[contemplator]

Very nice.

[BenLurkin]

Ping

[RobbyS]

Amazing how a claim becomes a fact. Such as this rubbish about the Gospel of Thomas.

[Plutarch]

...some early Christian gospels that do not appear in the New Testament.

Great. We'll have pseudo-scholars coming that gospel soley to find some inference they can confabulate that Jesus was gay.

[newgeezer]

Oh, look -- a dividend from all our investment in NASA!</megaSarcasm>

[2banana]

All of it was collected from the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus, a city that flourished after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. The city remained prominent in the Roman and Byzantine periods but declined after the Arab conquest in A.D. 641.

Yep - about sums up most of the history of the middle east...

[ClearCase_guy]

People need to be aware that we already have a number of "early gospels that do not appear in the New Testament".

New additions are very interesting, and will be eagerly studied. But it's not like these should turn Christianity upside-down.

[Kenny Bunkport]

the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, an enormous collection of texts unearthed from the rubbish heaps of the vanished city of Oxyrhynchus...The gospel of Thomas, for example, records the "Sayings of Jesus" in a manner that some scholars of early Christianity believe is more authentic than the Gospels in the New Testament.

There's probably a good reason why this stuff was found in an ancient city dump.

[r9etb]

"No one knows exactly why it produces the results it does," Obbink said of the technology. "But with texts that are difficult to read, it's a night-and-day difference."

Well, actually, it's well understood science. Different materials absorb and emit light at different wavelengths. Black ink and black papyrus have different thermal properties. It's how most remote sensing technology works...

[Adder]

So far, if I have this right, we haven't found any "lost" documents, like some lost play of Euripedes.

Maybe, like today's markets, such documents weren't popular enough to be widespread?

But its a "gaw-aw-lee" technology, for sure.

[Chinito]

Saw this on one of those Discovery/History channels. They brought in a language scholar and had him standing by while they were adjusting the camera which was pointed at these insignificant black scraps of nothing. When they hit the correct light frequency, ancient Greek words just jumped out at you. The scholar's mouth literally dropped open and the look on his face was priceless. He was able to read what hadn't been read aloud in, what, 2,000 years? Just amazing.

The scrolls recovered from Herculaneum were not only carbonized, but often compacted into solid masses, making them very difficult to work with.

[MEGoody]

"The gospel of Thomas, for example, records the "Sayings of Jesus" in a manner that some scholars of early Christianity believe is more authentic than the Gospels in the New Testament."

Some "scholars", as in the so called "Jesus Seminar".

[Cold Heart]

Funny. The Greeks got lost on the way to Troy, fought & lost a battle at Mysia before regrouping and heading for Troy. They should have put that part in the recent movie.

Also funny...suddenly revealed writing that had been invisible for two "centuries."

[snowsislander]

Yes, this is exciting.

There are other collections that might also prove to be of some help to retrieve material, since reuse of certain writing materials was not unusual (vellum, if memory serves was one of the most common.)

[Tennessee_Bob]

I understand that there's a treasure map hidden on the back of one of the documents as well...

[USArmySpouse]

More contemporaneous documentation of Jesus's existence is always a good thing, IMO. This could be extraordinary.

[nonsporting]

If find it hard to believe that the lyric poet Archilocus "chronicled" the events of the Trojan War.

Even if he had "written" about Troy (Homer's works were oral epics), it'd probably more like Dan Rather writing bathroom graffiti dis'ing our troops in Iraq.

[patriot_wes]

I hope this isn't more mis-information from the "Jesus Seminar" frauds!

[streetpreacher]

...some early Christian gospels that do not appear in the New Testament.

That would be because they don't belong in the New Testament.

[Steve_Seattle]

I'd be much more interested if they found a c. 70-90 AD Aramaic copy of one of the Gospels.