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New research on historical texts

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ShadowBoxer
Moderator
Joined in 2005
October 17, 2012, 12:14

For those interested in the study of the biblical canon (which books and gospels should be in the bible – AND which version of those books are the correct ones) this is potentially very exciting…. who knows what lost treasures may be found.


http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/56715.htm


The Greek Orthodox monks of St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai have been accumulating manuscripts and books since the sixth century, making their library the world’s greatest repository of early medieval writing after the Vatican. The collection is even richer than it first appears, because many of the 3,300 ancient manuscripts contain hidden text and illustrations older than their visible contents – and a large scientific effort is under way to reveal and record them.


As a place of pilgrimage since its foundation by the Emperor Justinian in around 550 …..

There are known to be 130 palimpsests at St Catherine’s – though research is likely to find more. Most are religious texts such as scriptures, homilies and services. An important exception awaiting further study is a medical treatise that may date back to the late classical period and seems to be the oldest known Hippocratic text.


multispectral imaging has already shown what it can do on individual manuscripts. The best example is the Archimedes Palimpsest, a 13th century Byzantine prayer book containing erased texts from the 10th century. These include seven treatises by Archimedes, two of which (The Method and Stomachion) cannot be found anywhere else.



J
 
Joined in 2012
October 17, 2012, 15:26

Hmmm I don't understand much of what's going on here :-/ I either learn differently or I am just plain stupid :-/


*clicks on link*


*googles palimpsests meaning*


Noun: palimpsests plural of pal•imp•sest (Noun)

1. A manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing.

2. Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.


*googles effaced meaning*


Gosh, there are too many words in the english language, honestly! So much pressure nowadays to know the 540,000+ words compared to the 140k+ words in shakespearian days!!


Is it about some ancient papers that have been discovered (or already have been discovered) but are finally being traced back to its origins? I read like half of the page and still couldn't understand most of it. Though the same happened whenever a teacher taught me at school or when I wrote notes in science class and still never learnt a thing. Is there a video of this somewhere? I might understand it that way. Anywho, it sounds like a major discovery.


I hope they find some sort of ancient page or tablet which can help LGBT people in coming to terms with their sexuality, in the same way that the clobber passages in the bible have been interpreted (with words like 'natural' and 'unnatural' meaning 'customary' and 'uncustomary' for example).


Edit: The thing about canon sounds interesting. I was reading the bible about a week back and noticed so much hatred for the nicolaitans or something? So I don't know what they did but the bible didn't speak too fondly of them. Would love to learn more about the stories back in the bible days to understand scripture more in its context. Who are the nicolaitans?



ShadowBoxer
Moderator
Joined in 2005
October 17, 2012, 16:34

Hey Jordon


To answer your questions


1) There are very few OLD copies of documents. For example – one of the earliest copies of the texts we use to reconstruct the bible is the Latin Vulgate (there are others). However the Oldest complete version of that dates from 800 years after christ although the Latin Vulgate was written during the 4th Century (400 years AFTER christ lived) and was a translation from the Greek and Hebrew texts of the time. The OLDEST Masoretic (Authorative Hebrew) texts that we have date to much later than that.

Also in the original copies of the old testament – they didnt write vowels – ONLY consonents –

So this sentence would look like this

S ths sntnce wld lk lk ths.

Note how lk and lk – look and like are the same.

So the construction of the Canon has been a long an difficult process. Not only did Jesus not sit down and write the bible and say – here it is.. – the bible consists of a CHOSEN SUBSET of gospels that the early church used (If you have heard of the Gnostic Gospels – these are some of the books that DIDNT make it into the bible) but also have handwritten copies of copies of copies of the original works – in different languages. Sometimes there are differences (like the ending of Mark which is in our bible but is now considered to be a later addition AND in fact there are several different endings to Mark). Thus we have to deal with multiple versions in different languages (which could mean both errors in copying AND occasional translation errors)


Theres a famous joke about this

A young monk arrives in a monastery where he is put to work as a copyist.

After a few days, he notices that the monks making copies of the scriptures are all working from copies — not the original. This alarms the young monk because he thinks of how easy it would be for mistakes to be repeated. And so he goes to the Head Monk and expresses his concerns.

"Yes, brother," replies the Head Monk, "you have a valid point. But this is the way we've always done it. Still, I better check to make sure there are no errors."

So off he goes to the cellar where he spends the entire night carefully consulting the original scriptures. In the morning all of the brothers go down to the cellar and find the Head Monk crying.

"What's the matter?" they ask.


Between the loudest of sobs, he groans: "The word is celebrate!"



(To make it clear – the word is Celebrate – NOT Celibate ! The inference being that the monks have been practising the wrong thing for centuries all because of two letters).


SO THATS ALL BACKGROUND – so this is why its exciting when we find things like the dead sea scrolls – OLD documents that we can use to check against later versions to see what (if anything) has changed.

The older it is – the more Authoritative it can be.


So this article above talks about Palimpsests. So in Medieval times paper was very expensive and very difficult to get. So sometimes they would wipe out older texts and reuse the paper. (Like a blackboard but it wasnt designed to work like that) – from the article "The concealed texts are in palimpsests, manuscripts on which the original writing was erased so that scribes could reuse the precious parchment. Faint signs of the original text remain, as traces of pigment or indentation, which can be enhanced visually through modern techniques of spectral imaging at different wavelengths. "


So the thing is there is no telling what those original documents might be…. The most famous example is one that contained the only copies of two works by the famous Greek mathematician Archimedes. They had been lost forever – but using this technology we have them recovered.

So there is more information on that here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest which tells the story of that palimpsest. I have Archimedes works on my shelf behind me as I type and it includes "the method of treating mathematical problem" which was a VERY important work in its day.


So who knows what these people will find. They could find an earlier copy of the bible. Or perhaps an unknown history like Herodotus which could shed light on who knows what biblical questions.


Does that explain the original article and why its exciting to biblical historians ?

(Ill start a new post for the next question)



ShadowBoxer
Moderator
Joined in 2005
October 17, 2012, 17:25

Now – Regarding the Nicolaitans (or from the Aramaic – Naqolaytans)


Thats a much debated topic… and not one I know much about the word ONLY appears twice in the bible – both in Revelations 2.

I personally am very careful about Revelations. Its written in a special writing style called "apocalyptic style" (as is the book of Daniel) and is the only New testament book so written. It takes a lot more care and knowledge to deal with this kind of writing – especially because its not common to our way of thinking.

Theres something on it here that I found by googling – that might give some useful background on the style

http://www.gci.org/bible/rev/apocalyptic (Note that I dont belong to this church – dont agree with all their teachings and am not recommending them – however in the context of this subject it was the best link to a complicated subject that I could find).


In short – you cant necessarily interpret ANYTHING in revelations as straight forward and often you require a lot of historical knowledge to even make sense of what the author is trying to say. (Ill give you another example of that. Have you seen the movie flatliners. In that movie there are LOTS of statues and paintings. They are famous statues or of famous entities and if you dont know who the statue or painting is of – you miss an enormous amount of subtext in the movies> E.g. The statue of Hermes who was messenger of the Gods AND conductor of souls into the afterlife. (Given the plot of the movie – the invocation of Hermes is REALLY important – but you just have to know who he was).

(As an aside the writings of Unberto Ecco are really like that also – and if you dont have a really good knowledge of church history you can miss huge amounts of his work – not to mention hes a great way to extend your vocabulary – scary when you realise english is NOT his first language) ANYWAY – back to revelations.


I would suggest looking at the various commentaries here

http://bible.cc/revelation/2-6.htm and

http://bible.cc/revelation/2-15.htm (Scroll down past the various translations and you will see various commentaries on these verses.


Also wikipedia has a write up on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaism and also one on the history of apocalypticism (which actually I alluded to in one of my posts yesterday when I noted there have been several times when the church has been sure the end is here) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypticism


Finally – I would draw your attention to two other things to think about

1) Monty Python and the holy grail – where the difference groups are splitting all the time (The followers of the Gourd and the Followers of the sandal – and lets not forget the splitters – the Popular Front of Judea (one person only) and the PFJ, the Popular Front, and Judean Peoples Front) Although that is comedy – it illustrates a truth that there were (before christ and after him and even now) many different groups with different beliefs.

You may have heard of the dead sea scrolls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls – and they were owned / written / collected by a minority sect called the essenes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

The essenes scriptures that werent eventually canonised into our bible. For the early church there were MANY different groups and beliefs. (some more information on some of them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Gospels

Even today we have many different denominations that all have differing beliefs – the arguments of which can get quite heated.


2) I would refer you to the parable of the good samaritan.

Jews considered Samaritans to he heretics of the worst sort. Neither side would deal with the other side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans If you dont know that – then you miss the WHOLE point of that parable. This wasnt just a person wandering down the road. It was a person that the Jews considered evil and heretical.

What Jesus is saying there – is that all are our neighbours – no matter WHAT THEIR BELIEFS and no matter how long our culture has been at war with them. So I would leave that thought as well in dealing with all the different groups.


So I would suggest that as with anything in revelations – given Jesus told us not to hate and given we dont REALLY know what they believed that the author of revelations (and we know how dangerous assumptions can be when interpreting scripture – especially two versus out of the entire bible) that the answer as to what those versus are about – is probably complicated. (Sorry – that DOESNT answer the question but hopefully gives you something to think about) so I HOPE its useful.



J
 
Joined in 2012
October 18, 2012, 09:11

(To make it clear – the word is Celebrate – NOT Celibate ! The inference being that the monks have been practicing the wrong thing for centuries all because of two letters).


Oh wow :-/ I could see something like that happening in the bible too (In the sense that most Christians anti-homosexual views are completely wrong and taken out of context – which I think only recently we've found major discoveries in the bible that Jesus doesn't condemn gay people at all, and words like 'natural' and 'unnatural' back then simply meant 'customary' and uncustomary'), so although just a monk’s joke, I could quite imagine something like that being true in the sense that there is more to the bible than what we currently know.


Monk joke aside, I really admire monks and their discipline, I just think *man that must be a very lonely and depressing life*. I think one of the greatest things in life is freedom and fun and they’re missing out!


The older it is – the more Authoritative it can be.


True. That reminds me of the Shroud of Turin (which I have found extremely fascinating ever since I heard about it) and that the people who took samples of it only took it from the sides or something, and the sides dated back to A.D. 700 or something, and no one has been able to explain how the image on the cloth was created (and photographers were baffled too because it was a POSITIVE image rather than a negative). A researcher also said to create that image back in those times, well, it would be like painting a Van Gogh on the tips of dog hairs. But yeah in conclusion, what they all didn’t realize was that the center of the cloth could possibly date right back to the days of Jesus, but I don’t think they have investigated it yet because they don’t want to *ruin the image* or something? I think the Shroud of Turin is the best physical evidence we have of Jesus and his resurrection today.


So this article above talks about Palimpsests. So in Medieval times paper was very expensive and very difficult to get. So sometimes they would wipe out older texts and reuse the paper. (Like a blackboard but it wasn’t designed to work like that) – from the article "The concealed texts are in palimpsests, manuscripts on which the original writing was erased so that scribes could reuse the precious parchment. Faint signs of the original text remain, as traces of pigment or indentation, which can be enhanced visually through modern techniques of spectral imaging at different wavelengths.


Ah thanks for that 😀 now I get it. That’s like when you write something on a big notepad and on the second page you can see the indentations of the last page. Man that’ll be extremely difficult to decipher then :-/ like the article said, it’s not as easy as they make it seem on those CSI television programs.


They could find an earlier copy of the bible.


That would be awesome. As long as they don’t have ‘worship this new being’ sort of thing XD as it could be the work of illuminati or whatever – if they exist that is.



I remember hearing about the Nicolaitans in Revelations as you mention.


I find it so frustrating that I can’t understand Revelations (makes me not even want to read it because of it). Every time I read it I try to decipher what all the symbolism means, but surely it cannot be literal when it talks about things like the scarlet woman and the dragon etc. (would be easy to think of it that way with movies and all that) but I think it means something completely different. Like you say, the way to find out the truth is going back in history to find the original source to understand it, and even then we can only go so far back before it has been lost from time/erosion etc. 🙁


Thanks for the tip on Umberto Eco and all that info, I’ll look him up and check out those links 😛



J
 
Joined in 2012
October 18, 2012, 09:42

Was googling 'who are the nicolaitans' and came across this page on 'the original aramaic new testament in plain english' – sounds interesting. What do you think of this? I'd love to find some books on the most original (but translated into plain english of course) scriptures of the bible.


http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=8iE53OVtSNUC&pg=PA265&lpg=PA265&dq=who+are+the+Naqolaytans&source=bl&ots=vDgoMeEU9r&sig=zqo-R_So4nmLi5QhX7CZChITLJs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xzR_ULW-Fe7jmAX7yYDYDQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA



ShadowBoxer
Moderator
Joined in 2005
October 22, 2012, 08:19

Hey Jordon -sorry for the delay in getting back to you – been away on some family business….


The link I posted above

http://bible.cc/revelation/2-6.htm and


is to an online parallel bible (so it shows the verses from MANY different translations.

Can be useful sometimes. ONE of those translations is the aramaic english bible.



J
 
Joined in 2012
October 22, 2012, 11:40

Hey 😛 I just got back from my parents bach an hour ago XD so it was good timing actually, thanks for the link!


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