I freely admit that I get excited about stuff that "real" people may not find intriguing. And yet I write about it anyway!
Recently a Torah scroll (first five books of the Jewish and Christian scriptures) was carbon-dated and discovered to be about 800 years old. Previously this manuscript had "languished in archival obscurity" to use a phrase from one scholar. In the 19th century it was dated to the 17th century, but advances in both science and scholarship now make it the oldest such scroll in the world. It is suddenly a scriptural superstar.
We can easily forget that none of the bible manuscripts of both the older and newer covenants, or testaments as we call them, date back to the times in which they were written. I suppose the closest we get to that is with the Dead Seas Scrolls, which contain certain books of the Hebrew scriptures. To find a complete Torah of this age is a big deal from a scholarly standpoint.
For me the excitement is that the sacred texts for Jews and Christians have been copied and printed for two millennia and when we read from the bible in our worship we are the recipients of this rich legacy of loving transmission.
Snore? Does this intrigue you or bore you? Do you ever consider how the bible we read today got to us? Is it important to be aware of that legacy?
What is Aquaviva? Take a look at my Groundling Blog to find out.
http://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.ca/2013/06/aquaviva.html
2 comments:
Interesting discovery. A book I read a while ago helped me to consider how the bible we read as I grew up got to us. The book is called "God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible" by Adam Nicolson. It is a fascinating account of the Jacobean era, King James and the 50 scholars he used to write a new version of the bible, a version that would be for everyone, not just the church hierarchy. It took seven years to complete. My Sunday School notion of the inspired word of God being magically transmitted in an instant to scribes ready and waiting got rather blown away after reading this book.
I really enjoyed that book as well Shirley. Somehow Nicholson made what could have been a very dry subject alive. It was published a few years ago and I tried to get my ministerial colleagues to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the KJV but there were no takers.
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