Christmas manuscripts (Part 4)
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This is Codex Washintonianus, a 5th century copy of the Gospels written in Greek on vellum (animal skin). It also contains both Matthew and Luke’s incarnation / nativity stories.
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Christmas manuscripts (Part 3)
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The preservation of P4 acts as a time capsule, hidden away inside another book, concealed in a jar, buried in a wall, in a house that was eventually buried. And yet, once again, the evidence from documents like it point to the story describing the events of that first Christmas being exactly what Christians have always read, believed, and testified to concerning the incarnation and virgin birth!
Read MoreChristmas manuscripts (Part 2)
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Despite being 1700 years old (and maybe even earlier within certain places of the text of Vaticanus) the evidence from literary artifacts like Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus point to the story describing the events of that first Christmas being exactly what Christians have always read, believed, and testified to concerning the incarnation and virgin birth!
Read MoreChristmas manuscripts (Part 1)
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All of the evidence from these literary artifacts point to the story describing the events of that first Christmas, being exactly what Christians have always read, believed, and testified to concerning the incarnation and virgin birth!
Read MoreThat time a scribe badly messed up Jesus' genealogy
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We see the scribe made a pretty big blunder in copying Luke’s genealogy of Jesus. This copy of the Gospels (with a commentary included afterwards) is largely generic, except for one very careless mistake made by the scribe…
Read MoreWhere the author of Hebrews calls Jesus God
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The author of Hebrews, right at the beginning of his letter (1:8), makes a very interesting statement “about the Son.” “The Son” in the context is Jesus, yet the author of Hebrews goes on to say “about the Son” a quote from Pslam 45:6-7…
Read MoreWhere the apostle Paul explicitly calls Jesus God
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Paul, at 1 Corinthians 8:6, expands the well known passage from Deuteronomy 6:4 and inserts Jesus. In writing to the Corinthians Paul is redefining monotheism as Christ-centred monotheism.
Read MoreYou should know who Granville Sharp is
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Granville Sharp, was one of the first British campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade. Along with being a musician and classicist, Sharp was also a brilliant Greek grammarian and biblical scholar. Yesterday, Nov. 10th, was his birthday.
Read MoreLuther (probably) didn't nail the 95 Theses
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One of the most famous catalysts for the start of what eventually became known as the Protestant Reformation was Luther’s 95th Thesis, which were famously reported to have been nailed to the Castle Church in Wittenberg, on October 31st, 1517…
Read MoreWho took verses out of your Bible?
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If you open up to nearly all modern English translations of the Gospel of John, at 5:4 you’ll notice something conspicuous. It goes from verse 3 to verse 5. So who took out verse 4? The answer to that question leads us back to the earliest surviving copies of John. Copies like our two 3rd century manuscripts of John like P75 and P66…
Read MoreAncient manuscripts made from snail spit
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This is a 6th century Greek New Testament and one of the “purple codices.” Its pages are velum (calf skin), dyed purple, with both silver and gold leaf used for the lettering…
Read MoreWhat is the "Jesus fish?"
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This is P.Oslo Inv. 303, a manuscript from the 4th century that acted as a Christian amulet. It is written in Greek and was used as an invocation to ward off evil from the household. This type of written appeal was popular in Egypt throughout antiquity. The inscription ends with an Alpha Cross Omega, Symbol of Christ, and the word Ichthus (Ίχθύς).
Read MoreHow ancient toilet paper might help us understand Paul
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The ultimate fate of P.Oxy4633, a 3rd century papyrus commentary on Homer, a part of the Oxyrhynchus collection, was…. toilet paper.
Read MoreWhat is the Gospel of Jesus' Wife?
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10 years ago, Dr. Karen King, a senior Harvard historian in early Christianity, gave an announcement across from the Vatican that an ancient papyrus in which Jesus speaks of “his wife” had just been discovered…
Read MoreThe British Monarchy and the most famous English Bible
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The King James Bible was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611. The beginning of it had a dedication to the King of England. James was potentially the most scholarly king to ever sit on the English throne. He produced his own commentary/paraphrase of Revelation, and even his own translation of the Psalms…
Read MoreIs the number of the beast REALLY 666?
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Everyone knows the number of the beast from the biblical book of Revelation, right?It’s 666. That’s just common knowledge! Or is it…
Read MoreWhy is Michelangelo's Moses horned?
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Because of the Latin Vulgate's (the Latin translation of the Bible that stood as the Bible of the church for a thousand years) influence we have portrayals all throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance like that of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, which is horned
Read MoreArcheaology of Roman brothels, moral quandries, and baby corpses
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Brothels were common place within antiquity and were often placed between houses of respected Roman families. Far from being perceived as taboo, brothels were one of the most common gathering places for Roman men. It was seen as antisocial for men not to engage in activities with prostitutes…
Read MoreManuscripts confirming Jesus, Josephus, and the Woman at the Well
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In John 4 we have the story recorded for us of a conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well in the land of Samaria. During the course of the conversation Jesus makes a very strange statement…
Read MoreSome of the most ancient and most notable New Testament manuscripts
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P52 (aka John Rylands 457) is one of the most notable New Testament manuscript fragments. Potentially the earliest extant piece of documentary evidence for the biblical New Testament, this papyrus fragment was discovered by C.H. Roberts in the basement of the John Rylands Library in 1934.
P66 (aka P.Bodmer II) is one of the earliest and most well preserved copies of the Gospel of John. Containing 2/3 of the entire Gospel, its discovery and publication surprised scholars due to the first 26 leaves being almost entirely intact. Ancient codices (what we would think of as a book) tend to lose most of the top and bottom sheets due to those being the most vulnerably exposed. Dated as early as the second century and as late as the fourth century, it nonetheless is in incredible shape considering its age. P66 is currently housed at the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, in Cologny, just outside Geneva.
P75 (aka Papyrus Bodmer XIV XV) is a 2nd or 3rd century manuscript text of Luke and John. Owned originally by Martin Bodmer and later donated to the Vatican where it is housed to this day. The text of P75 has a striking similarity to the 4th century Codex Vaticanus, which when discovered and evaluated, opened up a conversation both the scholarly perception of the text in its early form and as well as the function and purpose of Codex Vaticanus as a major codex.
P46 (aka P. Chester Beatty II), was discovered somewhere in the Fayum of Egypt, near what is beleived to be the ruins of a monastery near Atfih. It is one of our earliest collection manuscripts, that is, instead of being a single independent document it is a grouping of the Pauline epistles. Very early on the four Gospels and the Pauline epistles were being grouped together in collection codices, pointing to their significance in the early Christian community as prominent and important writings. One significance to this is that the P46 collection includes the book of Hebrews. While the majority of modern scholarship (correctly in my opinion) believes that Hebrews was not in fact written by Paul, it does appear that the collector of P46 did.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Codex Sinaiticus (aka א) is one of the most important Bibles in the world. The project started in the Middle of the fourth century and it marks our earliest surviving complete copy of the Christian New Testament in one volume. Having been in regular use for what is estimated to be around 600 years, Sinaiticus was eventually rediscovered at the Monastery of St. Catherine, at the base of Mount Sinai, in the nineteenth century by German biblical scholar, Constantine Tischendorf.
Codex Vaticanus ( aka B ) is one of the most important Bible’s in the world. The document has been housed in the Vatican Library since the 16th century and was largely made known to the world of Western biblical scholarship due to Erasmus’ correspondence with Bombasius in Rome in order to consult this important 4th century manuscript. Erasmus did so in order to see whether 1 John 5:7-11 was included in the most ancient readings of 1 John. The reading was not and so Erasmus (rightly) left it out of his 1st and 2nd editions of his Greek New Testaments. The 3rd edition did include 1 John 5:7-11 but this was largely due to pressure from the church authority at the time. Erasmus’ 3rd edition played a key role as an early edition of the primary texts used by the KJV translators and is one of the main reasons why 1 John 5:7-11 is in the King James today but not in modern translations.
