The Gospel of Mark

Preacher:
Date: July 22, 2016

Bible Text: Matthew 5:18 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  Matthew 5:18

In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd lad, Mohammed Adib, was searching for lost sheep which might have strayed into a cave up a narrow valley, or wadi, as the Bedouins described it.  Mohammed threw a rock into the opening of the cave hoping to frighten the sheep out; instead it was he who was frightened by the strange sound which he thought was an evil spirit.  The sound was that of breaking pottery, and that incident led to the discovery of thousands of manuscripts which history has dubbed “the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Those 40 caves have given up portions of every Old Testament book in the Bible with the exception of the book of Esther, and without exception those important manuscripts and documents have only substantiated the text of our Bible.  However, several of those manuscripts add additional light to the history of biblical times and the structure of the New Testament books.

One in particular, which has drawn a great deal of interest, was a fragment of a manuscript which appears to be the oldest writing of the New Testament ever discovered.  The Pontifical Biblical Institute, which is a part of the Roman Catholic Church, announced that the Reverend Jose O’Callaghan discovered fragments of Mark’s Gospel dating from the year 50 A.D.  The writings are older by at least 75 years than any other portion of the New Testament in our possession.

Allow me try to put this in perspective for you.  Matthew was the first to write his Gospel, about 45 to 50 A.D.  Then came the letter of James, the half-brother of Jesus.  Then Luke wrote his Gospel.  Then Mark was written, and eventually the Gospel of John.

Until the fragment of Mark was found, a piece of the Gospel of John from chapter 18 was the oldest existing fragment of the New Testament.  Known as Ryland’s papyrus 457, this piece of papyrus was dated about 125 A.D., less than a generation after the last New Testament book was written.

Professor O’Callaghan made the remarkable discovery at Cave Seven at Qumran.  Seven papyri fragments were found, all containing Greek scripts, which indicate that the desolate caves behind the Essene settlement were later used as a repository for Christian manuscripts and writings, probably after the destruction of the Qumran community in 73 A.D.

Possibly you are thinking, “What does an old piece of manuscript have to do with my life today?”  If you are a person who is concerned with the integrity of this great Book, the Bible, it has great importance.  When manuscripts which are very, very old are discovered, and their substance is the same as the text of the Bible you have in your home or office, you are assured that the text has not been changed or altered; your confidence in what God tells you increases.

The date of 50 A.D. which is attached to Professor O’Callaghan’s find, takes us back about 17 years closer to the time when Jesus walked the shores of Galilee, and this, of course, created no small stir among Bible scholars.

Again the manuscripts (and their numbers are in the thousands) confirm the authority and reliability of our Bibles today.  More than 5000 Greek manuscripts have been recovered.  Of them, 40 are more than 1000 years old.  Compare that mountain of documentary evidence with only 10 manuscripts of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and of them the earliest is dated 900 A.D.

Sir Frederick Kenyon, a renowned authority on manuscripts, wrote, “The interval, then, between the dates of the original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible….”  Yes, you can trust your Bible.  Read it today!

Resource reading: Isaiah 40:6-8