Christianity, Culture, Vocation
In more medieval forensic archaeology, researchers have found the mummified heart of Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199), which had been buried separately from the rest of his body. Nothing is left of it but a brown powder, but tests show that he was NOT poisoned, as some have thought, and that the embalming methods used spices associated with the burial of Christ. King Richard I ruled England beginning in 1189 and was a hero of the Crusades. (See the heart after the jump.) [Read more...]
We blogged about how archeologists have discovered what they thought was the skeleton of King Richard III, the monarch who, according to Shakespeare’s play of the same name, murdered his way to the crown until he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth field (“a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”) by Henry, the Earl of Richmond, who would found the Tudor dynasty. Well, yesterday DNA evidence confirmed that the skeleton–with its curved spine (Shakespeare described him as a hunchback) and a skull that had been hacked by a sword–is, in fact, that of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets. Not only that, facial reconstruction based on the skull showed his face, which is exactly that of a contemporary portrait of Richard. This has also sparked controversy about whether Shakespeare was a propagandist for the Tudors in making him such an over-the-top but extraordinarily interesting villain. Some say Richard was a good king after all. The details of the DNA research, my take on the controversy, and the pictures are after the jump. [Read more...]
I’m kind of behind, with my surgery and all, so this has already gone around, but we must post it. Scholars have found a small fragment in the Coptic language from ancient Egypt that has Jesus referring to “my wife.” Now first of all, as the historian who made the translation insists, this does NOT prove the thesis of the Da Vinci Code, nor does it prove that Jesus did, in fact, have a wife, since this was written centuries after his time on earth and it has affinities to Gnostic texts. But still, let’s look at the story:
A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’ ”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies by Karen L. King, a historian who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus.
Dr. King gave an interview and showed the papyrus fragment, encased in glass, to reporters from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine in her garret office in the tower at Harvard Divinity School last Thursday.
She repeatedly cautioned 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.
But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.
“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” she said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”. . .
[Scholars] examined the scrap under sharp magnification. It was very small — only 4 by 8 centimeters. The lettering was splotchy and uneven, the hand of an amateur, but not unusual for the time period, when many Christians were poor and persecuted. . .
The piece is torn into a rough rectangle, so that the document is missing its adjoining text on the left, right, top and bottom — most likely the work of a dealer who divided up a larger piece to maximize his profit, Dr. Bagnall said.
Much of the context, therefore, is missing. But Dr. King was struck by phrases in the fragment like “My mother gave to me life,” and “Mary is worthy of it,” which resemble snippets from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary. Experts believe those were written in the late second century and translated into Coptic. She surmises that this fragment is also copied from a second-century Greek text.
The meaning of the words, “my wife,” is beyond question, Dr. King said. “These words can mean nothing else.” The text beyond “my wife” is cut off.
Dr. King did not have the ink dated using carbon testing. She said it would require scraping off too much, destroying the relic. She still plans to have the ink tested by spectroscopy, which could roughly determine its age by its chemical composition.
Dr. King submitted her paper to The Harvard Theological Review, which asked three scholars to review it. Two questioned its authenticity, but they had seen only low-resolution photographs of the fragment and were unaware that expert papyrologists had seen the actual item and judged it to be genuine, Dr. King said. One of the two questioned the grammar, translation and interpretation.
Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an eminent Coptic linguist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was consulted, and said in an e-mail in September, “I believe — on the basis of language and grammar — the text is authentic.” [That is, not a modern forgery.]
Major doubts allayed, The Review plans to publish Dr. King’s article in its January issue.
via Historian Says Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife – NYTimes.com. That site includes a translation of the full, though fragmentary text.
Mollie Hemingway posts a compendium of evidence that points to forgery.
But here is the point: Jesus did and does have a wife: Her name is the CHURCH.
Richard III was the last Plantagenet king of England. In Shakespeare’s telling, in the play of that name, Richard was a hunchbacked villain, who murdered his way to the crown, had the child princes in the Tower of London killed, and met his rightful death at the Battle of Bosworth Field at the hands of Henry Tudor, the founder of the dynasty that would culminate in Shakespeare’s Queen.
Archaeologists have dug in the place where King Richard was supposed to have been buried. They found the bones of a hunchbacked man, shot with an arrow, whose head had been sliced with a sword.
The body of an adult male has been excavated from what is believed to be ruins of the choir area of the Grey Friars church in Leicester. It’s now a car park in the city centre, but was used as a church in the late 15th century. Some records suggest that Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, was buried here.
So how do we know it’s him? Has the body got a hunched back?
We don’t know it’s him – yet – but yes, the skeleton does show signs of spinal curvature. Contemporary accounts, reinforced later by Shakespeare, described Richard III as being “hunchbacked”. The newly found body appears to have scoliosis, a form of spinal curvature that would have made the man’s right shoulder appear higher than the left shoulder. The classic “hunchback” is caused by kyphosis but there is no evidence of this in the Leicester skeleton.
Any other evidence?
Yes. The man who became this skeleton took a beating. He has a small penetrating wound to the top of the head, and a much larger wound where a slice has been cut off the skull at the side and back – consistent with the swing of a blade. On 22 August 1485, Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field by blows that some accounts describe as being so violent they drove his helmet into his head.
The Leicester skeleton also has a barbed iron arrowhead stuck in its upper back. But the middle ages were violent times, so again this is only supporting evidence.
Can DNA testing determine if the body is Richard III?
Perhaps. The Richard III Society says it has located someone – Londoner Michael Ibsen – who is apparently the 17th great grand-nephew of Richard III, in the female line. Ibsen’s late mother Joy Ibsen is purportedly a direct descendent of the King’s eldest sister, Anne. Richard’s male relatives were executed.
Leicester University geneticists hope to extract mitochondrial DNA taken from the skeleton’s teeth and compare it with DNA from Ibsen. Mitochondrial DNA is transmitted only through the female line, so if Ibsen really is a direct descendent, his mtDNA can be compared with that from the skeleton.
via Is this Richard III, England’s last Plantagenet king? – life – 13 September 2012 – New Scientist.
For more details and pictures, read this. Here is a photo of the excavation site, with the location of the body, wrapped in a shroud, circled. (Read what I just linked for why this is thought to have been Richard’s burial site.)
Manasseh was King of Judah; Athens got rid of its kings and started on the road to democracy; Rome had just been founded. And a British criminal was executed (or maybe sacrificed), having been both hanged AND beheaded. We now have his brain.
A human skull dated to about 2,684 years ago with an “exceptionally preserved” human brain still inside of it was recently discovered in a waterlogged U.K. pit, according to a new Journal of Archaeological Science study.
The brain is the oldest known intact human brain from Europe and Asia, according to the authors, who also believe it’s one of the best-preserved ancient brains in the world.
“The early Iron Age skull belonged to a man, probably in his thirties,” lead author Sonia O’Connor told Discovery News. “Cause of death is rarely possible to determine in archaeological remains, but in this case, damage to the neck vertebrae is consistent with a hanging.”
“The head was then carefully severed from the neck using a small blade, such as a knife,” added O’Connor, a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Bradford. “This was used to cut through the throat and between the vertebrae and has left a cluster of fine cut marks on the bone.” . .
She and her colleagues suggest that a fortuitous series of events — for the brain and science, not the victim — led to the organ’s preservation. Shortly after the man was killed, his head must have been placed, or fallen into, the waterlogged pit that was free of oxygen. While other soft human body parts may not preserve well under such conditions, the wet environment appears to be perfect for keeping brains “fresh,” “due to the very different chemistry of brain tissue,” O’Connor said.
via Prehistoric Human Brain Found Pickled in Bog : Discovery News.
And thanks to this timeline.
I don’t recommend putting this brain into a body and trying to animate it. Bronze Age criminals were no doubt pretty formidable. This would, however, make for a good superhero movie.
Still, this makes ancient history, from Biblical times no less, very tangible and fills us with wonder.
Follow Patheos on
Copyright 2008-2013, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy | Site developed by Avalon Consulting, LLC
Follow Patheos
Evangelical: