Yes, it seems that about every three months or so First-Century Mark reappears. I hate to keep adding fuel to the fire, but there is some value to keeping a record of these things.This latest mention of the fragment came to me in my Twitter feed via Sean McDowell who posted this summary from Facebook about a talk Gary Habermas gave this week at Purdue University. (For those counting, we are now two social media platforms and two people away from the source.) The post is from Clark Bates who says,
Gary Habermas spoke at Purdue University last night. During the talk he stated that he has permission to announce that the Mark fragment has been dated between 80–110 AD. He also said that this is all he or CSNTM will say about the matter so no more questions regarding it will be entertained.I did a quick search and found the video of Habermas at Purdue. You can view it below (starting at the 22:10 mark) with my transcript below that. The main problem with Habermas’s claim is now old news to ETC readers and it is the specificity of the date. I don’t know how you date a papyrus to a thirty-year period like 80–110 A.D., especially if it is based on paleography (see the recent posts here by Malik and Orsini). Also, I didn’t hear Habermas mention CSNTM, so maybe that was a deduction by Bates. Unless I just missed it in the video. In any case, I appreciate his word of caution to fellow apologists.
As a side note, there will eventually be a lengthier critical analysis of the fragment but we in the apologetics community need to be cautious with how we handle this data. If the dating is accurate, this will become the oldest NT fragment in existence. However, paleography can’t really get a date accurately within about 100 years so there is always room for later dating.
Point being, no matter what the results, this fragment will go into the already immense amount of evidence for the New Testament and it’s early production and dissemination. Good information to have but not a nail in the coffin so to speak.
Blessings to you all!
Habermas mentions a paleographer who is not a Christian, a description we heard already in Dan Wallace’s original debate announcement. We have since identified this paleographer as Dirk Obbink of Oxford. What seems possibly new is that Habermas says he asked permission to share this and was told he could. But when did he ask and who granted such permission? He doesn’t say. There are further odd things said about provenance, but Habermas seems a bit fuzzy on that.
What I find curious at this stage in the First-Century Mark saga is how information about it keeps coming out in the context of Evangelical apologetics. I’m not sure what to make of that in terms of who owns this papyrus, but it is a consistent thread and I suspect one that will make more sense once we know for sure who the owner is.
Video
Transcript (from 22:10)
But before I do that [make my preferred argument for the resurrection], let me just make one other point. Some of you may have heard about a fragment in Mark that’s been floating around. I see a few of you shake your head yes. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. The dating on this hasn’t come out, there’s reasons the dating hasn’t come out. I won’t explain that; it’s a legal thing having to do with the provenance of the papyrus.
The previous earliest copy of a gospel book we have is the Rylands fragment of John at about 125. It’s very, very valuable because remember early is a key historical sign. Rylands only dates from about 25 or 30 years after the Gospel of John.
I dialogued with a guy—true story—I dialogued with a guy years ago who’s a classical theo—a classical scholar and he put the Gospels from 140–180 AD. Apparently, nobody told him that when he put John at 170 AD that we have a piece of John from fifty years earlier. That didn’t seem to bother him. [laughter]
Okay, so there’s been a piece of Mark that we’ve been concerned about for a long time. We hadn’t come out with dates for legal reasons that could land you—there’s a question about where this thing came from–not the provenance of it, not if it’s—it’s a good piece of papyri. But you got to be careful where you pick things up or you could be in jail because you have to register it with Middle Eastern antiquities authorities or they wonder what you stole that from.
Okay, but one paleographer—I don’t even think he’s a Christian—but you have to be very specialized to be able to date ancient writing by handwriting analysis, by the type of handwriting. And the date was just given. And I asked permission, “Could this be given?” I was told it could be. And the date of this little papyrus for Mark is 80–110 AD. It is earlier than Rylands for John.
So, if the fragment for Mark is about the time of John or earlier, now critics are saying, “We’re going to have to move the Gospel of Mark back before the year 50 AD.” What’s that do to early [...] witness? Plus, there are two agnostics, one of them just passed away before [...], but two agnostic scholars, neither one Christian, and they have recently—without reference to the fragment—have both dated Mark, one at 40 AD, one at 38–42 AD. This is good stuff.
But I don’t think it’s the best argument for the historicity of Jesus.
From this point on I’m going to use the second argument that some of you may know I call the minimal facts argument, I sometimes call the lowest common denominator.