Gospel truths
Dear Graham,
It is strange to find myself ranged against a scholar whose work I so admire. You are one of a handful of academics who have brought to life the complex subject of the historic Jesus and made it accessible to laymen such as myself. But on the significance of the Magdalen fragments -the three papyrus fragments of St Matthew's Gospel owned by Magdalen College, Oxford-we find ourselves at odds.
Let me set out the story so far, as I see it. In December 1994, I wrote a story in The Times about the fragments which had been spectacularly re-dated to the third quarter of the 1st century AD by Carsten Thiede, the distinguished German papyrologist (with whom I have since written a book on the subject). The three scraps, which bear a handful of verses from chapter 26 of the Gospel, had previously been dated to the 2nd century. But fresh analysis of the handwriting suggested they are old enough to have been handled by one of the "500 brothers and sisters" who saw the resurrected Christ.
The implications of this are awe-inspiring. St Matthew is generally believed to have been written late in the 1st century and to be the folkloric creation of early Christians. It is thought to proclaim a "kerygma" or theological message, not an historical one. But if (as we claim) a copy of St Matthew was already circulating by the mid-60s AD, this view will have to be revised.
The idea that the Gospel according to St Matthew was a personal recollection, written by a contemporary or near contemporary of Jesus, can no longer be dismissed as fundamentalist nonsense. It can no longer be taken for granted that the Gospels are merely a collection of stylised myths compiled to suit the needs of the primitive church.
There are two aspects to this debate. First, there is the technical argument. Could Christians have adopted the codex (book) format, of which the Magdalen papyrus is an early example, in preference to the scroll, before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70? You find this unlikely, in spite of evidence from the Roman poet Martial that the codex was circulating by this time.
Second, there is the broader question about the manner in which 20th century critics have approached the Gospels and the suspicion with which they have treated these books as historical sources. One thinks of Rudolf Bultmann's claim that one could know nothing of the historical Jesus because the Gospels have no interest in him. But is this view sustainable if St Matthew was, in fact, written so soon after the event?
Yours sincerely,
Matthew d'Ancona
9th February 1996
Dear Matthew,
I am delighted to pursue our differences over the origin and reliability of the Gospels. The Magdalen fragments are fascinating, and well worth the story you wrote about them. They do have a bearing on our understanding of the origins of Christianity, but I am not persuaded that they can be dated to the third quarter of the 1st century AD.
I agree that the Gospels contain sound historical traditions concerning the life and teaching of Jesus. The radical sceptics have had their day. But you have misunderstood my position on the codex.
The first followers of Jesus quickly adopted the codex format, even though scrolls were in general use at that time. Some 42 papyrus fragments of the Gospels have now come to light; every one is from a codex. Why did Christians prefer the codex to the roll? There is no agreed explanation. We do know that Christians did not invent this form of publishing: writing in about AD 85, Martial recommends his readers to buy copies of his poems with small pages so that they could be held in one hand. He implies that other writings were already available in "pocket book" editions. But the format promoted by Martial soon went out of fashion-except among Christians. You and I agree that Christians took over the codex format from Martial or his predecessors. What we lack is evidence that they did so in the 1st century AD. The earliest fragment from a Christian codex dates from AD 125, but we do not have the tiniest fragment of a 1st century Christian codex.
This brings me to the date of St Matthew's Gospel. On the basis of a re-dating of the Magdalen fragments, you want to bring forward the date when St Matthew was written to the mid-60s AD, perhaps even earlier. As you know, most scholars date St Matthew some 10 or 20 years later. This is easily explained. Because Matthew has included in his Gospel almost the whole of Mark's much shorter Gospel, he must have written after Mark. So when was St Mark written? Writing about AD 180, Irenaeus says that Mark wrote after the deaths of Peter and Paul in Rome (during Nero's persecution of Christians in AD 64/65). Hence the view that St Mark's Gospel was written either before or just after the Jewish war of AD 66-70 against the Romans, and Matthew's a little later, towards the end of the 1st century.
Occasionally a discovery, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, does revolutionise our understanding of the origins of Christianity. But I am intrigued to know why the Magdalen fragments shake the foundations of modern Gospel scholarship.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Stanton
21st February 1996
Dear Graham,
The crucial point here is whether Christians inherited the codex format from others or took an active part in its introduction. I mentioned Martial only as evidence that the format itself was in existence by AD 85 at the latest. We know, too, from 2 Timothy 4:13, that parchment notebooks were circulating in the first years of the primitive church.
Papyrologists like Colin Roberts and Italo Gallo have long argued that the Christian codex was introduced before AD 70. The point Thiede and I make is that the Magdalen papyrus provides physical evidence for this: it shows that Christian books were in use some 20 years before Martial wrote his famous lines.
I disagree with your assertion that "not the tiniest fragment of a 1st century Christian codex" has come to light: this is precisely what we believe the Magdalen manuscript to be. Thiede's re-dating has been carried out by detailed comparison with contemporary papyri from sites such as Qumran, Masada and Oxyrynchus and using the most sophisticated technology available to Biblical scholars. I remain unclear why you reject this papyrological argument with such confidence.
It strikes me that this debate has as much to do with academic assumption as scientific analysis. As you say, most scholars agree that St Mark's Gospel was written before St Matthew's. So when was St Mark written? On this, I am puzzled by your invocation of Irenaeus to show that Mark wrote after the death of Peter and Paul in AD 64/65. My understanding is that the scholar E Earle Ellis established from computer analysis of Irenaeus's work that he never uses "exodus" when he means death, but always "thanatos." When he refers to the "exodus" of St Peter, therefore, he means his departure, rather than his death.
But let us assume you are right and that St Mark was written just before or just after the Jewish war of AD 66-70. On that basis, St Mark could have been in circulation during AD 65 and St Matthew could have been completed not long after. This is quite consistent with the claim that the latter Gospel was written before AD 70.
The weak link in your argument is your premise that St Matthew must have been written "some 10 or 20 years later" than St Mark. Why? First, there is no internal evidence in St Matthew to make us think that his Gospel was written after AD 70. Nor is there any intrinsic reason why the customs official Levi-Matthew himself, or an associate, could not have written the text. We cannot accept this possibility credulously, as the early church fathers did. But we should not dismiss it out of hand.
Second, there is no reason to think that it would have taken two decades to write the second Gospel after Mark had completed the first. The cultural milieu which spawned these books was far more sophisticated than has been supposed. Jewish society in 1st century Palestine was multicultural and multilingual; Jesus himself spoke Aramaic and Greek and could read Hebrew.
Means of communication in New Testament times were surprisingly efficient. Texts circulated widely and quickly. The network of scriptoriums throughout the Mediterranean world and the speed of the Imperial postal service meant that a book or letter could reach Alexandria from Rome in three days. It is far more likely that the second Gospel was written very soon after the first upon which it drew than that the author, or authors, waited 10 or 20 years to let St Mark's version sink in. This difference between us of one or two decades seems small, but within it lies the difference between an eye-witness account and a folk memory.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew d'Ancona
28th February 1996
Dear Matthew,
You ask why I reject the papyrological evidence for the mid-1st century date which Thiede and you have advanced for the Magdalen fragments. This is the linchpin in our discussion about the origin, dating, and reliability of the Gospels. Until your story was published, there was general scholarly agreement that these fragments date from AD 200. Why should we now bring that date forward nearly 150 years?
Thiede's views have attracted worldwide interest over the past 14 months. There has now been sufficient time for the leading specialists to reconsider the dating of these fragments. Working quite independently, the verdict has been unanimous: the case for a 1st century date does not stand up to scrutiny. Two detailed technical articles have now been published in French journals: one in the German journal which published Thiede's own study, and two in British journals. The scholars in question (who are not grinding theological axes) have made similar points: they have affirmed that the dating in 1953 of the fragments to "the later 2nd century," by the distinguished British papyrologist Colin Roberts, is soundly based.
There are several reasons for this unanimity. Somewhat surprisingly, Thiede does not discuss Roberts' arguments. To overturn a consensus view, one needs to show precisely why it is no longer tenable. Roberts convinced the scholarly world that the Magdalen fragments are written in an early form of a style known as "Biblical Uncial." In comparing styles of handwriting in a set of papyri, close attention is given both to the ways individual letters have been formed and to their shape. Thiede largely ignores the former and does not offer a full comparison of the latter. While there are some similarities between the shape of some of the letters in the Magdalen fragments and their counterparts in the 1st century examples Thiede has appealed to, there are also dissimilar letters which are overlooked.
In his study of the three Magdalen fragments, Thiede does not consider the larger fragments of the same papyrus held in Barcelona. Even more significant are fragments of St Luke's Gospel in the Biblioth?ue Nationale in Paris. From time to time scholars had been struck by the similarities between the Magdalen and Barcelona fragments of St Matthew and the Paris fragments of St Luke. The leading German specialist Kurt Aland first said that they were from the same codex, but later changed his mind.
However, recent meticulous study by TC Skeat, whose standing in the field is unrivalled, shows that the fragments all come from the same codex, and that this is the earliest example of a codex which contained all four Gospels. In an article to be published shortly, Skeat shows not only that the styles of handwriting in the Magdalen, Barcelona and Paris fragments agree in minute detail, but also that the pages of the codex were made up in exactly the same way. Ancient scribes took as much trouble over the design of a papyrus codex as do modern editors of magazines. (Earlier hesitation about this is explained by colour-changing damage to the Paris fragments.)
At the end of the 1st century and beginning of the 2nd the four Gospels had circulated independently. To accept one Gospel as authoritative amounted to claiming that other Gospels were flawed. But in the second half of the 2nd century the conviction grew that the church had one Gospel in four-fold form: four foundation documents; no more, no less. This view was maintained even though acceptance of several Gospels meant that critics of Christianity were able to poke fun at the discrepancies in the church's parallel accounts of the life of Jesus. In some circles the four Gospels were harmonised into one continuous account of the life and teaching of Jesus. This solution appealed to many for a time, but it did not win the day. Since four Gospels could be included in a single codex, the surprising adoption by Christians of the codex format in preference to the roll is almost certainly related to the momentous decision to accept four authoritative Gospels. Given how precarious it is to date documents by handwriting, this provides another useful dating clue-and the truth is that a four Gospel codex is conceivable only from about a century after the date Thiede proposes for the Magdalen fragments.
Now to some of your more general points about the dating of the Gospels. I agree that, in the past, New Testament scholars have underestimated the efficiency of communication techniques in the ancient world. But even if St Matthew was written soon after St Mark, and even if both Gospels were written 15 years earlier than current consensus allows, the quality and quantity of the historical evidence we have for the life of Jesus would not be substantially improved. In antiquity oral traditions were passed on with far greater accuracy than they are today: we rely so much on the printed page that our memories have become less sharp.
A lively Christian faith does depend on the general reliability of the Gospels' portraits of Jesus, but the plausibility of the Christian Gospel today is not advanced by acceptance of an earlier dating for the Gospels which glosses over the most widely held scholarly views.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Stanton
1st March 1996
Dear Graham,
Come off it. To say that the scholarly community's verdict on the redating is "unanimously" hostile is wishful thinking. A host of distinguished scholars have said positive things about Thiede's claim: Harald Reisenfeld, Claude Tresmontant, Sergio Daris, Orsolina Montevecchi, Marta Sordi, Ulrich Victor, Paul Swarney, Benedikt Schwank and Ignace de la Potterie, to name but nine. Thiede is not a lone maverick.
You also say that his work takes no account of Colin Roberts, the last scholar to date the Magdalen fragments. This is incorrect. The original learned article which launched this controversy in 1994 dealt in depth with the flaws in Roberts' work on the papyrus. I am also puzzled that you think Thiede's argument about the handwriting on the manuscript "largely" ignores the shape and formation of letters, since these form an important part of our argument. Again, you say that he neglected the sister fragments in Barcelona, which in fact he did not.
Contrary to your principal argument, the Paris fragment of St Luke cannot be from the same codex as the Magdalen fragment of St Matthew-as Philip Comfort and others have shown. The handwriting is significantly different, as is the colouring of the two papyri. You say this difference reflects "damage." It is far more likely that the fragments are different colours because they are organically different-they are from different books.
But allow me to go back to broader points. I do not agree that "to accept one Gospel as authoritative amounted to claiming that other Gospels were flawed." In fact, it was in the interest of the first Christians to produce rapidly a collection of mutually corroborative eye-witness material. Indeed, legal thinkers of the time insisted that more than one account of a disputed event was required to establish its veracity.
St Mark and St Matthew should not be seen as rival accounts but as complementary recollections produced by authors desperate to commit to paper their memories of this amazing story for the good of posterity and their own souls. Eye-witness accounts of the same event differ in detail. This was taken for granted by the authorities who agreed upon the four Gospel canon. What mattered was their insistence upon the historical reality of the events described. You emphasise this in your books on the Gospels.
It is our contention that the apostles committed their memories to paper not long after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Christian faith may well depend on the historical accuracy of the Gospels. But our purpose has not been to encourage or undermine faith. We are trying to make a fresh argument about the origins of the Gospels and their potential worth as sources for Christians and non-Christians.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew d'Ancona
3rd March 1996
Dear Matthew,
In response, I must limit myself to three points. The nine scholars you name may be sympathetic to Thiede's attempt to date the Gospels earlier than nearly all other specialists in the field, but not one of them is a recognised expert on the dating of New Testament papyri. If, within two years, a single papyrologist with an international reputation publishes a full study of the Magdalen fragments which supports Thiede's dating, I shall eat my hat!
Thiede does not attempt to show why the fragments cannot be seen as an early form of the "Biblical Uncial" style, as first suggested by Roberts. Instead, he uses quite different comparative material which has now been shown by all the writers I mention to be inappropriate comparisons.
There are indeed good examples of fragments from the same papyrus or parchment which have survived from antiquity with a different colouring: this is not a difficulty for the view that the Paris fragments of St Luke are from the same four Gospel codex as the Magdalen fragments. I am confident that Skeat's discovery will be accepted as a important advance in the field.
I am glad that at least we can agree that the Gospels offer us four striking portraits of Jesus, whose life, death and resurrection continue to engage and surprise us today. I wish you a happy Easter.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Stanton
