By: Anonymous Muslim

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://./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://./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 Tim3:16-4:3) 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).^[68] This identification was given popularity in the news media for the consumption of general public. However, the scholarly community rejected the identification. A series of critiques by M. Baillet,^[69] P. Benoit,^[70] Gordon Fee,^[71] Colin Hemer,^[72] Colin Roberts^[73] and Kurt Aland^[74] appeared in journals. As Metzger puts it:

Most of the popular articles accepted O'Callaghan's opinion; almost all the scholarly articles rejected it.^[75]

In 1988, G. -Wilhelm Nebe proposed that fragment 7Q4,1 was part of I Enoch 103:3-4, while 7Q4,2 was part of I Enoch 98:11.^[76] He also suggested that 7Q8 was part of I Enoch 103:7-8; but with much reservation, since this fragment could easily be identified with several Old Testament passages.^[77] Nebe identification of 7Q4,1-2 was challenged by Thiede who supported O'Callaghan's identification. In 1996 Puech defended Nebe's identification of fragment 7Q4,1 as being part of I Enoch 103:3-4; while suggesting that 7Q4,2 is part of I Enoch 105:1.^[78]Recent textual reconstruction by Muro^[79] and Puech^[80] has convincingly shown that 7Q4,1 (= I Enoch 103:3-4), 7Q8 (= I Enoch 103:7-8) and 7Q12 (= I Enoch 103:4) are part of the same ensemble. This definitely excludes the identification of them as a part of the epistles of the New Testament, I Timothy 3:16, 4:1-3 and James 1:23-24.

It is not surprising that the Christian missionary and apologetical literature, that thrives on cashing in on human gullibility, still clings to the identification of O'Callaghan that has been rejected in scholarly circles.^[81] This is also true for Carsten Thiede's work.^[82]

O'Callaghan's discredited identification of the Qumran fragments was given a new lease of life by Carsten Thiede in his book The Earliest Gospel Manuscript? The Qumran Papyrus 7Q5 And Its Significance For New Testament Studies (1992, Paternoster: Exeter). In this book Thiede tried to argue for the existence of a Christian text in Qumran on the basis of an unlikely identification of the papyrus fragment 7Q5 as part of Mark's Gospel. But it is his later work co-authored with Matthew d'Ancona The Jesus Papyrus that attracted the biggest attention which we will now turn to.

Matthew d'Ancona, a reporter with The Times on the 24th December 1994, just a day before Christmas, reported a claim that certain fragments of Matthew are even older than P⁵², attributing its dating to Thiede:

A papyrus believed to the oldest extant fragment of the New Testament has been found in an Oxford library. It provides the first material evidence that the Gospel according to St. Matthew is an eyewitness account written by contemporaries of Christ.

In a paper to be published next month, Carsten Thiede, a German papyrologist, will claim that three scraps of Matthew belonging to Magdalen College date from the mid-first century A.D. The fragments, which have been kept at the college since 1901, were thought originally to have been written in the late second century.

This refers to three fragments of Matthew of the Magdalen papyrus P⁶⁴. In 1953, the papyrologist Colin Roberts found that the hand used on them closely paralleled the fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri from Egypt which had been dated around 200 CE.^[83] Roberts showed the photograph of this manuscript to three of his fellow papyrologists Bell, Skeat and Turner, who "independently without hesitation pronounced in favor of a date in the later second century." He then concludes that "their verdict can be accepted with confidence."^[84]

Thiede's paper disputing and overturning the findings of Roberts was published in 1995 in Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik.^[85] A slightly revised version appeared in Tyndale Bulletin later that year.^[86] The paper, contrary to the extravagant claims made in The Times, sounds more cautious:

... with all due caution, the possibility of redating the fragments from Oxford and Barcelona - which are, after all, definitely Matthean - to a period somewhat earlier than the second century previously assigned to them. Certainty will remain elusive, of course.^[87]

This "somewhat earlier" date is specified as a date in the "late first century sometime after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem."^[88] Unlike the newspaper article, there is no suggestion that Matthew is an eyewitness report. Since the academic journals are carefully refereed by peers, the authors do not find it easy to use these journals for their extravagant claims. However, when it comes to statements made in media what matters are the sound-bites and newsworthiness. Caution is dumped.

Since there is a consensus among the scholars that the "author" of the Gospel according to Matthew wrote it in the late first century,^[89] a late first century dating would not cause much of an alarm. But The Times reported a mid-first century date that contradicts Thiede's own assessment of a late first century dating of the Matthean fragments at Oxford as mentioned in the journal. In his book The Jesus Papyrus co-authored with the journalist Matthew d'Ancona, Thiede has completely abandoned the caution he had expressed in Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik. What one reads in the book is that the Magdalen papyri:

... were of astonishingly early origin, dating from the mid-first century AD. He was shortly to publish his claims in the specialist journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie.^[90]

As we have seen earlier, Thiede never made any such claim in the specialist journal. The issue does not stop at discrepancies in assigning a date to the Magdalen fragments. The authors describe P⁶⁴ as a manuscript on paper! A cursive manuscript is called a "minuscle".^[91] In fact, there are many such howlers to discredit the authors' competence in the field of palaeography. Such carelessness is surely unwarranted in a book that aims to impress the readers with Thiede's "dispassionate rigour". Not surprisingly the carelessness is also reflected in the dating and analysis of P⁶⁴ and the Qumran manuscript 7Q5. Thiede's material has been handed a devastating refutation by Klaus Wachtel,^[92] Peter Head,^[93] David Parker,^[94] Keith Elliott,^[95] Philip Comfort,^[96] Graham Stanton^[97] among others. As for the identification of the fragment 7Q5 as verses from the Gospel of Mark, Daniel B. Wallace wrote a critique of both O'Callaghan and Thiede. The popular Christian magazine Christianity Today also critiqued the work of Thiede in the article Indiana Jones and the Gospel Parchments.

Thiede attributes the widespread rejection of his proposals to the bias of academic scholars afraid of losing their chances of moving up the academic ladder, should they endorse conservative views. "There are", he declares, "virtually no limits to the scholarly acrobatics which some academics will perform to dismiss a thesis that does not fit their intellectual paradigm."^[98^]It is strange that a man who has constructed such a large glasshouse of his own should throw a stone of this size.^[99]

Thiede claims to have answered all those who are critical of his dating of P⁶⁴ and the Qumran manuscript 7Q5. Yet his "answers" can't persuade the scholars to accept his criticism. It is not surprising to see that the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung, Münster, Germany has not been spared, no doubt, due to its implacable resistance to register 7Q5 in its list of officially recognized New Testament manuscripts. Klaus Wachtel from this institute in Münster, who demolished Thiede's claims, is depicted in derogatory terms. Thiede's feelings are obvious when he addresses the critical text of the Greek New Testament (one of the products of the Münster institute) as "the so-called 'Nestle-Aland' Novum Testamentum Graece".^[100]Shall we say sour grapes? As to how sour the grapes have become, it can be discerned in a recent article by the well-known palaeographer T. C. Skeat on the papyrus P⁶⁴ who does not even mention the redating by Thiede! He dates it firmly to c. 200 CE.^[101]

Finally we should also mention the redating of papyrus fragment P⁴⁶ by Young Kyu Kim. He suggested that P⁴⁶ should be dated to the first century.^[102] Although his article provoked a widespread interest, it has failed to receive any sustained attention in the literature except for an endorsement by O'Callaghan^[103] and a cautious review by Daniel Wallace.^[104] The lack of sustained attention is quite likely due to the fact that Kim's viewpoint is far from compelling as well as the fact that his evidence is quite disorganized. Recently Pickering produced a detailed refutation of Kim's dating and he dates P⁴⁶ back to c. 200 CE.^[105] Other palaeographers do not seem to be persuaded by Kim's methodology of an early dating of P⁴⁶ either.^[106]

Let us now summarize the discussion on the early dating of fragments with a quote by Holmes:

Claims that portions of Mark have been identified among the manuscript fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran are quite unconvincing (see Graham Stanton, Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels [Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1995], 20-32; Metzger, Text, 264-65). The proposal by Y. K. Kim ... that P⁴⁶ (widely dated to ca. 200) should be dated prior to the end of the first century has not proven to be persuasive (see Metzger, Text, 265-66). The claim by C. P. Thiede that fragments of Matthew should be dated to "c. A.D. 66" is based on a rat's nest of fanciful hypotheses and unsubstantiated assertions (for a brief overview and response, see Stanton, Gospel Truth? 11-19).^[107]

Similarly, Burton Mack says:

Thiede's Dead Sea Scrolls scenario is preposterous; his theory about the Markan fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls has been discredited; and the mass of detailed scholarship on the origins and history of early Christian movements and their writings has simply been swept aside in the eager pursuit of a chimera. From a critical scholar's point of view, Thiede's proposal is an example of just how desperate the Christian imagination can become in the quest to argue for the literal facticity of the Christian gospels.^[108]

After rebutting the (Dead Sea Scrolls) Qumran Cave #7; 7Q5 claims of Shamoun's favorite Pagan Christian scholars crazy Father O'Callaghan and the hack Carsten Peter Thiede who's work is ignored by all REAL scholars be they Christian, agnostic, atheist, or whatever because they realize he was nothing more than a Pagan Christian propagandist who had only one mission: Validate the Bible, regardless of actual scholarship!!!! Let us now turn over concentration to the other Qumran Cave #7 documents Shamoun details in his article:

Shamouns claims:

Shamoun takes Pagan Christian apologists "research" saying

1) 7Q6 is Mark 4:28 and is from 50 C.E.

2) 7Q15 is Mark 6:48 and is from an unknown date C.E.?

3) 7Q7 is Mark 12:17 and is from 50 C.E.

4) 7Q6 is Acts 27:38 and is from 60+ C.E.

5) 7Q9 is Romans 5:11-12 and is from 70+ C.E.

6) 7Q4 is 1 Timothy 3:16, 4:1-3 and is from 70+ C.E.

7) 7Q10 is 2 Peter 1:15 and is from 70+ C.E.

8) 7Q8 is James 1:23-24 and is from 70+ C.E.

Let us now rebuttal Shamoun's "scholars" assertions:

1) (This rebuttal also is for the other instance called 7Q6 in question #4 )Regarding the 2 instances called 7Q6 let us first read from a Christian website disputing O'Callaghan and Thiede's assertions:

From: http://www.breadofangels.com/7q6/index.html

Fragment 7Q6 is actually two small pieces of papyrus that were found "one atop the other." In all likelihood they are from the same scroll. The larger of these two fragments is designated by the siglum 7Q6,1 while the smaller is designated by 7Q6,2. The first piece (7Q6,1) preserves three lines of text while the second (7Q6,2) preserves only two lines.

     The black and white image is a scan from page 107 of: "The First New Testament" by Estrada and White; done with the permission of Thomas Nelson, Inc. The color image is a copy of the black and white image, which has been enhanced with the help of Adobe Photoshop. In using Photoshop, I did not erase or add to the original scan. I only changed the color to resemble papyrus and I highlighted in black what I regarded as ink. This was done in order to ascertain what letters are on the papyrus.
     Father O'Callaghan identified 7Q6,1 as part of Mark 4:28. He identified 7Q6,2 as part of Acts 27:38. These identifications are not very convincing because they involve two different New Testament books. It makes more sense to regard them as from the same book; since one piece was found atop the other. If that is the case, the texts of these two pieces must be in close proximity to each other due to their physical position in the scroll.
     Prior to using Bible Works for Windows, I made a list of what I regarded were the letters on these two pieces; in order to establish the parameters of my search:

7Q6,1

Line 1: There is preserved a trace of a vertical stroke.
Line 2: This appears to be an  or a  followed by an . The next letter seems to be a  or a , followed by an  or a . There may be an additional narrow letter after the , as there is a fair amount of space between a  and the last letter. If the  is in fact a , an extra letter after it is unlikely.
Line 3: This is a followed by  and followed by a faint trace of a vertical stroke. This last letter could be one of the following: or.

7Q6,2

Line 1: There is a followed by a  or . The next letter has the upper part of a vertical stroke, along with what appears to be a serif. As with line 3 above, it could be:  or .
Line 2: The first letter appears to be an  followed by  and . The last letter appears to be an  or .

In using Bible Works, I performed searches for every possible combination of the letters listed above. I also took into account all the possible positions of spaces between these letters. I searched the Greek texts of both the Septuagint and the New Testament. I treated both pieces as part of the same textual source; looking for "hits" that were close to each other in the Biblical text and having similar stichometry or number of letters per line.
The results of such a search could never be conclusive, as these scraps of papyrus are quite small. (Note the scale bar in the images above). The following is a list of seven possible Biblical identifications for 7Q6,1&2. The first reference is for the first piece, while the second is for the second piece. The number in parentheses represents the average stichometry between the two pieces.

Exodus 13:21; Exodus 12:29; (29).
Exodus 29:20-21; Exodus 28:7-8; (30).
Deut. 31:3; Deut. 28:30-31; (36).
Sirach 22:14; Sirach 20:17; (13).
Mark 12:7; Mark 14:14; (21).
Mark 15:47-16:1; Mark 14:14; (41).
Luke 22:42; Luke22:11; (34 or 39).

In my opinion regarding the above list, only Sirach and Luke seem possible; although none of the above possibilities appear to provide an entirely satisfactory identification for 7Q6.

(From: http://www.breadofangels.com/7q6/index.html)

(Anonymous Muslim's Person Note: After reading this we must keep in mind the information from the elite (once "President Elect" of the "international society of New Testament scholars") New Testament scholar Graham Stanton wrote in his book (Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus & the Gospels). NOBODY can know for sure would they are looking at!!!!

These "papyri" are SO SMALL and SO FRAGMENTARY that literally in some cases there is only 1 WORD! That is clear. This leaves GREAT AMOUNTS of ROOM for debate about what exactly even each LETTER is! And just as Graham Stanton showed the errors in what Thiede claimed was the "amazing" computer searches of Greek texts that proved his now debunked claims. The errors and weaknesses of these Computer programs are manifold

1) In almost ALL cases scholars do NOT even agree to begin with on the "correct" reading of the puny, damaged, 1 letter sized manuscript fragments. Thus any search can be called largely meaningless.

2) These "great" Computer searches of "Every" known Greek Text of antiquity were heralded by the likes of the fraud Thiede, etc. But these have serious flaws in and of them themselves (NOT forgetting scholars continuously disagree on how to read damaged letters on centimeter sized papyri and thus do NOT agree on what should actually be entered into the computer search in the first place!) The serious flaws are computer programs have ONLY the known Greek texts of antiquity, this does NOT account for variations in individual manuscripts and as with the Bible NO 2 "ancient" manuscripts are EVER exactly alike! Each individual manuscript has it own unique features and unique peculiarities. Also a computer search is completely worthless if the thumb sized damaged papyri you are holding happens by chance to be of a LOST work that thus is UNKNOWN to us and THUS CANNOT be in the Computer search!!!! So the Computer doesn't account for Manuscripts variances (which almost always occur) and the computer doesn't account for works NOT entered into it because HUMANS have NEVER found them before. Computers can only display texts HUMANS have entered into them. Thus Lost Texts (Old Texts we don't know about) are a huge problem for these "computers".

Concluding on the 2 fragments marked as 7Q6 let us read: (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; (from: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1196)

2) 7Q15 is claimed by Shamoun and his sources to be part of Mark 6:48 let us quickly read: Seventeen out of the nineteen minute Greek papyrus fragments from cave 7 have been declared by the editors to be unidentifiable. A Spanish Jesuit, Jose O’Callaghan, in 1972 argued that these hardly legible scraps derived from six books of the New Testament: the Gospel of Mark 4:28 (7Q6 1), 6:48 (7Q15), 6:52-3 (7Q5), 12:17 (7Q7), the Acts of the Apostles 28:38 (7Q6 2); 1 Timothy 3:16, 4:1, 3 (7Q4); James 1:23-24 (7Q8), and even one of the latest New Testament writings: 2 Peter 1:15 (7Q10). Callaghan bases his opinion on a fragment which measures 3.3 x 2.3 cm. Letters appear on just four lines and these are of unknown length since both the beginning and the end of each line are missing. An unrecognizable trace of another letter is observed at the top of the fragment. Seventeen letters are identified of which only nine are certain. A single complete word has survived: the Greek word kai = and.

The leading experts in the field (C. H. Roberts of Oxford and G. Aland) discarded O’Callaghan’s theory. Roberts 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 hypothesis was revived in the 1980’s by Thiede and others only to encounter the same fate of summary dismissal as Father O’Callaghan’s a decade or so earlier. (From: http://faculty.bbc.edu/ggromacki/deadseascrolls/bible.htm)

Also:

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.

From: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

7Q15 is SO SMALL!!!!

Also the Qumran Community was Essenes who were STRICT Legalists i.e. followers of the Law (NO pork, etc.)! (they left the Jewish community in Jerusalem and lived alone because they viewed others as NOT adhering to the law enough!!!!, they would NOT have wanted or cared for the anti-law "Gospel of Mark"

3) 7Q7 Shamoun and his sources claim this is Mark 12:17 from circa 50 C.E.

For this let us recall:

(From: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1196)

Again the Qumran Community before 68 C.E. were Essenes they were STRICT Legalists! The Essenes lived in Qumran in a separated society from the Jews of Jerusalem largely because the Essenes viewed other Jews as NOT following the law enough! The strict law following Essenes (of Qumran Community) would NOT have wanted, kept, or cared for the anti-law "Gospel of Mark"

4) Is rebutted completely in Question #1 on the 2 parts of 7Q6

5) 7Q9 Shamoun and his sources claim is Roman 5:11-12 and is from 70+ C.E.

What do the Dead Sea Scrolls say about Jesus?
This is a common question asked by those not familiar with the dates of the scrolls. The body of literature known as the Dead Sea Scrolls predates the time of Jesus by approximately 80 years and as a consequence of this there are no direct references to his life and teachings. (From: http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/resources/FAQ.shtml#aboutJesus)

Again it's important to know that all of these are SMALL, TINY FRAGMENTS (THUMB-SIZE, etc.) and scholars do NOT agree on what the texts are from the few letters that exist on the damaged fragment of papyri.

Also why in the world would the Qumran Community have wanted the Paul's Romans?! The Qumran Community was Essene and were strong followers of Jewish LAW!!!! Paul's Roman's and all Paul's work would have been ignored and certainly NOT saved by the Essenes (who were Jewish Christians) who followed Jewish law stronger than even some Jews!

Let us read from: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1196

6) 7Q4 Shamoun and his sources claim is 1 Timothy 3:16, 4:1-3 and is from 70+ C.E.

Let us rebuttal this idiotic claim by Shamoun and his sources with an excerpt from the article ((From: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html):

In 1988, G. -Wilhelm Nebe proposed that fragment 7Q4,1 was part of I Enoch 103:3-4, while 7Q4,2 was part of I Enoch 98:11.^[76]

Nebe identification of 7Q4,1-2 was challenged by Thiede who supported O'Callaghan's identification. In 1996 Puech defended Nebe's identification of fragment 7Q4,1 as being part of I Enoch 103:3-4; while suggesting that 7Q4,2 is part of I Enoch 105:1.^[78]Recent textual reconstruction by Muro^[79] and Puech^[80] has convincingly shown that 7Q4,1 (= I Enoch 103:3-4), 7Q8 (= I Enoch 103:7-8) and 7Q12 (= I Enoch 103:4) are part of the same ensemble.

[76] G. -Wilhelm Nebe, "7Q4 - Möglichkeit Und Grenze Einer Identifikation", Revue De Qumran, 1988, Volume 13, pp. 313-323. For 7Q4,1 see pp. 630-632; for 7Q4,2 see p. 630 note 12.

[77] ibid., pp. 632-633 note 26.

[78] É. Puech, "Notes Sur Les Fragments Grecs Du Manuscript 7Q4 = 1 Hénoch 103 Et 105", Revue Biblique, 1996, Volume 103, pp. 592-600; also see É. Puech, "Des Fragments Grecs De La Grotte 7 Et Le Nouveau Testament? 7Q4 Et 7Q5, Et Le Papyrus Magdalen Grec 17 = P⁶⁴", Revue Biblique, 1995, Volume 102, pp. 570-584.

[79] E. A. Muro Jr., "The Greek Fragments Of Enoch From Qumran Cave 7", Revue De Qumran, 1997, Volume 70, pp. 307-312.

[80] É. Puech, "Sept Fragments de la Lettre d'Hénoch (1 Hén 100, 103 et 105) Dans La Grotte 7 de Qumrân", Revue De Qumran, 1997, Volume 70, pp. 313-323.

(From: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html)

Also: 7Q4 (= 1 Tim3:16-4:3) 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). (From: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1196)

AGAIN!!!!

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.

From: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

7) 7Q10 Shamoun and his sources claim this is 2 Peter 1:15, and his from 70+C.E.

First let us read this important info: Christian writings in DSS has been fodder for conspiracy stories for

> > years

> > in spite of the obvious anachronism.  2 Peter hails from the early

> 2nd

> > century

> > CE and given the latest possible date of deposit, a "Mark fragment"

> > would have

> > to be the autograph. (From: http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/archives/1997b/msg01078.html)

AGAIN!!!!

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.

From: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

So the claim on 7Q10 is worthless since we are dealing with something so small and damaged! Scholars will NEVER agree to this since with only a few letters debate even on the best readings of damaged 1 or 2 letters is WIDE OPEN! and scholars tell us 2 Peter is much later than 70 C.E.

2 Peter is dated at: 100 C.E. to 160 C.E. (From: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/)

8) 7Q8 Shamoun and his sources claim this is James 1:23-24 and is from 70+C.E. Let us remember from: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

[76] G. -Wilhelm Nebe, "7Q4 - Möglichkeit Und Grenze Einer Identifikation", Revue De Qumran, 1988, Volume 13, pp. 313-323. For 7Q4,1 see pp. 630-632; for 7Q4,2 see p. 630 note 12.

[77] ibid., pp. 632-633 note 26.

[79] E. A. Muro Jr., "The Greek Fragments Of Enoch From Qumran Cave 7", Revue De Qumran, 1997, Volume 70, pp. 307-312.

[80] É. Puech, "Sept Fragments de la Lettre d'Hénoch (1 Hén 100, 103 et 105) Dans La Grotte 7 de Qumrân", Revue De Qumran, 1997, Volume 70, pp. 313-323.

[81] See for example, "New Testament Manuscripts", in N. L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia Of Christian Apologetics, op. cit., p. 533; Also repeated at "New Testament, Dating Of", in N. L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia Of Christian Apologetics, op. cit., p. 530; R. Morey, The Islamic Invasion: Confronting The World's Fastest Growing Religion, 1992, Harvest House Publishers: Eugene (OR), p. 136. Robert Morey claims that the Christians have "portions of the New Testament from the first century...".

One of the exceptions to the endorsement of Carsten Thiede's work is Craig Blomberg. He acknowledges the virtual rejection of Thiede's claim in the scholarly community even though the latter is an evangelical scholar. See C. L. Blomberg, Making Sense Of The New Testament: Three Crucial Questions, 2004, op. cit., p. 18.

[82] ibid.

(From: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html)

And also let us see another link:

10/Qumran cave 7 has produced several other small Greek fragments, the identifications of which have been much debated. In general, many of them seem to be bilinear and decorated with serifs and/or hooks. Spacing may be present on 7Q5 [see now the meticulous physical description of this fragment by E.A.Muro, with enlargements] and 7Q15, and 7Q16 may have a paragraph mark (see also 7Q7?). Since they are probably of Jewish provenance, they are also of possible relevance as attesting Jewish literary activity and scribal practices. The identification of 7Q4.1 + 7Q8 + 7Q12 as from the Epistle of Enoch ("1 Enoch" 103) by G.W.Nebe (RevQum [1988]), E.A.Muro (RevQum 70 and on his home page), and E.Puech (RevBibl [1996], RevQum 70 [1997]) seems highly probable, despite certain apparent paleographical inconsistencies. Puech also suggests that 7Q12 is part of that same ensemble, and that 7Q11 may be from "1 Enoch" 100, 7Q13 from "1 Enoch" 103.15, and 7Q4.2 from "1 Enoch" 105.1. In his forthcoming article (above, n.7) Tov notes the following suggested identifications with LXX/OG locations, any of which if verifiable would qualify the respective fragment(s) for inclusion in the present list: (From: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/jewishpap.html)

Before we conclude it's important to bring up one point scholars even made to Thiede's outrageous and discredited claims. The Papyri and such found at the Qumran Community has NOT had a publicized C-14 Radiocarbon dating. Thus even if the fragments of Papyri were the New Testament texts idiotically advocated by fundamentalist Pagan Christians like Father O'Callaghan and pseudo-scholar Carsten Peter Thiede, which they are NOT, Thiede and his likes CANNOT prove when they entered the Qumran caves!!!! We know that the Essenes used the Qumran Caves till around 68 C.E., we do NOT know what happened after them. We have no information about anyone else using them but scholars will tell us that does NOT mean between 68 C.E. and say 500 C.E. or even 1900s C.E. that someone else did not use the cave! We simply don't know! Somebody else traveling in Palestine could easily have stopped to rest in the cave or somebody could've know about it's location and decided to store texts or other items there! So for all we know the texts (without a C-14 radiocarbon dating) could be from long after 68 C.E.! This doesn't really matter though, since Father O'Callaghan and Thiede's bogus claims that the Qumran Cave #7 damaged centimeter sized fragments are New Testament texts has been thoroughly destroyed!

All Praise is Due to Almighty Allah!