
Mummy mask may reveal oldest known gospel - diodorus
http://www.livescience.com/49489-oldest-known-gospel-mummy-mask.html
======
themartorana
I've been thinking about the debate for a minute, and I have no idea where I
stand. On the one hand, 2000 year old Egyptian burial masks are being
destroyed. I'm pretty sure they're all "museum quality" (calling any 2000 year
old piece of Egyptian history not "museum quality" is absurd - I've spent many
a museum trip staring at pottery shards).

On the other hand, we've revealed masterpieces by removing a painting by
someone unknown to find a painting by Da Vinci or the like.

Reading a text so old can teach us so so much. It can unlock long-lost
languages, it can answer long-debated historical unknowns.

So I don't know. I wish they could just X-ray it like they do with Picassos
and Van Goghs - non-destructively revealing amazing insights. But I guess
that's not available here?

~~~
cbd1984
There's no guarantee the mask would last another 2000 years. Depending on
where it's stored, there's no guarantee of another 20 years. Had we left the
mask alone, and stored it somewhere, it's entirely possible it would have been
destroyed by some random process without us having learned a damn thing from
it.

~~~
skj
So, we're lucky it wasn't destroyed already, so we might as well break it now?

~~~
cbd1984
No, we should only break it if we can learn something from it if we do;
obviously, we should only do it if we have very good reason to think that, but
if we do, why wait?

~~~
kbutler
If we destroy it today, we get x, but in 20 years, technology may have
advanced enough to get x + y. Or learn x without destroying the original.

Like the early plunderers of the Egyptian tombs - they got short term
benefits, but at what cost?

------
jorangreef
The oldest fragment from the New Testament documents (apart from this
fragment) is Rylands Library Papyrus P52 [0], a fragment from John's gospel,
John 18:31–33 (front) and John 18:37-38 (back), circa AD 125, which is on
display at John Rylands Library in Manchester, England.

The John fragment is one of several fragments in libraries and museums around
the world, and there is an interesting list [1] of these if you are interested
in textual criticism ("Are the documents we read today the same as what were
originally written?") and planning a "history holiday" in any of those places
any time soon.

See also, FF Bruce's "The New Testament Documents: Are They reliable?" [2] for
a scholarly discussion of the historicity of the New Testament. FF Bruce was
incidentally a member of the council of governors for John Rylands Library.

[0] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52)

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri)

[2] - [http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Documents-They-
Reliable/...](http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Documents-They-
Reliable/dp/148370274X)

------
bane
It's an interesting reminder what a huge confluence of major cultural events
was happening all at the same time in the Roman empire during the first
century A.D.

------
orionblastar
So someone in Egypt was poor and took pages out of an early Christian bible to
make a mummy mask for them.

One that could be the book of Mark carbon dated to be 90AD or earlier.

Do they keep the mask or heat the glue to remove the paper to decipher the
gospel?

------
justifier
i despise religion and i despised the majority of my time at university, but i
always enjoyed the classics department

in 2005 i took a class i thought sounded interesting, introduction to coptic

coptic is a middle egyptian language, somewhere between ancient and
contemporary egyptian(i)

there are some 30 plus gospels written, when the church chose their canon they
went with the four because they contained ideas and perspectives in line with
the church's message, manipulation through ommission

these other gospels have fascinating insights into the breadth of perspective
of people at the time

the vast majority of them were either written in or translated into coptic

magdelene and thomas are some hightlights of the thirty

for the class we were learning to read`translate coptic by translating a copy
of the gospel of thomas

about midway through semester, as the fable went, a wealthy individual came on
hard times and went through thaer attic looking for items to pawn off

one item was an ancient text.. upon further investigation this text turned out
to be the gospel of judas

judas, the one who betrays christ

as it so happened, my professor was the leading coptic scholar in the states
at the time, he lost out on the book deal to a higher ranked scholar on the
world scene but he were given facsmiles of the fragments to aide in
deciphering and translating

so one day he came to class and we put away thomas and this tiny room in the
classics department with nine kids and a professor were some of the first to
read the gospel of judas in millenia

some things struck me signifigantly:

the big payoff is during the garden scene, famously where christ sweats
blood.. in judas' account judas goes to christ in the garden in secret and
confesses to him: ~'i am the one you spoke of at the meal, i am the one who is
going to betray you, and i hope you can forgive me for i have decided i am
unable to go through with it'; christ responds: 'you need to continue with
your plan.. you see, you need to do what you need to do so that i may do i
what i need to do'

but my favourite was how every, every, instance of the word christ in the text
was accompanied with the quantifier 'laughing'

.

(i) ..
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic)

~~~
jorangreef
"There are some 30 plus gospels written, when the church chose their canon
they went with the four because they contained ideas and perspectives in line
with the church's message, manipulation through ommission"

I don't think that is historically accurate.

The reason that apocrypha such as the Gospel of Thomas were not included in
the early church canon, is because the Gospel of Thomas was pseudonymous,
Gnostic, likely written in Egypt, dated around the middle of the 2nd century,
well after the eye-witnesses of the events had passed away.

The four gospels on the other hand were already in wide circulation in the
early church by then.

