So, the story began with a debate between Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman in 2012. Yes. It’s been fourteen years. But anyway. I first covered this in 2012 under Amazing Proofs of Jesus! and updated it in 2017 in an article about how not to be duped by myths like this, From Lead Codices to Mummy Gospels: Essential Links on Dubious Tales, which went over several examples but concluded with the mythical “Mummy Gospel of Mark.” I noted then that it was “dirty fucking pool, citing evidence” in a live debate “that has never been published before, and never gone through peer review, and that Ehrman couldn’t even have examined or known anything about” to try and “win” the argument that we “have” manuscripts of Mark dating to the first century. It was all bogus. Wallace claimed it came from mummy masks, and rumor had it, in the Green collection—the Hobby Lobby Bible Museum people (whose collection we’d later learn was tainted with frauds). But none of that is true.

The Spin Up

Eventually we would learn: zero Gospels came from mummy masks; and none date to the first century. But it took many years before those beans were spilled.

I followed my 2017 article up with The Mummy Gospel Isn’t Even a Mummy Gospel!? Updates on That Supposed First Century Manuscript of Mark, by which time we learned Wallace was just repeating bollocks told him by other Christian apologists maybe a year earlier, in 2011 (details in the link). Supposedly someone just saw an actual unpublished manuscript of Mark on Oxford papyrologist Dirk Obbink’s table next to mummy masks and somehow (?) confused them. And the jury is still out on whether the “first century” claim was a telephone game (where “maybe” got transformed into “definitely”) or a deliberate lie Obbink told them—because, surprise, Obbink would turn out to be shady as fuck. As we learned when indeed the truth all came out: that the manuscript in question was actually from around 200 A.D. give or take a few decades, and not “first century” and not from mummy masks or the Green collection. I covered all that soon after in Bullshit from Day One: The First Century Gospel Is a Third Century Gospel.

But before this all came out, the whole industry was abuzz over what this “missing” first century mummy Gospel could be, where it could be, why it wasn’t published, and so on. The rumor that it was in the Green collection could explain why it wasn’t published (shady fat cat collectors often hide their finds for fear of getting busted buying illegal antiquities). And that rumor had some teeth. Because it would turn out the Green collection was trying to buy this manuscript, and some anonymous collector did instead, all unaware that Obbink was illegally selling it to get rich. Though he claims he was framed (in my opinion a wildly implausible defense here), he’s since been arrested and is under criminal investigation for a broad scheme to sell off dozens of Oxford papyri, and was successfully sued by Hobby Lobby for this scheme, losing to the tune of seven million dollars because he evaded process and never showed up in court. Which tells you a lot. But which also can explain why this was being “pitched” as a first century fragment—to goose its dark money market price.

But no one knew this yet. At the time, all that was known was that there was supposedly such a manuscript being studied by Obbink that contained parts of Mark 1. So when people dug up a story about a mummy Gospel fragment of Mark 15, it was known that that had to be different, though it was odd that it should also be connected to mummies. Nevertheless, experts ran that to ground and uncovered it as a myth: called the Fackelmann fraud, it was not a Gospel at all, but a pre-Christian manuscript from mummy cartonnage that was being fraudulently claimed to have text from Mark 15 (see The Nongbri Revelation).

But in the midst of all this whirlwind, A Missing Third Fragment entered the fray. Yes, a third first century Gospel of Mark! Already in 2012. Of course the first one wasn’t first century or a mummy Gospel, and the second one was made up. But what about the third? Glimmer of hope maybe?? This was a piece of Mark 5, so not the Obbink scam or the Fackelmann fraud. Could this one be real? No one could find it. There was only one photo of it that circulated online and was tracked to a mysterious since-deleted Facebook page. Those who followed this story will remember that image:

Some gullible Christian apologists did thirst over this, suggesting it could be first century and authentic and must just be hidden in some dark money collection somewhere. But experts were pretty unanimously not buying it. My own observations in 2012 matched that of others that “it’s far more likely to be a fake” and even “the best argument against it being fake is that it was so badly faked: the papyrus shows no fray lines, the scribal lines are not evenly spaced, the lettering is inconsistent, and there are no other typical indicators of authenticity.” But who faked it? Where was it? And hey, that’s just, like, an opinion, man. Could we prove it was a fake?

The Wind Down

Well. Here’s the news. I had dinner recently with its forger. He plopped it right down on the table. I won’t name him. This was always just a prank to see how easily people could be fooled with minimal effort. It wasn’t sellable (you’ll see why in a minute) so he couldn’t pull an Obbink with it. He is not in the industry and has no relevant credentials in papyrology or forgery. It was literally just a garage craft project by an HVAC repairman. A work of performance art really, right out of the pages of Duchamp or Warhol or Haaning. To document all this I took my own photos of it (next to my beer for context):

And now for the big reveal:

That’s right. You’re not seeing things. That second photo is of the object turned around so you can see the back of it, revealing that this supposed papyrus fragment is actually a piece of bark from a tree.

So, thanks to that kind man bringing this in and telling me its story, I can now prove conclusively to you that this “first century fragment of Mark” is assuredly a twenty-first century fake. Which lets me put the entire “first century Gospel” myth to bed.

You’re welcome.