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Digitizing Literary Treasures Leads To New Finds
storagedude writes "The WSJ has a cool article on how the race to digitize literary treasures has led to a trove of new discoveries. Quoting: 'Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable — blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph Mars and CAT scans used by medical technicians ... By taking high-resolution digital images in 14 different light wavelengths, ranging from infrared to ultraviolet, Oxford scholars are reading bits of papyrus that were discovered in 1898 in an ancient garbage dump in central Egypt. So far, researchers have digitized about 80% of the collection of 500,000 fragments, dating from the 2nd century B.C. to the 8th century A.D. The texts include fragments of unknown works by famous authors of antiquity, lost gospels and early Islamic manuscripts.'"
Good, now put them online.
As someone who majored in Classics as an undergraduate, I've long been captivated by the massive papyrus finds finds at the Oxyrhynchus site in Egypt. The site has been well-explored for over a century, and many of the papyri have already been deciphered and published. The Biblical texts there have gotten the most attention, but one shouldn't neglect the important literary finds as well. See Bowman's Oxyrhynchus: A City and its Texts for a nice introduction. Over the last few years, there's been more work with using new technologies to examine manuscripts that otherwise can't be deciphered. Classics may seem an unsexy and superseded field, but in fact with digital technology the field is living in exciting times.
Don't want the church to try and bury anything that discredits the bible the way they did to the discoveries of Jean-Francois Champollion in Egypt in the 1820s
I sometimes wonder of our knowledge of great people events and stories from the past; we only know about the ones that were documented or were very famous. Imagine what fantastic times may have existed that history has just forgotten.
Digitization seems to be uncovering some of these.
Computation power, advanced in physics and chemistry and IT improvements not only are helping in digitize literary treasures but also helps curators, historians and normal people to better understand, study, interpret works of art in general. Multispectral applied to paintings reveal hided drawings, xray on pottery or statues give us the exact position of internal pieces and 3D is occupying a role more and more important in documentation and as communication tool.
Which church? There are thousands of denominations which reject non-canonical gospels.
The popular media perpetuates this myth that non-canonical gospels reveal truths suppressed by mainstream Christianity. That's just not the case. Even non-Christian historians find most non-canonical gospels less reliable as history than the canonical gospels, being written still decades later and are often by their own admission non-historical.
English translations of many non-canonical gospels have been pretty easily available for a 100 years already. Churches aren't conspiring to keep them in the dark. If they have been little read, it's because they really aren't worth much.
That is very interesting. Maybe they find evidence of the existence of Jesus, or maybe text about his life that were written when he was still actually on Earth.
-- Cheers!
I seem to find many to be unreadable.
Mostly, the ones that I write.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Have you ever tried to argue with a fundamentalist?
Anything that disagrees with their point of view is wrong. That is all. Seriously.
And if you think that evidence that Jesus was really a pedophile would really make a difference, you are wrong. They don't care, but the fact that you bring it up is reason for them to hate you.
Fundamentalists are proof to the world that Satan does, in fact, exists.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Good evening. Here is the news on Friday, the 27th of Geldof. Archaeologists near mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is currently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental." The page has been universally condemned by church leaders.
Well to the media a conspiracy theory sells better than the plain truth...
Please also tell that to Dan Brown before he spills out his next badly researched book full of historical errors!
Those gospels have been known for ages and have been omitted in the 5th century for many reasons one of them in many cases was that they were unreliable and often written by third parties trying to promote an agenda. Have in mind early christianity was split way more than we are today and everyone could run his/her religious and monetary agenda on top of the religion.
Often those gospels also were folk tales written down which can be attributed to the area of folk legends nothing more!
To my darling Candy.
All characters contained within this gospel are fictional and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Indeed.
And keep in mind what was going on at the time: The religion of Mithra was growing in the West; the Gnostics were a force to be reckoned with in Egypt; and the followers of the 1st Century BC Yeshu(a) the Nazar were slowly morphing into the so-called Christians. We may finally get a glimpse of the true historical origins of Christianity unvarnished by the official Church authorities, before and just after Constantine took the major religions of the Roman Empire and merged them into a single syncretistic faith.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
"Non-canonical gospels"? As opposed to pre-Christian Gnostic and related texts that shed light on the true origins of Christianity? Talk about using a razor blade to make subtle distinctions. And while we're on the subject, the digitization of 19th Century antiquarian works has brought back into the public debate ideas that are supported by surviving ancient texts but ignored by modern archaeologists who would rather dig up a pot than read a text in Greek or Coptic.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
They don't have to conspire to hide it as most hardcore Christians are good at blocking valid information from their mind without outside help.
And how, exactly does this differ from the Catholic-approved books? I'm not trying to be insulting here, just making a point. The Pauline epistles are letters written to various peoples arguing specific aspects of early Christian theology. The gospels include many aspects that were part of common Middle Eastern "folklore" (the messiah, virgin birth, resurrection, consumption of flesh, the Logos/Arche, etc.).
Please also tell that to Dan Brown before he spills out his next badly researched book full of historical errors!
Ahh. Another one who doesn't understand the differences between "fiction" and "non fiction".
Those gospels have been known for ages and have been omitted in the 5th century for many reasons one of them in many cases was that they were unreliable and often written by third parties trying to promote an agenda. Have in mind early christianity was split way more than we are today and everyone could run his/her religious and monetary agenda on top of the religion. Often those gospels also were folk tales written down which can be attributed to the area of folk legends nothing more!
And how exactly is that different from the other "accepted" gospels?
Well for one some of the gospels at least back then could be dated exactly to persons surrounding jesus followers, and others omitted clearly showed up way later then the one canoninized or clearly showed gnostic influences which crawled up way later in christianity. I dont know too much about the early history, but the entire council of Nicea is well documented and written philosophical texts way before that so a person with good historical and religious background can give you more insight why exactly the gospels we have today were canoninized but my assumption goes towards, those were the most historical correct ones, you partially can prove that today by trying to date them back, some of the gospels we have today were canonized within the first century after the death of crist while others not making it into the canon came after 200 bc!
But anyone with a good historical background can give you more insight on this. But rest assured that the gospels which made it in can be taken more seriously than the rest which is floating around, which sometimes has heavy gnostic influence or influences from other religions and which most of the times came way later!
Anyway the canonisation is always a problem, even the Moslems who always say their book is 100% correct are at fault here. First of all Muhammad has rewritten parts of the canon during his lifetime, secondly the canonisation happened as book a few generations after Muhammad before everything was written down in leather scrolls. So who can gurantee that nothing was added or altered, after all a few generations after Muhammad the islam already was an established political force with Muhammads heirs being the ones profiting most from it!
So in the end there always is a certain factor of believe, and in the end it is only the message that counts!
"Non-canonical gospels"? As opposed to pre-Christian Gnostic and related texts that shed light on the true origins of Christianity?
Wrong, Gnosticism was sort of a meta religion which existed outside of Christianity when it arrived at the scene, remember first christianity started as a judaic side religion.
Gnosticims made it into Christianity to my knowledge after 100 AC as one of the influences which influenced christianity heavily, the other was greek pholosophy like stoism. There are well documented disputes of early christian philosophers and the entire gnostic angle of early christianity is well documented!
Have in mind such things are normal when you dont have a clear canon nor a central religious authority. Heaves, simply look at all the splits protestantic churces had the last 300 years to having no central religious authority. So assume this tenfold in early christianity, with Arianism, Trinitarism running wild, later even Gnisticism came to the mix. And everyone was working on his/her own canon or stories.
What you can do in such a situation is try to make a canon which tries to be as accurate as possible in its historical roots and omit newer ones. The biggest issue back than AFAIK was the split between Trinitarism and Arianism, which was finally resolved in the council of Nicea, Gnostic sects always were seen as non christians by the bigger streams of early christianity and were rather late to the table!
Please also tell that to Dan Brown before he spills out his next badly researched book full of historical errors!
Ahh. Another one who doesn't understand the differences between "fiction" and "non fiction".
I do but DB obviously doesnÂt if you follow his interviews. I once made the mistake to open his latest books alone in the description of the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicea he made several historical mistakes intermixing events which often occurred within 150 years!
Just to prove his point.
I dont have a problem with him doing that, my problem with him is that he then talks in front of the camera how long he has researched and he is right on things, while the history books say clearly he is wrong.
Those gospels have been known for ages and have been omitted in the 5th century for many reasons one of them in many cases was that they were unreliable and often written by third parties trying to promote an agenda. Have in mind early christianity was split way more than we are today and everyone could run his/her religious and monetary agenda on top of the religion.
Often those gospels also were folk tales written down which can be attributed to the area of folk legends nothing more!
And how exactly is that different from the other "accepted" gospels?
You can see that by the historical dates, in which area the gospels can be attributed to and which philosophical context they are. A gnostic gospel for instance easily immediately can be ommitted because gnosticism never made it into christianity before 100 AC also you pretty much have the date of the first occurrence of each gospel and other non canonized texts by historical letters preserved until today.
>>>some of the gospels at least back then could be dated exactly to persons surrounding jesus followers
False. The oldest gospel only dates to circa year 80, fifty years after Jesus' death. So whoever wrote that book/gospel is equivalent to someone writing a biography about Kennedy, a man I've never met, know nothing about his personal life except whispers from neighbors, and don't know what he looked like (there were no photographs in ancient Israel).
Basically I'd be writing fiction, not history.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You Pirates!!!
The Author's Guild will be in touch as soon as they are done with Google!
All joking aside, I'll bet it is exciting times, and I wish you all well.
*said with envy*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Dan Brown doesn't bill his books as historical fiction. The publisher sort-of does, but in radio interviews Mr. Brown presents his books as an expose of the Vatican.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You can see that by the historical dates, in which area the gospels can be attributed to and which philosophical context they are. A gnostic gospel for instance easily immediately can be ommitted because gnosticism never made it into christianity before 100 AC also you pretty much have the date of the first occurrence of each gospel and other non canonized texts by historical letters preserved until today.
Yet "accepted" gospels that were written 50-200 years after Christ are A-OK in your book. Gotcha. No double-standard there. No sirree bob. And politics and agendas had nothing to do with which ones were accepted either....
(*) unlikely to be good enough for scholars, but at the very least a worthy PR exercise.
Wow!
I mean, wow!
I was ready to jump in this thread to deposit my 'two cents' worth as a Buddhist, but this caught my attention first.
But in the end, is it really important, I always saw such things as things which distract people from the core of the message which over all this mumbo jumbo seems to be forgotten, and the message is one of peace, forgiveness, trying to help others and no violence!
Very well done! If I wore a hat, it would be 'tipped' in your direction. /., but appreciated when pulled off.
Thank you for an 'intelligent' and rational comment in the favor of religion. Not easily done on
That was an effective 'stroke to the heart' of many religious fundamentalist's main arguments defending their agenda while abandoning the core 'cause'.
Again, wow!
And thanks for the lesson!(really-no sarcasm filter needed) That was timely for me.
Forgetting that fact**, or letting it get 'lost in the shuffle' is the one thing we seem to excel at as a species, unfortunately.
Hopefully we will overcome that trait someday.
*doffs 'virtual hat' in MemoryDragon's direction*
**the 'quote' from your post
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I can see the headlines: "Ancient Scandals Involving Gods and Mortal Women Exposed at Last!!!"
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
It all seems pretty clear. A lot of the glyphs are recognisable to me, I've holidayed in Greece, studied physics and so can read the modern greek alphabet enough to use look up greek translations. As I'm a noob I'd have thought a greek scholar could just read that off.
I'd have thought that the letters could be used in a Greek version of recaptcha? Then it's just down to machine translation, or am I wrong?
IANAC, but IAA Palaeographer, Codicologist and Medievalist, and I work on many projects involving the transcription, edition and sometimes translation of ancient texts. The technology you speak of isn't there, and I wonder if it'll ever be there.
OCR's great, and handwriting recognition can be made to work with sufficient training. But handwriting styles before printing often involved abbreviation (in highly inflected languages too, which means that their expansion is dependent not only on grammar, but on the sense). Moreover, in pre-printing handwriting, often the shape of the word matters less than the motion of the pen that it describes, so OCR as such wouldn't work -- you'd need Optical Word recognition. The only problem there is that before the 17th Century, the notion of orthography (aka proper spelling) was very fluid. Finally, all these parameters: abbreviation style, character and word formation, spelling, all have a range and style that is heavily dependent on the scribe and time involved. Since we have (for computing purposes) very little data, the piece being scanned helps define those parameters.
Even top experts in the field read texts wrong from time to time. Even for a machine to produce a quick-n-dirty transcription (to say nothing of translation) would be an expensive proposition that would have to be extensively checked and corrected by an expert. At that point, I could just transcribe it myself much faster and more accurately.
So I'm saying that my job is safe for the time-being, since it's still several orders of magnitude cheaper to have trained experts transcribe and translate than to figure out how to teach a computer to do it (and the applications are wider).
One of the great repositories of stuff that I hope can be read with this technique is the library of the "Villa of the Papyri" outside of ancient Herculaneum (Naples, buried by Vesuvius in AD79 along with Pompeii, et. al.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri
Somewhere I remember reading that the few scrolls that have been read were full of rather obscure philosophical texts (and this is discussed in the Wikipedia article.) (But wouldn't it be a hoot if it turns out that a substantial part of the holdings were schlocky romances or even porn... O Tempore! O Mores!)
I agree, DB writes great fiction, there is no need to market it as factual like he tried to do with da vinci code.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The gospels include many aspects that were part of common Middle Eastern "folklore" (the messiah, virgin birth, resurrection, consumption of flesh, the Logos/Arche, etc.).
Other than the whole "messiah" thing those are Greco-Roman religious aspects, not Semitic.
In case of Gnosticism yes, almost all church leaders omitted gnosticism, as I said it is a meta religion which also found its way into christianity long after the religion was founded, the early christian texts definitely were non gnostic and Gnosticism basically emerged after 100 BC and constantly was seen as heretic by all other christian philosophers and church leaders, because some of its aspects broke extremely with the already established christian doctrine (like seeing god as evil being or trying to push the devil at the same level with god etc...)
Depends on the scale of impact your subject had on the world at the time. Its no quite logical to compare Christ to Kennedy. Kennedy was not a religious figure, let alone considered to be God (a higly contoversial claim and therefore hotly debated). Your analogy doesn't quite hold up. In that light I'd tend to disagree with you.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Could this mean that any well-preserved (but still indefatigably destroyed) texts from the fabled library at Alexandria could be recovered?
Dan Brown is nothing more than the next generation of Whitley Strieber--did anyone actually believe that good ol' Whit was telling the truth about his alien abduction experiences IN A NOVEL when he made a (poor) career out of being a HORROR NOVELIST.
It's PR at it's finest, moreso because Brown didn't have a dozen books already behind him when he started the Da Vinci Code nonsense. Whatever people think of his character or his books, I have to give him credit for working over the media and the public the way he has.
I mean, really, BRAVO...even Slashdotters are talking about this!
If any of you are expecting sensible translations out of this, forget it.
I am reading a pirate* copy of Thomas Covenant right now, and unless I already knew the story and the English language pretty well, I would be lost. The crap transcription causes so many misconceptions it is hard to make sense of the story. So whatever results from this, don't take it as gospel (ha fuckin ha).
Sadly, I did some proof reading for the distributed proof reading crowd a while back, and the assholes are so anal about NOT changing errors, that the resultant text is so bad as to be laughable. I no longer do it because I would rather write my own than promote falsehoods as they do. They prefer you to promulgate transcription errors rather than use your brain about what the sentence actually says. Sorry, no.
Being true to the author is one thing, being true to the fucking OCR is another matter.
Here's a tip
read it on paper, in the original if possible, or don't bother. Computers are turning it into a game of chinese whispers.
*
Yeah, so what ? Where do you think most people are getting their text from ? Should only the paying public deserve the truth ? I also own the entire series in print.
There is a tomb in Srinigar, Kashmir, supposedly belonging to the prophet Issa, a Jew who healed people and preached compassion, and was buried there an old man in about 80 C.E.; the tomb is oriented east-west jewish style and the typical buddhist footprints on the lid have these odd crucifixion scars. I've been to the tomb, and wondered at its anonymity.
It's physical evidence, there's some contemporary corroborating textual evidence from the graffiti of stoneworkers at the time. It doesn't fit the standard narrative very well, though, does it? Unless Yeshua/Issa and his followers pulled a clean getaway, then carried on with the mission elsewhere... and the clean getaway involved a good cover story.
I can see why scholars ignore this, however. Simple Game Theory... leave it to the kooks, for now.
Damn those pesky terrorists
There are no conclusive pieces of evidence from the region or Roman records about this Yeshu of Nazar. There are, however, scattered clues outside of the narrative of the faithful (and no, not just the Apocrypha!).
There are sources of information about the historical existence of Jesus in Persia, Kashmir and the Himalaya that are not "persuasive" because they haven't been properly investigated (except by hobbyists or unsystematic scholars following their fancy).
(look up Roza-Bal or 'Yuz Asaf' or "Jami-ut-tuwarik")
The notion of survival (as a human) after crucifixion, then a lifetime of travel and preaching abroad, is dismissed as absurd and ignored very easily, but one of the stronger objections I've heard is distance, which itself is absurd: my ancestors regularly travelled from Venice to Beijing and back -- by foot, and freakin' nasty camels. Better objections come in the form of "the evidence isn't properly documented".
Until someone actually goes in to the sacred shrine in Srinigar and does some sampling, the proof is all circumstantial and textual. There is great danger in studying anything so heretical, however, so the cost-benefit ratio must be poor; don't hold your breath.
Damn those pesky terrorists
You're absolutely spot on! Except Dan Brown realized that religious nuts are among the easiest to con of them all.
The oldest gospel only dates to circa year 80, fifty years after Jesus' death.
Paul was killed in 60-65 A.D, or 27-35 years after Jesus' death. He is the main character in Acts, and since Acts cuts off rather abruptly at the end without covering things such as his execution, it is reasonable to assume Acts was written before that. Acts is the second half of a two-parter, Luke being the first half. And Luke uses some parts from Mark...
Oh, and don't forget that Paul's letters pre-date all the gospels. Really hard to argue that he wrote them after his death.
World renowned multispectral imagist Jacques Renaud heard an arm hit the ground, and he knew it was his.
1. Read the first sentence of any of Dan Brown's books.
2. Then reread my comment.
3. Then mod me +10 insightful AND funny.
4. ???
5. Profit!
I wouldn't say Brown conned religious nuts. I'd say he trolled them. "Con" implies that he persuaded them to his side. I do not think this occurred.
shoud one of those fragments turn out to be from the Koran in oh say Aramaic.
While all of that is true, Paul's letter don't corroborate the events in the Gospels. He barely discusses Jesus' supposed miracles. In addition, how accurate is a history created by one single man? You might as well study the writings of Brigham Young as proclaim them to be "true".
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
P.S. One reason Paul doesn't corroborate the Gospels is because he never knew Jesus. He never met the man, so he can not corroborate anything. It's all just gossip he heard from neighbors.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
OK, so we go thru all the trouble of detecting, transcribing, translating, digitizing these ancient texts. Has anyone thought of printing them out on archival paper and storing those in a safe place?
"Man do I love it when people apply rigorous historical methodology to hot topics and base their opinions according to their methodological findings."
TRUTH
I'm unsure of what you're talking about.
The FAQ states that, first and foremost, don't change what the author wrote; if there's some kind of misprint, mark it for the postprocessor to deal with, but don't silently correct it.
Who told you otherwise, and how did you get the impression that this wasn't the sitewide policy?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca