From: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H. Buehler)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: The O'Callaghan Case, part I
Date: 3 Sep 92 04:12:28 GMT
Organization: none

The following is copyright "30 Days" magazine, and is posted here by
permission of their English language publisher.  It may not be
reproduced without permission of "30 Days".

"The O'Callaghan Case", part I, from the September 1991 issue of
30DAYS.  (I will post part II when I find it and get it OCR'd.  Also,
I am going to scan the photos of the 7Q4 and 7Q5 fragments and put
them in the archive server on my machine, for the interested.  I'll
post something when I have them up and available.)

----------------------------------------------------

Among the manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic discovered in 1947 in rock
grottoes west of the Dead Sea near Kirbet Qumran, 19 fragments in
Greek were also found in Grotto Number 7.  Unlike the other
manuscripts, they were not written on parchment or animal skins but on
papyrus and because they were in Greek they were unique.  Two of the
fragments were identified as part of the Old Testament -- Exodus 28,
4-7 and Baruc 6, 53-44.  The others remained a mystery.

Years passed and in 1971, the Spanish-born Jesuit papyrologist, Fr.
Jose O'Callaghan, a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in
Rome, was editing a catalogue of Old Testament manuscripts and decided
to examine the unidentified fragments again, especially Fragment
Number 5, but to no avail.  Even the clearly visible sequence of
letters on the fourth line -- nnes -- that seemed to suggest the word
egennesen (generate) and therefore the genealogical section of the
Bible, were not indicative.  Moreover, a leading British papyrologist,
Cecil H. Roberts, had dated the fragment no later than 50 A.D. on the
basis of scientific dating procedures for writing that are recognized
as highly precise.  Fr.  O'Callaghan was forced, therefore, to exclude
the possibility from the outset that the fragment could be part of the
synoptic Gospels, which even experts within the Catholic Church had
dated at between 70 and 100 A.D.

He was about to abandon his research when he began to wonder if that
*nnes* could indicate Gennesaret.  But he could find no passage in the
Old Testament that corresponded to the fragment, known as the 7Q5 and
which comprised 20 letters spread over five lines.

Then, out of curiosity, he pored over the New Testament.  To his great
surprise, he discovered that the fragment was a perfect match for a
passage of the Gospel According to Mark: "(since) they had not
understood the fact of the bread and their hearts had hardened.  And
when they had completed the crossing (towards land) they arrived at
Gennesaret and disembarked.  And when ..." (Mark 6, 52-53)

The 7Q5 featured other details which also coincided, such as the white
spacing between two letters where the caesura had been (the
paragraphos) and the initial Kai (E), typical of the parataxis found
in Mark.

In 1972, the then rector of the Biblical Institute, Carlo Maria
Martini now the cardinal archbishop of Milan, responded to the
publication of O'Callaghan's find in a cautious article in the Jesuit
review La Civilta Cattolica: "Although it may seem strange to a
non-expert, the casual matching of just a few letters spread out over
different lines with a well known literary text is rather improbable".

But it was Martini who commissioned all the experts of the Biblical
Institute to examine O'Callaghan's find and later he asked the opinion
of Professor Sergio Daris, a papyrologist at the University of Trieste
in northem Italy.  The result was authorization to publish information
about the discovery but with a question mark.  "I remember that Paul
VI heard about the find and it is said that he wanted to make the
official announcement to the world but he was dissuaded", said Fr.
Michele Piccirillo, an archeologist in the Holy Land.

The need to avoid compromising the Church over a discovery that had
still not been subject to the scrutiny of international science
demanded caution.

The two priests directly concerned, Fr. P. Benoit and Fr. M. Baillet
who had been in charge of the Qumran finds, reacted sharply to
O'Callaghan's discovery, as did Kurt Aland, the respected director of
the Munster Institute for Research into the Text of the New Testament
and co-publisher of the Nestle-Aland and Greek New Testament.  For
acceptance of O'Callaghan's discovery would mean annulling the of
ficial reconstruction of events by the academic world.  The whole
structure of modern exegesis risked collapsing in ruins.  The
historical truth of the Gospels would have to be restored because it
would seem that they record eye-witness accounts, the events people
had seen, heard and experienced.

In short, the tiny 7Q5 fragment of papyrus could harbor exceptional
documentary proof of uninterrupted Church teaching over 19 centuries.

In their book "The First New Testament", two Presbyterian professors,
D.  Estrada and W. White Jr. explain how the controversy counter-posed
liberal opinions on the New Testament against a discovery liable to
destroy the foundations of accepted liberal and theological theories.
The work of Fr. O'Callaghan, the latest researcher into the Dead Sea
Scrolls, had challenged the efforts of several widely esteemed
scientists who were the institutional leaders of the study, the
professors said.

"I must admit that I would have been cautious too about accepting the
results of my 7Q5 research immediately", said Fr. O'Callaghan, known
for his scruples as a scientist.  "But I believe that if it had been a
fragment of Greek literature or of the Old Testament, all these
unncessary problems would not have arisen.  I have identified many
ancient texts, from Xenophon to Theocritus and Eusebius of Caesarea
and all my discoveries were accepted without question.  I published
some of the finds in Brussels and some in Spain and I have won only
praise until now", he added.

Fr. O'Callaghan, dean of the Pontifical Institute's Biblical Faculty
where he has been teaching for 24 years, is the author of over 200
works.  But censorship has blocked the official release of news on the
7Q5 outside the clique of experts, although one Italian religious
affairs periodical has been commenting on the whole affair for some
time.

Controversy surrounds the fragment even though it has been subject to
numerous computerized tests.  Oxford was the venue for the most recent
when the fragment was compared with a whole range of examples of
Greek-Christian literature.  So far, the only answer the computers
continue to give for the identity of the 7Q5 is Mark 6, 52-53.

Now after many years, a Lutheran scientist has broken the mysterious
silence on the 7QS.  In an in-depth study, "The Oldest Manuscript of
the Gospels?" which the Biblical Institute in Rome has published,
Carsten Peter Thiede arrives at this well-argumented conclusion: "On
the basis of the rules of paleographic research and the study of
texts, it is certain that 7Q5 is Mark 6, 52-53, the oldest fragment we
have of a New Testament text, written at about 5O A.D. but certainly
before 68 A.D.  Kurt Aland himself rightly confirmed that such an
extract would not have come from a series of texts before Mark's time
but from a completed Gospel".

The cracks in the "academia" wall of historic exegesis are now
widening.  But the dogmas of rationalist exegesis, which are proving
to be increasingly irrational, seem to continue to enjoy the support
of ecclesiastical officialdom.

[Thanks for finding the original source for us.  I'm still not clear
that this would be such an earthquake, even if true.  64 A.D.  is not
an uncommon view these days.  50, though a bit early, would not seem
such a big deal.  --clh]