From: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H. Buehler)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: "The Wall of Words Crushed by a Fragment"
Date: 9 Sep 92 05:24:15 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 Wall of Words Crushed by a Fragment", from the 30DAYS #4 issue of
1991.

This article consists of some introductory material, followed by an
interview with Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede, mostly on the subject of
Qumran fragment 7Q4, a possible fragment of I Timothy, dated to about
50 AD.

A quotation from Dr. Thiede that 30DAYS highlighted in the article:

    It is no longer just a working hypothesis that fragment 7Q4 comes
    from Paul's first letter to Timothy, but a certainty.  Even those
    who doubt that the Qumran caves may contain a fragment of Mark's
    gospel are admitting that this latest could be a definitive find.

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

It was one of the greatest forgeries in history, a snare for centuries
of popes, fathers of the Church and saints and along with them, the
millions and millions of Catholic faithful who from the beginning of
Christianity had believed that some of the finest epistles in St
Paul's correspondence, the two epistles to Timothy and the one to
Titus, were genuine.

It was believed that the Apostle to the Gentiles had not written them,
but that a "forger" at the end of the first or the start of the second
century had.  His aim was said to have been to exploit the authority
of Paul's name in order to legitimize the structure of the Church and
the struggle against Gnosticism by dating the epistles from apostolic
times.

At first those in the know were few, exegetes, theologians, university
professors, though their reputations carried weight.  In recent years,
however, the conviction has gradually moved out of academia and though
it has not yet reached Christians at large, it has become ever more
widespread in Church circles.  Nowadays, not only in the great
majority of theology faculties but even in seminaries, it is generally
admitted that St. Paul was not the author of these particular letters.

Until last century, however, nobody had ever doubted the authorship of
the three letters -- called "pastoral" because they were addressed to
the leaders of the Christian communities in Ephesus (Timothy) and
Crete (Titus) -- in which Paul gives indications and warnings about
how the young Church should be led.  The apostolic fathers of the
Church, from St. Clement in Rome to St. Ignatius of Antioch and St.
Polycarp, testified to their authenticity.  The later fathers are if
anything more convinced: St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian and the others had no doubts about the author of the
letters.  St. Augustine could even insist that the letters "be
constantly present to whoever in the Church is proposed as teacher".
What was it, then, that caused the traditional notion to be abandoned,
first in subdued fashion, then ever more openly?

It all started in 1807 when the philosopher Friedrich Schieiermacher
denied the authenticity of the first letter to Timothy, thus clearing
the way for many rationalist and Protestant scholars (including
Holtzmann, Bultmann and Barret in this century) who negated Pauline
authorship for the other two letters as well, on the basis of what was
called "internal criticism".  What the phrase meant in this case was
that the style of the letters is notably different from the Apostle's
usual style, the organization of the Church too advanced for Paul's
time, the errors attacked suggest second century gnosticism and the
teaching insists, as never before, on the notion of orthodoxy.

The objections seemed serious, well documented and were substantial
enough to make rapid inroads even among Catholics.  In the first half
of the present century the new critico-historical scrutiny was turned
on all the texts of Holy Scripture and seemed likely to sweep
everything before it necessitating a revision of all the old
conceptions.  So widespread was this view that in 1943 Pius XII
promulgated Divino Afflante Spiritu, an encyclical that many people,
wrongly, took to be an attempt at reconciling the new method with the
evidence of tradition.

Now, however, a new discovery is undermining the conviction that the
pastoral epistles are not authentic, and oddly enough it is precisely
scientific discovery that is confirming the truth of tradition.  A
book dealing with the question is to be published in December.  Its
author is Carsten Peter Thiede, the brilliant German scholar who heads
the Christliche Medien-Akademie in Wetzlar and who has already
reopened the debate on the date of composition of Mark's gospel (No. 1
30 Days ).  His new book has an amply documented section on what is in
some ways an even more clamorous attribution.  Thiede claims that the
largest fragment found in cave 7 at Qumran -- where the library of the
Jewish sect of Essenes was walled up in 68 AD -- comes from the first
epistle to Timothy, thus establishing its authenticity.  The initial
identification was made by the Spanish Jesuit Jose O'Callaghan, who
worked on all the 18 fragments from the cave, but his discovery of
Paul's letter was immediately hushed up.  No one mentioned it except
to deride it.  However, Father O'Callaghan had set a time-bomb, and
now, twenty years later, Professor Thiede will ensure that it
explodes, and the blast will shake more than the classrooms of
theologians and scholars.  Its repercussions will be heard throughout
the Church, textbooks will have to be rewritten and presumptuous
modern certainties abandoned.

To find out more, 30 DAYS spoke with the German scholar.

30 DAYS: Professor, how did you come to be interested in Father
O'Callaghan's discovery?

CARSTEN PETER THIEDE: It was certainly nothing to do with a problem
involving my faith, not for a theological reason.  It all had to do
with papyrus and my only intention was a scientific one.  I am a
historian and an expert in papyrus and I was engaged in a general
study on the textual tradition of antique documents.  I happened to
come across a book on antique Greek texts which referred to
O'Callaghan's discovery.  I was fascinated by the idea.  If it turned
out to be true, it would be an absolutely sensational discovery.  But
I immediately began to wonder why there had been no debate on the
identification.  Was it a hoax, or was it serious? So I started
looking for everything that had been written on these caves and on the
identification suggested by O'Callaghan, and then I went to Rome to
talk to him.  In effect, it was scientific curiosity that led me this
far.  Curiosity open to the real world, not constrained by theological
a priori.

30 Days: Is the identification your book claims between the papyrus
fragment known as 7Q4 and First Timothy a working hypothesis or a
certainty?

THIEDE: A certainty.  Father O'Callaghan himself, a very great
scholar, was convinced of it from the start.  Everybody challenged him
on it, though nobody actually engaged in serious scholarly debate with
him.  The result was that they precluded the possibility of seriously
studying the fragment and it has been forgotten for twenty years.

When I started on my new book, I began with an examination of the
arguments put forward by O'Callaghan and the handful of other scholars
who are for the identification, as well as of those who are against
it.  And during my inquiry I came across further decisive details that
prove incontrovertibly that the fragment comes from First Timothy.
During this period the fragment was also checked on the computer using
the sophisticated Ibykus program.  We ran a comparison against all the
other antique texts.  Well, we found nothing.  The sole identification
the computer obstinately insisted on giving was with First Timothy.
And thus I am now quite certain that the identification is the right
one.

30 DAYS: It is not hard to see that there will be a good deal of
opposition...

THIEDE: There are experts who have always refused to accept the
identification of 7Q5 with a fragment of Mark's gospel because they
can't believe that there can have been a Gospel text at Qumran.  Now
there is one of them, extremely famous, with a world-wide reputation,
who has recently stated that for papyrological reasons 7Q4 may really
be First Timothy.  I am referring to Professor Emil Puech, one of the
five people in charge of the team supervising all the work at Qumran
This is an enormous step forward, since of course Puech is aware that
this discovery will cause a tremendous upheaval in the exegesis of the
pastoral epistles.  And he also knows that such an identification is
in strident conflict with the prevalent view of the date and
authenticity of this letter.  This is the first time that anyone who
'knows' has an accepted certainty and for papyrological reasons --
that is for scholarly reasons -- has admitted the possibility of
another hypothesis.

It is perhaps the start of a new trend.  Up till now, whenever debate
began about the possibility of there being fragments of the New
Testament at Qumran, there were always experts who said: 'It isn't
possible.  There can't be any New Testament writings earlier than 68
AD'.  They were unwilling to accept a papyrological identification
because that would have meant having to redate the New Testament
writings.  They had a priori certainties.  But academically,
scholarship requires going about it in a different way.

30 DAYS: Why do scholars who deny that there could be a fragment of
Mark's gospel at Qumran admit that there might be the first letter to
Timothy?

THIEDE: The reason is simple: this fragment, which is the largest
found in the cave, has certain rare particularities, very difficult to
find together in a single fragment, and which facilitate the work of
identification enormously.  There are much smaller fragments of
ancient literature which have been identified with absolute certainty
and they lacked the many certain points of 7Q4.

30 DAYS: Could you give us a brief outline of them?

THIEDE: This fragment still has its right margin, that is, all the
line-endings.  Thus one can calculate the length of the completed
line, how many words and how many letters it contains.  For a
papyrologist, this is the rarest of luck, practically unique.

Another detail that helps towards identification are the words that
remain.  For example, in the second line, the letters
'ton' are clearly visible,
and are probably a noun ending or the start of a word.  In the
following line there is 'ontai', a recognizable verb-form.  I could go
on for half an hour describing other details.  In the whole of ancient
literature, the statistical probability that there is more than one
text with these same particularities is very, very slight, almost nil.
And it was through these particularities that the identification with
First Timothy came about.  Later we used the computer to check the
identification.  The sophisticated Ibykus program went through all
Greek literature and in all the Greek literature known to us there is
not one single possibility, not one, of identifying the fragment apart
from First Timothy.

One last thing: in cave 7 there were other very small fragments which
have been identified and published.  They seem to be part of this
epistle to Timothy.

30 DAYS: Might it not be the case that the cave contained the personal
letters of monks, or other Greek texts hitherto unknown, and that 7Q4
is a fragment of those.

THIEDE: No.  Though it is paradoxically true that 'we know unknown
texts'-- St Paul's epistles to the Laodiceans, for example, of which
he himself speaks -- the particularities of this fragment are so
individual as to exclude the possibility.

30DAYS: From the point of view of scholarship and exegesis, Professor,
just how important is the document?

THIEDE: For the scholar, it is of quite exceptional importance.  This
is absolutely the first time we have come across it in an ancient
papyrus.  And you have to remember we have come across fragments of
almost the whole of the New Testament.

For the exegete, it is possibly more important still.  Ninety-nine
percent of New Testament scholars are convinced -- and, of course,
they have their own good reasons -- that this epistle is not by Paul,
but comes from much later, from the end of the first century, or even
from the second.  Yet we know for certain that every fragment in cave
7 was written before the year 68 AD, much earlier than the occupation
of Qumran by the Xth Legion under Vespasian.

That means that it was written while St. Paul was still alive, since
we know he was killed between 64 and 67 AD.  Naturally that doesn't
prove that Paul wrote it, there are serious exegetical problems
involved.  Nevertheless, it was written either by him or by his
secretary, Silvanus, or by someone else named in the New Testament.
St. Paul may well have said: 'Silvanus, write to Timothy'.  But that
is just a hypothesis, plausible as it is.  What is important is that
the fragment proves that the epistle was written while Paul was still
alive.

30 DAYS: What are the "pastoral" consequences of the discovery?

THIEDE: Well, as you know, I am only a papyrologist, but I will try to
answer the question.  Recently I had to give a lecture at the Sacred
Heart University in Milan.  Two thousand young people came to listen
in silence while I talked about this discovery.  There are reasons for
optimism.  We are beginning to understand that there is decisive
evidence about the origins of the Gospels and St. Paul's epistles,
writings that go back to the time of the eye-witnesses.  The people
who wrote them were there when things happened, what they write is
based on what they saw, lived, heard, experienced.  This letter of
Paul's brings back the flavor and the experience of the first
Christian communities.  My starting point, as I have said, is purely
scholarly, but I am quite aware of the importance of certain
discoveries.  It is important to find historical, archeological,
literary evidence to show the people of today that their faith is
based on an event that happened in history, on things that occurred in
the actual lives of human beings.  To be able to show through a
papyrus found in Qumran that the first Christians were real people,
that the Gospels, the epistles of St. Paul are real documents, written
when the events were taking place, is a first step towards
understanding the historical value of the words and actions of Jesus
Christ.  So that when we look at the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of
history, we become aware that we are looking at two aspects of the
same real man and get a fuller picture of the most important man in
history, the only one who has ever proclaimed himself God.

30 DAYS: At the conference held in Eichstatt at the end of October,
when you announced your findings on fragment 7Q4, the Israeli
authorities were asked to reopen excavation work in cave 7 permitting
a search for further documents.  Why did the request concern just that
cave?

THIEDE: Because it is a most important cave, and even those who oppose
the identification with First Timothy and St. Mark's gospel are agreed
that cave 7 is special.  All the other Qumran caves contain Aramaic or
Hebrew texts only, while cave 7 is the only one that contains nothing
but papyrus -- there is not even one fragment of parchment -- and only
papyrus in Greek.  It was a 'special collection', therefore, and the
question immediately arises as to why this special collection was put
into its own cave.  Was it a Christian collection donated to the
Qumran community?

It is a legitimate question because in the New Testament there is an
oblique reference to Essene priests who had become Christian.  It
occurs in the Acts of the Apostles: 'And many of the priests have come
into the faith.' The priests can't have been Sadducees because they
came nowhere near accepting a bodily resurrection and thus it is
impossible that 'many' priests of that persuasion can have become
Christian.  The other religious grouping active at the time were the
Pharisees and they did not have priests.  The only important movement
at the time of Jesus that accepted the possibility of the physical
resurrection of man and which had priests was the Essenes, hence the
conviction that the Acts was talking of them.  The Acts don't name
them simply because they had no name for themselves.  All this shows
that there were real contacts between the Christians and the Essenes.
It is likely that the Christians had given some of their books to the
Essenes and the Essenes had given some of theirs to the Christians of
Jerusalem.  Why not? We are speaking of a real world in which people
spoke and argued with each other.  All this is guesswork, however, the
important thing is that there were Essenes who had become Christians
in the time of the first Apostles.

30 DAYS: One final question.  In the last few days there has been a
lot of talk in the international press about the claim made by
Professor Robert Eisenman of the University of California that the
fragments from cave 4 refer to the death of a messiah who might well
be Jesus Christ.  What do you think?

THIEDE: Eisenman says that to find reference to a messiah at Qumran is
something sensational.  The opposite is the case.  To find reference
to the expectation of a messiah in the century preceding and following
the coming of Christ is perfectly normal.  It was a period full of
messianic predictions, based on Isaiah and other prophecies.  What,
however, is the real thrust of Eisenman's thesis?  He hopes to show
that Christianity was not a new movement with a new message, but no
more than a sect of the Qumran Essenes.  Hence of no historical
importance in the Judaism of the early centuries.  Only in the second
century, therefore, would Christianity as such have begun to establish
itself as an independent religion, and become the religion of the
Roman Empire under Constantine.  During the first century,
Christianity of the original kind will have been nothing but an Essene
sect.  That is the thesis Eisenman is proposing on the basis of a few
phrases from Qumran.

What is ludicrous is his attempt to suggest that Christ was a messiah
of the Essene kind.  It is simply not possible in the light of the
texts and our knowledge of the history, archeology and papyrology of
the early centuries.

30 DAYS: How could Eisenman make such a blunder about the messianic
import of the fragments?

THIEDE: He did not make a blunder, he is deliberately trying to
mislead.  He has already published books on the origins of
Christianity and no expert in the world accepts his thesis.  He is
considered a maverick by the academic world.  His notions are
unacceptable because they lack any solid basis in history, archeology
or papyrology.  His intention is clear and he is Willing to confess
it.  He wants to prove that Christianity is not an independent
religion, that it is some offshoot of Essene beliefs of the early
period.

Clearly he has every right to attack the Catholic Church, but to do it
you need evidence.

He presents his notions in a sensationalist way and the media always
find such things irresistible.  But the fact that the world's press
has taken them up doesn't make them any more respectable.  On the
contrary...