Dewin

I am of the opinion that not only was Jesus not the son of a god, but also that Jesus the Nazerene is not an historical figure.

However, I watched a programme on one of the 'Discovery' channels the other night claiming that the Gospel according to Mark was written around 34AD, putting it well within this 'Eye Witness Period'.

Their evidence was basically this :-

The 'Essenes' were driven out of their caves by the Romans and it was in these cave systems that the Dead Sea Scrolls and other papyrus scripts were discovered as we all know.

Recently found in these caves, so this programme asserted, was a fragment of what is claimed to be part of Marks Gospel, and the programme gives some evidence about it's authenticity by the shape of the lettering and certain words used within the script etc, etc ,and they date this fragment to be 64 AD. Now, what these experts were claiming was that the 'Essenes' used to copy their scripts onto pages of books from the original scrolls, thereby inferring that the scrolls were even older than the pages found in these caves. The conclusion that this programme drew from these 'facts' was that the original scrolls from which the Essenes copied from must have originated well within the 'Eye Witness Period', about 30-34AD, and therefore is good evidence that an historical figure called Jesus did exist.

I am no expert on all of this, but I am hoping that there are individuals out there who can give me the arguments etc as to why this conclusion is not the case.

Is there a fragment in existence which is from the original Gospel of Mark?

Was this so called fragment taken from a scroll that could only have been written within this 'Eyewitness period' ?

I await your wise Counsel with anticipation. Thanks.

Steven Carr

The only complete recognisable word on this fragment is 'kai' (and)

If you think that 'and' is conclusive evidence for eyewitness reports of Jesus, then your name is Carsten Thiede.

http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/thiede.htm should give you plenty of keywords to search on.

The word after the Kai begins with a 'tau', and so is unlikely to be
Mark´s 'diaperasantes'.

If the only letter of a word that you have is an initial 't', it is hard to see why somebody can say that it must be 'diaperasantes'. It is quite a stretch to get 'diaperasantes' from 't.............'


http://www.stefan-enste.de/TheologieText.htm has a picture of the fragment.


http://www.stefan-enste.de/Rezensionen7Q5.htm has a discussion

Enste writes :'
'Wenn es also nicht Nachlässigkeit im Lesen kritischer Textausgaben ist, dann muß vermutet werden, daß es C. P. Thiede hier um den ´Effekt´ geht, daß er Tatsachen irreführend darstellt, um die eigene Position in einem besseren Licht erscheinen zu lassen.'

which means roughly, 'If it is not through negligence in the critical study of texts, then we must suppose that Thiede is trying to get the effect of letting his own position seem in a better light, by mistaken presentation of the facts.'

MortalWombat

They are probably referring to Carsten Thiede's book on 7Q5, which is a thumbnail sized scrap of manuscript having a handful of partially legible letters and only one unambiguously identifiable word "kai" (and).

See a review of Thiede's work here.

As an aside, the author of the Gospel of Mark is definitely not an eyewitness based on his poor knowledge of the geography, customs, and practices of 1st century Palestine alone.

Doctor X

What people fail to see is that Mk had patented the use of "and."

Anyways, this is another attempt to try to lend historical credibility to texts to . . . by some wonderful extension . . . to make what people believe now to be "Truth!" [Tm.--Ed.]

--J.D.

Boro Nut

There are THREE letters in the word 'and'. How significant do you want?.

It fits between Father AND Son AND Holy Ghost.

It is an anagram of Dan, the most important tribe of Israel.

It appears 222 times in the old testament. 3 x 222 = 666

If you swap the letters round and change some it spells 'GOD'

Work it out people.

Boro Nut - Speaking from the perspective of Dan's wife.

Doctor X

Now do you put it THAT way . . . takes another hit . . . it makes PERFECT sense!!

Colors!!

--J. "Do NOT Drink the Bong Water!" D.

Amen-Moses

Not that it matters but area of the DSS repository was still in use as late as 136CE (from coin evidence) so even if it contains an entire NT it wouldn't really prove an early date.

A lot is made of the destruction of Jerusalem in 69 CE but not many people realise that the Qu'mran site isn't even in Judea but is instead part of the Galilean portion originally run by the Greekophile Herod Antipas (i.e it comes well within the "decopolis" region of Greek influence). The usual assumption is that the Romans destroyed the site on the way to Masada to the South West but Masada was part of Judea and the Romans could well have gone straight there without even passing Qu'mran.

It wasn't until the 136 CE uprising which was initiated in the "badlands" of Galilee that the Romans expunged the whole of region of Jews.

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses

btw I am hoping that they will find an entire NT in the DSS repository area which dates to 100 BCE, now that would really put the cat among the pigeons!

Amen-Moses

Nialler

This interests me because I saw a comment by Helen Setterfield on Baptistboard, in which she states that the miracles attributed to jesus were never contradicted by eye-witnesses.

Strikes me that contradictions by these eyewitnesses would be impossible if they were no longer around to read about these "miracles" - if they could read.

I'd take her up on the comment, but I only ever lurk on that board - It would be dishonest of me to register and contribute to a xtians-only forum.