Ancient Texts (a record of this morning’s investigation)
I was scanning slashdot this morning and an interesting post entitled Breakthrough Decodes ‘Classical Holy Grail’ caught my eye. As it turned out, the post was about a recent story in an online magazine whose abstract read “Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome”. This is a record of where the story led me this morning…
“The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus (”city of the sharp-nosed fish”) in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford’s Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world.” the story states. The documents were not a recent find, but the big news was that some new technology has made it possible to read scraps that were previously un-readable. Very cool stuff! The scraps of manuscripts which have lain discarded, forgotten by history all this time include long lost works by Sophocles and Euripides amoung other famous Greek writers.
A page at Oxford describes the restoration project which has been publishing the restored texts at the rate of about a text a year and includes over 4,700 individual items of note in their catalouge. The image on this page is from that site. The text says: “Social life at Oxyrhynchus: “Tayris asks you to dinner for the offering to our Lady Isis, in the Iseum, on the 8th, from the 9th hour” (P.Oxy. 4539, 2nd/3rd cent. AD.) � Imaging Papyri Project” (reproduced without permission)
There was speculation in the slashdot forum that more lost gospels might be found ( they have already found two ) which led me to an investigation of what is known as the Apocrypha and Gnosticism which I really had never investigated before. I found it interesting to learn that the Christian bible as it exists today is an amalgamation of many different sources which has been hobbled together through time as a result of religious politics. I never realized that the accepted canon of the Protestant bible has major gospels left out because they were perceived to be ‘inconsistent’ with other gospels it included. As a non-religious person, to learn that the infalible ‘word of God’ is really the result of Christian politicing is comforting. The bible would have looked entirely different if Christian sects that otherwise lost dominance had won the political battles.
The Gospel of Thomas discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Eqypt contains 114 ’sayings of Jesus’ of which Greek fragments have been found at Oxyrhynchus. If this gospel had made it into the Christian canon, Christianity might have looked a little different - this gospel is thought to be a Gnostic text. from Wikipedia: “Unlike John, which distinguishes belief in Jesus from unbelief, the Gospel of Thomas premises salvation on an enlightened understanding of one’s true identity�an image of oneself as divine”. Oneself as divine? Heresy! Burn the Gnostics, they’re no better than the heathen Bhuddists! Oh, and throw that gospel of Thomas out will you?
Comment posted on 4-17-2005
There were many texts containing acts by the apostles that were just plain
insane. Tale of them becoming supermen were common in the centuries
following the death of Christ. I’ve looked into them and they’re bizarre. My
Christian friends believe that Constantine, 300 years later, had divine
guidance and that the canonized and edited version is the truth. Can you
say edit until believable?
Some evangelicals that I know consider Catholicism a different religion
than what they call, without blinking an eye, Christianity. The main
differences are legalistic. They focus on grace and faith as the only things
that really matter. They don’t believe sin sends you to hell, only a lack of
faith does that. It seems a very narrow and Paulistic way of thinking.
In essence the idea is: Works are only good for some special rewards in
heaven. Faith without works is fine if it’s correct faith.
I have a detailed explanation written by an evangelical friend via email that
I could forward you if you are interested. He’s a smart guy, wacky, but
smart.
Some goodies here: http://www.bibleufo.com/anomlostbooks.htm
Comment posted on 4-17-2005
Oh, and how did we ever live without the net?
Comment posted on 4-17-2005
I really enjoyed poking around the site you mentioned, but I prefer my
biblical research to be totally sans UFO reference. It makes it more
difficult to win arguments when your evidence is from a souce that has
this on its main page: "Why we say God does travel in UFOs but is not
an alien."
Comment posted on 5-11-2005
There is a great book on the historical life of Jesus written by John Dominic Crossan titled ‘Jesus Christ a Revolutionary Biography’ which draws from many of the unpublished ‘inconsistent’ gospels. It’s a tough read actually - interesting but tough. Luckily, he’s done several interviews with Terri Gross on Fresh Air and discusses quite a bit of his research which made the topic a lot more accessable for a person like myself.