What is the oldest Greek manuscript of the Gospel of Mark?

AnswerBefore 1881, translations of the New Testament were based on copies of Greek manuscripts known as the Textus Receptus (Latin for "Received Text"), or the Latin Vulgate. In the 19th and 20th centuries, older Greek manuscripts were discovered, causing Bible scholars to revise what they believe was the correct text of the New Testament. The latest revision of this Greek Text is the United Bible Societies' The Greek New Testament (published by United Bible Societies, 4th Edition abbreviated as UBS4). The UBS4 differs from the Received Text at thousands of points.

Not all manuscripts contain all four gospels of the New Testament, and many are only partial or even fragmentary.

One of the very earliest is Papyrus 45, which contains the gospels and Acts, is dated to around 225 CE. Slightly earlier manuscripts exist, but do not contain Mark.

A very early manuscript known as 7Q5, found at Qumran among the "Dead Sea Scrolls" has been seen by some scholars as a copy of two verses from Mark 6:52-3. This would potentially be the earliest fragment of Mark's Gospel, as it would predate the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. However other scholars have rejected the view that this fragment is from Mark, and it is no longer generally accepted. An extension of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" position is provided by Robert Eisenman, who believes that Christianity was really an evolution of the Qumran sect (The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians), but once again, this is not a widely supported position. It is perhaps more likely that Mark based verses 6:52-3 on the document found at Qumran, without being a member of the community.

Later, important manuscripts, that date from the mid-4th to the early 5th century, include Codex Vaticanus, Codex Aleph (Codex Sinaiticus), Codex Alexandrinus.

AnswerIf you are referring to an almost entire manuscript of the Gospel of Mark, then you would go to Codex Vaticanus at around 300 AD, closely followed by Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph) dated at around 350 AD. These however, are not quite complete as they have space allocated for missing verses at the end of Mark and then continue into Luke. In fact, in the Vaticanus manuscript, the space left for the ending is the only such space left in the entire manuscript.

Seven early church writers (all who pre-date the two manuscripts which omit the ending) have also directly quoted from the ending or else referred to it and so, since it is also in the great majority of manuscripts, it is rightly regarded as genuine. Further to this, both the two codices which omit the ending are notoriously unreliable manuscripts and have thousands of errors between them.

It has been proposed that a fragment from Qmran, known as 7Q5 contains Mark 6:52-53. From what is known of Qmran, it would appear that this fragment pre-dates AD 70. However, the fragment is small and the identification has not been sufficient to convince most scholars.

The next oldest fragment, known as the Chester Beatty Papyrus or P45 dates from the early to the middle of the third century or around 200- 250 AD. This contains parts of Mark 7, although it is considered that it originally contained all the Gospels and Acts.

Codex Bezae, dated AD 450 plus would appear to be the earliest existing manuscript to contain the entire Gospel of Mark.