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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)"
Dan Brown just had his next idea for a book...
'could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence'
Well no, but it could certainly increase the number of them that we can read.
Additionally, scientists think they 'are likely to find lost Christian gospels.'
What's the betting that the one that reads "'The Bible' copyright 134AD, Any resemblance to people past or present is purely coincidental" is quickly covered up?
..can it decipher doctors' handwriting on prescription pads? That would be a momentous scientific advance!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Euripides papyri you pay for 'em.
Anciant pornography is less likely to show in literary work and far more likely to be done in paint as often has been the case .
We have plenty of examples of this, we do have a fair bit of background from many already avaiable anciant greek and roman works as to the culture of morality revolving around sexual attitudes back then.
These works are more likely to be a boon to the study of the more esoteric areas of the cultures , not that i dont doubt we will find some works relating to the sexuality of the cultures , This is by far in a way not a main area of study.
Though you are right that eroticism has driven many technoligies , but this is more of particular note in more represed cultures, as the current theorys go the anciant Greek and (earlyer) anciant Roman society were far less prudish about their bodys then we tend to be nowadays so pornography would be far less prolific as it tends to thrive where sexuality is less open.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
As a classicist, I want to express the incredible debt we owe to physical sciences. We dig stuff up all the time we can't read, and rely on chemists and physicists to find a way to get to the text. The Vindolandum tables, for instance - slats of wood on which Roman legionaires in Britan wrote letter on, and which were burned. Chemists managed to trace the residue of the ink on the wooden remains and we have volumes of personal correpondence.
In this case, lost works by Sopholces are invaluable; we have only 7 of his plays complete. Any scrap we can add to the corpus provides a much better perspective of greek tragedy in general. And the possibility of finding lost gospels is always exciting for those of us interested in the development of Christianity.
So to sum it up: Thanks for the help, guys! We'll be sure to include your names when people start asking who's responsible for the next crappy sword-and-sandal flick!
The use of multispectral imaging (MSI) to view ancient papyri has been going on for some years now, with the following being some of the most interesting projects:
- recovering text from a manuscript containing 10th century copies of some of Archimedes works which had been erased and over-written in the 12th century. http://www.thewalters.org/archimedes/frame.html
- similar to the project above, this is the recovery of carbonised Roman papyri found in Herculaneum (which was covered in 100 feet of lava during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-14522 44_1,00.html
There are also lots of other artefact imaging projects, such as that being carried out by the Digital Hammurabi Project (http://www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/), who want to digitise (make high-res 3D computer models of) ancient cuneiform tablets or the work at the University of Kentucky which may allow text to be 'read' without the artefact being touched at all - using a CT scan which can be decoded on a computer http://www.research.uky.edu/odyssey/fall04/seales. html
Awesome stuff...
But I've discovered it's really an ancient Linux (kernel 0.2.1), where all console output is put on paper. What did they find important enough to try and save? Apparently the following command, entered over and over:
$ fortune
The Peanut Gallery, Ubergeek, Biblically Sober
NCAAbbs.com: Thousands of fans, Hundreds of teams, Just one place
I hope these works are not going to be reprinted without fully compensating the original authors, and their descendants.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Until it's capable of decoding Ogg Vorbis, I'm not buying it.
I hope one of the new gospels has something that will really get the Bible-thumpers in a rage.
Doubtfull. It's well known among biblical scholars that there are works in Christianity that have been rejected from 'the cannon" of works that is the bible. These books are refered to as Apocrypha Rejecting alternative texts as authoritative is old hat at far as Christianity is concerned.
AccountKiller
'Classical Holy Grail'
... for God's sake let them drink using the wooden cup and not the golden. I tell you, I've seen it happen before, I know.
It's already been written: Matthew 5-7. You might want to take a read sometime.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
That's actually the criticism many people have of Christianity, you realise? As pertaining to trying to fit findings to a theory rather than theory to available evidence.
Reading the article (which is a form of heresy in itself...) this is an exciting development, though it does make you wonder how many previous archaelogical finds got discarded over the years because no-one had an inkling as to their possible value.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
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.
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.
Hey, you know what? My comment wasn't defending Christianity (though I do think that, as long as people keep it out of my life, they can do what they want) -- just lamenting the lack of real discussion of this interesting issue. OTOH, there was a nice comment above me, made while I was commenting, which negates my post somewhat. I just don't like to see hate spewed out so much on a tech website about a science story.
OTs to the lot of them, I say!
Put identity in the browser.
I wonder what discoveries will be made that could cause a re-renaissance in our modern civilization.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
mostly just bashes on Christians
Well, you can imagine why people in the sciences might be a little snarky on this subject. A lot of the history of Christianity revolves around bashing people who try to point out the actual reality of the universe. Those people (scientists) do get a little tired of the unrelenting "seek to tear down" (to use your phrase) attitude from the religious side of the spectrum. So, must of the comments in that tone about this article are made in the context of a more-secular-than-usual audience, and presume a certain world-weariness on this subject.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You don't see historical value here ? How has the 2nd century view of Christ changed from the modern interpretation ?
Your example suggests that only 150 years after his death Christ was viewed as a super-human avenging spirit. 2000 years later we view him as a meek and mild self-sacrificing man. Yet the text of the gospels remains them same.
If you fail to see any interest here, I suspect you are more interested in reiterating the rhetoric of your teachers rather than studying early Christianity and interpreting the scriptures in the context of the epoch in which they were written and the church founded.
Also, it doesn't help your case that you point to a couple of "Jesus Myth" sites to bolster your case. You realize that these people are considered to be a joke in the world of New Testament scholarship, don't you? The "anti-Jesus" advocates are far worse than the "pro-Jesus" advocates, so far as distorting history goes. I would suggest you read a good, standard intro to new testament, such as Raymond Brown's, before you continue to spout this bilge.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
From the original comment:
> Evidence doesn't matter.
Therefore, the fact that you can disprove the point doesn't matter. The tall-tree thing is from some Dawkins book, a belief held by a tribe with no access to space travel, telescopes etc so they couldn't disprove the point, anyway.
Faith, as the original poster puts it, is the belief in something without evidence. It is logically inconsistent: if somebody believes one thing without evidence, why not everything? How does one decide which is a 'right' faith? Is there actually some evidence required? At what point does it stop, then, being something you believe through faith and something you know through evidence?
Physics is not a belief system, it cannot be used to justify anything. It's just a collection of theories which appear, given the evidence we have, to describe our universe reasonably well. As such, you can't judge physics: it just is. E may stop equaling mc2 tomorrow, that doesn't mean physics stops.
Faith, on the other hand, as a construct of human thought, can be judged as good or bad.
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.
"And Jesus wept down on the meaty cook [who] brough[t] the glor[ious (sic.)] mole."
Sounds like Jesus had a terrific, Mexican-themed last supper. I'm sure people south of the border will be thrilled with this news.
That's right after the 11th commandment:
Thou shalt not pay too much for a muffler.
I don't get it.
With all this talk about finding lost Gospels, nobody has even thought to mention the greatest Greek poet, whose works, all but a few fragments, were destroyed over the years by religious zealots. I'm talking about Sappho, of course.
I'd be very keen on reading any of her poems. What little we still have is all fragmentary, and highly unlikely to be representative of her best
So come on, folks, please look for her poetry too, while you're reading about 50-foot tall crosses.
Lemon curry?
The problem is, while religions do not make it a secret that they have a particular worldview and a set of beliefs (and thus, sometimes violent and not-so-righteous acts to enforce those beliefs), science is supposed to be objective, fact-based, and experimentally-verified. I'm not here to say that scientists should be completely free of bias or any personal prejudices, but they definitely shouldn't let those things guide nor hinder their work in science---not anything more than initial inspiration, anyway. Religion-bashing does not belong to the "people in sciences". Religion, as far as science is concerned, should be irrelevant---personally significant (either in a positive way or negative way) to a particular scientist, maybe; but it should in no way influence (either positively or negatively) his work in science.
Is this a double-standard? Yes. But I put forward this double-standard as a double believer in scientific principles and Christ. And, as much as I don't like fundamentalists standing in the way of scientific progress, I am appalled by atheists exploiting success of science (which neither presumes nor denies existence of God, so far, at least) to bash religion. I would even go as far as to say that such coattailing is more cowardly act than oppressing minority beliefs under the authority of a powerful Church (a couple centuries back, anyway).
The problem with your argument that science (and scientists) ought not be concerned with religion at allis that religion, and people who are religious, have very real, measurable impacts on the world and society.
Many (if not most or all, depending on how you measure) of those impacts are negative - and it makes perfect sense for science (and scientists) to analyze, and comment on, religion.
I am an atheist recisely because I am a scientist. If I were to, say, go into my lab and decide to believe that the electron had a positive charge, without any evidence whatsoever, and certainly no evidence that was verifiable & repeatable, I would be ignorant and stupid. Worse, if I got other people to believe this 'fact' that had no evidence to support it, I would be guilty of something worse: intentionally misleading people.
I apply the same standards to everything, because a world (and human society) in which what is is more important than what we might wish is better than one in which we tell ourselves stories and them call them truth.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
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.
I am appalled by atheists exploiting success of science (which neither presumes nor denies existence of God, so far, at least)
Science does not and cannot disprove God (i.e. the idea of a supernatural Creator): such a concept is beyond science altogether. It is not possible to prove or disprove the fact that the world was initially created by a sentient being.
However science, or even plain common sense, puts a lot of strain on religions, that is, particular teachings based on sacred revelations.
Religion consists in switching off your brain and believing the unbelievable. Not only that, but believing in one particular set of unbelievable things, to the exclusion of any other. Hint: What is the difference between a religion and a cult, except for size and political impact ?
I would even go as far as to say that such coattailing is more cowardly act than oppressing minority beliefs under the authority of a powerful Church
Show me a preacher burnt at the stake (as in real fire and real charred flesh, not metaphorically) by a council of scientists and I'll agree with you.
Thomas-
And for your general information, the other gospels and new testament works have not been "tainted" through translation or interpretation- anyone who wants to can still access the original greek of those texts.
We have no original texts; the earliest texts that we have are fragments of copies of copies. Unsurprisingly, these multi-generation copies disagree with each other in places. One well known disagreement is the ending of Mark. The modern ending is found in none of the earliest manuscripts, and when we do begin finding manuscripts with an ending, we find two different endings. The Catholic Church declared the currently popular ending canonical at the Council of Trent in the 16th century.
There is also no "the Bible." Each major branch of the Christian church has their own Bibles, with numbers of books ranging from about two dozen for the Syrian church to 66 for the Protestants to 81 for the Ethiopian church. The most common dates I've seen for the Gospel of Thomas are 100-150, which puts it in about the same range as the 90-120 dates for the Gospel of John.
Since you brought up Paul, it's worth examining the authenticity of his writings too. For example, the Ethiopian Bible has 3 letters to the Corinthians, while the Catholic/Protestant Bible has only 2 such letters. Several of his epistles, including 3rd Corithians, were debated strongly when the Catholic church began putting together its Biblical canon in the 4th century. The Catholics rejected 3rd Corinthians, but kept several of the other more dubious epistles, which modern scholars now have come to same conclusion that some 4th century bishops did--they were forgeries.
The controversy over what was really canonical or not erupted again in Europe with the Protestant Reformation. Luther rejected the apostolicity of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation, and moved them to the back of his translation of the Catholic Bible. Modern rediscoveries of the gnostic gospels, and communication between the European branch of Christianity with branches in Asia and Africa with their different Bibles have brought these controversies to life again.