It’s officially the mythical mummy Gospel. The “first century” manuscript of Mark Christian apologists have been gloating about and beating everyone over the head with for years…is not a first century manuscript of Mark. It also didn’t come from a mummy. It came from, apparently, garbage. And on top of all that…there is a weird unsolved question about it still looming. Here’s the latest.

Backstory & Update

I’ve written on this legendary Mummy Gospel several times already (see The Mummy Gospel Isn’t Even a Mummy Gospel!? and From Lead Codices to Mummy Gospels). Publicly, this all began in 2012 when Dan Wallace, a credentialed but oft gullible Christian apologist, tried to “gotcha” Bart Ehrman in a debate claiming we’d found a first century copy of the Gospel of Mark. Legend grew. It supposedly came from mummy masks. And this supposedly had something to do with how we know its date. All of that was bullshit. But we already knew that (see the first link above).

Now the manuscript in question has finally been published under peer review. Hallelujah! Only…oh no. It says it dates to the late second, early third century. And the dating is based on what it usually is: paleography (handwriting style). Also…it’s being published in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus collection. And has always been there (that collection was famously excavated in and around 1903, but as it recovered half a million papyri, the collection is still being translated and published to this day; it is nowhere near done). Which is news to us, contradicting some previous (and even some still current) insistence it was in someone’s private collection and on the market (more on that in a minute). But no. It is now confirmed to have been recovered in the original dig and never left the collection (figuratively speaking). That means it comes from the Oxyrhynchus excavation—famously an ancient garbage heap in the Egyptian desert.

This manuscript is also just another tiny, torn fragment, containing only a few verses from Mark 1—which we knew; but now we know it only contains mere bits of Mk. 1:7-9 and 1:16-18. The official publication is in the 83rd volume of the The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (officially dated 2017; delayed printing is common for academic journals). It was translated and edited by Daniela Colomo and Dirk Obbink. The entry: [Oxyrhynchus papyrus] ‘5345. Mark I 7-9, 16-18’. They conclude it dates by paleography to the late 2nd early 3rd century. Just as we predicted would happen. Wallace has now apologized. [And tried explaining.]

Christians? You need to learn a lesson here. The Loch Ness monster doesn’t exist. That exciting new publication coming “any year now” that proves all your wildest dreams, is probably going to be bullshit. And when you start to realize that’s pretty much always the case, you’ll start to understand better why we’re not Christians.

More Details

You can see images and a brief on this new published papyrus, and how we know it’s really the mythical “mummy” Gospel, at the blog of Brice Jones (Ph.D., Early Christianity). Elijah Hixson (I assume the same who is a Ph.D. candidate in New Testament & Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh) is keeping tabs on this new development with updates appended to his own latest article on it. So much uproar has gone up already, that the owners of the fragment (the Egypt Exploration Society or EES) have posted an official press release to dispel various rumors about it [which they have since expanded with even more information; then more; and now even more]. And when that wasn’t enough, within hours they just went ahead and put the whole article online. It’s now designated P137 in Lists of NT Papyri.

The EES press release makes a special point of noting, “No other unpublished fragments of New Testament texts in the EES collection have been identified as earlier than the third century AD.” That’s a hint. They mean: the date range including late second century might be wishful thinking. It’s probably a third century papyrus. If all NT texts found there date 3rd century or later, arguably a literate Christian presence in Oxyrhynchus itself only began in the 3rd century (and hence no Gospel could have been tossed into the garbage there in the 2nd century, unless an old manuscript was tossed there later).

Granted, that’s not known for sure; it’s just playing the odds. But there is, after all, no other evidence from Oxyrhynchus placing Christians there before the 3rd century, either (see Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources; and Lincoln Blumell’s chapter, “Is P.Oxy. XLII 3057 the Earliest Christian Letter?” in Early Christian Manuscripts). It should also be noted, the editors of the fragment wrote that “dating this hand presents even more difficulties than usual, since the sample is so small and damaged and the scribe inconsistent.” So even the “late second” century date could be questionable.

There are, front and back, in total only 10 whole words surviving on this fragment, with bits of less than twenty other words that we can guess at if we compare with other texts of Mark. Reconstructed as follows (the blue is what’s actually on the manuscript):

And notice how many letters are uncertain (marked with dots beneath). They weren’t kidding when they said they had so little to go on in dating the hand! This also means the editors are relying a lot on other manuscripts of Mark even to reconstruct what is written on this one. Granted, there are limits on what letters can be there. But this just illustrates how tiny and trivial and vexed it all is. The harrumph was all about this. A few barely legible scribbles on a piece of trash. Copied well over a hundred years after the book was even authored. Wah, wah.

New Questions

You’ll find in the linked articles a lot of serious questions about how this papyrus was marketed until now. Dirk Obbink denies ever offering it for sale, but there are eyewitnesses who claim he was [and now documentary evidence and formal investigations are starting to conclude he did]. Much confusion has ensued. I was once left to speculate if perhaps Obbink was claiming to offer it for sale, just to get a read on what people might pay for it, in order to suss out the viability of his creating and selling a forgery to retire on. [But I thought that’s far too sinister a speculation. It turns out it was not sinister enough: there is now evidence he signed a contract of sale, and the Museum of the Bible has confirmed he sold it to them and the EES has likewise concluded so; there is even evidence Obbink stole and sold off a lot more; although Obbink claims he’s being framed].

What others had been insinuating is no less nefarious; I’ve seen proposed everything from Obbink the thief [which so far appears to be correct], to his having planted it in the Oxyrhynchus collection to pass it off as authentic—which would imply a pious lie rather than a financial one; but are we to suppose the appointment of a second editor foiled his plans to assert a first century date? The EES says it is investigating and will publish an account clearing up these issues. [It has since found Obbink may have stolen about a dozen manuscripts and sold them, and even appears to have tried covering his tracks, as “catalogue cards and photographs of the texts also disappeared from the Oxford collection.”]

Aspects of this mystery are explored in an article at The Daily Beast [followed by another more recently, plus a very revealing insider perspective in Christianity Today]. For those who want a clearer picture of what’s riling folks, and what questions remain unanswered.

Concluding Amusement

An anonymous commenter on Jones’s article remarks, “I feel all this Mark stuff is overshadowing the much more exciting fact that volume LXXXIII [of The Oxyrhunchus Papyri] contains a drawing of a unicorn.” Is that true? The legend begins! No, really, it’s true. It actually does have an ancient drawing of a unicorn in it:

The final section of the volume contains art: a fine pen-and-ink drawing of a rampant goat, and seven sketches on a single sheet, including a cockerel and a peacock, a wild boar, and a unicorn. As the Artemidorus papyrus has renewed discussion of drawing as an art in the Greek world, with some finding its own spread of drawings so striking as to suggest forgery, the new examples from Oxyrhynchus now demonstrate comparable technique and similar subject-matter in papyri of undoubted authenticity.

So there you go. Fuck you, Markan scribe. We want unicorns! But seriously. Art history is as important if not more. Texts aren’t all we are discovering in the half million papyri dug out of that Egyptian town’s trash. If only Christians cared more about actual history than selling their mythology as fact. A first century manuscript of Mark is their unicorn. We have more evidence of ours. Both are myth.