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?
I think it's a matter of balance. If there are tons of these mummy masks and we have no idea what's on the paper they're made of, then the value of the information on the paper outweighs the value of any individual mummy masks.
But once we start rediscovering more and more new copies of exactly the same texts in those masks, it may be more important to keep an eye on how many masks we have left.
In general, though, I'm inclined to value the information higher than the object itself. And paper can carry lots of information.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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'
"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.
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?