A Gospel Discovery In an Ancient Mask
A team of scientists and scholars claim to have discovered the world's earliest-known version of the Gospel, dating back to the first century A.D., which was found on a sheet of papyrus used to make an ancient mummy's mask in Egypt.
Live Science is reporting that Craig Evans, a professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, and an associated team of three dozen researchers and scholars have unmasked what is thought to be a written portion of the Gospel of Mark, that possibly dates back as early as 80 A.D.
Although most people think of Egyptian mummy masks being made of gold, Evans explained in a seminar that most ancient Egyptians, that were not pharaohs nor part of ancient Egypt's elite social class, were mummified with masks made out of used sheets of papyrus because that was the most cost efficient way for the families to preserve the bodies of their loved ones.
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Because papyrus itself was so expensive, the families often used sheets of papyrus that had already been used to write on. Evans further explained that many pagans, who had no respect for Christians, often used Christian writings to mask their dead loved ones, because they deemed the Christian writings as "trash."
