7Q5—Facts or Fiction? -- By: Carsten Peter Thiede

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 57:2 (Fall 1995)
Article: 7Q5—Facts or Fiction?
Author: Carsten Peter Thiede


7Q5—Facts or Fiction?

Carsten Peter Thiede

In a recent review article, Daniel B. Wallace argues against the identification of the papyrus fragment 7Q5 from Qumran Cave 7 with a passage from the Gospel of Mark (Mark 6:52–53).1 He was not the first and he will not be the last scholar to do so. This is quite legitimate, of course. What remains puzzling, though, is the attempt to treat the case as a minority problem espoused by two scholars (O’Callaghan in Spain and Thiede in Germany) and “many conservatives” (p. 180). Is it really too much to expect that in a paper published in 1994, the detailed analysis by the great papyrologist Herbert Hunger of Vienna, Austria, published in 1992,2 in favour of Mark 6:52–53—and already answering the objections raised by Wallace—should have been noticed? Does one have to remind readers of the fact that other renowned experts, such as the papyrologists Sergio Daris and Orsolina Montevecchi, have spoken out in favor of Mark? The latter, author of the standard introduction to papyrology3 and, at present, Honorary President of the International Papyrologists’ Association, accepted the Markan identification of 7Q5 as early as 1973 and did so again last summer, in quite unmistakable terms.4

Daniel B. Wallace asks the decisive question at the end of his paper: “Will we fairly examine the evidence, or will we hold the party line at all costs?” Let us begin by accepting the tendency of the present debate (that is, in favor of the Markan identification), rather than ignore it. And let us stick to the facts.

Why is there such a continuous interest in 7Q5? Because my “earlier writings have almost completely fallen on deaf German ears,” as Wallace claims? Hardly, since they were received internationally and translated into several languages. I suppose it is because the arguments in the case just cannot be dismissed that easily and superficially. Thus, my comparison of 7Q5 with P52 (John 18:31–33, 37–38) does not serve the purpose, as

Wallace would like to make WTJ readers believe, of proving that 7Q5 should be accepted as Markan “since [P52] has similar textual ‘glitches.’“ That is a kind of fallacy of analogy no papyrologist would commit. However, and this is vital, 7Q5 does not exist in a vacuum. It is—r...

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