Carsten Peter ThiedeOCFKStJ (8 August 1952 – 14 December 2004) was a German archaeologist andNew Testament scholar. He was also a member ofPEN and appointed a Knight of Justice of theOrder of St John. He taught as professor of New Testament times and history at the Staatsunabhängige Theologische Hochschule (STH) inBasel and at theBen-Gurion University of the Negev inBeersheba,Israel. He often advanced theories that conflicted with the consensus of academic and theological scholarship.
Born inWest Berlin, Thiede studiedcomparative literature andhistory there before procuring a German National Scholarship Foundation Research Fellow position atQueen's College atOxford University in 1976, where he attained aBlue forvolleyball, which he had played in theGerman Volleyball Premier League.
In 1978, he became a senior lecturer in comparative literature atGeneva, where he drew inspiration from his fellow "comparativist",George Steiner. Drawn to the subject ofearly Christianity because of his background as alinguist and his expertise inmedievalLatinphilology, the study of the origins ofChristianity came to form his life's work.
For a number of years into the early '90s Thiede worked with various broadcasting companies, includingBBC Radio andERF, and as an editor at theBrockhaus publishing company.
Thiede was best known for his interpretation of some of the GreekDead Sea Scrolls fragments, including the identification of the small7Q5 papyrus fragment (illustration) as a fragment of theGospel of Mark.[1] He supportedO’Callaghan’s controversial claims that several papyrus fragments fromQumran Cave 7 are actually Christian New Testament texts from pre AD 70.
In December 1994, Thiede redated theMagdalen papyrus together with former deputy editor ofThe Sunday Telegraph and later editor ofThe Spectator,Matthew d'Ancona, which bears a fragment in Greek of theGospel of Matthew, to the latter part of the 1st century onpalaeographical grounds; this too provoked much debate and was highly publicised, most notably with a front-page headline inThe Times. By attempting to make his material more accessible to the general public he was often accused of being apopular science writer.
Carsten Thiede initially wrote an article in the academically peer-reviewedZeitschrift für Papyrologie in regards to his dating of the papyrus to the last third of the first century. He improved upon his research and published the results in his book titledEyewitness to Jesus in 1996. Thiede was able to date the Magdalen papyrus containing a portion of Matthew's Gospel to 66 CE using more advanced papyrological techniques and comparative analysis with a document dated to 66 CE (P. Oxy 246 II).
InThe Quest for the True Cross, also co-written withd'Ancona, Thiede argued that theTitulus Crucis could in fact be part ofJesus' cross, based on his palaeographic study of the writing,[2] though it is considered to be a medieval forgery by many scholars.[3] Thiede is particularly noted for his research intoearly Christianity, notablyPeter andPaul.
For the last seven years of his life, Thiede also worked for theIsrael Antiquities Authority repairing damage to the Dead Sea Scrolls and excavating the biblical location ofEmmaus. A devout Anglican who was ordained priest in 2000, he was alsoChaplain to Her Majesty's Forces despite being a German citizen. He died inPaderborn suddenly at the age of 52 from a heart attack.
