Church of Reality

Oct. 1, 2008 -- A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that is engraved with what they believe could be the world's first known reference to Christ. If the word "Christ" refers to the Biblical Jesus Christ, as is speculated, then the discovery may provide evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world. The full engraving on the bowl reads, "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which has been interpreted by the excavation team to mean either, "by Christ the magician" or, "the magician by Christ." "It could very well be a reference to Jesus Christ, in that he was once the primary exponent of white magic," Goddio, co-founder of the Oxford Center of Maritime Archaeology, said. -Article Continues Off Site

Excavations at Kfar HaHoresh, in the north of Israel, led by Prof. Nigel Goring-Morris of Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, have revealed a prehistoric funerary precinct dating back to 6,750-8,500 BC. This funerary has grave goods including phallic figurines and sea shells from the Mediterranean and Red Seas, along with other items from Syria, Cyprus and Anatolia.

While fertility symbols during this period are often associated with female imagery, at Kfar HaHoresh only phallic figurines have been found to date, including one placed as a foundation deposit in the wall of the precinct.

Burials at the site now total at least 65 individuals, and display an unusual demographic profile – with an emphasis on young adult males. Graves occur under or associated with lime-plaster surfaced L-shaped walled structures, and are varied in nature from single articulated burials through multiple secondary burials with up to 17 individuals. Bones in one had been intentionally re-arranged in what appears to be a depiction.

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Courtesy Scientific Blogging

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on a historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet.

Equipped with high-powered cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have significant scholarly impact.

The 2,000-year-old scrolls, found in the late 1940s in caves near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem, contain the earliest known copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible (missing only the Book of Esther), as well as apocryphal texts and descriptions of rituals of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus. The texts, most of them on parchment but some on papyrus, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

Only a handful of the scrolls exist in large pieces, with several on permanent exhibit at the Israel Museum here in its dimly lighted Shrine of the Book. Most of what was found is separated into 15,000 fragments that make up about 900 documents, fueling a longstanding debate on how to order the fragments as well as the origin and meaning of what is written on them.

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Courtesy The New York Times.

One of the driest deserts in the world, the Saharan Tenere Desert, hosted at least two flourishing lakeside populations during the Stone Age, a discovery of the largest graveyard from the era reveals.

The archaeological site in Niger, called Gobero, was discovered by Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago, during a dinosaur-hunting expedition. It had been used as a burial site by two very different populations during the millennia when the Sahara was lush.

Careful examination of 67 graves - a third of the 200 plots on the site - has uncovered unprecedented details about the lifestyles of the people who inhabited the green Stone Age "desert", says Sereno.

"The first people who used the Gobero cemetery were Kiffian, hunter-gatherers who grew up to two metres tall," says Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy and one of the scientists on the team. The large stature of the Kiffian suggests that food was plentiful during their time in Gobero, 10,000 to 8,000 years ago.

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Courtesy NewScientist

The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secrets

...The Villa of the Papyri is believed to have been owned by Roman statesman Lucius Calpurnius Piso, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. He was a man of wealth and refined taste. Like many members of the Roman elite of the time, Piso looked back fondly to the glories of ancient Greece. His library, written mostly in Greek, was dominated by works of the Epicurean school, which sought a salve for the troubled soul in the taming of runaway desire.

Epicurus, the creed's founder, was a fourth century BC atomist philosopher with an atheistic bent and a medicinal aim. He wanted to remedy human pain in this life rather than prepare sufferers for the next. "Nothing to fear in God," he wrote, displaying a talent for pithy distillation. "Nothing to feel in death. Good can be attained. Evil can be endured."

Shortly before 300BC Epicurus withdrew his followers to a commune outside Athens, known to all as The Garden. Friendship and frugality were its guiding principles. In fact, Epicurus would regard the modern use of the adjective epicurean as a travesty of his ideals. "Plain fare gives us as much pleasure as a costly diet," he said. True pleasure for Epicurus was a "pot of cheese", though he was thought to enjoy a tipple from a wineskin.

Ancient gossip links him with a fellow communard called Mammarion (big breasts), which only shows that the sage was human.

Epicureanism takes up a radical position in the Hellenistic world, standing apart from the philosophical mainstream. When Paul addresses the Athenians, in Acts 17 of the Bible, he speaks of Epicureans and Stoics in the same breath. Christianity, naturally, set itself firmly against Epicurean materialism and its implicit atheism. But the Stoics were equally stern disputants. Epicureans, as a result, found themselves traduced by their fellow pagans and damned by the early church. The Garden, nevertheless, flourished for some eight centuries....

"Epicurus's philosophy exercised so widespread an influence that for a long time it was touch and go whether Christianity might not have to give way before it," writes Lawrence Durrell in a tone of lament....

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Courtesy The Australian

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