More on Alleged First Century Fragment of Mark

Over at Live Science, Craig Evans has provided some clarification and comment on the claim that a first century fragment from the Gospel of Mark has been found in a mask for an Egyptian mummy.

Evans says that the text was dated through a combination of carbon-14 dating, studying the handwriting on the fragment and studying the other documents found along with the gospel. These considerations led the researchers to conclude that the fragment was written before the year 90. With the nondisclosure agreement in place, Evans said that he can’t say much more about the text’s date until the papyrus is published.

Over at ETC, Peter Williams chimes in with some queries and reservations about the Live Science article.

I have great confidence in the scholarly judgments of guys like Craig Evans and Dan Wallace so I’m positively salivating to see this. Look, if this is legit, then it is great, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, dating papyri is notoriously imprecise, so lets all keep a cool head until the thing is published and textual critics and papyrologists from around the world get to have a gander at it. If the fragment is datable to ca. 90 AD or even early in the second century, then whoa and wow, its a big discovery.

I just wish Brill would get around to publishing the darn thing!