Slashdot Mirror
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."
We can finally see if Samuel Jackson was actually quoting the bible in Pulp Fiction, or if he was just making shit up...
...to Slashdot the Vatican? I guess we just might find out!
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
It will be interesting to see if this stuff is public domain (you would think), or does the Vatican claim copyright ownership, in the manner of Scientology?
Unfortunately the DMCA forbids them from putting any of Leonardo's work on the Web, since he used a simple encryptation system and didn't write them an access license.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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"
It's about time. The Vatican has, arguably, the worlds most diverse collection not just of religious writings, but also of scientific, historical, mathematic, political and cultural documents known to man.
Looking forward to seeing whats online.
=U= "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you"
There's a "Holy See Plus Plus" joke here somewhere.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
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.
1. Nail decree on church door
2. ???
3. Prophet!!!
For instance, only one page from the rare "B" version of the "Codex Vaticanus" Bible is available online.
Coming soon: The Holy Bible - Special Edition
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
If the Vatican puts the contents of the Vatican library I guarantee they will censor the living hell out of what goes online. They wouldn't dare put the old Pre-Nicean Counsel (sp) texts up on the library. I am certain all the old Gnostic works will still be locked up in a vault. The pre-latin translation, arimeic, (sp) texts and countless other "forbidden" texts won't make it in. This is a joke right? It's hard enough when I was studying theology to get Pre-Vatican II texts from them. The bulk of what is in the library I doubt will ever see the light of day. I wonder if they still have the notes and comments from the Nicean Councel on what was removed and what was kept and what was changed. (Case in point the whole Virgin thing is in question as prior to most Latin text Mary wasn't mentioned as being a Virgin. So maybe his brother really was a half brother) I will be interested in seeing the results of this no doubt but I have a feeling we'll only get the tip of the iceberg.
P.S. Yes I know I butchered this but I have no spell checker at the moment.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I think that this might qualify as the most naive thing I have heard on Slashdot. The Catholic church tells you exactly what they want you to hear. The Bible is the most interpreted/misinterpred book ever written. People over time have always translated it to say what they wanted it to say. I would love for them to put all of the "good stuff" from their archive online, but it won't happen. It will be selected texts that make them look good. Otherwise, if people found out all the info behind the Catholic church, it would probably fold.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
How can the Vatican Library exert copyright over a document written by, of all people, Martin Luther. I suppose he was a Monk at the time he wrote it....
Are they simply exerting copyright over the photograph of the document, and not on the contents of the document itself? Is that okay, even?
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
No basis to criticize, the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility mandates that HP is divinely suited to do this job.
Nope. This handwritten note from Michaelangelo is as close as it gets:
Note to self: put big schlong on new statue.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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!
"Not to mention, it would bring out a lot of texts that would show just how modern Christianity and Catholicism was practically invented by Roman Councils picking, choosing, and editing text as they pleased, and how all the text of the Bible either came from oral history or history written 70 years after Jesus' death, of which none of the original texts still exist."
Yeah, whatever. You obviously know absolutely nothing about Historical Criticism. Your bias against Christianity has scewed your view of New Testament development so severely that you lack any objectivity. Though, IMHO, traditional authorship (as claimed by Christians) of NT texts has a tendency to be incorrect, save for Paul's writings (and even some of those are up for contention), it's a stetch to say "modern Christianity and Catholicism was practically invented by Roman Councils picking, choosing, and editing text as they pleased" and "written 70 years after Jesus' death". There are some that argue (including myself) that Mark and "Q" predate the revolt/Temple destruction and 'Luke'/'Mat.' reliance on said texts shows a level of care in constructing their gospels that sceptics don't want to admit.
I'm probabally wasting my time...
Learn some Biblical history and take your anti-Christian bias out of the picture, it makes you look immature, even to non-Christians (like myself).
Burn Hollywood Burn
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").
"And try to refrain from making wildly opinionated and unsupported comments about something as sensitive as religion...any religion."
While I agree it's never good to make "wildly opinionated and unsupported comments", I don't think that's the case here. After spending all my years in schooling up 'til college in either Sunday school (first 4 years) or a Catholic school (the rest), I learned a great deal about the Catholic Church and its history. And you know what? (S)He's right. The statements made aren't supported by links etc., but generally speaking, facts stand on their own. If you would like to debate anything that was said, feel free. I'm more than willing to find a plethoria of evidence to support each and every claim made in that post.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
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.
Esther is in my Bible, as well as Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. There are some books the Roman Catholic Church considers to be Scripture such as Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the Maccabees books, III and IV Esdras (I think?), etc., that most Protestants do not.
Not sure where the poster above got the idea that Esther was omitted in Catholic or Protestant Bibles...
I figure I'm capable of examining each book myself on its merits and deciding if it is Scripture or not myself. People were doing so long before any councils decided what was canon and what was not.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
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**
LOL.. this reminds me of my trip to Rome and the Vaticam museum. there was this one Roman era statue that has some nude guy holding a bowl of fruit in front of his groin. What strunk me as odd was the this really goofy smile on his face. Upon closer inspection, the large fruit in the front of the bowl was the tip of his dick. Looking underneath the bowl shows his shaft going into the fruit. Needless to say we all laughed our asses off.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
"And that's only the last 30 or 40 years, imagine how much its changed in 800 or 1000 years!"
That's not the worst of it, as those are intentional changes, usually meant to clarify something or to make it fit better into context. The worst happened before printing presses were widely available. Monks would sit copying Bibles by hand, sometimes translating them into other languages as they went. Ever take a foreign language? Say a sentence in a foreign language, then translate it on paper; first putting it into context, then translating word for word literally. Meanings are lost/changed any time you translate something, and many sections of the Bible have been translated a dozen times or more. As another neat idea, type a sentence into Babblefish and start translating the same sentence over and over (copying the results into the translation window each time). Finally, translate it back into English. Does it look anything like what you started out with? More importantly, does it mean the same thing? (This used to work and was fun, haven't tried it recently.)
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
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.
When the Bible was first assembled from the Gospels, Acts, Revelations, and the various letters of the apostiles to the early churches, there was much debate as to which versions of various books to include. Most of the books of the Bible had various differences as they were copied by various scribes attempting to preserve them before the first collections of them were gathered. Here's a good timeline of the history of the Good Book.
Furthermore, there's the Pseudepigrapha. These are rejected books of the Bible that scholars of various times either considered falsified or otherwise not worthy to include in the Bible. Usually, they purport to be written by a Biblical figure, but were generally not believed to have actually been written by them at the time of the Council of Laodicea. Then you have the books where are in the Catholic Old Testament but not in the Protestant Old Testament. These are the books most commonly labelled as Apocrypha.
Here's some more info on early church texts.
Here's a FAQ on the history of the Bible.
You can find a lot of this on Google if you know what to look for, but I've been nice and included links without bizarre obscurist religious or UFO ranting. The "lost" books of the Bible are a rich source of material for people with fringe beliefs that are looking to justify them or people who have an axe to grind with mainstream Christianity.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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?
A great many of the Vatican's (and many other Church libraries') works are actually in other languages besides Latin. German, Greek and French works outnumber those in Latin at any theological library I've seen.
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
For the last 15 years, the Vatican has been working on transferring many texts and artwork to a secure digital format in hopes of saving it for all future generations.
Most of the text that the project has successfully transferred (and a good majority of text that has not been transferred) is available here. You do have to fill out some forms and then the materials are copied and sent to you.
All jokes and criticisms aside, the Vatican possesses the majority of the world's greatest works of literature, art, and historical documentation. I hope that they make all of it available to the world very soon.
"he was referring to the claim that the Vatican would hide the records of such past sins. That claim was provided entirely without evidence, unless we're to believe that "that's just the sort of thing that those Catholics would do." To the extent that the original poster was implying that, I am rightly offended."
I think the poster was referring to what the Catholic Church tends to do; and I have to agree. Nobody likes to admit mistakes, and the Catholic Church is no different; they try to bury that which does not make the Church look good. Unless you're a Catholic Cardinal, I don't think you should be offended at all. Personally, as a Catholic myself, I'm offended by the way my Church has acted in the past and in the present. The Vatican has been ordering NDA's for settlements for years in abuse cases (despite calls for reconciliation by a number of bishops), and now one of the things the Vatican is fighting is reporting of molestation accusations to local authorities. That offends me greatly, as it should you and every other good and decent human being on this Earth. The poster wasn't Catholic-slamming, (s)he was Catholic Church-slamming; something I do every chance I get. Why? I'm Catholic, and I was taught that the stuff my church is doing is wrong.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Inclusion of text into the bible was not arbitrary. Texts were chosen based upon a set of fairly clear criteria that became established over centuries of debate. Not everyone agrees with the final decision, but that hardly makes it arbitrary.
Additionally, BS Catholic conspiracies aside, they have no earthly reason to hide works that they disagreee with. In fact the works they are putting onine were already available to visiting scholars and practically anyone with an interest. I, for instance, have the full text on the 20-something different Gospels we have discovered to date at home on my shelf...and if you read them all, you'd see pretty quick why some were excluded. I also have the many of the other non-canonical texts. No great hidden secret. Just order them from Amazon like I did.
There is no great scholastic coverup to keep the juicy religious bits away from the masses.
Disclaimer: I am not Catholic, but I do have a degree in Religious Studies.
-Tom
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
It would be really great if they made scans of scores of medieval and renaissance sacred music available. For hundreds of years, church music was the only music written down. Plus, many of the choirbooks are works of art in themselves.
No disrespect to Martin Luther's handwritten notes, but give me Josquin Desprez's scores any day.
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
First off all the King James Version is protestant not catholic. You want something like the Saint Jerome Bible for a Catholic bible. Second the inclusion list for the Kind James isn't arbitrary its following the organization from Martin Luther's Geneva Bible.
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Anyway here is an old list with pretty good information about what got included when
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&i
Couple of points:
(1) Esther is in both. The books that are not in both include Tobit (an excellent novel, worth reading, and amusing at some points. Did you know you get cataracts from sleeping outdoors with your eyes open? Birds poop in them, you see...), Maccabbees (an excellent documentary), Daniel and Susannah, maybe Wisdom.
(2) Martin Luther, if I understand correctly, picked the Hebrew Bible because he liked the feeling he got that he'd understand things better in the original Hebrew. The RC Church picked the Septuagint, which was archived in Greek in the Library of Alexandria, because this was archived *before* the time of Christ, and was generally accepted as scripture at the time of Christ. The Hebrew Bible was written by Sadducees after Masada, and does include some significant changes. Sadducces did not believe in the Resurrection, for example, and thus did not include books that pointed heavily towards the Resurrection. Also, "virgin" was changed to "maid" (neanis) at the part where the prophet says to the king "is it not enough that you should weary the ears of men? Must you weary God as well? But since you do not ask for a sign, this shall be a sign unto you: a virgin shall concieve, and shall bear a son..." One can only guess the reason for such a change.
There is something to be said for both sides. I prefer the RC side, though.
(3) Then you get to books like the Gospel of Thomas. This is a case where you especially have to look at the source. The paper is quite old, and indeed would be one of the earliest gospels based upon the age of the paper. However, the ink dates back to the time of the Saracen invasion of Spain, and the pollens in the ink seem to place the writing in Italy. So it would appear, especially since that book supports Islam more than Christianity, that it was a work of fiction written at that time. Perhaps it was written on very old paper to try to support Islam -- perhaps not.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Isn't the Web "the largest collection of erotica in the world"?
No, it's not a collection.. more of a loose colaboration
What, then, is the Church about?
It's about a lot of things.
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?
The Vatican's behavior during the Holocaust does bear scrutiny, but I don't think they deserve all of the bad press they had. There were two options Pope Pius had; protest Hitler's actions and bring the Church openly against him, or maintain diplomatic relations publicly while privately trying to help Jews behind the scenes. The Church chose the latter, and managed to smuggle several thousand Jews out of Germany and provide a safe haven (many ended up in the Swiss Guard). I think it was probably a mistake, considering the horrific loss of life that took place, and that they should have come out publicly against Germany. I think it would probably have saved more lives in the long run by publicizing the plight of Jewish Holocaust victims, but I don't think they were complicit in the deaths as some people feel.
I'm not sure what you mean by the Dead Sea Scrolls; I don't pretend to know everything, or even that much about the Church, so perhaps you can enlighten me. As far as I know the Scrolls are held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, and any information the Vatican has would have had been from the same sources as any scholar; a reading of the scrolls themselves.
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?
Of course they won't publish everything, but they're not saying they will. The article I read explicitly said "selected".
Besides, every book in the Vatican != every book in the Vatican library. The real secret stuff I'm sure is kept somewhere else.
The Bible is the most interpreted/misinterpred book ever written.
Oh, I don't know. Nobody seems to understand The Sound and the Fury either...
I write in my journal
Don't use python, and don't work on an Apple, and everything will be fine.
Some chapters are omitted from Protestant Bibles... or some chapters are added in Catholic Bibles?
I'm looking at a Jewish Bible right here, and Esther (an Old Testament book) jibes precisely with the King James - same number of chapters and same number of verses in each chapter.
In case you want to verify this, take note of the following: In Christian Bibles, Esther comes between Nehemiah and Job. In the Jewish Bible, Esther (Ester) comes between Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) and Daniel (Dani'el).
Actually the Vatican approached us when I was working at a consultancy (not IBM) to do this project. "Mmm, cool," thought I. "They have loadsa money."
Ah, but not so, grasshopper. We met with their librarians and "IT" people and when it came to money, not only did they try and make us feel guilty about charging the Church (I'm Jewish..that didn't work on me) but they wanted us to PAY for the privilege. Yes, we would eat all production costs, hardware, hosting, travel costs, encoding, delivery, etc...AND we were expected to make a "sizable honorarium" to the RCC for the privilege of being permitted to work on the project. (Picture: Ellen Feiss going "nnnnggggh?")
"Hmm, well they have lots of money...they'll pay us for the next project," thought I.
Ah, not so. When I asked as to $$ arrangements for future work we were told that if they liked the library project, we could expect more work, but each project would require an additional honorarium.
"Wow, look at the time, I gotta run," said I. We never even considered doing the work.
Looks like HP got the same treatment, as evidenced by this line in the press release:
"HP's contribution included technical consulting along with donated computer servers, scanners and other hardware items.
Didier Philippe, HP's director of strategy and development in Europe, said the motivation for the donation had more to do with history and art than with business.
But he recognized that the Catholic Church could be a huge buyer."
So they are HOPING the RCC buys some hardware in the future, after they already gave them a couple mil worth of free stuff. Great business sense, eh?
I'm calling my broker now.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
If the banner above is flashing you might go to heaven?
Priests, click here instead of abusing the children in your church. Look, but don't touch.
Okay, that was bad, I'm going to hell...
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.
I was browsing through the U.S. State Department's online "dossier of countries" (whatever it's called), which includes some interesting statistics for each country.
The Vatican is the only country in the world to have a literacy rate of 100%. (Granted, there's only a few thousand citizens, but still...)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
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?
Muslim scholars are out for the truth, which should also be what the Church wants. So they actually read Rushdie's book, and found the obvious flaws in it, and debunked them. There is no effort to hide the work, just point out it's slander. The price on his head was not to coverup his work, only make him withdraw his slander.