From: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H. Buehler)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Qumran finding
Date: 1 Sep 92 07:09:18 GMT
Organization: none

In article <Aug.31.02.34.59.1992.25622@athos.rutgers.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

   [I find this quite a frustrating postings.  Nothing against Ken.  He's
   giving us all the available information.  But there are all kinds of
   obvious questions that would need to be answered before we could
   evaluation the significance of claims like this.  It would certainly
   be nice if Coulumbe would have chosen a method of publishing that gave
   some of that information.  Does anybody else know more about any of
   this?  --clh]

The information started in the Italian Catholic magazine "30 Days"
several months ago and is filtering its way out to various other
Catholic magazines from there.  By coincidence, I am going to be
posting some of these very "30 Days" articles on the Catholic mailing
list I run.

The O'Callahan find is at least 20 years old.  There is just now
beginning to be acceptance of its validity.  There are two exciting
fragments from Qumran Cave 7:

- One, fragment 7Q5, appears to be a fragment of Mark 6:52-53, dating
from about 50 AD.

- The other, fragment 7Q4, looks to be a fragment of 1 Timothy, from
the same time period.

One of the fragments has a left or right margin intact, a very rare
find indeed.

The man who is currently championing these finds is Dr. Carsten Peter
Thiede.  There was a conference on the fragments in Europe recently I
believe.  Don't know what happened.  He was also just recently back at
Qumran looking for more fragments.

Needless to say, these finds, if they pan out, would make mincemeat of
current thoughts in some circles about the late dating of the Gospels.
The Catholic Church holds to an early dating, so the finds are most
welcome...

Fr. Carmignac was another Catholic Biblical scholar.  His work
centered on the theory of the Hebrew/Aramaic language of the original
Gospels.  Meaning, that he theorized that the Gospels were written,
not in Greek, but in a Semitic tongue.  I'm not sure of the exact
details, since it has been several months since "30 Days" covered
this, so I may have it slightly wrong.  I do remember that he had
hoped that Biblical scholarship by the year 2000 would be based on his
groundwork.  When he died, he left his papers and research material to
the Institute Catholique in France, since he had taught there so long.
They refused to let anyone see it!!!

This story was also broken by "30 Days".  There was another article on
it just recently, where there appears to be some hope of the material
being released, because of the scandal generated by "30 Days."

The example in the 30 Days article from Fr. Carmignac's work covered
the Gospel of St. John, in particular, a passage where there was
wordplay in Aramaic/Hebrew that did not show up in the current Greek
text.  It had to be translated into Aramaic/Hebrew for the wordplay to
show up.  I don't recall any other details, sorry...

If there's enough interest, I can post the articles I have on the
Qumran fragments.  I can also obtain the articles on Fr. Carmignac's
work and do likewise.

This is an example of why I wish Catholics in this country would
subscribe to the English edition of "30 Days."  There's no magazine in
this country at all like it, as you can perhaps see from the pieces
described above.  They are at a good level intellectually.  They also
appear to have political connections and pull.  There are often
articles by high-ranking Church prelates, such as Cardinal Sodano,
Cardinal Ratzinger, etc.

Just recently "30 Days" wrote an article on the Creed in use in the
Mass in France being Arian.  The Cardinal primate of France, I believe
it was, responded to the charges.  I think they're going to revise the
French Creed.

Joe Buehler