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)"

Comments

Non-Ecumenical Gospels

[TheMediaWrangler]

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.

Re:Classicist 3 Scientists

[kfg]

"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

The significance of "new" gospels...

[Fished]

As a student of the New Testament and early Christianity, I have to say that discoveries of "new" gospels are rarely very interesting. There was an explosion of gospel narratives starting in the late 2nd century (say 175). Most of these narratives are quite fantastic and have virtually no historical vallue. (Think of a 50 foot tall cross walking out of Jesus tomb, shouting imprecations upon Jerusalem.) More imporantly than their content, they are so late that any trace of historical content is purely derivative of the four canonical gospels.

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.

Re:Bibles

[wnknisely]

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).

70-some messages so far...

[Dot.Com.CEO]

and I find it amazing that there are people speaking of the possibility of discovering lost gospels as if something like that would be extraordinary. There is a series of lost gospels, otherwise called the "Nag Hamadi library" (google for it) that gave rise to a modern revival of the gnostic church, a set of believes that have deeply influenced popular culture (the Matrix is full of gnostic elements, for example.

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.

Bible = 'acceptable gospels'

[seven of five]

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.