The independant [1] is busy this fine morning, crowing over a supposedly major breakthrough in the ability to read acient documents which were unreadable previously. They go on to holler:
In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.
The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye – decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a “second Renaissance”.
Ummmm…. Guys?
I would find it hard to be very reliant on such material as being the final word on the various subjects by the authors. Interesting, perhaps, and revealing in their way. But not the final word.
Think about it; By even your own description…. These writings by these ancient masters were found in a DUMP…. a LANDFILL. Somehow, it seems to me that there were later refinements to the original works that those greats wrote, and that what was in the landfill was likely considered… even by their authors…. to be utter crap…. which would explain where you found them!
Guess that one got by you, huh?
I mean, yes, by all means, let’s change our reading of the Gospels because of something we found in a dump…. (Sheesh!)