ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

Howard J. Vos

[Howard J. Vos is professor of history and archaeology at the King’s College, Briarcliffe Manor, New York. He is the author of a number of books on biblical archaeology, including Archaeology in Bible Lands from which this article was taken.]

Archaeological discoveries have revolutionized study of the New Testament text. They have pushed back the history of the text by hundreds of years and have provided an abundance of new material for assessment of the quality of the text and demonstration of its accuracy. As the New Testament documents have accumulated, even the philosophy of New Testament origins has been altered. Not only have more and more portions of the New Testament itself come to light, but contextual materials also have become available in increasing quantity, with the result that we have new perspectives on the nature of New Testament Greek, the meaning of individual words, and the development of New Testament concepts. For purposes of organization, attention focuses first on the great new uncial manuscripts (written in capital letters), then on the papyri, and finally on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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The Uncial Manuscripts

Codex Sinaiticus

If archaeology includes the study of ancient things lost and found again, and if it includes rummaging in wastebaskets, then the story of the recovery of the great Sinaiticus (Aleph1 ) manuscript of the New Testament is one of the most important in the annals of archaeology. In 1844 a German scholar, Constantine Tischendorf, was traveling in the Middle East in search of Greek manuscripts of the Bible and came to the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. While working in the library there, he noticed a large wastebasket stuffed with leaves of manuscripts. Upon looking at them he quickly concluded that they were pages of the Septuagint (Old Testament translated into Greek) and that they were the oldest Greek writing he had ever seen. He was allowed to keep the forty-three leaves that he rescued because they were slated for the incinerator anyway. In fact, two basketfuls had already been burned. On further inquiry he learned that there were more leaves of this manuscript, but his questions had raised suspicion of their value, and he was not allowed to see them. Leaving the plea that the monks start their fires with something else, he presented his find (parts of 1 Chronicles, 2 Esdras, Tobit, and Jeremiah) to his patron, King Fredrick Augustus of Saxony. It was published under the title Codex Friderico-Augustanus and now resides in the Leipzig University Library.

When Tischendorf returned to the monastery in 1853, he had no success in locating the manuscript he sought. In 1859 he came back again, this time under the sponsorship of Czar Alexander II, patron of the Greek Church. Again he found nothing until shortly before he left. He was showing the monastery steward a printed copy of his earlier discovery and the steward said that he, too, had a copy of the Septuagint and invited Tischendorf to his home to see it. There before the astonished scholar’s eyes lay a large portion of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament. Tischendorf received permission to look at the manuscript further but could not succeed in buying it or taking it to Cairo for study. But the abbot of the monastery was in Cairo at the time, and when Tischendorf got there he persuaded him to send for the manuscript and let Tischendorf copy it. Then he persuaded the abbot to let him take the manuscript to Russia as a gift to the czar, to

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influence him to support certain wishes of the monastery. A sum of money and other grants later reached the monastery from the imperial court. Oxford University Press published the New Testament in 1911.

Finally in 1933 the Soviet government, short of cash and with no use for Bibles, sold the Sinai Manuscript to Britain for about a half million dollars. Since then it has resided in the British Museum. Codex2 Sinaiticus is the oldest complete New Testament in the world (dating c. 350). The pages are 15 by 13½ inches and have four columns of beautiful hand printing in capital letters per parchment page.

Codex Vaticanus

Tischendorf was also involved with the other great fourth-century manuscript of the New Testament. Actually Codex Vaticanus or B was in the Vatican Library at Rome before 1475. Carried off to France by Napoleon as part of the spoils of war, it remained in Paris from 1809 to 1815. While there its age and value were recognized. Tischendorf studied it in Rome in 1843 under very restricted conditions and finally in 1866 won permission to edit it; and in 1867 he published an edition of it. Finally from 1889 to 1890 a complete photographic facsimile appeared. The text is a little older than Aleph (date c. A.D. 340) and thus is considered to be the most valuable New Testament. But it is not complete, lacking Hebrews 9:4 to the end, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation. The page size of this parchment manuscript is 10½ by 10 inches, and there are three columns per page.

Codex Alexandrinus

It is evident that both of these extremely important uncial manuscripts on parchment became available to scholars long after production of the King James Version. Both, however, were available for translation of the Revised Version at the end of the nineteenth century. Another important parchment manuscript that really did not need to be found was Codex Alexandrinus, or A. It also appeared after the King James Version. It was offered by the Patriarch of Constantinople to the British ambassador in Turkey in 1624 as a gift to James I, but the king died before the manuscript was given. In 1627 it was actually presented to Charles I and remained part of the royal library until 1757 when it was given to the British Museum. Dated to the first half of the fifth

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The Bodmer Papyrus showing John 1:1–14 (Bodmer Library)

Codex Sinaiticus opened to John 21:1–25 (British Museum)

century, it is complete except for most of Matthew and portions of John and 2 Corinthians. The leaves measure 12¾ by 10¼ inches and have two columns per page.

Other Uncial Manuscripts

Other interesting significant discoveries or acquisitions of portions of the New Testament have been made in the last century or so. The oldest known fragment of a New Testament parchment book is one purchased by Leland C. Wyman of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1950 in Cairo that dates to the latter part of the third century. It contains parts of Romans 4 and 5. Dating just a little earlier is a Yale harmony fragment of part of Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19. A Syriac manuscript of the four gospels dating to the early fifth century was discovered at St. Catherine’s at the foot of Mount Sinai by Mrs. A. S. Lewis and Mrs. M. D. Gibson in 1892. The Washington Codex (W) was purchased by Charles L. Freer from an Arab dealer at Gizeh in 1906 and is in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This is a manuscript of the four gospels and parts of the Pauline epistles dating to the late fourth or early fifth century.

Reference has been made above to uncial manuscripts. These are written on parchment or vellum in a capital letter script and

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date from the third to the tenth centuries; they number 250. Minuscule manuscripts are written in lower-case letters and in a more cursive or freehand script. These date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries and total 2,646. There is not room here to discuss examples of the latter.

Papyri

Papyrus was the writing “paper” of the New Testament world, and almost certainly the New Testament books were written on it. Probably used as early as 2700 B.C. or earlier in Egypt, it gradually gained in popularity and was used all over the Mediterranean world by the time of Christ and continued in use until the seventh century A.D. By a rather prolonged process the pith of the papyrus plant was cut into thin strips and processed for writing. Vertical strips were crossed with horizontal ones and pressed into sheets which varied in size but normally were about 10 by 5 inches. Usually writing was done only on the side with the horizontal strips. If a larger writing surface was desired, sheets were glued together; many of them might be attached to form a roll that was then wound around a stick. A roll commonly was not larger than about 35 feet long and 10 inches high, though larger ones are known. For instance, the Harris Medical Papyrus in the British Museum is 133 feet long and 17 inches high.

If the New Testament were written on one continuous roll, it would need to be about two hundred feet long. The longer books, Luke and Acts, could be written on rolls about thirty-one or thirty-two feet in length. It is easy to understand why Christians would prefer to use the codex form (book form with pages) rather than the roll so they might, for instance, collect the four gospels or the Pauline epistles into one book that could be read with ease. As a matter of fact, Christians of the early Christian centuries used the codex form more than secular figures did. Almost all the biblical papyri discussed below are in the codex form.

Discovery Of The Papyri

Papyrus disintegrates so quickly, especially in damp climates, that Egypt is one of the few places one would expect to find any. But the first discovery was in Herculaneum, near Pompeii, in 1752. These scrolls were charred lumps buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. They were not successfully unrolled and published until 1793. The first papyrus find in Egypt was in 1778 and proved to be a record about laborers on the dikes. In 1820

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some religious documents were unearthed near Memphis. In 1836 the first biblical papyrus (part of the Psalms, dating to the 7th century) came to light at Thebes. Other isolated papyri continued to be found. Then, in 1877, several thousands of fragments were dug up by nationals near the town of Arsinoë in the Fayum, some fifty miles southwest of Cairo. Most of these were obtained by Archduke Rainer for his library in Vienna. From 1889 to 1890 Flinders Petrie excavated a Ptolemaic cemetery at Gurob in the Fayum and found a number of papyri there. During the following year the British Museum acquired a group of literary papyri, including Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, and parts of works of Homer, Demosthenes, and others.

A new chapter in the history of discovery began during the winter of 1895–96 when the Egyptian Exploration Fund sent out an expedition under the leadership of B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt, and D. G. Hogarth to search for papyri. They continued their search for several subsequent seasons. At Tebtunis in the Fayum they found numerous mummified crocodiles wrapped in papyrus cartonnage, and in some cases rolls were stuffed into their mouths. The Fayum oasis area was too damp for many papyri to be preserved there, so the excavators turned their attention, with great success, to points south—Oxyrhynchus, Hermopolis, Panopolis, and elsewhere. Most of the finds at the southern towns came from ruins of houses or rubbish heaps that surrounded most ancient Egyptian towns. The greatest single expedition worked at Oxyrhynchus, 120 miles south of Cairo, under the leadership of Grenfell and Hunt (from Oxford) from 1896 to 1906 and amassed papyri season by season.

The Egyptian Exploration Fund divided the finds among supporting institutions after publication. Of the biblical papyri they found, P 1 is at the University of Pennsylvania Museum; P 5, British Museum; P 9 and 10, Harvard; P 13, British Museum; P 15 and 16, Cairo Museum; P 17, Cambridge; P 18, British Museum; P 19, Oxford; P 20, Princeton; P 22, Glasgow University; P 23, University of Illinois; P 24, Andover Newton; P 26, Southern Methodist University; P 27, Cambridge University Library; P 28, Pacific School of Religion; P 29, Oxford; P 30, Ghent University; P 39, Crozer Theological Seminary; P 51, British Museum; P 69, 70, 71, location unknown.

After the Egyptian Exploration Fund finished at Oxyrhynchus, an Italian team took over and found more papyri. For the most part, subsequent discoveries have been made by Egyptians digging in the ancient rubbish heaps. One such magnificent collection

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appeared in November 1931 and included portions of eleven codices containing parts of nine books of the Old Testament and fifteen of the New Testament, plus the book of Enoch. The greater part was acquired by Chester Beatty, but the University of Michigan and other institutions obtained parts of it.

Other interesting discoveries include the Elephantine papyri and the Nag Hammadi materials. The Elephantine papyri were found on the island of Elephantine phantine at Aswan in 1903. Written in Aramaic, they relate to a settlement of Jews there in the fifth century B.C. Apparently they had a temple of their own but did not adhere rigorously to the Law of Moses, and seem to have worshiped pagan gods in addition to Yahweh. The papyri consist of three groups of about a dozen documents each, two groups being family archives and the third a community archive. Interestingly, the collection included a copy of Darius’s Behistun inscription, showing how extensive distribution of that record was. The Elephantine papyri provide the earliest documentation for the corporate life of a Jewish community and display many points of contact with the contemporary biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. A detailed study of the community and its literary remains appears in Bezalel Porten’s Archives from Elephantine.

In 1946 at ancient Shenest-Chenoboskion in the region of Nag Hammadi, 32 miles north of Luxor, thirteen well-preserved codices came to light. Written in Coptic, they date between the middle of the third century and the middle of the fourth century A.D. These are Gnostic-type materials. A useful commentary on these documents is in Andrew K. Helmbold’s The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts and the Bible.

Contents Of The Papyri

From what has been said it should be recognized that the contents of the papyri are varied. They were written in Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, Coptic, and Arabic, with the majority in Greek. Some of the materials are classified as literary and include such things as Homeric poems, works of Aristotle, and Greek dramas. About one-fourth of these literary papyri supply texts not previously known. But a majority of the papyri are categorized as nonliterary: letters, tax papers, diaries, judicial proceedings, magical texts, marriage contracts, wills, and a variety of other items from public and private life. These help us to see how the common people thought and acted during the New Testament period and provide an interesting secular backdrop for the New Testament drama. Several thousand in Greek cover the

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period from about the third or fourth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D.

Then there are the biblical papyri, which are not literary because they are written in Koine (the language of the common people) rather than classical Greek, and not nonliterary because they are not trivial. As noted in passing, these texts include not only the New Testament but portions of several Old Testament books in Greek. There are at least seventy-two Septuagint fragments among the papyri. Those offered for sale at the time the Chester Beatty collection was purchased include an Old Testament codex of the first half of the second century A.D. embodying large portions of Numbers and Deuteronomy, fragments of Isaiah dating to the third century, a small portion of Jeremiah dating to the end of the second century, a codex of sections of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Esther from the first half of the third century, and two manuscripts of parts of Genesis, one from the third and the other from the fourth century.

Biblical Papyri

A complete listing of the seventy-six biblical papyri with basic facts about them appears in Bruce Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament. Fifteen of the most important papyri are noted here. Especially important collections of papyrus manuscripts may be found in the Chester Beatty Museum in a suburb of Dublin (purchased 1930–31), the Bodmer Museum in Cologny, a suburb of Geneva (purchased 1955–56), the British Museum, and the Austrian National Library (which contains eleven, the largest single holding).

P 5, in the British Museum, dates to the third century and contains parts of John 1 and 20.

P 13, in the British Museum, dates to the late third or early fourth century and contains parts of Hebrews 2, 10, 11.

P 37, at the University of Michigan, dates to the second half of the third century and contains Matthew 26:19–52.

P 38, at the University of Michigan, dates to probably the fourth century and contains parts of Acts 18 and 19.

P 45, Chester Beatty I, dates to the first half of the third century and contains parts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts.

P 46, Chester Beatty Papyrus II, also at the University of Michigan, dates about 200, thus about 150 years removed from the originals and about 150 years before the great uncials. It contains eight of Paul’s epistles and Hebrews in the following order: Romans,

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Hebrews, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians.

P 47, Chester Beatty Papyrus III, dates to the middle or late third century and contains Revelation 9:10—17:2.

P 48, in Florence, dates to probably the third century and contains part of Acts 23.

P 52, John Rylands Library Papyrus 457, dates to the first half of the second century and contains John 18:31–33, 37, 38. This fragment is the oldest of the biblical papyri. Deissmann argued that it dates within the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (117–138) or earlier.3 It was purchased for the Rylands Library in 1920 but went unnoticed until 1934.

P 53, at the University of Michigan, dates about 250 and contains fragments of Matthew and Acts.

P 64, at the Library of Magdalen College, Oxford, dates to the last half of the second century (second oldest papyrus) and contains part of Matthew 26.

P 66, Bodmer Papyrus II, dates to about 200 and contains approximately two-thirds of John.

P 72, Bodmer Papyrus VII-IX, dates to the third century and contains Jude, 1 and 2 Peter.

P 74, Bodmer Papyrus XVII, dates to the seventh century and contains parts of Acts, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, Jude.

P 75, Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV, dates between 175 and 225 and contains Luke and John.

Significance Of The Papyri

The impact of the papyri on New Testament studies has been absolutely revolutionary. But while scholars generally have made rather extensive use of the contributions of the papyri, their full effect is yet to be felt by the lay public. The significance of the papyri may be seen in at least five areas.

1. They have pushed back the history of the New Testament text by at least two centuries and have bridged the gap between the great uncial manuscripts and the original writings. The Rylands fragment of the Gospel of John almost has us breathing down the apostle’s neck. A date of about 120 assigned to this manuscript found in Egypt is only some twenty-five years away from the traditional date of its composition in faraway Ephesus. If we allow for dissemination, we are almost back to the original. P 64 and P 75 date to the latter half of the second century, and the others spread out over succeeding decades. Thus we have a textual

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tradition almost from the originals to the present time.

2. There is remarkable verbal agreement among copies of the papyri and between the papyri and the later uncials and minuscules. The abundance of new textual material has not proved to be an embarrassment to the reverent student of Scripture. No new evidence of mass corruption of the text has come to light. On the contrary, the papyri and the great parchment manuscripts team up to demonstrate a remarkable degree of accuracy in transmission of the text from the beginnings to the present. This assertion has nothing to do with one’s theological persuasion. The textual critics who have done most to study and edit the New Testament Greek text generally have not been of a conservative theological bent: And scholars of all theological persuasions today attest the fact that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written. Finegan’s comment is typical, “The words which the New Testament writers addressed to their world and time have crossed the further miles and centuries to us substantially unchanged in form and certainly undiminished in power.”4

3. The whole philosophy of New Testament origins has been changed in many circles. There is such an abundance of all types of literature in the papyri that it has been possible to establish a fairly detailed history of Greek grammar for the late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries. This study of historical grammar demonstrates that the New Testament was written in the first Christian century.5 The argument from historical grammar is buttressed by the testimony of the Rylands fragment of John. What all this means is that the old view of an evolutionary development of the New Testament books over a period of centuries is hard to maintain. The same goes for the idea that Jesus was a mere human being around whom myths of deity developed over a long period of time. There is no longer a gap in the textual record when such a long development could have occurred.

4. There has been a complete change in attitude toward the nature of New Testament Greek. In the last century and before, scholars did not know quite what to think of the Greek text of the New Testament. Because it was not like classical Greek in many respects, it was treated as inferior. Some described it as “biblical Greek,” something invented for the purpose of communicating the Gospel message. Others, impressed with the Hebrew impact on the New Testament, called it “Hebraic Greek.” Yet, others, looking to a divine influence to explain the differences, called it

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“Holy Ghost Greek.” But Adolph Deissmann, the great German New Testament scholar, concluded in 1895 and later developed more fully the thesis that the New Testament was written in the same kind of Greek in which the papyri were written—the language of the common people of the New Testament era, the Koine. There was nothing contrived about the language. It was the most natural thing in the world that a message for the masses should be written in the language of the man on the street. Very few of the words supposedly coined by the apostles had been coined for their use at all. Moreover, the New Testament was not full of grammatical errors committed by unlearned fishermen and others. Judged by the grammatical standards of the Koine, the New Testament was quite correctly written.

5. The papyri also make a tremendous contribution toward understanding the meanings of New Testament words. Any student of English realizes that word meanings are in a constant flux. To obtain a clear knowledge of vocabulary at any one period it is necessary to discover how words are used in a variety of contemporary literature. To learn what the New Testament is really trying to say, it will not be adequate to study the sources in classical Greek. One must ask, how did the man on the street in the first century use those words? Adolf Deissmann, James H. Moulton, George Milligan, A. T. Robertson, and many others of the past and present generation have done so much work on Koine grammar and vocabulary that it would take volumes to summarize their efforts. Suffice it to say that as a result of their labors some words not really comprehended before have emerged into the clear sunlight of understanding; others have acquired new life and significance.

A few examples will make the point. One of the disciples is referred to as “James the Less,” and one wonders if this means his nickname was “shorty.” The papyri demonstrate that the word used for “less” in this case (mikros) invariably refers to age, not stature. So he should be called James the Younger.

Hebrews 11:1 in the King James Version says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for” (itals. added) and in the Revised Standard Version the “assurance.” Neither is very helpful in explaining what faith is or does. The papyri use the word as a technical legal term referring to a collection of papers bearing on the possession of a piece of property. The word may then be translated “title deed”; thus, “Faith is the title deed of things hoped for.” In other words, faith actually gives us a sort of legal

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claim on the great glories in the future.

First Peter 2:2 refers to “sincere milk of the word” (King James) or “pure spiritual milk” (RSV). Neither helps very much; none of us has ever seen or drunk sincere or pure spiritual milk. The papyri use the word in connection with unadulterated grain or oil, unmixed with impurities, or pure. When we read, “As newborn babes desire the pure or unadulterated milk of the word,” we can understand that.

Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls do not bear directly on the accuracy and meaning of the text of the New Testament so much as on the nature and origins of its concepts. For some years before the discovery of the scrolls it was fashionable to claim that Greek thought patterns were behind the conceptual development of the Gospel of John and to a lesser degree behind Paul’s epistles. Now, as a result of studies in the scrolls, it is generally agreed that both have a Jewish background—a fact claimed by conservative Christian scholars all along.

But soon after the scrolls began to make their impact, a literature developed that sought to rob Christ and Christianity of all their uniqueness. A. Dupont-Sommer in The Dead Sea Scrolls (1952) found Christ to be merely the “reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness” of the Qumran community, and the Church to be merely an extension of the community there. Sensationalists soon appeared on the horizon. Edmund Wilson in The Scrolls from the Dead Sea (1955); A. Powell Davies in The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1956); and J. M. Allegro in “The Untold Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Harpers (Aug. 1966), and The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) followed many of the views of Dupont-Sommer and went on in even more extreme directions. Some of the writers even accused some biblical scholars of suppressing information revealed in the scrolls that was damaging to the cause of Christianity.

Of course many of the most scholarly men of our times went to work on the questions these popularizers were raising. R. K. Harrison concludes,

One result of this scholarly activity has been the unanimous agreement that Dupont-Sommer and Allegro derived their views partly from untenable translations and forced interpretations of their source material. Another is that the observations of Wilson were not merely premature, but were based upon a methodology which would never be entertained for one moment in Wilson’s own

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field of literary criticism.6

A detailed and definitive answer to those who would make John the Baptist and Christ members of the Qumran community, deriving their ideas from that group, and who would make the Church merely an offshoot or extension of Qumran is neither possible in a few words here, nor is it necessary. William S. LaSor in his definitive The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament has carefully handled all aspects of the question. He shows how John the Baptist was either not a Qumranian or, if he ever had been, he had broken completely with the community’s viewpoint.7 He demonstrates the tremendous difference between the Church and the Qumran community.8 And answering some of the earlier assertions, LaSor concludes that the “Teacher of Righteousness” is really totally unlike Jesus Christ. Contrary to claims of likeness, there is no record of His crucifixion, burial, resurrection, or promise of return.9

In his scholarly and low-key manner, LaSor concludes that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament

are essentially similar in religious perspectives. Both have arisen from sectarian movements in Judaism.. .. There will therefore be many points of similarity.. .. There will also be characteristic points of difference. .. it seems reasonable to conclude that the two movements were independent beyond the initial origins in Judaism. The similarities have been examined, and can be explained in nearly all cases by the Jewish origin of the movements. The differences are such that they seem to require independent development of the two movements.10

The Jewish scholar Samuel Sandmel comes on even stronger. In a summary of Sandmel’s presidential address delivered to the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, R. K. Harrison writes:

He has maintained that there is absolutely no evidence which would link early Christianity with the Dead Sea community, holding that any alleged connections between Essene beliefs and Christian teachings are based on speculation and the discovery of parallel forms in the sectarian manuscripts and the New Testament.11

There have also been attempts to find New Testament manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1972 the Jesuit scholar José

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O’Callaghan claimed to have discovered fragments of the Gospel of Mark in the collection from Cave 7, dating to about A.D. 50. The popular and scholarly press debated the issue for many months. All the controversy and discussion of O’Callaghan’s claims seem to lead to the conclusion that they are highly unlikely.

It is easy to be sensational about a sensational discovery like the Dead Sea Scrolls, but sober and scholarly investigation seldom bends to such a temptation. The relationship of the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls has now been put in better focus. The scrolls have provided a better understanding of the context in which Christianity and the New Testament developed, but they have taken away none of the uniqueness of either. In a similar vein, Floyd V. Filson concludes:

But there is nothing in the contents of the scrolls or in a careful comparison of them with the New Testament which warrants hasty statements that the Christian gospel was taken over from the Qumran sect or is basically dependent on that sect for its message and way of life.”12

(From Archaeology in Bible Lands by Howard J. Vos. Copyright 1977. Moody Press, Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. Used by permission.)

Bible and Spade 9:4 (Autumn 1980)