{"id":63028,"date":"2018-07-17T22:55:18","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T04:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=63028"},"modified":"2018-09-05T09:53:01","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T15:53:01","slug":"remembrance-of-things-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/07\/remembrance-of-things-past.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembrance of Things Past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Vesuvius<\/a>
A street in Pompeii, with Vesuvius in the background
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was surprised to see, in the July\/August 2018 issue of Smithsonian<\/em>, an article titled \u201cSecrets of the Scrolls: A revolutionary American scientist is using subatomic physics to decipher 2,000-year-old texts from early days of Western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I expected, it\u2019s about the recovery of texts from the ruins of ancient Herculaneum, a city that was covered in AD 79 during the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius \u2014 the same cataclysmic event that destroyed nearby Pompeii. \u00a0They came from the large private library of a wealthy man who was very interested in the philosophical school called Epicureanism, and particularly in the first-century BC Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was pleased to read this, on page 47 of the article:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

None of the Herculaneum scrolls has been opened since the 19th century, and scholars have instead focused on squeezing information out of the already-revealed texts. \u00a0A step forward came in the 1980s, when Dirk Obbink of Oxford University and Daniel Delattre of France\u2019s National Center for Scientific Research independently worked out how to reassemble fragments dissected under Paderni. \u00a0In the 1990s, Brigham Young University researchers photographed the surviving opened papyri using multispectral imaging, which deploys a range of wavelengths of light to illuminate the text. \u00a0Infrared light, in particular, increased the contrast between the black ink and dark background. \u00a0That was a \u201chuge breakthrough,\u201d says Obbink. \u00a0\u201cIt enabled us to read vastly more of the unrolled rolls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The new images triggered a wave of scholarship into Epicurean philosophy, which had been poorly understood compared with the rival ideas of Plato, Aristotle or the Stoics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Brigham Young University, it was the Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts, or CPART, a subunit of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) \u2014 which ultimately became the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship \u2014 that did this work. \u00a0(During some of that period, it went under the transitional name of \u201cthe Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts,\u201d or ISPART.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was, for several years, the head of CPART and the chairman of the board of the overall organization. \u00a0This was during our heyday, and among our most valuable and valued associates were Steve and Susan Booras.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a 2001 article from BYU Magazine<\/em> on the project:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA Library of Mud and Ashes:\u00a0A BYU team images ancient scrolls burned by Mount Vesuvius.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a 2002 article from BYU\u2019s Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBYU Adapts Space-age Technology to Study Ancient Documents\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s a documentary that was made about the project:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the Ashes: Recovering the Lost Library of Herculaneum\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those were the days, my friend. \u00a0We thought they\u2019d never end.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But they did.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult not to feel nostalgic.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I was surprised to see, in the July\/August 2018 issue of Smithsonian, an article titled \u201cSecrets of the Scrolls: A revolutionary American scientist is using subatomic physics to decipher 2,000-year-old texts from early days of Western civilization.\u201d \u00a0 As I expected, it\u2019s about the recovery of texts from the ruins of ancient Herculaneum, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRemembrance of Things Past<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    I was surprised to see, in the July\/August 2018 issue of Smithsonian, an article titled "Secrets of the Scrolls: A revolutionary American\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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