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Breakthrough Decodes 'Classical Holy Grail'
wka writes "Scientists at Oxford University have made a major breakthrough in their study of a large collection of Greek and Roman writings. Many of the documents known as the 'Oxyrhynchus Papyri' (found at 'ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt') are 'meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time.' Using an infrared technique originally developed for use with satellite imaging, scientists are able to view the original writing, which 'could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence'. Thus far, works by Sophocles, Lucian, Euripides, Hesiod and others have been (re-)discovered. Additionally, scientists think they 'are likely to find lost Christian gospels.' (via The Light of Reason)"
I am fascinated to hear that more gospels may be revealed. The Gospel of Thomas was enlightening and actually led me to a better understanding of mainstream Christianity. Non-ecumenical gospels are fascinating because they haven't been highly tainted through interpretations and translations.
People should not fear what they do not understand; people should fear because they do not understand.
"In this case, lost works by Sopholces are invaluable; we have only 7 of his plays complete."
As Carl Sagan explained it:
Imagine that we had some plays by this Shakespeare fellow, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Cymbaline, Pericles, The Life of Timon of Athens, The Winter's Tale and Troilus and Cressida.
Fine plays all. We know from the record that he wrote a few other plays that were well regarded in his time, but alas, those have been lost.
KFG
N.B. I don't include Thomas in quite this category - it is a much more complicated case. But, despite the shrill nonsense that comes from the entertainment industry (anybody see the epigraph on "Stigmata") most scholars, myself included, would not regard Thomas in its present form as even being in the same class as the 4 canonical gospels.
At any rate, I suspect that any "lost gospels" found here will be of limited interest, mostly to scholars and pedants. Move along, nothing to see here.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I'd add additionally that there have been controversies in Christianity from the get-go. (A number of them are alluded to in Paul's writings (which are the earliest Christian literature known.))
The "Lost Gospels" are not lost as much as they were *not preserved* by copiests in the early years of the Church. Fragments of many of them have been known. Occasionally an entire work - like the Gospel of Thomas are discovered.
They are extraordinarily useful for helping people understand the early fights within the Church. And for putting the writings that the Church has deemed Orthodox into perspective (since we finally have access to the documents that the cannonical works were written in response to).
In illa quae ultra sunt
Elaine Pagels work in the subject is fascinating - gnosticism itself is fascinating in its contradictions and, if anything, shows how different christianity might have been.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
It's not open to debate. It's a personal choice and should be respected.
A few counter-examples:Faith can be used to justify appaling acts and discrimination or can limit development of society, and is not something to be respected.
The bible has already gone thru zillions of revisions, leaving out many parts along the way. Remember, there was a huge pile of hallucinatory writing done by starving desert dwelling hermits. They had to toss out the completely incoherent gibberish so they could publish the quasi-coherent hallucinations.
William Burroughs and Ted Kaczynsky had predecessors.
Consider:
While Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, only 7 have been uncovered in their entirety. Missing texts may be a common theme for classical Greek literature (??), but is really not very common for Christian texts.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Hundreds of copies of writings of the church fathers exist as well. In short, no one's really looking for any *new* gospels or epistles since there really aren't any indicators that they exist like with Sophocles plays.
That being said, this still could potentially be profound for Christianity in other ways. For example, while we have thousands of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the originals from (or anything copied during) the First Century are scant at best.
Couple that with many scholars' theory that several books of the New Testament were orginally written in Hebrew or Aramaic (many Oxyrhynchus Papyri are in Hebrew & Aramaic), then you could potentially uncover a copy the Gospel of Matthew in it's orginial, First Century Hebrew.
The potential for "get[ting] the Bible-thumpers in a rage" is there, but only from the perspective of realizing how Jewish and Old Testament law-upholding Jesus/Yeshua really was.