Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on September 19, 2012, 12:36:50 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19645273
Knowing early Christian documents' habit for metaphor, they will probably be arguing over this for years, but interesting nonetheless.
Edit: Just wanted to add this from the article, since it made me laugh a bit...
Jim West, a professor and Baptist pastor in Tennessee, said: "A statement on a papyrus fragment isn't proof of anything. It's nothing more than a statement 'in thin air', without substantial context."
Dead Sea Scrolls anyone?
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In all fairness, the papyrus in question was dated to the 4th century, so roughly 300-something years after the events in question. One single fragment without a whole lot of context to go along with it. We've got thousands of older scrolls and fragments of scripture from the 2nd and 3rd centuries that corroborate one another so consistently that it makes the New Testament one of the most well preserved ancient texts in existence. Under the weight of all that other documentation, this one fragment's claim is a bit dubious.
If this was relating to any other ancient document, say Euclid's Elements, everyone including historians would be pretty skeptical about one fragment among thousands deviating from the rest, and rightly so.
So one scroll from 300 years later comes out and has some incomplete hints of something odd; that isn't terribly surprising. There are probably more out there, especially given what we know about the gnostics, Marcionism and other sects that split off from the church and made up their own doctrine.
[shrugs] It sounds interesting from a historical point of view, but we already knew there were a lot of different factions that split off from what was left of the 1st century church by that point in history.
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Until they find something from early 1st century, I don't think it's really meaningful. Not to mention the church is unlikely to change the official version even in this case.
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Yup, the current Bible itself is based on the outcome of a meeting around that time of Coptic Christians who sat down and decided which Gospels should and should not be included in the Bible. This is probably just one of those fragments that was left out because it was incomplete, or did not fit with the concept of Christianity at the time.
The thing is, this isn't a bolt from the blue, there have been several documents that have inferred a relationship, and it was even suggested that the 'Blood of Christ' that Mary Magdalene took was actually the offspring of Christ, but the problem is, when you get into religion, saying anything outside the accepted norm is considered blasphemy, rather than curiosity, so having a level-headed conversation about it is often very difficult and it gets buried.
Edit : To be honest, some of the omitted chapters make very interesting reading, such as the 'Infancy Gospel of Thomas', in which Christ kills a child for splashing a pool of water....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas
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jesus was a serial killer
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To be honest, what I love about that Gospel is the ending, where Joseph tweaks Jesus' ear until he undoes all the damage he's done, because in many ways it is character development for Jesus and highlights the fact the He was a (in Biblical definition) a product of both humanity and deity, and that, like most adolescents, he struggled to come to terms with who he was and what he could do and needed discipline.
Oddly enough, it is probably the ending more than the acts he performed that precluded that Gospel from the Bible, no-one wants to hear about the Son of God getting his ear tweaked...
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I've wondered more than once about Jesus' adolescence. We already know he ditched his parents to teach in the temple, and they were frantically searching for him for quite awhile. Wonder how severe the flogging was for that? There is an awful lot about his life we do not know. Whether it was never recorded or just not deemed worthy of preservation, who knows?
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To be honest, what I love about that Gospel is the ending, where Joseph tweaks Jesus' ear until he undoes all the damage he's done, because in many ways it is character development for Jesus and highlights the fact the He was a (in Biblical definition) a product of both humanity and deity, and that, like most adolescents, he struggled to come to terms with who he was and what he could do and needed discipline.
Oddly enough, it is probably the ending more than the acts he performed that precluded that Gospel from the Bible, no-one wants to hear about the Son of God getting his ear tweaked...
[monty python voice] He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"[/monty python voice]
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I would point reference to what perihelion noted in Reply #1 as well...
Books that were not adopted by the Church were usually not adopted for a reason, as there are problems with the doctrine or information included within those books. I'll be interested when trained theologians report on their findings of the material - until then, this is just what it appears to be: hype for journalists.
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Yup, as I said before, this was probably missed out for being incomplete or not projecting the right message. A sentence that starts with 'My Wife' could be anything from a parable to the first ever stand-up routine ;)
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I've wondered more than once about Jesus' adolescence. We already know he ditched his parents to teach in the temple, and they were frantically searching for him for quite awhile. Wonder how severe the flogging was for that? There is an awful lot about his life we do not know. Whether it was never recorded or just not deemed worthy of preservation, who knows?
You're wondering about characteristics of a person whose very existence has not been proven, so it's a bit weird, I think, to wonder about life-details in this case.
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No offence Nemesis, but can we try to keep this a historical debate, rather than a religious one, we've already got one thread on the board that is quite heated, and I don't want to give my fellow moderators even more work ;)
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I think it's been pretty well established that there existed a philosopher near the beginning of the 1st century who got crucified by Romans who didn't like his philosophy. I've heard about documents which mention that the same philosopher visited India at some point of time, and spent some time in a Buddhist monastery. Aside from this and holy texts, there isn't much material about his life, and some of those texts are most likely somewhat modified to fit christian theology.
Anyway, I'd like to see the rest of this papyrus translated before jumping to any conclusions.
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If the next line is 'is so fat...' I'm going to laugh my ass off ;)
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Meh, Wife jokes have been done to death. I'm waiting for the bit where he starts on his father. :p
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jesus was a serial killer
and then he was a zombie
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Meh, Wife jokes have been done to death. I'm waiting for the bit where he starts on his father. :p
"And Joseph spake unto his companions, 'The Force is strong in this one...'" ;)
And yes, I know you meant the other father, but I thought his route was probably safer :p
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Yeah but you're kinda setting up a perfect "No, I am your father." joke. :p
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:lol:
"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational St David's Star..."
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JEWS IN SPAAAAAAACE! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAZhtT-dUyo)
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Since this thread seems to be mostly for the funnies, I deem no harm in posting this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8-8WJxA-cI
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JEWS IN SPAAAAAAACE! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAZhtT-dUyo)
i will watch the full version of this before iron sky.
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Since this thread seems to be mostly for the funnies, I deem no harm in posting this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8-8WJxA-cI
Hahaha.
Just don't let the Trolls on the FreeThought blogs get a whiff of it :P
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not concrete, at least yet, (http://news.google.com/news/i/story?ncl=dZ0gBTr9jBxLe9MiLkNsqsstkKY5M&q=jesus+wife+fragment+fake+vatican+expert&lr=English&hl=en) but the beginning of questions. Even the peer-reviewed journal at Harvard said they haven't committed to publishing until more tests are done, specifically, the ink, to see when this was written.
Granted, ofc the Vatican doesn't agree, but taken in the larger context of experts, right now it's all just premature hype.
m.newser.com/article/da1ib8404/vatican-paper-weighs-in-on-jesus-wife-papyrus-declares-it-a-fake-faults-harvard.html
By NICOLE WINFIELD | ASSOCIATED PRESS | Sep 27, 2012 3:16 PM CDT
The Vatican newspaper has added to the doubts surrounding Harvard University's claim that a 4th century Coptic papyrus fragment showed that some early Christians believed that Jesus was married, declaring it a "fake."
The newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published an article Thursday by leading Coptic scholar Alberto Camplani and an accompanying editorial by the newspaper's editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, an expert in early Christianity. They both cited concerns expressed by other scholars about the fragment's authenticity and the fact that it was purchased on the market without a known archaeological provenance.
"At any rate, a fake," Vian entitled his editorial, which criticized Harvard for creating a "clamorous" media frenzy over the fragment by handing the scoop to two U.S. newspapers only to see "specialists immediately question it."
Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the finding last week at an international congress on Coptic studies in Rome. The text, written in Coptic and probably translated from a 2nd century Greek text, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary.
The issue has had resonance since Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried, and any evidence to the contrary would fuel current debates about celibacy for priests and the role of women in the church.
As such, it's not surprising that the Vatican would challenge the claim.
King has said the fragment doesn't prove Jesus was married, only that some early Christians thought he was. She has acknowledged the doubts raised by her colleagues and says the fragment's ink will be tested to help determine when it was written.
Some scholars attending the conference questioned the authenticity of the fragment, noting its form and grammar looked unconvincing and suspicious. Others said it was impossible to deduce the meaning of it given the fragmented nature of the script.
Camplani, a professor at Rome's La Sapienza university who helped organize the conference, cited those concerns and added his own, specifically over King's interpretation of the text _ assuming it is real.
Rather than taking the reference to a wife literally, he wrote, scholars routinely take such references in primitive Christian and biblical literature metaphorically, to symbolize the spiritual union between Jesus and his disciples.
The absence of any reference to Jesus being married in historic documents "seems more significant than the literal interpretation of a few expressions from the new text, which by my reading should be understood purely in a symbolic sense," he wrote.
Camplani nevertheless praised King's academic paper on the subject as scientific and objective.
In its announcement about the discovery, Harvard said the paper would be published in January in the Harvard Theological Review, a peer-reviewed journal. The journal later said it hadn't committed to publication and would await testing on the fragment's ink to help determine its authenticity.
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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
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Hit the snooze button...
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I think it's been pretty well established that there existed a philosopher near the beginning of the 1st century who got crucified by Romans who didn't like his philosophy. I've heard about documents which mention that the same philosopher visited India at some point of time, and spent some time in a Buddhist monastery.
And there is speculation that he may have even visited England to study Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8380511.stm)
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There are also texts (honestly can't remember off-hand which ones, probably from Gospel of X, where X =/= Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) that claim the Jewish God was essentially the crippled Hephaestus of some greater pantheon who threw an anti-social temper tantrum. He didn't know what he was doing, because he sucked, so the world was imperfect and full of death, but he convinced the poor sobs in Israel that he was the only God anyway. Jesus is the messenger sent from the real gods, to help humans reach enlightenment and escape their bodily prisons. God left human Jesus before he died, hence why he yells "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?".
Point is (and Karen King will be the first to say this, and has), this only proves - maybe - that a group of people in 4th century Egypt believed Jesus had a wife, which is plenty interesting in its own right. Early Christian history isn't quite as far fetched or exciting as a Dan Brown novel, but plenty of groups with non-orthodox views existed well into Late Antiquity (I'm thinking especially of the 6th century Ostrogoths, who had a distinct Arian Church hierarchy in Rome/Italy). On the other hand, if the document turns out to be legitimate, I'm actually really interested to hear/read/see Dr. King's analysis*, because I'm not sure if she'd waste her time on it if it was just another random gnostic text, unless the media just went crazy over her research and she's riding the waves of excitement.
*if anybody somehow has a link to the conference paper or research she presented with it, that would be REALLY useful in determining the worth. Unfortunately, looks like January before it'll be snaggable on jstor.
Also, to contribute to the real purpose of the thread :D
(http://www.bangitout.com/photosb/images/all_jewish_funny_photos/middle_east__israel/jews.bmp)
Where's Sandwich when you need him?
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I guess what amuses me the most about this whole story is that the fragment ends literally just before the rest of the sentence that could have given things greater context. I mean, maybe it really was cut off there, but it seems pretty damn convenient. :D
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There is no way Jesus wasn't involved in some heavy duty horizontal fracking.