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The Reading Culture of Early Christianity

Daniel Baird Wallace (born June 5, 1952) is an American professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), the purpose of which is digitizing all known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament via digital photographs.

Wallace’s Early life

Wallace was born June 5, 1952, in California. He earned his B.A. (1975) from Biola University, and his Th.M. (1979) and Ph.D. (1995) in New Testament studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He also pursued postdoctoral studies in a variety of places, including in Cambridge at Tyndale House, Christ’s College, Clare College, and Westminster College, and in Germany at the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of Tübingen, and the Bavarian State Library.

Wallace’s Career

Wallace began his academic career teaching at Dallas Seminary from 1979 until 1981 and then at Grace Theological Seminary from 1981 until 1983, before returning to Dallas, where he has been tenured since 1995. He published his first edition of Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics in 1996. It has since become a standard work in the field in the US. Two-thirds of schools that teach the subject use the textbook.[1] He also served as senior New Testament editor for the NET Bible and has founded the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. In 2016, he was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Wallace’s Views

Wallace, along with DTS colleague Darrell L. Bock, has been an outspoken critic of the alleged “popular culture” quest to discredit conservative evangelical views of Jesus—including the writings of Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman.[2] He is a contributor to the Ehrman Project, a website that critiques the writings of Bart Ehrman.[3] Wallace critiqued Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why for misrepresenting commonly held views of textual criticism, especially in Ehrman’s view of the “orthodox corruption of Scripture.”[4] Wallace and Ehrman dialogued at the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum in April 2008. Wallace is a Baptist and also a classical cessationist.[5]

“First Century Mark” – Missing the Forest From the Trees

In 2012 Wallace claimed that a recently identified papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Mark (P137) had been definitively dated by a leading paleographer to the late first century and would shortly be published by E.J. Brill. The fragment might consequently be the earliest surviving Christian text. This claim resulted in widespread speculation on social media and in the press as to the fragment’s content, provenance, and date, exacerbated by Wallace’s inability to give any further details due to a non-disclosure agreement. The fragment, designated Papyrus 137 and subsequently dated by its editors to the later 2nd or earlier 3rd century [175-225 A.D.], was eventually published in 2018, in the series of Oxyrhynchus Papyri LXXXIII. After the publication, Daniel Wallace confirmed that Papyrus 137 was indeed the fragment that he had been referring to, and that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement at the request of Jerry Pattengale, then representing the Museum of the Bible in its efforts to purchase this particular fragment; efforts that proved unavailing, as all the time it had been in the ownership of the Egypt Exploration Society, and had not legitimately been offered for sale.

PAPYRUS 137 (P137): Recently Published Earliest Manuscript Fragment of Mark

The Complete Guide to Bible Translation-2

First, Daniel B. Wallace is a man of impeccable integrity, who has been a defender of God’s Word for decades and yet because of his predicament, we have a focus on his unintended misstep instead of the fact that P137 dates to the early middle second century. Second, while the above turned out to be untrue, P137 is dated to the early middle second century (125-150 A.D.) by Philip W. Comfort and the earliest extant manuscript of Mark. Edward D. Andrews would also concur with this early date. See Philip W. Comfort (1950–) New Testament Textual Scholar and Professor of Greek and New Testament

Attribution: This article incorporates text from the public domain: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and by Edward D. Andrews

Wallace Books

Wallace, Daniel B. (1996). Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of New Testament Greek. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-310-21895-1. OCLC 37227757.

——— (2000). The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Grammar. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. ISBN 0-310-23229-5. OCLC 43684564.

———; Sawyer, M. James, eds. (2005). Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? An Investigation into the Ministry of the Spirit of God Today. Dallas, TX: Biblical Studies Press. ISBN 978-0-737-50068-4. OCLC 62866519.

———; Komoszewski, J. Ed; Sawyer, M. James (2006). Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications. ISBN 0-8254-2982-X.

———; Bock, Darrell L. (2007). Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. ISBN 978-0-7852-2615-4.

———; Edwards, Grant G. (2007). A Workbook for New Testament Syntax: companion to Basics of New Testament syntax and Greek grammar beyond the basics: an exegetical syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-310-27389-9. OCLC 154666705.

——— (2009). Granville Sharp’s Canon and its Kin: semantics and significance. Studies in Biblical Greek. 14. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-820-43342-4. OCLC 213408489.

——— (2011). Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence. Text and Canon of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic. ISBN 978-0825433382.

———; Burnette, Brittany C.; Moore, Terri Darby (2013). A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic. ISBN 978-0-825-43949-0. OCLC 860757187.