actually on his pool table in his office along with a number of mummy heads. So, he had these mummy heads—
McDowell: So, you’re playing pool [laughter, inaudible]
Carroll: And you’ve got that document there. And that’s the setting. That’s kind of surreal. And Dirk was wrestling with dating [it] somewhere between 70 AD and 120, 110/120.
McDowell: That early?
Carroll: Yeah
McDowell: Whoa!
Carroll: Okay, so Mark is like one that the critics have always dated late. So, this is like—I can hear their arguments being formulated now. So, this is what the later authors were quoting from.
McDowell: Folks, make sure—that is all tentative. And you would say that, right?
Carroll: Yeah. Yeah.
McDowell: That is just an assumption in there. So, don’t go out and say there’s a manuscript dated 70 AD. How long will we have to wait, probably, to know specifically?
Carroll: I would say, in this next year. Alright? Any delays that are going to happen over the next couple of months are delays with the publisher. … If the group is to go to a major journal, they’ll, of course, want to have it in quickly but there’ll be some delays as its vetted through the whole academic process and all.
McDowell: So, keep that in mind. Don’t go out and say, ‘Well Dr. Scott Carroll said its dated between 70 AD. We don’t really know yet. But those are probably the parameters for it. But it will be—now this is my opinion—the oldest ever discovered.
Carroll: Yeah, I think that without question.