Bryant G. Wood
Quiet, pious, peace-loving Father Jose’ O’Callaghan has rocked the scholarly world. He says he has identified Dead Sea Scroll fragments as portions of the New Testament dating to A.D. 50-75 years earlier than the oldest known manuscript and only 15 years after the death of Christ. If accepted, this would radically change current widely-held beliefs about the New Testament. A debate now rages as to whether or not he is correct.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Fragments From Cave 7
The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947, and after, in caves near the Dead Sea. They were copied by scribes living in a monastic community at Qumran and date to the period 200 B.C.-A.D. 68. Portions of every book of the Old Testament were found, with the exception of Esther, as well as commentaries and non-Biblical material. The find was of great significance to Old Testament textual studies since the scrolls were 1000 years older than the previous oldest Hebrew manuscripts.
The Scriptorium in the monastery at Qumran. It was in this room that scribes carefully copied their precious scrolls in Jesus’ day and before.
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In 1955 a new cave, labeled by archaeologists as Cave 7, was explored. The finds were sparse: 19 papyrus fragments, two jars (one with the Hebrew inscription ROMA on it) and several miscellaneous pieces of pottery. But the fragments were different than the other Dead Sea Scroll material – they were written in Greek rather than Hebrew or Aramaic. Although they have been called “Dead Sea Scroll fragments” there was no evidence to link the finds in Cave 7 with the Qumran community who produced the treasure of scrolls found in other nearby caves. Scholars were able to identify only two of the scraps: Exodus 28:4–7 and verses 43 and 44 of the apocryphal Letter of Jeremiah. The rest were termed “unidentified”.
Cliffs at Qumran where Cave 7 is located.
O’Callaghan’s Hypothesis
Now after carefully studying the unidentified scraps, Jesuit scholar O’Callaghan claims that a number of them are portions of the New Testament and date to A.D. 50. In a recent article in BIBLICA, published by the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, he identified three fragments as Mark 6:52, 53; Mark 4:28; and James 1:23, 24.
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Dr. O’Callaghan’s reconstruction of Mark 6:52, 53 showing how the letters on the Cave 7 fragment fit into the five lines of text.
His first identification was of a thumb-print size fragment containing 17 letters which cut vertically through five lives of text. The key was the four Greek letters “nnes” which form part of a word. Scholars previously thought that they were part of a Greek verb referring to geneology. It occurred to O’Callaghan that possibly they were from the word Gennesaret, found in the Gospels.
Taking various mentions of Gennesaret from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, O’Callaghan set them in Greek lines of 20 to 23 characters, the format of the two identified fragments. Finally he found one that, with the omission of three short words, fit the fragment: Mark 6:52–53. Using the same technique, he identified a total of nine of the fragments as portions of the New Testament. In his article, O’Callaghan presented the linguistic details of three of the identifications and offered his findings as a hypothesis for scholarly consideration by his colleagues. “They will say if my identifications prove acceptable,” he said.
Father O’Callaghan considers his first three identifications as “certain”. In follow-up articles in BIBLICA, he will report one more “certain” identification (I Timothy 3:16; 4:1, 3), three “probables”(Acts 27:38, Mark 12:17
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and Romans 5:11–12) and two “possibles” (2 Peter 1:15 and Mark 6:48).
O’Callaghan is confident of the dating of the fragments because they were written in the “Zierstil” Greek script. According to paleographers (writing experts), that particular script was used between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50.
Initial Reaction Critical
But will his hypothesis be accepted by the scholarly world? The initial reaction from most scholars has been one of skepticism. In April, a “Summit Conference” of scholars was called at the University of Michigan to discuss O’Callaghan’s theory. They concluded that there is too little evidence to establish the identifications.
Frank M. Cross, Jr., a Harvard professor who is an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, stated “I don’t believe it is Mark for a moment. The evidence is not convincing.” Cross said the fragment O’Callaghan identified as Mark 6:52–53 is an “exceedingly small piece”. Of the five partial lines that are on the fragment, the only complete word is “kai”, which means “and”. “The other three lines”, he said, “are the most common stuff of the Greek language.” Cross also noted that the four letters on which O’Callaghan based his identification (nnes) “could be read as a half dozen other Greek forms”.
Dr. David N. Freedman, director of the Program of Studies in Religion at U—M, pointed out that in order to make the text fit the lines of the papyrus, O’Callaghan had to omit three words and alter one letter of the fragment. “There isn’t a manuscript without errors,” he said, “but how many can you have and still defend the identification?”
“It’s fair to say most serious scholars have agreed the evidence is too small to confirm the identification,” Cross concluded.
Comments from other scholars are equally as negative. David Flusser, Professor of Comparative Religion at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, called the Jesuit’s hypothesis “wild speculation”; he believes the fragment is part of a treatise against women. Even the editor of BIBLICA, Jesuit Roderick McKenzie, fears that the O’Callaghan article is “producing premature judgments”. McKenzie suggests that the letters could well fit some unknown text.
BSP 1:2 (Spring 1972) p. 39
A Linguist Supports O’Callaghan
One scholar, Dr. William White, Jr., is 100 per cent behind O’Callaghan’s theory. Dr. White specialized in linguistics and the history of science while earning his Ph.D. He is considered an expert in the information science of semiotic systems (language of signs), and enciphering and deciphering theory. Writing in the June issue of ETERNITY magazine, Dr. White made the following comments:
“But what about the extremely small size of the fragments? Can reliable conclusions be drawn from such tiny scraps?
“The answer is yes. The identification of small fragments has sometimes been achieved with as few as two letters. Such cases, of course, are rare. More normally, accurate work becomes feasible whenever the papyrologist has three lines that can be deciphered. The letters on the lines form the “x” and “y” coordinates on which mathematical probabilities can be based. When there are several “ranks” (horizontal lines of letters) and “files” (vertical lines of letters), as we find in the Mark, Timothy and James fragments, the degree of certainty is increased exponentially.
“Thus, the identification of the Mark passage on so small a fragment is affirmed by four criteria:
a. “There are more than three lines of text involved, providing “x” and “y” coordinates for confirmation. The odds against someone some day turning up another text in first century koiné Greek, circulating as part of a collection of valuable manuscripts in Palestine around A.D. 100 exactly corresponding to the letter configuration of fragment 5 (but not of New Testament origin), is something Like 1,000,000 to 1!
b. “The letters occur in clusters of two and more which allow the location of the consonant-plus-vowel groups fundamental to Greek words. This supplies the beginning of recognizable semantic and syntactical elements.
c. “A complete word at the initiation of both a verse (semantic) and a sentence (grammatic) is extant — a further clue to the intended direction of the meaning and the content of the material.
d. “There is use of a word of Semitic origin, “Gennesaret”, transliterated into Greek. Thus, the combination of “nnes”, which is rare in Greek, is elegantly explained.
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“It should be remembered that prior to O’Callaghan’s work no one was able to suggest any koiné Greek literary work in first century Palestine except the Old Testament as a possible source of fragment 5. The reason for this is that there simply isn’t any other Greek material known from that era that logically would be collected and preserved in Palestine – except for rather meaningless personal memos found in trash heaps.
“These criteria guided Dr. O’Callaghan to his conclusion. And he successfully demonstrated his identification when he laid out the length of the lines of text in such a way that the readable words fell into place according to their position on the page. This is known as stichometry. (See illustration on page 37.) The incredible degree to which Mark 6:52–53 fits the fragment leaves little doubt as to the identification.
“And, of course, the attribution of these fragments to the New Testament is made the more certain with each additional decipherment. The incredible aspect of the find is that a number of the fragments contain words or letter clusters which are relatively rare in koiné Greek, but which are characteristic of the New Testament. They are a powerful argument in favor of O’Callaghan’s identification.”
Criticisms Answered
Dr. White went on to answer two of the major criticisms against the Mark 6:52–53 identification. The first concerns a “t” in the middle of the fragment. All known manuscripts of Mark 6 have a “d” at this point. Dr. White explained that the writing of Greek is a transcription of speech based upon two factors: how the writer heard the sound and how he transcribed the sound he heard. It is well-known that the Semitic languages have a wider variety of dental sounds (d, t, ts, and th) than does Greek. The difficulty of knowing how to transcribe these sounds into Greek shows itself in some Greek papyri from Egypt in which the substitution of t for d has taken place. Therefore the new variant reading, Dr. White said, is not only interesting, but very possible.
Another main objection is that three words have been omitted. Missing from the Cave 7 fragment are the words “to the land” before the place name “Gennesaret” in verse 53. This omission is not shown in the critical apparatus of Nestle or Westcott and Hort, the two best known Greek New Testaments. Dr. White explained that the standard editions omit variants which appear in only a very few manuscripts. But there are known texts where these words are left out; they are listed by S.C.E. Lagge in EVANGELIUM SECUNDUM MARCUM.
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Potential Impact of Identifications
If O’Callaghan’s identifications gain acceptance, it will revolutionize New Testament theories. The current belief of most theologians is that the accounts of Jesus’ life were passed on orally for several decades before being committed to writing. It is believed that the earliest Gospel to be written was Mark, at about A.D. 70. Because of this, many scholars contend that the New Testament accounts of Christ’s life have been embellished and that a “mythical” element has been intertwined with the historical content.
There is much evidence to refute this, but without an actual manuscript dating to near the time of Christ, the critical theories persist. The Bible is always “guilty” until proven innocent.
Finding a portion of one of the Gospels dating to A.D. 50 would put an end to these theories. In only 15 years from the death of Christ there would hardly be time for embellishment or “mythologizing”. If the accounts were not true, they would have been quickly refuted by those who actually witnessed the events.
World-famous British New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce, writing in ETERNITY, said:
“For the past century or so, New Testament critics have assumed a date of around A.D. 68 or later for Mark’s gospel. Many scholars have also postulated a long-lost oral or written source for some of Mark’s basic material. But if O’Callaghan’s work holds up—and it really is too early to predict one way or the other—we will have strong evidence that Mark was in circulation in Palestine a whole generation earlier than anyone had imagined, and the suggestion of an earner source would be pointless. The Gospel would be close enough to the events it records to stand on its own merits.”
The oldest known verified portion of the New Testament is a papyrus fragment containing John 18: 31–33 on one side and John 18: 37–38 on the other side. This was found in Egypt and dates to approximately A.D. 125, only about 35 years after the death of John. The discovery of this fragment destroyed the claim that the Gospel of John was written toward the end of the second century, after Christian doctrines and beliefs had had time to “evolve”. It showed that the Gospel of John was written much earlier, for it was circulating as far away as Egypt not too long after John’s death.
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Will O’Callaghan’s identifications be accepted? Only time will tell. As Dr. David Estrada wrote in the June issue of ETERNITY, after describing an interview with Father O’Callaghan, “In the years to come, specialists from all over the world will examine the evidence. If O’Callaghan’s thesis still stands, it will truly be one of the most significant finds of the century.”
(DISCOVERIES IN THE JUDAEAN DESERT OF JORDAN, Vol. III, 1962; BIBIICA, Vol. 53, Fasc. 1, 1972; NEW YORK TIMES, March 19, 1972; ANN ARBOR NEWS, April 14, 1972; TIME, May 1, 1972; ETERNITY, June, 1972)
Editor’s Note: A bound reprint of the ETERNITY feature on Father O’Callaghan’s discovery, including photos of the fragments and initial scholarly reactions, may be obtained for $.50 by writing to ETERNITY, 1716 Spruce St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19103.
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