By: Abdul-Rahman (Brent) Klimaszewski

 

Rebuttal to Shamoun dutifully pandering silly, fraudulent, and completely unscholarly Christian pseudo-scholar propaganda regarding Early Gospel writing claims (7Q5, Qumran Cave 7, Magdalen Papyrus (a.k.a. "Huleatt Manuscript", "Jesus Papyrus", "Papyrus 64"), etc.

 

Let us first read from Shamoun himself:

From: http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Shabir-Ally/nab.htm

He Wrote

Add to this list the possible discovery of several NT quotations found in Qumran:

"Jose O'Callahan, a Spanish Jesuit paleographer, made headlines around the world on March 18, 1972, when he identified a manuscript fragment from Qumran... as a piece of the Gospel of Mark. The piece was from Cave 7. Fragments from this cave had previously been dated between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50, hardly within the time frame established for New Testament writings. Using accepted methods of papyrology and paleography, O'Callahan compared sequences of letters with existing documents and eventually identified nine fragments as belonging to one Gospel, Acts, and a few Epistles. Some of these were dated slightly later than 50, but still extremely early...

Mark 4:28 7Q6 A.D. 50

Mark 6:48 7Q15 A.D?

Mark 6:52, 53 7Q5 A.D. 50

Mark 12:17 7Q7 A.D. 50

Acts 27:38 7Q6 A.D. 60+

Rom. 5:11, 12 7Q9 A.D 70+

1 Tim. 3:16; 4:1-3 7Q4 A.D. 70+

2 Peter 1:15 7Q10 A.D. 70+

James 1:23, 24 7Q8 A.D. 70+

"... Both friends and critics acknowledge that, if valid, O'Callahan's conclusions will revolutionize New Testament theories. If even some of these fragments are from New Testament, the implications for Christian apologetics are enormous. Mark and Acts must have been written within the lifetimes of the apostles and contemporaries of the events. There would be no time for mythological embellishment of the records... They must be accepted as historical... There would hardly be time for a predecessor series of Q manuscripts... And since these manuscripts are not originals but copies, parts of the New Testament would be shown to have been copied and disseminated during the lives of the writers. No first-century date allows time for myths or legends to creep into the stories about Jesus." (Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, p. 530) (please see this article for more information.)

Hence, if further research confirms O'Callahan's theories this would establish beyond any reasonable doubt the reliability of the New Testament. Even without these discoveries, the evidence from the Patristic writings and MSS overwhelmingly supports the authenticity and reliability of the biblical text.

Also some excerpts from another Shamoun article located here: http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/documents.htm

Biblical Manuscripts: (note: these are individual manuscripts):
Magdalene Ms (Matthew 26)	1st century	50-60 AD	coexistent(?)
John Rylands (John)	90 AD	130 AD	40 years
Bodmer Papyrus II (John)	90 AD	150-200 AD	60-110 years
Chester Beatty Papyri (NT)	1st cen.	200 AD	150 years
Diatessaron by Tatian (Gospels)	1st cen.	200 AD	150 years
Codex Vaticanus (Bible)	1st cen.	325-350 AD	275-300 years
Codex Sinaiticus (Bible)	1st cen.	350 AD	300 years
Codex Alexandrinus (Bible)	1st cen.	400 AD	350 years

Total New Testament manuscripts = 5,300 Greek MSS, 10,000 Latin Vulgates, 9,300 others = 24,000 copies. Total MSS compiled prior to 600 AD = 230. Some of the most important MSS include:

The John Ryland Papyri:

Manuscript portions of the Gospel of John, located in the John Ryland Library of Manchester, England and believed to be the oldest known fragment of the New Testament, dated AD 130, within 40 years of the original.

Lukan Papyrus:

"The Lukan papyrus, situated in a library in Paris has been dated to the late 1st century or early 2nd century, so it predates the John papyrus by 20-30 years (Time April 26, 1996, pg.8)."

Mark and Qumran:

"But of more importance are the manuscript findings of Mark and Matthew! New research which has now been uncovered by Dr. Carsten Thiede, and is published in his newly released book on the subject, the Jesus Papyrus mentions a fragment from the book of Mark found among the Qumran scrolls (fragment 7Q5) showing that it was written sometime before 68 AD It is important to remember that Christ died in 33 AD, so this manuscript could have been written, at the latest, within 35 years of His death; possibly earlier, and thus during the time that the eyewitnesses to that event were still alive!"

Magdelene Manuscript:

"The most significant find, however, is a manuscript fragment from the book of Matthew (chapt.26) called the Magdalene Manuscript which has been analyzed by Dr. Carsten Thiede, and also written up in his book The Jesus Papyrus. Using a sophisticated analysis of the handwriting of the fragment by employing a special state-of-the-art microscope, he differentiated between 20 separate micrometer layers of the papyrus, measuring the height and depth of the ink as well as the angle of the stylus used by the scribe. After this analysis Thiede was able to compare it with other papyri from that period; notably manuscripts found at Qumran (dated to 58 AD), another at Herculaneum (dated prior to 79 AD), a further one from the fortress of Masada (dated to between 73/74 AD), and finally a papyrus from the Egyptian town of Oxyrynchus. The Magdalene Manuscript fragments matches all four, and in fact is almost a twin to the papyrus found in Oxyrynchus, which bears the date of 65/66 AD Thiede concludes that these papyrus fragments of St. Matthew's Gospel were written no later than this date and probably earlier. That suggests that we either have a portion of the original gospel of Matthew, or an immediate copy, which was written while Matthew and the other disciples, and eyewitnesses to the events were still alive. This would be the oldest manuscript portion of our Bible in existence today, one which co-exists with the original writers!

"What is of even more importance is what it says. The Matthew 26 fragment uses in its text nomina sacra (holy names) such as the diminutive "IS" for Jesus and "KE" for Kurie or Lord (The Times, Saturday, December 24, 1994). This is highly significant for our discussion today, because it suggests that the godhead of Jesus was recognized centuries before it was accepted as official church doctrine at the council of Nicea in 325 AD There is still ongoing discussion concerning the exact dating of this manuscript. However, if the dates prove to be correct then this document alone completely eradicates the criticism leveled against the gospel accounts (such as the "Jesus Seminar") that the early disciples knew nothing about Christ's divinity, and that this concept was a later redaction imposed by the Christian community in the second century (AD)."

(NOTE: The preceding citations can be found at the following web page: http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm)

Other, more extensive, copies of the New Testament include the Chester Beatty Papyri, containing major portions of the New Testament and dated early 3rd century, the Bodmer Papyrus, dated late 2nd century, the Codex Sinaiticus, dated AD 350, and the Codex Vaticanus, dated AD 325 - AD 350. Some of the codices contain the entire New Testament. It can be seen that, as far as the time gap between the original writing of the New Testament and the earliest extant manuscripts, there is no work from the ancient world which can compare to the New Testament. As Sir Frederic Kenyon, former Curator of the British Museum, says:

"The net result of this discovery [of the Chester Beatty Papyri] ... is, in fact, to reduce the gap between the earlier manuscripts and the traditional dates of the New Testament books so far that it becomes negligible in any discussion of their authenticity. No other ancient book has anything like such an early and plentiful testimony to its text." (Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, The Bible and Modern Scholarship [London: John Murray, 1948], 20, as cited in McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict, p. 49)

Add to this list the possible discovery of several NT quotations found in Qumran:

"Jose O'Callahan, a Spanish Jesuit paleographer, made headlines around the world on March 18, 1972, when he identified a manuscript fragment from Qumran ... as a piece of the Gospel of Mark. The piece was from Cave 7. Fragments from this cave had previously been dated between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50, hardly within the time frame established for New Testament writings. Using accepted methods of papyrology and paleography, O'Callahan compared sequences of letters with existing documents and eventually identified nine fragments as belonging to one Gospel, Acts, and a few Epistles. Some of these were dated slightly later than 50, but still extremely early ...

Mark 4:28	7Q6	A.D. 50
Mark 6:48	7Q15	A.D. ?
Mark 6:52, 53	7Q5	A.D. 50
Mark 12:17	7Q7	A.D. 50
Acts 27:38	7Q6	A.D. 60+
Rom. 5:11, 12	7Q9	A.D 70+
1 Tim. 3:16; 4:1-3	7Q4	A.D. 70+
2 Peter 1:15	7Q10	A.D. 70+
James 1:23, 24	7Q8	A.D. 70+

 

 

My Response

First let us quickly rebuttal the SILLY and fraudulent claims regarding the "Magdalen Papyrus" (a.k.a. "Huleatt Manuscript", "Jesus Papyrus", "Papyrus 64") made by the pseudo-scholar fundamentalist Pagan Christian apologists Father O'Callaghan and Carsten Peter Thiede.  Shamoun humorously gives Thiede's fraudulent apologist dating of the Magalen Papyrus, Thiede dated them between 50 C.E. and 60 C.E.  It is VERY, VERY IMPORTANT to know that Thiede's claim has absolutely NO scholarly backing.  All true scholars of papyri who have studied it agree that the Papyrus is earlier than its original dating, but all the true scholars (excluding the fundamentalist Pagan Christian apologist Thiede) agree the Magdalen Papyrus should be dated to around 200 C.E.

A great rebuttal to the pseudo-scholar Pagan Christian fundamentalist Thiede's idiotic and fraudulent claims comes from the University of Pennsylvania's Sigrid Peterson, PhD here whole article can be found at this link: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~petersig/thiede2.txt

Let us read a very important excerpt from the article by Sigrid Peterson, PhD here she shows the main reason Thiede's argument for a 50 C.E. or 60 C.E. date is wrong, fraudulent, and cannot be accepted:

His redating on paleographical grounds is seriously flawed in

four ways. First, he does not indicate how four great

paleographers could all concur on a lowered redating of the

Matthew fragments to a date ca. 200 and still be in error.

Second, he compares letters in these fragments from Egypt

[Luxor is purchase place, hand compares with {P}4, from Philo

codex binding] with material from Herculaneum in Italy (that

may be from ca. 40 b.c.e. on provenance grounds, with a

terminus ad quem of 79 c.e.) and from Qumran in The Land, and

from elsewhere in the wilderness of the Dead Sea (Naxal Xever).

Third, he compares individual letters without an appreciation

of the characteristics of their formation or the hands of which

they are a part. Fourth, his assembly of mss for comparisons is

not a coherent set, and was apparently chosen primarily as a

group of mss which COULD be dated in the first century c.e.,

regardless of their other features.

Thiede does not recognize that a two-column codex such as {P}

64 --Magdalen Gr. 17 -- has no similarly-constructed examples

with which to be compared. He also does not recognize the need

to provide some explanation for the appearance of a two-column

codex at least a century  earlier than all other examples of

two-column codices. See Turner, op. cit.

Finally, Thiede (1995) and Roberts (1953) both transcribed the

fragments as though they contained <italics>nomina sacra

</italics>, and as though the use of nomina sacra was not

restricted to KURIOS, KURIE, or QEOS, QEOU, but rather extended

to abbreviations of IHSOUS. However, and I must state this

emphatically, there is <italics>NO VISIBLE SUPPORT</italics>

for reconstructing <italics>nomina sacra</italics> of IS or IH.

That is to say, almost no ink-papyrus combination exists for

the areas where these have been indicated. In working out the

stichometry, using the available text of Matthew 26 in the

relevant verses, I was able to supply alternative lines in

every case where Thiede proposed abbreviation or suspension

(use of first and last letters), except for the proposed use of

letters instead of a word to signify the number 12. There, I

agree, the stichometry (line length) is such that IB (Greek

letters standing for 12) must be read. This was also Roberts's

(1953) transcription. 

Specifically, in the case of Fr. 2, verso (Mt 26.10), Thiede

reconstructs a first line as <Greek> [oISeipenau]t[o]i[sti]

</Greek>  -- which gives a 16-letter stich.

There are at least two problems with this reconstruction.

First, the column is missing both beginning letters and ending

letters. Second, there are no letters on papyrus for this line.

At most, there are two dots, which might be the bottoms of

letters, and if they are the bottoms of letters, those letters

just might be the indicated t and i of Thiede's line 1.

In the case of Fr. 3, recto (Mt 26.22-23) both Thiede and

Roberts reconstruct a line with KE, for KURIE of "Is it I,

Lord." Thiede shows <Greek>[imei]KEod[eapokri]</Greek> for a

15-letter stich. 

That there is a line of text here in the papyrus is apparent.

What it might contain is not at all clear. The only clear line

follows, with both beginning and end of the stich missing. The

possibilities for reconstruction are numerous; Thiede's line is

not supported by the miscellaneous ink in various spots on the

line. 

In the case of Fr. 1, recto (Mt 26.31) many might argue that

the name IHSOUS *must* be suspended, using IH, or abbreviated,

using IS, in order for the line lengths to come out right. I

would point out that we have a line clearly beginning <Greek>

autoiso </Greek>. . . . and a following line that is 16 letters

long, (Thiede counted 17) consisting of one word, <Greek>

skandalisqhsesqe </Greek>, with the words following in the text

appearing on the line below. The text we now have suggests that

the first line would read <Greek> autoisoiesouspanteshumeis

</Greek> for an impossible 25 letters.

Thiede suggested <Greek> autoiso[ISpantes] </Greek> at 15

letters. I suggest that <Greek> autoiso[iesouspantes </Greek>

at 19 letters is possible. This possibility exists because the

word <Greek> autois </Greek> extends into the margin by one

letter, and the next five letters occupy the space taken by

only four in the following line. This would mean that a line of

19 letters would come out no longer than a line of 16 or 17

letters, yet could still contain the name IHSOUS written out.

Something has to be done to fit the first line into the column.

That it has to be done using an abbreviation or suspension of

IHSOUS is not automatically the case. It is a plausible

solution, however, for a manuscript considered in relationship

with other two-column codices and other manuscripts containing

<italics> nomina sacra </italics>, which Thiede does not do.

IV SUMMATION

Thiede's 1995 article suggests a lowered date for {P}64 -- P.

Magdalen Gr.17 -- by arguments which are methodologically

unsound. His further argument that there are <italics> nomina

sacra</italics> used in place of IHSOUS and KURIE is an

extremely flimsy one. These fragments of papyrus do not witness

directly to the reconstructions with recognizable inked letters

on physical papyrus. The layout of visible letters in one case

supports Thiede's (and Roberts's) observation that the text

contains Greek letters which represent the numeral 12, rather

than the Greek word for 12. In the other cases, other plausible

reconstructions of the lines are also possible. In the absence

of more data, such as the Barcelona fragments might provide,

these fragments do not provide any firm evidence for the

existence of <italics> nomina sacra</italics> in either

Roberts's date of ca. 200, or Thiede's 1st century dating.

 

Again the preceding excerpts are from the great article located at this link: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~petersig/thiede2.txt

 

Another great article refuting's the fundamentalist Pagan Christian apologist Thiede's LIES and fraudulent claims regarding the "Magdalen Papyrus" (a.k.a. "Huleatt manuscript", "Jesus Papyrus", "Papyrus 64") can be found at the following link: http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/210Thiede.html

The following are some excerpts from this great article http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/210Thiede.html:

Thiede argued that the three pieces of Matthew that make up the Magdalen Papyrus (P64), usually dated “c 200,” share similarities with handwriting from earlier papyri and should be redated between 70 and 100 AD. Thiede therefore puts the Magdalen Papyrus back before 70 AD to “the lifetime of disciples, apostles, contemporaries” of Jesus. This allows him to picture the Magdalen Papyrus as a direct copy of the original scroll written by the apostle, Matthew, and, because the Magdalen Papyrus uses a “sacred name” abbreviation when Jesus is called “kyrios”, “lord” or “master,"

Thiede’s redating on all these grounds is seriously flawed. He must know the tendentiousness of his method, and that it overturns most modern scholarship on the synoptic gospels, so what is his point? Thiede hopes to strengthen the evidence that Jesus was known to be divine by his contemporaries. If Thiede’s downdating is true, and if nomina sacra are used for the name of Jesus, he wants to argue these fragments show that some of the early Jesus movement thought that Jesus was like God, Moses or David, and his name treated as sacred. If the practice can be seen in a version of Matthew as early as 70 AD, Thiede wants to persuade us the first Christians used the nomen sacra for the name of a man they had witnessed as a god. Within the lifetime of some of the disciples, Matthew therefore recorded an eyewitness account of the deeds of a god.

The media were not critical and said things like, “new papyrus fragment shows that followers of Jesus knew he was divine”. Later Thiede with a hack called Matthew d’Ancona wrote a bestselling book, The Jesus Papyrus, (Eyewitness to Jesus, in the USA). Yet, Thiede’s redating would not qualify the fragments as pieces of an “eyewitness” account, a claim Thiede and his hack accomplice had made. Daryl D Schmidt, in the Journal of Higher Criticism in 1996 said in exasperation, “What is so amazing is that there is no evidence here whatsoever."

The Times of London wrote, “not since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 has there been such a potentially important breakthrough in biblical scholarship.” Such a prestigious weekly as Time was utterly sycophantic about the book even though scholar, Graham Stanton, had been interviewed and explained to the editor the worthlessness of it. His views were scarcely mentioned, while Thiede was made out to be a Robin Hood fighting the cynical establishment. Robin Hoods are needed but Thiede is trying to buttress the “Adamandevers” of the Christian establishment—he is a Sheriff of Nottingham not a Robin Hood!

Der Spiegel, the German popular magazine, gave a much more balanced and scholarly account, notwithstanding its populist appeal. Spiegel rejected Thiede’s claims. Biblical Archaeology Review called Thiede’s work, “junk scholarship”, earning a letter from Thiede himself, but Hershel Shanks, the editor, politely replied that even scholars to whom Thiede appeals reject his claims. Meanwhile Graham Stanton had written his own popular but scholarly refutation in his book, Gospel Truth? Buy it! Especially if you have been gulled by d’Ancona and Thiede.

So, ignoring all the hype, the whole caboodle is a confidence trick. Sigrid Peterson of the University of Pennsylvania has comprehensively shown in Judaios Thiede’s lowering of the date for P64—P Magdalen Gr 17—is methodologically unsound. Mistaken methods invalidate Thiede’s inference about the date of the copy of Matthew from the P Magdalen Gr fragments. His redating is opposed to those of Bell, Skeat, Turner, and Roberts, all of whom agree that these fragments should indeed be redated but from the third or fourth centuries to c 200 AD, not the first century. Thiede does not explain why these authorities on papyrology are wrong. Skeat completely ignores Thiede in a 1997 review of work of these papyri in New Testament Studies. Thiede’s is a minor contribution—he has shown simply that what was once P Magdalen Gr 18 is now P Magdalen Gr 17. …

A S Hunt, who with Grenfell assigned manuscripts which came from codices to third century or later, thought the fourth century was more likely. While Hunt and Grenfell were wrong to think that codices did not appear until the third century, codicological information is important. No one disputes that these fragments come from a codex. Eric G Turner set a lower bound for codex development as the second century AD based on the dating of “Christian” materials, with Greek literary codices becoming prevalent a century later. Thiede does not address the implications of his findings for codicology. Should Turner’s dates for codices be lowered? One assumes they should but Thiede, knowing his work is feeble, will not say.

Roberts, with the agreement of Bell, Skeat and Turner, all authorities in the palæography of Greek manuscripts, reassigned P64 to c 200 AD from its palæography. Thiede does not say why these eminent people were incorrect. Instead, he argues that new papyri, published since Roberts’ work, allow an earlier date. He mentions the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, texts from Herculaneum before 79 AD, the eruption of Vesuvius, and a recent publication that lowers the date of Bodmer-Chester Beatty Papyrus II (P46) from c 200 to c 100 AD. From these examples some of which might be datable to the first century, he looks for individual letter forms from the Matthew fragments which are not unlike letter forms in his samples chosen only by their date. In short, he adduces likenesses of individual letters in the Matthew fragments to these early papyri from various parts of the Mediterranean, even seeing resemblances between serifed letters from serif-style manuscripts and unserifed letters from P64, where overall the style is lacking in serifs or other ornamentation.

Even then all his data do not fit his conclusion. The letter epsilon is squared off before 200 BC and after 200 AD, and is rounded during the 400 years in between. In these fragments of Matthew, the epsilon is not usually rounded but is squared off, and so the fragments were not written between 200 BC and 200 AD. The doubt in some cases makes the date of 200 AD just tenable. Without the knowledge gained in this way, Thiede’s redating contradicts what is known. It does not follow accepted standards of practice, and is therefore suspect.

Reliance solely on individual letter forms is unsound. A sound method would assemble a group of related manuscripts without regard to their date, then place the specific manuscript at its optimum place in the series. This method has good results in palæographically dating the Hebrew-Aramaic manuscripts of the Dead Sea. Where there are few examples, good palæographical comparisons cannot be made and dating is hazardous. Thiede’s assembly of manuscripts for comparisons is not a coherent set, and was apparently chosen primarily as a group of manuscripts which could be dated in the first century AD, regardless of their other features. To use the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll as a basis for dating, as Thiede has done, is to compound the unreliability of his palæographical dating. There is no reason to think that Thiede has been striving for objectivity, when the methodology is so closely related to the results obtained.

Thiede concludes his argumentation with a discussion of nomina sacra, two or three letter representations of holy names such as for Iesous and Kyrie. Early Christian manuscripts abbreviated “sacred names” used for Jesus, God, and Spirit, as well as a dozen other associated nouns, such as Father, Son, Heaven, David, Israel and Jerusalem. Thiede contends that the very act of using such an abbreviation was a visual way for Christians to show that “Jesus was Lord and God”. On this basis alone rests the claim repeated in the news media that Thiede had discovered evidence that Jesus was considered divine by his own disciples. There is of course no such evidence. Thiede’s argument, from Roberts’ suggestion, that nomina sacra, might have been used—but cannot now be seen because the papyrus is broken—is flimsy. Usually they are denoted by an overhead line, and none can be seen on these fragments.

Typical of Thiede’s disingenuousness, the evidence argues against him. The context of the abbreviation in Matthew 26:22 is someone calling Jesus Kyrie, which can mean merely “Sir” or “master”, rather than “Lord.” In the other earliest surviving New Testament papyri, this word gets abbreviated regardless of what it means, including when it is addressed to Philip in John 12:21 and when Jesus uses it in parables about masters and slaves. Likewise the name Jesus gets abbreviated even when it refers to Joshua (Heb 4:8) and to Justus (Col 4:11). Such mundane uses of the “sacred name” abbreviations would totally surprise the naïve reader who might well assume that Thiede was telling the whole truth.

Thiede argues that Kim’s lowered dating of P46 (Bodmer II), which has clear nomina sacra, supports Roberts’s speculation that nomina sacra were used in the first century AD. Roberts and Thiede both reconstruct nomina sacra in unclear or missing portions of the fragments of P64. Where documents have similar phraseology, such as legal and commercial documents, one document can be reconstructed from another. In specific cases, there is no such basis. Basing an argument on reconstruction then is arguing from uncertain evidence.

Roberts is methodologically within bounds in so doing for a manuscript of c 200 AD, because other evidence exists to support the practice. Thiede is methodologically less secure in reconstructing nomina sacra for a date around 70 AD, since he relies on their plain existence only in Kim’s redating of P46. Thiede’s hypothesis depends on nomina sacra in the text of these fragments of Matthew 26, and specifically on the nomen sacrum IS for IHSOUS. Thiede and Roberts both transcribed the fragments as though they contained nomina sacra, and as though the use of nomina sacra was not restricted to KURIOS, KURIE, or THEOS, THEOU, but rather extended to abbreviations of IHSOUS. There is no independent support for reconstructing nomina sacra of IS or IH.

Alternative lines can be constructed in every case where Thiede sees abbreviation except for use of letters instead of a word to signify the number 12, where IB (Greek letters for 12) must be read. The layout of visible letters (stichometry or line length), using the relevant verses of Matthew 26, in this one case supports Thiede. In the other cases, other plausible reconstructions of the lines are also possible. Elsewhere, the possibilities for reconstruction are many.

In the case of Matthew 26:31 in the fragment, many argue that the name IHSOUS must be suspended, using IH, or abbreviated, using IS, for the line lengths to come out right. The text we now have suggests that the first line would read “autoisoiesouspanteshumeis” for an impossible 25 letters. Thiede suggested “autoiso[ISpantes]” at 15 letters. But “autoiso[iesouspantes]” at 19 letters is possible. The word “autois” enters the margin by one letter, and the next five letters occupy the space of four in the following line. This would mean that a line of 19 letters would be no longer than a line of 16 or 17 letters even with IHSOUS written out.

In the absence of more data, such as the Barcelona fragments Thiede mentions but does not use—P67 which is part of the same manuscript—might provide, these fragments do not give any firm evidence for nomina sacra from either Roberts’s date of c 200, or Thiede’s first century dating. He also provides no reason for dropping P4, the Paris Luke fragment, which C H Roberts assigned to the same manuscript:

There can in my opinion be no doubt that all these fragments come from the same codex which was reused as packing for the binding of the late third century codex of Philo.

Graham Stanton has found that binding the four gospels into one codex bagan no earlier than about 150 AD. If the fragments P4, P64 and P67 prove to be from the same codex as Roberts thinks they are then Thiede’s hypothesis is dealt another heavy blow. T C Skeat, after 60 years of experience, declares that the script of the three papyri “agree even in the smallest details, so far as these can be checked,” P64 and P67 being such small fragments. Thiede’s research is flawed in its conception and its presentation, and his findings therefore have no basis. It is another lunatic attempt by a Christian to do God’s work by cheating. Thiede has admitted that his purpose was to promote belief. It serves as an example of what Christians have often done and continue to do. Issue bogus research and fabrications to fool the gullible.

Thiede is interested too in a fourth piece of Greek papyrus, a tiny fragment from Qumran Cave 7. He champions the proposal that this belongs to the gospel of Mark (Mk 6:52-53) as against other identifications, such as Jeremy 7:3b-5. The Qumran fragment has fewer than a dozen complete letters and the only complete word is “kai” (“and”). To make it match Mark 6, Thiede has to justify a spelling variation, an entire missing phrase, and special reconstructions of broken-off letters.

Thiede’s forte is creating scenarios that answer critics’ objections to his astonishing suggestions. How would Mark end up in a Qumran cave? As Jewish Christians fled Jerusalem for Pella in 62 or 66 AD, they dropped their scrolls off for the Essenes to deposit in the caves! Thiede further speculates that when they returned to Jerusalem a decade after the war they built the first synagogal church on Mount Zion on “the rubble of their former living quarters”. …

According to Schmidt, Thiede has no credentials, has never held an academic post, is self-appointed, and has no credibility in scholarly circles, who dismiss his claims as groundless. Buyers of his books should demand their money back on the grounds that they were defrauded into buying fiction.

 

Again the preceding excerpts were from the great article at this link: http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/210Thiede.html

 

 

The following is from the link: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Mss/P64.html

Name

Papyrus 64 (Mag Gr. 18), P⁶⁴, Papyrus 67 (P.Barc. 1), P⁶⁷, and Papyrus 4 (#Gr. 1120), P⁴, believed to be coming from the same codex.

Date

c. 200 CE.

Provenance

P⁴ : Coptos (modern name Qift), Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile, by Vincent Scheil during his expedition to Upper Egypt in 1880.

P⁶⁴ : Puchased by Charles B. Huleatt in Luxor in 1901 and given to Magdalen College Library, Oxford University.

P⁶⁷ : First published by Ramón Roca-Puig.

Size

P⁴ : 13.5 cm. x 17 cm. There are two columns and 36 lines per page.

P⁶⁴ : Three fragments of sizes (a) 4.1 cm x 1.2 cm., (b) 1.6 cm. x 1.6 cm., and (c) 4.1 cm. x 1.3 cm. There are two columns and 35-36 lines per page. Image can be seen here.

P⁶⁷ : 10 [+3] cm. x 15 cm. There are two columns and 36-38 lines per page.

Contents

P⁴ : Luke 1:58-59; 1:62-2:1, 6-7; 3:8-4:2, 29-32, 34-35; 5:3-8; 5:30-6:16.

P⁶⁴ : Matthew 26:7-8, 10, 14-15, 22-23, 31-33.

P⁶⁷ : Matthew 3:9, 15; 5:20-22, 25-28.

Textual Character

P⁴ : It concurs with B against more often than the reverse. The Alands call this text as "normal" and Metzger, "proto-Alexandrian." Accompanying P⁴ is one fragment that reads "Gospel according to Matthew" perhaps written by a later scribe at a later date.

P⁶⁴ : The Alands call this text as "strict." Colin Roberts notes the "Alexandrian" character of the text.

P⁶⁷ : The Alands call this text as "strict." Ramón Roca-Puig demonstrated this manuscript's close affinity with .

Writing

The hand is strong and firm perhaps written by a professional scribe.

Location

P⁴ : Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France.

P⁶⁴ : Magdalen College Library, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.

P⁶⁷ : Fundación San Lucas Evangelista, Barcelona, Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me now begin refuting Shamoun's use of the tired claims of the "researchers" Christian fundamentalist apologists Father O'Callaghan and Carsten Peter Thiede.  Shamoun brings up Cave Qumran #7 of the "Dead Sea Scrolls".

 

Let us deal with this in sections

 

7Q5- Shamoun dutifully gives the Pagan Christian apologist fairy-tale conclusion saying 7Q5 is Mark 6:52-53.

The Gospel of Mark has a composition date of: 65 C.E. to 80 C.E. according to Christian scholars (from: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/)

 

So if Shamoun's sources were correct this would be huge for proving that Mark was an eyewitness and very early after the time of Jesus(PBUH), since scholars tell us the Qumran community in Palestine disbanded at the last 68 C.E.  But very importantly, does the Pagan Christian claim that "7Q5" equals Mark 6:52-53 stand up to scholarly criticism?  As we will soon see the clear and certain answer is NO!

 

Picture of 7Q5 papyri from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/7Q5.jpg

 

Mark 6:52-53: 52: for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
53: And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennes'aret, and moored to the shore. (RSV (Revised Standard version) Bible) (from: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=RsvMark.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=6&division=div1)

 

 

Christian scholar Graham Stanton who served as "President-Elect" of the international society of New Testament scholars, Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, writes in his book Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus & the Gospels

"7Q5 contains only ten Greek letters on four lines which can be read with certainty.  I used to tell my students that after only one Greek lesson they could already read an important Greek fragment from Qumran, for it contains only one full word, kai (and).  However, as Thiede himself has shown, the tiny size of the fragment and the small number of certain letters do not rule out the possibility of identification, for papyrus fragments of comparable size have been identified successfully.  If 7Q5 = Mark 6:52-53, then this text did not contain the Greek phrase epi ten gen (to land), otherwise line 4 would be nine letters too long.  The phrase is found in all Greek manuscripts of Mark and all the early translations into other languages.  This is an embarrassment for the theory, but it is not fatal: individual New Testament manuscripts occasionally contain readings not attested in any other manuscript. (page 27)

 

continuing on with Graham's writing:

 

Two letters are clear in line two, tau and omega.  For some time now the next letter has been central to the debate.  If 7Q5 is a fragment of Mark, this damaged letter must be a nu, otherwise the theory collapses.  Thiede claims that the difference between what he takes to be partial nu in line 2 and the clear nu in line 4 is not significant, for the scribe of 7Q5 did vary his letters slightly.  He cites as an example the differences between the eta in line four, and the eta in line 5.  But a simple test shows that this claim is fallacious.  By using tracing paper on an enlarged clear photograph of 7Q5 one can compare the two etas: the difference is insignificant.  If one traces the clear nu in line 4 and tries to place it over the disputed damaged letter in line 2, it is immediately obvious that a nu simply will not fit there.  Very properly, Thiede insists that careful examination of the original is always preferable to photographs, even if they are infrared, or enlargements.  He concludes that the nu in line 2 is 'highly possible'.  Other experienced scholars have looked at the original recently and have concluded that a nu is impossible.  One such scholar is R.G. Jenkins of the University of Melbourne.  He has carried out a much more sophisticated version of my tracing paper test.  The results are shown in the diagram in Plate 8 of this book.

            At this point in the debate, Carsten Thiede will want to produce his trump card, the result of an investigation carried out on 12 April 1992 by the Division of Identification and Forensic Science of the Israel National Police.  With German television cameras rolling, a stereo-microscope was used to look closely at the disputed letter in line 2.  A photograph is included in the published version of the papers given at a symposium held in Eichstatt, Germany in 1991.  In the photography there are faint traces of what Thiede thinks is the top of the diagonal of a nu (the Greek letter shaped like the English letter N).  These traces are not visible to the naked eye.  In May 1995 I showed the new enlarged photograph to T.C. Skeat, a very experienced papyrologist.  He was certain there simply wasn't enough room for a nu in this line.  He also confirmed the judgment of S.R. Pickering and R.R.E. Cook that the next damaged letter looks very much like a damaged alpha- a further nail in the coffin of the theory that 7Q5 is a part of Mark.  R.G. Jenkins, who has been working on all the fragments from Cave 7 for some time, has looked carefully at the original and the new photograph.  He has reached the same conclusion: he thinks the faint traces which the stereo-microscope has found may be no more than a shadow.  

            Several other experienced specialists have concluded that nu in line 2 is either very unlikely or quite impossible.  Pickering and Cook read an iota at this point; they stress the similarity of this damaged letter to the certain iota in line 3.  This seems to me to be the most likely reading.

            One last argument used to support the O'Callaghan/Thiede theory needs to be examined.  Computer searchers have been mentioned several times in the debate.  In particular, appeal has been made to search at Tyndale House, Cambridge, using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) CD-ROM, a massive database of almost all the Greek writings of antiquity.  The search failed to yield any text other than Mark 6:52-53 for the letters identified by O'Callaghan.  This seems to provide impressive support for the O'Callaghan theory until one learns that the Cambridge search did not take account of all the possible ways of reading the damaged letters in 7Q5.

            There is an even more serious limitation with computer searches.  Although computers can search rapidly databases with incorporate selected editions of texts, not even the TLG CD-ROM is complete.  It does not include all possible readings of the damaged letters, let alone textual variations in manuscripts.  Above all, neither the TLG CD-ROM nor any other database can possibly include lost writings or missing sections of texts!  Many Jewish writings in Greek have survived either only in part, or in translations into other languages, or not at all.  7Q5 is almost certainly a fragment of one such writing.  (Graham Stanton, Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus & the Gospels, pages 28-29; Copyright date 1995)

 

Let us now read some excerpts of another article debunking O'Callaghan and Thiede's 7Q5 Fraud!

 

Following is an excerpt from the article found at this link: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1196

 

These counter-charges by Thiede are not as substantial as he supposes. We shall approach them chiastically. First, 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, Thiede discounts the empirical evidence which he himself provides and renders his own judgments untouchable by any who have access only to a photograph. In other words, he is saying, “You don’t have a right to criticize O’Callaghan’s reconstruction because you haven’t seen the fragment.” Such a stance is elitist at best; at worst, it moves the entire discussion from a scholarly dialogue to a fideistic statement: Thiede basically says “Trust me.” A constant refrain is that O’Callaghan’s reconstructions are possible. Perhaps this is so, but such are also highly unlikely. In particular, an unbiased reader looking at the photograph will almost certainly disagree with O’Callaghan’s reconstructed nu in line 2¹⁴ and agree with the original editors’ judgment about epsilon, sigma in line 5 (against O’Callaghan’s sigma, alpha). Thiede is quite right that examination of a document firsthand is to be preferred to examination of a photograph.¹⁵ And this is precisely where his and O’Callaghan’s approach falters: others have looked at the MS firsthand and have disagreed with O’Callaghan.

Second, although it is certainly possible that ejpiV thVn gh'n is legitimately omitted in O’Callaghan’s stichometric reconstruction,¹⁶ it strikes me as too convenient for the hypothesis: in order to make this papyrus fragment fit the text of Mark, the non-recoverable portion of the text needs to be altered. This again makes the proposal non-falsifiable. Further—and this still looms as an important consideration—such an omission is unattested in any other MS for this verse.

Third, most damaging for O’Callaghan’s identification is the tau in the place of a delta. Although, admirably, both O’Callaghan and Thiede provide examples of such interchange in koine Greek due to the similar sound of the two letters (e.g., te for dev), none of the examples produced involve the preposition diav, whether standing alone or in compound. Illustrations such as the interchange of te for dev do not help the case, because both were real words with some semantic overlap. And Thiede’s example of the interchange between druvfakton and truvfakton (pp. 28-29) is not very convincing, because such a rare word would be expected to have variant spellings. The preposition diav, however, has no semantic overlap with tia (there is, in fact, no such word) and is so common that a schoolboy would have learned its correct spelling. Such a misspelling as O’Callaghan and Thiede envision this scribe as producing would be analogous to a modern author writing “tiameter” for “diameter.” In light of this, surely it is an overstatement for Thiede to assert that “one might go so far as to say that the peculiarities themselves support this view [that 7Q5 = Mark 6:52-53]” (p. 31).

One final point about chapter 3 can be mentioned. In his final footnote of the chapter (n. 31, pp. 40-41), Thiede states that “a more recent computer check [than K. Aland’s], using the most elaborate Greek texts (Ibykus [sic]) has failed to yield any text other than Mark 6:52-53 for the combination of letters identified by O’Callaghan et al. in 7Q5.” In other words, using a very powerful software search engine¹⁷ which is able to scan over 64 million words in hundreds of ancient Greek texts in a matter of minutes, Thiede could not find any text, besides Mark 6, that fit this Cinderella’s shoe.

At first glance, this 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. Now suppose I come along and say that one or two of the clear letters need to be changed. And of the unclear letters, I propose three or four nearly impossible suggestions. I do this because I have a certain text in mind that I want this sheet to be a copy of. Would it be so surprising when my Macintosh spits out that very text—after I have programmed it do so? In doing this kind of thing, Thiede has fallen prey to the very argument he just leveled against Kurt Aland in the same footnote!¹⁸

Second, when one allows for different possibilities than just O’Callaghan’s for the partially legible letters, the Ibycus program¹⁹ 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).²⁰

Third, even if none of these is as impressive as is Mark 6:52-53 (a point I would readily concede), there is no necessity in identifying 7Q5 with any known text.²¹ As possible as the O’Callaghan/Thiede proposal is, it remains far more plausible to see 7Q5 as a copy of some unknown text—just like other papyri in cave 7.

Chapter 4 (three pages in length) is an attempt to show, by analogy with two other fragments, that positive identification of 7Q5 can be made in spite of the paucity of letters.

The fifth chapter (“The Seventh Cave at Qumran—Its Text and Their Users”) (pp. 45-63) answers the historical question: Why would Christian documents be concealed in a Qumran cave? Thiede summarizes O’Callaghan’s case that some of the other fragments in this cave are portions from the NT (e.g., 7Q6 = Mark 4:28; 7Q15 = Mark 6:48; 7Q8 = Jas 1:23-24; 7Q9 = Rom 5:11-12; 7Q10 = 2 Pet 1:15; 7Q4 = 1 Tim 3:16-4:3).²² Such equations were pursued by O’Callaghan because he had already felt that his identification of 7Q5 was certain. As would be expected, he has received quite a bit of criticism for these speculations. Some of the arguments against his proposals are that (1) the fragments involved have as few as three or four clearly identified letters; (2) one of the documents, 7Q6, has two fragments, yet O’Callaghan assigned the first to Mark 4, the second to Acts 27; (3) on higher critical grounds, that 2 Peter and 1 Timothy especially could have had copies by 68 CE seemed impossible;²³ (4) four fragments identified as copies of Mark by four different scribes seemed to go beyond even the realm of “Phantasie”;²⁴ (5) textual emendations and/or less than probable reconstructions of letters were forced on the fragments to make them fit the theory; and (6) 7Q4 (= 1 Tim 3:16-4:3) is, paleographically, so much like 7Q5, that it should likewise be dated no later than 50 CE—and this is an impossible date for any pastoral epistle. In my judgment, Thiede does not adequately address these concerns (many of which are completely ignored).

Regarding the historical situation, Thiede devotes ten pages (54-63) to his defense of a Christian cave among the Qumran caves. He builds an ingenious case for geographical contact between Christians and the Essenes in Jerusalem, with many of his points containing an element of truth. From this he extrapolates that when the Christians left Jerusalem for Pella (c. 66 CE), they would have “entrusted them [their sacred documents], or some of them, to their Essene neighbours for safekeeping, and they, in turn, [would have] hid them in a separate cave at Qumran” (p. 58). Although this reconstruction is in the realm of possibility, it is barely so.

Even if we were to grant geographical contact between Christians and Essenes in Jerusalem, it is too much to assume that there was a friendly familiarity between the two communities. Two considerations seem to argue against this. First, the Essenes were the most extreme separatists of any Jewish sect in the first century—so much so that they established a celibate community away from Jerusalem. If they hardly communicated with other Jews, how much less would they do so with Christians? Second, the Essenes were extreme legalists.²⁵ The Christians were at the other end of the spectrum. And it is significant that five of the fragments found in cave 7 are allegedly from Mark and Romans—two books which are about as anti-legalistic as can be found in the NT canon. In light of these two considerations, is it really plausible that the early Christians “entrusted [these documents] to their Essene neighbours for safekeeping”?

The book concludes with several illustrations (including 7Q5, ⁵², et al), inviting the reader to see exactly what it is that the experts have been debating.

Conclusion

To sum up: Not only are O’Callaghan and Thiede arguing that 7Q5 is a fragment from Mark’s Gospel, but they are also appealing to Kurt Aland to list this document officially as a NT papyrus: “Future editions of the Greek New Testament will have to include 7Q5. It should, at long last, receive a ‘p’ number, it must be recognized in the apparatus, with its variants” (p. 41). Here is no detached plea; rather, it is an indictment. And this not-so-subtle indictment takes on parabolic overtones in the concluding statement of the book, where Thiede comments about the alleged early Christians who orchestrated the burying of these documents in Qumran’s Cave 7 (p. 63):

Using papyrus instead of the more expensive parchment, these first Christians were eager to share the first fruits of their own literary harvest with those who were hungry for the good news. When it was a question of promoting the gospel about Jesus they showed a spirit which was at the same time innovative and open-minded. Of them, it could not be said what Mark writes, preserved in 7Q5, about the first disciples after the feeding of the five thousand: ‘Their minds were closed.’

Putting all this in perspective, we conclude this review by addressing two concerns: evidence and attitudes. First, what is the hard evidence on which O’Callaghan’s identification is based? A scrap of papyrus smaller than a man’s thumb with only one unambiguous word—kai. Only six other letters are undisputed: tw (line 2), t (line 3, immediately after the kai), nh (line 4), h (line 5). To build a case on such slender evidence would seem almost impossible even if all other conditions were favorable to it. But to identify this as Mark 6:52-53 requires (1) two significant textual emendations (tau for delta in a manner which is unparalleled; and the dropping of ejpiV thVn gh'n even though no other MSS omit this phrase); and (2) unlikely reconstructions of several other letters. Add to this that the MS is from a Qumran cave and that it is to be dated no later than 50 CE and the case against the Marcan proposal seems overwhelming. If it were not for the fact that Jos O’Callaghan is a reputable papyrologist and that C. P. Thiede is a German scholar, one has to wonder whether this hypothesis would ever have gotten more than an amused glance from the scholarly community.

Second, regarding attitude, I find it disturbing that many conservatives have been so uncritically eager to accept the O’Callaghan hypothesis. 7Q5 does not, as one conservative put it, mean “that seven tons of German scholarship may now be consigned to the flames.”²⁶ On the other hand, I find it equally disturbing that many liberal scholars have uncritically rejected O’Callaghan’s proposal without even examining the evidence. Higher criticism must of course have a say in this discussion; but it must not preclude discussion. Both attitudes, in their most extreme forms, betray an arrogance, an unwillingness to learn, a fear of truth while clinging to tradition, a fortress mentality—none of which is in the spirit of genuine biblical scholarship. When the next sensational archaeological find is made, should not conservatives and liberals alike ask the question: Will we fairly examine the evidence, or will we hold the party line at all costs? ²⁷

Further rebuttal to Christian 7Q5 and more claims

An excerpt from the link: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

José O'Callaghan's work was related to identification of very small fragments found in Cave VII in Qumran. These fragments were published by Baillet, Milik and de Vaux. Since they were unsure, they classified them as "Biblical Texts?".^[67]

Figure 1: Fragments of the papyri found in Cave VII in Qumran. The sizes of 7Q6,1, 7Q6,2, 7Q9, 7Q10 and 7Q15 are even smaller than that of 7Q8 as shown above.

O'Callaghan identified them as having being written around 50 CE and containing a portion of Mark 6:52-53 (MSS. 7Q5), Mark 4:28 (MSS. 7Q6,1), I Timothy 3:16, 4:1-3 (MSS. 7Q4), James 1:23, 24 (MSS. 7Q8), Acts 27:38 (MSS. 7Q6,2), Romans 5:11-12 (MSS. 7Q9), II Peter 1:15 (MSS. 7Q10), Mark 12:17 (MSS. 7Q7) and Mark 6:48 (MSS. 7Q15).