7Q5: Is it 'Mark' and does it matter?

"For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened; And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore." [Mark 6:52-53, KJV] Introduction This page discusses the controversy over the tiny 7Q5 fragment, and it's identification by two scholars with the "Gospel of Mark" [1]. It is a work in progress. Please contact me if you have any further evidence or information. The fragment, no bigger than a mans thumb[1], forms part of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and was found at a site in Qumran reportedly destroyed by the Romans in 68 CE. Its "decorated" style of handwriting suggest a date between 50 BCE and 50 CE [2]. It should be made clear from the outset that the identification of 7Q5 with "Mark" appears to have been thoroughly discredited. Excellent timelines narrating the history of the Qumran find and this controversy are available from Rutgers University and MetaReligion. Update: I have recently discovered a 1997 interview with Thiede, were he seems to say that the scriptures themselves are the final arbiter of their own truth: "I would like to say that, in order to understand the historical background of the gospel, one doesn't have to be a papyrologist, one doesn't even have to be a historian. All it takes is to read the text very carefully. Look at what the Christians in Berea did in Acts 17. They searched the Scriptures day by day to find out if what Paul and Silas were saying was true..." "Let us go back to the texts, read them carefully, forget about all we think or assume that we already know, forget about our prejudices and our biases, scholarly or otherwise, and we'll make an enormous amount of discoveries ourselves, understanding why those texts are what they really are-historical documents of the first century with Jesus Christ in its center." [19] This seems to put an end to any suggestion that Thiede is an objective researcher of the issues at hand. The latest updates to this page are shown in darkred. For more on Thiede's other claims regarding early New Testament fragments, see my page Collected responses to Peter Cartson Thiede. See also my thread in soc.religion.christian on this web page.

1. "In 1972 Fr. José O’Callaghan, S.J., a Spanish papyrologist, declared that the words on 7Q5 were from the Gospel of St. Mark: 6:52-53. This identification was widely questioned, but many papyrologists rallied to his support, and there are good reasons for thinking that O’Callaghan was right." [3]
   
   
2. "Above all, it was the detailed analysis presented [in 1972] by the Vienna papyrologist Herbert Hunger in favour of the Marcan identification which did not fail to impress the participants . As an aftermath of the symposium, fragment 7Q5 was analyzed in the forensic laboratory of the Department of Investigations at the Israel National Police in Jerusalem. The upper remnant of a decisive diagonal stroke be made visible in line 2 and further contributed to the solidity of the Marcan identification." [4]
   
   
3. "O'Callaghan's identification was checked by the Ibykus computer programme with the result that there is no other text than Mark 6,52-53 in extant Greek literature which fits the papyrological evidence of 7Q5." [4]
   
   
4. "[From 1972] O’Callaghan defended his views against virtually every assailant. But until 1982 he found few, if any, real followers. In that year Carsten Peter Thiede, a German scholar, began to publish in defense of the O’Callaghan hypothesis. In the last dozen years, in fact, he has surpassed his mentor in periodical proliferation." [1]
   
   
5. "Thiede writes: 'In 1994, the last word on this particular identification seemed to have been uttered by one of the great papyrologists of our time, Orsolina Montevecchi, Honorary President of the International Papyrological Association. She summarized the results in a single unequivocal sentence: ‘I do not think there can be any doubt about the identification of 7Q5.’' This implies that St. Marks’ Gospel was in being some time before the monastery at Qumran was destroyed by the Romans in 68." [3]
   
   
6. Thiede claims that electron microscope evidence O'Callaghan's identification of the letter "nu" in 7Q5 [18].

1. Theodore Skeat, another Honorary President of the International Papyrological Association, is a leading critic of Thiede's work.
   
   
2. "The leading experts in the field, the late C. H. Roberts of Oxford and the German Kurt Aland, unhesitatingly discarded O'Callaghan's theory. Roberts jokingly... [said] that if he wanted to waste his time, he was sure he would be able to `demonstrate' that 7Q5 belonged to any ancient Greek text, biblical or non-biblical. Yet this unlikely and clearly unprovable hypothesis was revived in the 1980s by C. P. Thiede and others, only to encounter the same fate of summary dismissal as Father O'Callaghan's a decade or so earlier." [5]
   
   
3. "At first glance, [the 'Ibykus' computer identification]... sounds very impressive. But Thiede overlooked two things. First, the restriction of 'letters identified by O’Callaghan' assumes O’Callaghan’s problematic letter reconstructions to be correct. But this manifold assumption is exceedingly gratuitous. It is like observing a sheet of paper that has been left out in the rain. Only a handful of letters can be made out clearly; all else is up for grabs." [1]
   
   
4. "...when one allows for different possibilities than just O'Callaghan's for the partially legible letters, the Ibycus program does, indeed, seem to permit other texts to be identified with 7Q5. In my own cursory examination of the TLG via Ibycus, I found sixteen texts which could possibly fit (though only if one stretched both his or her imagination and the textual evidence)... even allowing O'Callaghan his nu in line 2... The passages found include Ezek 23:36; Josephus, Vita 42-3; Vita 236; Bellum 5.528; 7.380-1; Philo Cher. 44; 119; Plant. 135; Plant. 136; Mut. 173; Thucydides, Hist. 1.10.2; 1.60.1; 3.109.2; 4.67.4; 5.82.5; 8.55.1." [1]
   
   
5. "Thiede makes the remarkable statement that 'leaving theological arguments aside, the earliest possible date for this gospel, historically speaking, is AD 30, the year of the last event recorded in it, the resurrection of Jesus' (p. 25). Thiede’s assessment that higher critical reconstructions - especially as regards the synoptic problem - are merely 'theological arguments' strikes me as a bit naïve and ought to signal the reader to Thiede’s antecedent eagerness to accept O’Callaghan’s identification of 7Q5. No reputable NT scholar - regardless of his theological underpinnings or views of gospel priorities - dates Mark this early." [1]
   
   
6. Thiede concedes that another parchment fragment I52 has been accepted by the academic community without argument. However, he relies on the expertise of the late C. H. Roberts, who gives a range of one hundred years for possible dates for I52. Further, Roberts never accepted the identification of 7Q5 with the Gospel of Mark. [1]
   
   
7. Thiede concedes that the wording of Mark would have to be changed to fit an identification with 7Q5 (again removing the basis for the 'Ibykus' computer identification." [1]
   
   
8. "...both the original editors of this fragment and most who have followed disagree with several of O’Callaghan’s letter reconstructions. At every point in which the enlarged photograph of the fragment at the end of Thiede’s booklet (p. 68) seems to disprove O’Callaghan’s reconstructions." [1]
   
   
9. Articles by E. Muro and É. Puech in the Revue de Qumrân 70 (1998) both refute O'Callaghan and Thiede's work on similar grounds. [2]
   
   
10. As of 2001, Thiede still maintains his claim. I have seen no other work supporting his position. In March 2002, Muro wrote that he would provide a detailed rebuttal of Thiede's latest claims when time allowed. [2]
    
    
11. The 7Q5 fragment comes from a Essene Jewish Community in Qumran, dating from around 68 CE. No other "New Testament" writings have been found at Qumran. [6]
    
    
12. "The English textual critic J.K. Elliot had called The Earliest Gospel Manuscript? by Thiede a 'publication cashing in on human gullibility.'" [12]
    
    
13. "Thiede's Dead Sea Scroll's scenario is preposterous; his theory about the Markan fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls has been discredited..." [13]

Notes on the evidence

1. The Ibykus computer programme analysis of Mark depends upon unequivocal agreement of the text. However, even Thiede has admitted that the text would require amendment from the accepted word of the Gospel of Mark for a match [1]. Further, condition and tiny size of the parchments make clear identification impossible without further information [2].
   
   
2. Thiede claims that the latest electron microscope evidence confirms O'Callaghan's identification of the letter "nu" in 7Q5 [18]. However, even given this letter, the fragment cannot be definitively identified with "Mark" [1].
   
   
3. The only named academic support for O'Callaghan and Thiede came from Hunger in 1972, and Orsolina Montevecchi, Honorary President of the International Papyrological Association, in 1994. (This is clearly not, as some Thiede supporters on the web claim, an "official position" of the IPA.)
   
   
4. I have found no evidence of any academic support for Thiede since the refutations of his work by Muro and Puech in 1998.
   
   
5. Until or unless further evidence comes to light, there is no reason to accept Thiede's proposal that 7Q5 formed part of an early version of the Gospel According To Mark.

1. Entire New Testament Completed before 70 BCE

   "These manuscript finds confirm something that was worked out by Bible scholars in the 1970s: the whole of the Bible must have been completed before 70 AD. This means that the events it describes were written in the lifetimes of the people who took part in them. Some of the people who saw Jesus preach were among those who read the first gospels. This means that there is little scope for errors of fact or outright invention to have worked their way into the gospels." [7]

   This idea can be nothing more than wishful thinking by Bible Literalists. An early identification of "Mark" would prove nothing about any of the other Gospels - which are all generally accepted to have been written after c. 80 CE [8], and not cast into their final forms for several centuries after that [9].
   
   
2. Primacy of "Mark"

   "Why all the furor? What is at stake? A number of things: (1) If this identification is correct, it would be the earliest NT MS by some 50-100 years; (2) on paleographical grounds, since the upper limit of its date is 50 CE, this would put Mark in the 40’s at the latest; (3) one consequence of such an early date for Mark would be to virtually silence advocates of Matthean priority; and (4) finally, it would suggest, perhaps, that at least some of the New Testament documents were regarded highly enough to be copied soon after publication - a view which lends itself to an early recognition of the NT as canon." [1]

3. Could 7Q5 be a proto-New Testament Document?
   
   It is generally accepted that the New Testament Gospels were derived from earlier traditions [9]. Even if 7Q5 did contain lines similar to those in Mark, the possibility could not be discounted that 7Q5 formed part of a "lost" writing (such as the "Gospel Of Q" [10] [15]). Moreover, various texts found at Qumran containing elements similar to New Testament texts have been dated to 100-75 BCE [16]... As ever with the internet, there are conspiracy theories that the Catholic Church is supressing the identification of 7Q5 with Mark out of fear for its implications for Christianity [17].

Conclusion

"Thiede is no stranger to controversy. Threaded through all of his arguments is his view that a portion of Mark 6:52-53 is among the 18 Greek fragments found in Qumran cave seven. And since Qumran was destroyed in a.d. 68, this would make the scrap of Mark (known as 7Q5) early indeed. If true, this finding would suggest that copies of the Gospels were circulating widely much earlier than is generally believed. But this theory has been vigorously challenged, and at least for this reviewer, the fragment from Qumran is far too uncertain to support Thiede's conclusions. (Thiede even has to emend Mark 6:52-53 in order to make the Qumran papyrus work for him!)..." [11]

Acknowledgment: I would like to thank Ernest Muro for clarifying some issues regarding 7Q5. Any opinions (and errors!) in this page are, of course, mine and not his. PTET.

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