Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 333

Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Gospel of Judas Iscariot

A number of people have asked me about scholars and non-disclosure agreements. This is tangentially related to the long thread I’ve just finished on the alleged first-centry copy of the Gospel of Mark. Scholars have told us it exists and that they have had something to do with it. We all *assumed* it was because they had actually seen it and probably studied it; turns out *that* was wrong. They almost certainly haven’t studied it and evidently haven’t seen it.

Why do I say “almost certainly an...

GUEST POST! Dr. Brent Nongbri on How We Date Manuscripts

One of the people we are lucky to have as a member of the blog is Dr. Brent Nongbri, who did his PhD at Yale in 2008 and who is now a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Macquarie University (see http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_ancient_history/staff/dr_brent_nongbri/ ). Among other things Brent is one of the most knowledgeable and productive scholars working in the field of palaeography – the discipline that deals with the dating of ancient m...

Another (Final!) Insight into that Mummy Mask and Papyrus

OK, I am at the tail end of this thread on mummy masks and the alleged discovery of a first-century fragment of Mark’s Gospel. But I did want to provide access to an interesting article and penetrating set of questions on the issue published a week ago on CNN by my friend Candida Moss and her partner-in-all-things-editorial Joel Baden (they crank out a lot of articles on issues in biblical studies, especially as items appear in the news). Candida is a Professor of New Testament at Notre Dame...

Why I’d Be Thrilled If A First-Century Manuscript Appeared

In several posts I have been emphasizing – possibly over-emphasizing – that if a first-century fragment of the Gospel of Mark does ever get published, and if it is in *fact*from the first century (which, I should stress, will be almost *impossible* to demonstrate conclusively), that it is very hard indeed to imagine that it will be any kind of game-changer, that it will tell us something different from what we already think. The reason I have been emphasizing this is because the evangelical C...

Talks at the Smithsonian, March 21

My friends at the Biblical Archaeology Society sent this around to some people on their mailing list, announcing my talks on March 21 in Washington DC – talks not for them (the Biblical Archaeology Society) but for the Smithsonian. Here is the announcement, with the blurb and description of the talks. Maybe some of you can come!

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If you plan to be in Washington DC during March you might try to catch his lectures while you are here.

To register for h...

Why Are Evangelical Scholars So Interested in Finding a First-Century Manuscript?

I have thought of a couple of scenarios that would make the discovery of a first -entury papyrus copy – even a small fragment of Mark – VERY interesting, for all of us, not just for evangelical Christian scholars intent on destroying antiquities in order to get their hands on it. (Well, I’ve thought of these scenarios as others have suggested them….) I’ll give the scenarios at the end of this post. But first, assuming, as it is *relatively*, but not absolutely probable that we should, that th...

How Accurate Are our Earliest NT Manuscripts?

QUESTIONS

I have received the following three, interrelated, questions from an inquiring mind that wants to know, all of them involving the potential accuracy of the manuscript tradition of the NT based on what we can deduce from the early papyri. My responses will follow.

In your last debate with Dr. Wallace, he seemed to argue, in part, for the relative integrity of the early NT manuscript tradition. He referred to p75 as being representative of other early NT MSS in that, while obviously the...

Would a First-Century Fragment of Mark Matter?

As you know, there is a good deal of discussion going on about the destruction of mummy masks in order to uncover New Testament papyri. One point that I am not seeing discussed strikes me as the most important of all, and I want to address that here.

But before doing so, I want to ask two questions, that maybe someone on the Blog can answer for me. The first is actuallyseveral questions: exactly how many masks are we talking about here? How many have been destroyed? And how many have been sing...

An Expert Talks About Mummy Masks and Papyri

One of the things that I find disconcerting about all the discussion about whether it is legitimate to destroy mummy masks in order to get NT papyri is that the only people who seem to know anything about what has been found (this alleged first century copy of the Gospel of Mark) are not experts in the specific fields in which expertise is required, both to dismantle masks and to date papyri. As it turns out, they’re all friends of mine. Craig Evans is a New Testament scholar, but he is not...

Defending the Destruction of Mummy Masks

In yesterday’s post on New Manuscripts and the Destruction of Antiquities, I cited an article by Mary-Ann Russo that explained the situation about the mummy masks that were being destroyed in order to acquire papyrus fragments of the New Testament. The scholar mainly cited in that article as being involved in that process was Craig Evans, a friend of mine with whom I have had several public debates. Craig feels that he has been somewhat misrepresented in this article, and sent me a clarificat...