http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-trice-demotic-language-1022-20121022,0,6669532.column

While in graduate school in the 1970s, Johnson began the project using as a springboard a 700-page demotic glossary published in 1954. Her new version is an updated 4,500-page volume that is now only available free online (www.oi.uchicago.edu). She said it eventually will be published in book form by the University of Chicago Press.

Professor King is quick to point out that

“this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said.”

The article also points out that the “provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery.”  What that means is, somebody in a dark robe went up to somebody in a dark alley and said,

Hey buddy, you look like a scholar –You talking to me?  –Yeah, you, you’re a scholar right?  –Uh, yeah.  –You wanna buy a papyrus fragment?  For you my friend, I’ll make you a special deal . . .

Or something like that.  Professor Chris Rollston is an expert on forgeries.  Technically he is an expert on epigraphy, meaning ancient inscriptions.  Within that realm his expertise is more in Hebrew, or even Aramaic and Akkadian texts written on stone or pottery.  He’s not a Coptic specialist, but he knows a lot about real, forged, and uncertain ancient writings.  His policy is generally if it’s unprovenanced, its inadmissible in the court of history.  In particular, dramatic claims require dramatic evidence.  He has an interesting review of a book based on another dramatic claim about an ancient inscription purported to mention Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Back to the papyrus, Professor King and other experts say the text has all the signs of being authentic.  Professor AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton examined the fragment and concluded “It would be impossible to forge.”  That may well be true.  There are probably a few Coptic scholars in the world who know the language well enough to compose a grammatically correct fragment.  I would guess the directory of Coptic scholars in the U.S. (and Australia!), for example, would only take a page or two.  But there must also be many Coptic monks unknown to the world of Academia.  Who’s to say that one of them with time on his hands may not have tried a little exercise?

But I will defer to the experts and assume it is genuine and interesting.  It gives us a window of the beliefs of some fringe-group of Christians living in Southern Egypt several centuries after the age of Christ.  And we should be grateful for that historical window.

http://explorepassages.com/

You can see the manuscript exhibit in Atlanta until May 16, 2012.

One of my students asked me about this.  I’m trying to catch up with my students.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/november/archaeology-rebel.html

Interesting article.  Thanks Wes.

You can look at the five most important scrolls: The great Isaiah Scroll, the War Scroll, the Rule of the Community, the Temple Scroll, and the Commentary on Habakkuk.

Thanks to Kasey Portenier and Karre Schaeffer for giving me the tip.

The Bible Project at Hebrew University

Thanks to Kevin Mace for notifying me of the AP article that accompanies this picture: “Scholars Seek to Correct ‘Mistakes’ in the Bible.”

The article has some interesting information, but is sensationalized as is the title.  Scholars have know–forever, I guess–of variations among hand-written copies of the Bible.  The prophet Jeremiah in the 7th century before Christ complained of deliberate corruptions in the text by “lying scribes.”  The book of Jeremiah’s prophecies  itself testifies to at least three editions within the prophet’s lifetime.

But to be “news” journalists have to make it sound like a bold new discovery.  Nevertheless, the article provides a good introduction to textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.