Madonna and the Manuscript of Mark’s Gospel

The first century manuscript fragment of the Gospel of Mark that Dan Wallace mentioned in a recent debate with Bart Ehrman is getting all kinds of cautions, skepticism, etc., from Jim West, James McGrath, Joel Watts, et al. Rightly so. Here’s what Wallace said:

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. (In the Q & A, Bart questioned the validity of the first-century Mark fragment. I noted that a world-class paleographer, a man who had no religious affiliation and thus was not biased toward an early date, was my source.

It is really frustrating when people spill ‘news’ of a manuscript discovery to score a point for themselves (e.g., in a debate) but then can only say, ‘Trust me. I got my info from a ‘world-class paleographer; and oh, by the way, he’s entirely unbiased because he’s not a fundamentalist.’ Time will tell, but no-one should buy this until the manuscript has been cross-examined several times. In any case the existence of a manuscript is almost irrelevant anyway unless it has some new light to shed on the text history, and for what it’s worth, it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to pin down a date within the first century on paleographical grounds: the line between the first and second centuries is very blurry. This is likely to be only of great concern to those obsessed with finding the autographa; others whose faith isn’t disrupted or confirmed by autographa will be less wakeful at night.

After the debate Andreas Köstenberger wrote up a response, which included this inappropriate suggestion:

Perhaps it might have been helpful at some point, without being unduly ad hominem, to bring out Ehrman’s agnosticism and overall skepticism toward the Christian faith. Ehrman certainly came across as very sensible and measured during the debate, but in some of his writings it is quite clear that he has taken a strongly adversarial stance toward Christianity (not least because of his concerns related to the problem of evil).

Ehrman’s faith has nothing to do with the debate, and even if the suggestion is to avoid being ‘unduly ad hominem’, you’d still be encouraging Wallace to be ‘ad hominem’.

UPDATE: Chris Hays writes:

I’m frustrated by Köstenberger’s comment: “Ehrman certainly came across as very sensible and measured during the debate, but in some of his writings it is quite clear that he has taken a strongly adversarial stance toward Christianity”. He seems to imply that although Ehrman *sounds reasonable*, his atheism (agnosticism?) clearly makes him a crazy and unreliable scholar.

There are certain fields of study where your religious presuppositions inexorably exercise a heavy influence on the way you read the data (the study of miracles,for example). But textual criticism generally ain’t one of them (or shouldn’t be), unless you think a plausible argument could be made for dating this text of Mark to the middle of the first century!

But why all the furor over this manuscript, when the real news of the day is the fabulous (and classy) Halftime Show Madonna put on last night at Super Bowl XLVI. There were throwbacks and new stuff, but all of it well-conceived and brilliantly delivered. And even Mark Goodacre loved it! The best part was the Icon bringing on Nicki Minaj! I regretted having to turn down the invite to be a dancer.