Scholars attending a Dead Sea Scroll conference at the University of Eichstaett in Germany recently addressed a letter to the Israel Antiquities Authority calling for a renewed investigation of Qumran Cave 7, where several fragmentary Greek texts were uncovered in the 1950s. According to two scholars in attendance, some of these fragments may have been parts of New Testament texts, including the Gospel of Mark. Almost all other scholars dispute this conclusion. The fragment with the best case, 7Q5, contains only 19 letters, half of which are only partially preserved, and has only one complete word—“and” in Greek. Nevertheless, […]
