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The Muratorian fragment / The Muratorian canon (click for larger image) I sometimes hear this odd objection that the books that were to be included in the Bible were not decided until the 4th century. I think it comes from some Hollywood movie, or maybe a TV show. Anyway, this post should help fix that myth.I’m going to quote from New Testament expert Dr. Michael J. Kruger from his blog.He writes: One of the key data points in any discussion of canon is something called the Muratorian fragment (also known as the Muratorian canon). This fragment, named after its discoverer...

A team of researchers led by the UAB has found the first ancient remains of a calcified ovarian teratoma, in the pelvis of the skeleton of a woman from the Roman era. The find confirms the presence in antiquity of this type of tumour -- formed by the remains of tissues or organs, which are difficult to locate during the examination of ancient remains. Inside the small round mass, four teeth and a small piece of bone were found. Teratomas are usually benign and contain remains of organic material, such as hair, teeth, bones and other tissues. There are no...

DALLAS (BP) -- The seminary professor who surprised the academic world by saying a first-century fragment of Mark's Gospel had been found has released new information along with two new claims -- an early sermon on Hebrews and the earliest-known manuscripts of Paul's letters also have been discovered. Details about the finds will be published in an academic book in 2013, says Dallas Theological Seminary's Daniel B. Wallace, a New Testament professor. Wallace started the buzz on Feb. 1 when, during a debate with author and skeptic Bart Ehrman, he made the claim about the Mark fragment, which would be...

Jerusalem, July 11, 2010 -- A tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – that was found in excavations outside Jerusalem's Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem, say researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The find, believed to be part of a tablet from a royal archives, further testifies to the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the Late Bronze Age, long before its conquest by King David, they say. The clay fragment was uncovered recently during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century B.C.E. tower...

Archaeologists excavating north of Jerusalem have found a piece of a sarcofagus - a stone coffin - belonging to a son of a High Priest. The visible inscription reads, "the son of the High Priest" - but the words before it are broken off. It thus cannot be ascertained which High Priest is referred to, nor the name or age of the deceased. Many other findings in the excavation are from the late Second Temple period, and archaeologists assume that the High Priest in question lived between 30 and 70 C.E. Yoli Shwartz, Spokesperson for the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes...

Rich pickings The library of the Mouseion in Alexandria may have ceased to exist but evidence of what it once contained can be gleaned from fragments of papyri found elsewhere in Egypt, writes Jill Kamil. Thanks to Egypt's dry climate and warm desert sand, papyrus texts in fragile and fragmentary form have survived from many sites -- among them Fayoum and Middle and Upper Egypt -- with the most expansive horde coming from Oxyrhynchus (modern Al-Bahnasa), a vast Graeco-Roman city once second in importance only to Alexandria. Oxyrhynchus was little more than a mass of ruins when, back in...

Scrolls, Scripts & Stelae A Norwegian Collector Shows BAR His Rare Inscriptions Hershel Shanks If you have a Dead Sea Scroll for sale, you should get in touch with Martin Schøyen (pronounced Skoo-yen) in Oslo. He is a prime prospect. He already owns several Dead Sea Scroll fragments—making him one of the few individuals in the world (I can think of only one other) who own Dead Sea Scroll material. In his spacious London pied-à-terre, Schøyen also has one of the unusual pottery jars from Qumran in which the Bedouin found the first intact scrolls in 1947 or 1948....