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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Breakthrough Decodes 'Classical Holy Grail'

14:21 / 18.04.05

Eureka! Extraordinary Discovery Unlocks Secrets of the Ancients

"A vast array of previously unintelligible manuscripts from ancient Greece and Rome are being read for the first time thanks to infra-red light, in a breakthrough hailed as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail.

The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase by one fifth, and may even lead to the unveiling of some lost Christian gospels.

A team at Oxford University is using the technology to bring back into view faded ink on thousands of papyrus scrolls salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the 19th century.

The "multi-spectral imaging process", which is also used in producing images from satellites, uses infra-red light to reveal ink invisible to the eye.

The collection, taken from the now-disappeared town of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, has been stored in the Sackler library in Oxford, where it is the largest of its kind in the world. [The Scotsman | April 17, 2005]

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:50 / 18.04.05

I guess my one question on this is in what sense it's news - excavations at Oxyrhynchus have been going on since the 19th century, and the technology to read the fragments has been improving steadily - an earlier use of infrared infrared viewer technology has, for example, been used to read the Vindolanda postcards.

The Vindolanda postcards are actually quite a useful reminder that, although the finds like Sappho and Menander make the headlines, areas like Oxyrhynchus provide us with the written material that nobody thought to preserve for a day, much less a generation. The notes to shopkeepers, shopping lists, letters - fragments of a culture which give us an insight into what life in the Roman Empire was like if you weren't a member of the upper classes. Which might be quite an interesting question to think about - what should we be looking to get out of Oxyrhynchus?

More on the reclamation of the papyri here

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:00 / 19.04.05

(Obviously, I am personally very wet about these finds. Especially the Archilochus and the fragments of the Epigonoi. But there are some interesting things about the use of technology, and maybe also the status of the classics as repository of knowledge or lost treasure. Not to mention the question of why early Christian texts are assumed to be the important bits, and indeed why the phrase "holy grail" is being used here...)

12:11 / 19.04.05

Not to mention the question of why early Christian texts are assumed to be the important bits, and indeed why the phrase "holy grail" is being used here...

Interesting point.

Might it be that the author of the Scotsman article sought to convey the importance of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri by making an allusion to something with which a broader public could identify (e.g. the "holy grail")? The recent success of Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" with a plot focused on the "holy grail" comes to mind.

Granted, as a "former" classicist, I am more interested in the Greco-Roman texts.

Other allusions might have been able to impart the import of the papyri to scholars, but may not be as widely known. Some allusions come to mind: Schliemann's excavation of Troy, the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by Champollion and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:36 / 19.04.05

Especially, of course, because the Dead Sea Scrolls were the original recipents of this multi-spectral viewing. I think the influence of Dan Brown's book (in which the Holy Grail is actually the mummified body of Mary Magdalene, which is buried under the Louvre, fact fans) is very likely.

However, this isn't the Holy Grail. Most obviously, this demonstrates that, as technologies to read damaged material improves, the amount of potentially recoverable material is actually increasing, whereas the discovery of the Holy Grail is a single and complete action. One of the things I like about Classics is that it is pretty much defined by its incompleteness.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:24 / 19.04.05

Oh, forgot to say - welcome aboard, EricB. There's a scratchy but rather fun discussion of Classics and its discontents here.

13:39 / 19.04.05

Haus, thank you for the welcome and the pointer to the classics thread.

15:16 / 20.04.05

Although it might not be an enormous surprise in the sense that this work is ongoing, I am incredibly interested to see what they actually come up with. It's not often that new works from the Ancient World emerge - I want to know whether any of the dramas that we only know of by reputation are in this stash, I want to know whether fragmentary works are going to be enhanced. I really want to know whether or not there are going to be any new complete works as a result of this. The world of the Classicist would completely change if this was to happen. Could be fascinating...

16:00 / 20.04.05

First and foremost I'd hope for Porphyry's "Against the Christians," the long-lost work which apparently destroyed Christianity. I think it was a multi-volume work, but I'm sure the early Christians did their best to completely wipe it from the face of the Earth -- other than the few quotes which Literalist writers used in their "Anti-Heresy" diatribes.

16:11 / 20.04.05

The 'holy grail' bit(s), I would assume, are inocuous, just the standard practice of refering to any long-sought or major find of revelatory material (in any field of interest) as 'the holy grail.'
Why focus import on the Christian-related docs? Not having brokered entry into Paradise via Jesus-the-negotiator, and having no intent of mindwiped stoop labor in the post-apocalyptic fields, et cetera, I still believe that Christianity had an awful lot of impact on the Euro-influenced (descended, maybe, even) culture in which I, and probably most of us, live. If only because they stamped on everything that disagreed with them, kicking it to dead, bloody, pulp and then assimilated the pulp into their own body of thought/practice. It is, painfully, often only through Jesus-effect that we can regain some things, if only for the culturally-dominant Christian memeplexes still floating about in our societal backbrain.
Whether we like it or not.
I can't even have a *thought* of Aeschylus without Jesus popping up, the bastard.

18:30 / 20.04.05

The blogosphere is abuzz...

The "classical holy grail" or unholy hype?

"Some of the papyrologists on the "PAPY list," the listserv where many papyrologists from around the world make announcements, ask questions, etc., were openly derisive of the article [published in the Independent on April 17, 2005]....So as of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up or disavow the claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent's reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they're trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news."

18:48 / 20.04.05

A thing of beauty is (now) a joy forever
"My new heroes are the Brigham Young researchers whose scanners have unveiled ancient fragments of Sophocles, Euripides and the earliest Gospels." [Salon | April 19, 2005 - requires free registration for day pass]

21:41 / 03.05.05

Here's an interesting upshot of the new imaging techniques.
According to the Independent online edition, a 3rd-century version of the New Testament, in Greek, sets the Number Of The Beast at 616.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula."

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:14 / 04.05.05

It doesn't tell us _why_ 616 represents Caligula, does it? That would be my first question on this one, I think. Caligula's as good a bet for the Beast as anyone, in the sense that he had a statue of himself set up in the temple of Jerusalem, claimed to be divine while still alive, that sort of gubbins. But he's early, and he didn't last very long...

11:26 / 04.05.05

satan = baseline marvel universe

13:01 / 04.05.05

666 is gematria for "he phren," ancient Greek for "the lower mind." The so-called Book of Revelations is a mystical document with a hidden chart in it which reveals self-transformation into gnosis. It was written by gnostics and somehow accepted into the canon. Only one guy figured this out, but people still flock to the same old Jerry Falwell "end is near" shit when they talk about Revelations. The guy who figured it out was James Morgan Pryse, in 1910, and his book, "Apocalypse Unsealed," is life-changing. I wrote a review of it with more info here under this same name: "buttergun."

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:40 / 04.05.05

I was rather under the impression that he^ phre^n was Ancient Greek for "the midriff", with all that that entailed (emotion, thought, physical desire, wits)... not sure where "lower" mind comes from - it's the thing that the shades of the dead lose, is maybe where this is coming from, but I'd like to get some textual support here that phre^n as "lower mind" is a comprehensible bit of 1st-century gnostic thought.

But anyway. My question, then, is _why_ is 666 gematria for he^ phre^n? The numerical values of the letters (2 etas (8 each), a nu (50), a rho (100) and a phi (500) add up to 666, sure, but you're already shoving in the definite article he^ to make it work... anyone with a Liddell and Scott and a calculator could offer alternatives that also make 666, surely? And how about 616? Does that have a meaning in gematria also?

13:48 / 04.05.05

Haus, I heartily encourage you to pick up the Pryse book. He shows exactly how he arrives at each transliteration. As for "the lower mind," I think Pryse wrote it that way, instead of "the midriff" or what have you, because he was writing in the very early 20th Century.

Also encourage you to pick up his later book, The Restored New Testament, which is just as excellent: yet another review.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:51 / 04.05.05

Yes, but John the Divine _wasn't_ writing in the early 20th century, which is kind of my point. There just isn't a "lower mind"/Jesus antithesis that I know of. It's possible, indeed probable, that Pryse knows more than I about this, but it is also possible that he is making it up to fit his own schema, not a gnostic schema of the time.

19:38 / 04.05.05

Well, is there a "higher mind" in the Greek? I mean, is there a body part located higher up that was linked to logic & reason? Brain vs. midriff?

And I've always read that Nero translated out to 666, but whatever -- gematria's fun because you can add things up differently.

23:23 / 04.05.05

Graffiti on the back fence of a house near my old high school:

Ronald Wilson Reagan = 666

By the number of letters in his name, see? Which would make me, using my full name, 444, or two-thirds of the number of the beast. The Beast's sidekick, perhaps. Beast-Kid?

"Unholy Moley, AntiChrist! He's walking ON TOP OF THE WATER!"

[/threadrot]

m.

12:53 / 05.05.05

I think you all should check out the Pryse books, especially those of you who can read ancient Greek and who know gematria. Unfortunately, his books aren't online, but you can find a book by a guy heavily influenced by him. The book's called "Dance of Ecstasy," it's by Michael Wassil, and it's right here.

Wassil goes into different areas than Pryse, but he uses "Apocalypse Unsealed" as his foundation. More importantly, drop down on that page linked above, and you will find some illustrations (aka "figures") taken from Pryse's book. Most importantly, there's this Gnostic chart concealed in Revelations, and more detail into Pryse's use of gematria.

05:34 / 01.08.05

You have to keep the Oxyrhynchus materials in perspective. Most of the stuff is 3rd and 4th century. So nothing is original, still just copies of copies. Textural variations are to be expected. Regarding the renewed controversy around the number 666 in the Christian Apocalypse, this is not new. 616 has been around a long time and seems pretty thoroughly discredited as simply another copyist error or a gloss. For anyone who's interested, Irenaeus's 2nd century comments on 616 are here.

Do a word search for the string: - some have erred - to find the relevant text.

Here are a couple of other discussions that you will also find interesting:

Laputan Logic
CAI

For anyone who's read Pryse's Apocalypse Unsealed, you will find that Pryse's argument, given the full context, is conclusive. The book is long out of print unfortunately, but most of Pryse's discussion is reproduced here.

I have elaborated a bit on Pryse's material, but have not altered his essential proof of the matter.

Also, above, "grant" asked about the terms "higher mind" and "lower mind". Both are common terms in classical Greek philosophy: 'o nous and 'he phren, the former referring to the "higher intellect", and latter to that portion of the mind consumed by the logical, mundane day to day necessities of living. 'He phren as the solution to the riddle is so elegant, the alternatives are puerile in comparison, especially when you appreciate the full extent of the riddle, of which "666" is only one small portion!

Michael

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:07 / 01.08.05

You realise that you just said "logical", don't you, dude?

05:51 / 11.08.05

Haus: I think Philo and later Plotinus would probably be closer to my position than Plato, at least in his earlier dialogues, that phren includes the mental operations of logical deduction and inference. Whereas nous would correspond more closely to what we now would rather term intuition in the jungian sense, ie a holistic leap of understanding rather than the result of logical deduction or inference. I think even Plato in his later dialogues was also moving in the same direction, since he started to equate nous with divinity. This seems to indicate that he was thinking of nous as something more than the processes of logic, something of a different order and certainly more extensive.

I don't really want to go off on a tangent about this, as I simply wanted to indicate that indeed classical philosophy included the concepts of "lower" and "higher" minds. In that, Pryse is correct and his decoding of the Apocalyptic key remains valid. Certainly, there are many specifics discussed in both Pryse's works and DOE that do not appear congruent with classical philosophy. But you have to keep in mind that the Apocalypse was the result of a confluence of ideas from Greek philosophy, Vedic metaphysics and other sources. Although agreeing with all its sources in broad strokes, it varies from each in many specifics.

Michael