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Vatican/HP To Put Library Online
darkuncle writes "I first read it in the LA Times print edition this morning, but the story is also available on several websites via news.google.com. Apparently the Vatican has enlisted Hewlett-Packard in an effort to put the contents of the Vatican Library online, including many rare Bible texts and previously unavailable manuscripts, including handwritten notes by the likes of Martin Luther and Michelangelo."
I mean there are documents going back to the Roman Empire. Could you imagine if it all was available online? And searchable? The man-hours to do it would be incredible.
I mean, there are rumors of intelligence reports from Pontius Pilate being archived there. Watch all the Bible geeks have a field day.
Plus I imagine, a copy of every forbidden book written since then. Kept around, just as evidence.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Just as a correction, they are releasing their WWII era documents. And try to refrain from making wildly opinionated and unsupported comments about something as sensitive as religion...any religion.
Considering all the brainpower that seems to be concentrated(?) at the /.-ers PCs when it comes to more or less mindless trivia like asteroids threatening Earth, new ways to make ultra-thin condoms or whatever, it's rather scary to see all the glibness and plain ignorance at a moment like this.
The fact that a tremendous lot of historical data will be acessible is, in it self, fantastic news.
Of course, it will be selected and skewed, and no, the p)0(rn will not be there, but that's not the point. It will be THERE, to help all those interested to learn more. Like any great museum, if you will.
I'm not a Catholic, I'm not a bit religious, but I think things like this make the Net something great!
Well, they're putting the notes of Martin Luther online. If you don't know the relation of Martin Luther to the Catholic church, then you might need spend some time with the Googline Oracle.
All in all, that's not very favorable material to the Catholic Church considering what the movement he started was and why he started it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just as a correction, they are releasing their WWII era documents. And try to refrain from making wildly opinionated and unsupported comments about something as sensitive as religion...any religion.
Yes.
It is OK to laugh at an adult who believes in Santa Clause, and with the right judge, you can probably get said adult committed and their next-of-kin awarded power of attorney.
But do not ever question religious beliefs, or express unflattering opinions thereof, and for god's sake don't ever imply that religious beliefs might be on the same order of silliness as a belief in Santa Clause!
Conviniently, we have decided pointing out the foolishness of adults who believe in modern day myth to be rude, while of course their expounding on the eternal torture of those who do not believe in precisely those same myths, or do believe in those same myths, but with slightly differing interpretations thereof, and proseletyzing such beliefs to others, whether or not the victim of such proseletyzing wants to hear it, is merely an "expression" of their "faith."
So have some tolerance, and for crying out loud stop calling a jack-of-diamonds a jack-of-diamonds.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The posters here criticizing the Catholic Church have for the most part no clue what they're talking about. Anyone who thinks they can define the actions of billions of people in dozens of countries across 2000 years of history that simply has a screw loose.
In my experience the people who criticize the Catholic Church the most know the least about it (blah blah they only want money blah blah).
Anti-Catholicism doesn't bother me; I personally have a lot of problems with the Church both as a political as well as theological entity, and have no problem criticizing them (I'm not a practicing Catholic because of some of these reasons). Ignorance, however, DOES bother me, and these inane blanket comments about what the Church is about just reek of profound ignorance.
Even the most ridiculously extreme copyright law doesn't protect any works from the 1800's, much less works from the 1500's (Luther), 1400's (Michangelo- I think?), 300's (Augustine), etc.
The Vatican has never attempted to copyright the Bible, for example.
Now if any material that they are going to release is going to be translated and edited, they will probably copyright the translations. But I majored in history in college and have idly studied it since, and I've never ever ever ever heard of anyone attempting to copyright original source material simply do to having possession of a (or even the only) physical copy of it. That's like saying I could copyright one of George Washington's letters if I happened to find one in my attic.
Um, sorry for the rant, but too often people just completely don't think about what copyright means when the discuss it.
(BTW, the reason the Scientologists have copyrights on their works is because they were all written in the last 50-60 years)
Certainly you could find many sources. And I could find many counter-sources as well. No doubt you would refer to something like 'Hitler's Pope' while I would counter by pointing to all the Jewish historians and leaders who have shown their support for Pius IX. It would go on and on. But above all what the poster and most others fail to do is to distinguish between what Catholics do and what the Church teaches. No doubt there have been many individual Catholics who, in forsaking Church teachings, have brought shame to the institution as a whole. It is vitally important to make the distinction.
"Rare texts" are rare, because it's easy to use them agains (sic)Catholic Church. I think they'll stay "rare".
No, rare texts are rare because few copies exist. Why not? For one thing, many of the books and manuscripts that we're talking about predate the printing press. No need to come up with conspiracy theories to explain it.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
As soon as there is a post that mentions religion, the trolls come out of the wood work to flame and run. The really sad part is that this posting is of much more significance than religion. Some of those manuscripts may contain clues to unlock mysteries in history. A lot have nothing more that just historical significance, but that's enough. We should all be happy that more information is being put into the mainstream, not flaming it because we just don't like the people it's coming from.
What, then, is the Church about?
In your opinion, should I expect to find the known-to-exist-but-tightly-guarded material regarding Hitler's final solution online? Should I expect to see everything the Vatican has about the Dead Sea Scrolls online?
I'm not trying to troll, but seriously asking for you opinion about these. It's my hypothesis that both of these documents would cause quite an outrage, loss of favor, and a serious cut in revenue for Catholic Churches around the world. I suspect that would be reason enough to keep them concealed. I think that this would be precisely the reason to publish them if The Powers That Be in the Church felt that theirs was the true way to God; a "trust in Him and be humble and glory will be yours" type of thing. Turn the other cheek, let down your guard, and God will deliver victory because Catholicism is the way to Him.
But I think that's pretty unlikely. I will be mightily impressed if the Vatican DOES fully disclose all of these secrets. What do you think? What is the Church about and why do you think they will publish everything?
Well, the basic problem is that we don't have any of the original documents -- we have copies of copies of copies of copies; it's inevitable that discrepancies and errors happen in the copying, no matter how careful people are.
That's why there's a science called "textual criticism", where archeologists look at different manuscripts of the same document and try to figure out what the original writer actually wrote. A good translation will even include footnotes like "Most early texts say bar; some say foo."
Just FYI, what helps is (1) number of copies of the document from (2) different areas. It makes sense; if we only have one copy of a letter supposedly written by Paul from 100 years after he died, who knows how accurate it is? But if we have ten copies, from a bunch of different places, and they're all pretty similar, we can get a pretty good idea what Paul actually wrote.
Just for reference, I believe (someone who knows this stuff correct me) typical number of copies for non-biblical texts is 1-20. The highest number is Homer's Oddessy, of which we have about 800 copies.
Compare that to the New Testament, where we have over 2,000 different texts from all over the world. And that doesn't include fragments, etc., which brings it closer to 5,000.
So by normal archeological standards, we have a pretty good idea of what the original NT writers actually wrote; if you chose to believe our copies of the NT texts unreliable, you bascially have to throw out all ancient texts as unreliable.
But more is always better, and there's always interesting historical notes; that's why putting the rare texts online is useful. It may be useful to someone to know that there's a copy of Corinthians found in Ethiopia, dated xxx AD, with a verse that says "foo" instead of "bar"
IANABS (biblical scholar), this is what I remember from "More Than a Carpenter" by Josh McDowell, and "The Case for Christ", by Lee Strobel.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
The Catholic Church has a bunch of original works by the Martin Luther? Author of 95 theses [iclnet.org]? One of the founders of the Reformation and perhaps the biggest and most influential critic of the Vatican? I'm curious as to why they have them. History shows they weren't exactly the most open-minded bunch back when they collected them. Was it to "learn thy enemy"? That's like finding out Linus has a collection of signed First Edition books written by Bill Gates
And the Master [Sun Tzu] said: 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles'
But seriously, Martin Luther was much more than just an enemy of the Vatican, he was also one of it's greatest reformers. Letters of forgiveness were eventually abandoned - in no small part due to his criticism.
Tor
What, then, is the Church about?
I know you weren't asking me, but I couldn't resist. In a word: Christ.
In your opinion, should I expect to find the known-to-exist-but-tightly-guarded material regarding Hitler's final solution online? Should I expect to see everything the Vatican has about the Dead Sea Scrolls online?
Again, I know you weren't asking me, but...
It's tough to say whether documents noone has ever seen but "know to exist" will show up online. There's really not a whole lot of secrecy involved in the modern Vatican. It's possible that we'll see some suprising things turn up online, but chances are, nothing very scandelous, because, chances are, these documents don't actually exist. Either they never did, or they were so "earthshattering" that they have already been destroyed. The Pope and those near him with unrestricted daily access to the Library are pretty dedicated to the Church (obviously). Don't you think they'd be a little shaken in their faith if documents proving the fallacy of their belief systems were kept in their basement? Most of the great Chruch thinkers have had easy access, both chronologicallly (lived near the times in question), or physically (lived in/near the Vatican) to such works, and yet were very faithful men. Take that for what it's worth.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Yea, but its an interpreted document, and the interpretations were selected by councils, popes, etc.
When/who wrote it is less important than the uses it was put to, and the interpretations it inspired, and that was done by the church.
A complete record of all their changes of opinion, selective enforcement of canon law, and their political intrigues would make for very interesting reading.
Theres probably 2000 years of history in that library, all of it important, and all of it affecting the modern church. There's much more in there than just early copies of the New Testament gospels, and while important, the gospels are not the only thing that influenced, informed, and motivated the early church and early Europe.
Europe and the rest of the western hemisphere by extension owe their existence to the church, and as such, their history is really the history of the west. Keeping it locked up in the basement of the Vatican is not where this should be.
Really, nomadic, I hope you don't take this in a negative way. Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by "practicing Catholic." Please correct me if I'm way off base, but I've seen your kind of response before.
Are you saying that you have forsaken faith in the Savior because other Catholics aren't, in your estimation, living morally enough? Have you, in effect, opted for Hell because there were hypocrites in the church?
Jesus said "Follow me" not "Follow people who claim to follow me." Jesus will never let you down. If your faith is in Him, the whole world going to Hell around you (literally and/or figuratively) should have no influence on your beliefs.
WW2 -- One also has to consider that the Vatican doesn't exactly have a standing army, has a land area best measured in acres rather than miles, and at the time was surrounded by an Axis power -- not the best time to stand up in opposition of one's neighbour's allies. It would have been all too simple to bomb the Vatican out of existance, and dead they'd have been no help to anyone.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?