Ancient Book of Mark Found Not So Ancient After All

 ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2009) – A biblical expert at the University of
Chicago, Margaret M. Mitchell, together with experts in micro-chemical
analysis and medieval bookmaking, has concluded that one of the University
Library’s most enigmatic possessions is a forgery. The book, a copy of the
Gospel of Mark, will remain in the collection as a study document for
scholars studying the authenticity of ancient books.

Scholars have argued for nearly 70 years over the provenance of what’s
called the Archaic Mark, a 44-page miniature book, known as a “codex,”
which contains the complete 16-chapter text of the Gospel of Mark in
minuscule handwritten text. The manuscript, which also includes 16 colorful
illustrations, has long been believed to be either an important witness to
the early text of the gospel or a modern forgery, said Mitchell, Professor
of New Testament and Early Christian Literature.

“The mystery is now solved from textual, chemical, and codicological
(bookmaking) angles,” said Mitchell, who first became intrigued by the codex
when she saw it as a graduate student in 1982. Comprehensive analysis
demonstrates that it is not a genuine Byzantine manuscript, but a
counterfeit, she said, “made somewhere between 1874 and the first decades of
the 20th century.”

Mitchell said experts from multiple disciplines made the findings possible.
“Our collective efforts have achieved what no single scholar could do —
give a comprehensive analysis of the composite artifact that is an
illustrated codex. The data collected in this research process has given us
an even deeper understanding of the exact process used by the forger,” said
Mitchell. “It will, we hope, assist ongoing scholarly investigation into and
detection of manuscripts forged in the modern period.”

Since 1937, when Edgar J. Goodspeed a University of Chicago biblical
scholar, acquired the Archaic Mark, the manuscript has been an enigma.
As early as 1947, scholars speculated about its authenticity. Because it is
the closest of any known manuscript to the venerable 4th-century Codex
Vaticanus for the text of Mark’s Gospel, Mitchell said, it was believed to
be “either a very important textual witness (from the 14th
Century) or a forgery based upon some late 19th-century critical edition of
the Greek New Testament incorporating the readings of the Vatican
manuscript.” The modern blue pigment in the illustrations, indentified in
1989, would support the latter, but Mitchell explained this finding was not
definitive because the pigment could have come from a restoration effort on
 an earlier manuscript.

In 2006, the University of Chicago Library digitized the Archaic Mark,
making it available to scholars worldwide (goodspeed.lib.uchicago.edu) and
stimulating renewed interest in it. The following year, in response to that
growing interest in the mysterious manuscript, Alice Schreyer, Director of
the Special Collections Research Center, convened a committee to lead a
complete and definitive examination of the material components of the
Archaic Mark.

The Library commissioned materials analysis from McCrone Associates, and
enlisted the aid of Abigail Quandt, a rare books expert and preservationist
at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Last January, Joseph G. Barabe, a senior scientist at McCrone, took 24
samples of parchment, ink and a range of paints used in illustrations.
Barabe analyzed the samples using an array of techniques — polarized light;
energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry; the scanning electron microscope for
elemental analysis; X-ray diffraction; Fourier Transform infrared
spectroscopy; and Raman spectroscopy. Under microscopic analysis, Barabe and
his colleagues found no evidence of retouching of any kind in the
manuscript, disproving earlier suspicions of restoration attempts.

Barabe determined the Archaic Mark was created after 1874 — using materials
not available until the late 19th century — on a parchment substrate dating
from about the middle of the 16th century. Carbon dating determined the
animal hide was from some time between 1485-1631.

The rest of the authentication team confirmed and helped interpret Barabe’s
findings. Quandt carefully reconstructed the steps the modern forger took to produce
the manuscript, from preparing the parchment, to the painting of images and
inscription of text, as well as the application of the modern coating,
cellulose nitrate. Quandt also identified specific ways in which its
production defies usual Byzantine procedures, and she determined that the
reused parchment contains no recoverable text underneath.

Mitchell completed the analysis with a study of the textual edition the
forger had used. She confirmed and refined Stephen C. Carlson’s proposal
that the modern edition from which the forger copied the text was the 1860
edition of the Greek New Testament by Philipp Buttmann.
Mitchell identified telltale readings in the Archaic Mark that arose from
the original 1856 edition of Buttmann’s critical text, reproducing errors
later corrected in the flurry of collations of the famous manuscript
Vaticanus between 1857 and 1867.

Mitchell, Barabe and Quandt have detailed these findings in a paper
scheduled for February publication in the journal Novum Testamentum.
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In order to be clear, this finding has nothing to do with the Morton Smith Secret Mark controversy, except one thing— it shows how very clever forgers are, able to fool even the best of epigraphers.  This is why chemical analysis is so crucial to the issue of determining forgery in the case of a manuscript. 

I sent Margaret Mitchell an email today asked her whether she thought this finding had any direct ramifications for the secret Mark controversy. Her answer was no, but she also said she is waiting for the Secret Mark controversy to calm down before offering an opinion as to whether that mss. is also a modern forgery. She wants to teach a class on the subject at U. of Chicago.  My opinion is it is definitely a forgery, whether ancient or modern. Stay tuned.

BW3