Gospel Fragments in Britain May Be Contemporary Account of Life of Jesus Christ

Bits of papyrus in an Oxford University library may be the oldest fragments of the New Testament Gospels and may even be a contemporary account of the life of Jesus Christ, the London Times reported Saturday.

Biblical scholars have traditionally believed that three scraps of text of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, inscribed in Greek, were written in the late 2nd Century, or considerably after Christ’s death, which is usually given as AD 33. But German papyrus expert Carsten Thiede will publish a scholarly paper next month arguing that the fragments, kept at Oxford’s Magdalen College, could be an eyewitness account of Jesus’ life, the newspaper said.

The newspaper said the evidence on an early form of writing paper was a potentially important breakthrough in biblical scholarship, on a level with the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.

Some scholars have questioned the accuracy of the New Testament as historical accounts because, they say, the texts were written long after the events described. But if Thiede has correctly dated the fragments, it would be evidence that the Matthew Gospel was written only a generation after the Crucifixion, or even earlier. Parts of the New Testament may have been written by men who actually knew Christ, rather than authors recounting a 2nd-Century version of an oral tradition.

According to the newspaper, the Magdalen fragments have been at the Oxford college since 1901. Little work was done on them after 1953 when they were last edited by biblical scholars.

Earlier this year, Thiede visited Oxford and inspected the papyrus. A close study of the script led to his conclusion.

“The Magdalen fragment now appears to belong to a style of handwriting that was current in the 1st Century AD, and that slowly petered out around the mid-1st Century,” the paper quoted him as saying. “Even a hesitant approach to questions of dating would therefore seem to justify a date in the 1st Century, about 100 years earlier than previously thought.”

The lines on the fragments are from the 26th chapter of the Matthew Gospel and include the oldest written reference to Mary Magdalene and the betrayal of Christ by Judas.

Thiede’s theory is expected to provoke controversy among scholars, who may question his reliance on the style of script to support his argument that the text was written earlier than previously believed.

Prof. Peter Parsons, a papyrus expert at Oxford who believes that the fragments date from the 2nd Century or later, said Thiede’s theory was “sloppy” and based on the wrong assumption that all scribes of the Jewish Diaspora wrote in the same script.