Oh, yes...and by the way, some anchient Christian texts...
This story caught my eye. I have to look into it more. The implications are pretty cool, maybe some more Sophocles and such. I remember watching a special on scientists figuring out how to read the text in a book that had been hidden by someone else writing over it. They discovered that somebody, Euclid I think, had discovered calculus, like 2000 years before everyone else had. Wait...nope... it was Archimedes, 1000 years before everyone else (I found an article (is it "discovered" or "invented" for math?). Anyway, it's pretty cool. Maybe we'll find out that Euripides wrote "Hey, Jude" 2000 years before John Lennon did or something.
I really liked how they threw in "oh, yeah, maybe some Christian Gospels..." at the end. "Scientists have found some works of some folks that probably only a few million people on Earth have ever of, and even less have even studdied!!! Wow!!! oh, and btw, they also found some... whazzit? 'gospels,' do they call them? that a couple of billion people use as the foundation of their lives *yawn*." Ain't it always the way? :)
I'm not sure about the ages of the oldest existing copies of the Gospels...hmmm...lemme look. Nope, couldn't find a source online that I trusted, but I think that the oldest copies come from around 350 AD. So, this could be a major find, possibly bigger than the Dead Sea Scrolls, depending upon the accuracy of this article. Let me 'splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up.
1. The article says "up to 2000" years. A nice phrase that could literally mean anywhere between 2000 years ago and, well, right now. So, the "Lost Christian Gospels" could be that little Bible that I lost in 1990 (I miss that little Bible).
2. What does "a series of Christian gospels" mean? Do they mean Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Do they mean extra-cannonical (non-Biblical) gospels, like the "Gnostic gospels," which are nothing more than heresy? or do they mean copies of other New Testament books?
3. If they are authentic Biblical books and can be properly dated AND are old enough they could have the same effect on liberal Biblical scholars that the Dead Sea Scrolls did (the Dead Sea Scrolls disproved some of the liberal scholars ideas about the origins of the book of Isaiah, it didn't necessarally change their minds, it just proved them wrong). Scholars who don't want to believe that certain parts of the Bible are authentic (written when and by whom traditional Christian scholarship says they were) like to play fast and loose with the dates that the books of the Bible were written (i.e. they usually have prophetic books being written after the events that they prophesy about took place). So...if, say, liberal scholarship says that the book of Matthew was written by my grandfather in 1916 and I can find a copy of the Gospel in a Bible copyrighted 1915, then they have to admit they are wrong (actually, they would probably question the accuracy of the copyright). Thus, if the people examining these documents finds a copy of Mark that existed in the year 90 A.D. (or somesuch), then it would disprove anyone who said that it was written later. That's kinda what happened with the Dead Sea Scrolls re the book of Isaiah.
I'll have to look into this more.
I really liked how they threw in "oh, yeah, maybe some Christian Gospels..." at the end. "Scientists have found some works of some folks that probably only a few million people on Earth have ever of, and even less have even studdied!!! Wow!!! oh, and btw, they also found some... whazzit? 'gospels,' do they call them? that a couple of billion people use as the foundation of their lives *yawn*." Ain't it always the way? :)
I'm not sure about the ages of the oldest existing copies of the Gospels...hmmm...lemme look. Nope, couldn't find a source online that I trusted, but I think that the oldest copies come from around 350 AD. So, this could be a major find, possibly bigger than the Dead Sea Scrolls, depending upon the accuracy of this article. Let me 'splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up.
1. The article says "up to 2000" years. A nice phrase that could literally mean anywhere between 2000 years ago and, well, right now. So, the "Lost Christian Gospels" could be that little Bible that I lost in 1990 (I miss that little Bible).
2. What does "a series of Christian gospels" mean? Do they mean Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Do they mean extra-cannonical (non-Biblical) gospels, like the "Gnostic gospels," which are nothing more than heresy? or do they mean copies of other New Testament books?
3. If they are authentic Biblical books and can be properly dated AND are old enough they could have the same effect on liberal Biblical scholars that the Dead Sea Scrolls did (the Dead Sea Scrolls disproved some of the liberal scholars ideas about the origins of the book of Isaiah, it didn't necessarally change their minds, it just proved them wrong). Scholars who don't want to believe that certain parts of the Bible are authentic (written when and by whom traditional Christian scholarship says they were) like to play fast and loose with the dates that the books of the Bible were written (i.e. they usually have prophetic books being written after the events that they prophesy about took place). So...if, say, liberal scholarship says that the book of Matthew was written by my grandfather in 1916 and I can find a copy of the Gospel in a Bible copyrighted 1915, then they have to admit they are wrong (actually, they would probably question the accuracy of the copyright). Thus, if the people examining these documents finds a copy of Mark that existed in the year 90 A.D. (or somesuch), then it would disprove anyone who said that it was written later. That's kinda what happened with the Dead Sea Scrolls re the book of Isaiah.
I'll have to look into this more.
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