Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.
The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.
"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.
"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out. First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."
An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of an impact crater, even in satellite images.
American geophysicist John Wasson is another scientist interested in the origins of the glass. He suggested a solution that came directly from the forests of Siberia.
"When the thought came to me that it required a hot sky, I thought immediately of the Tunguska event," he tells Horizon.
In 1908, a massive explosion flattened 80 million trees in Tunguska, Siberia.
Although there was no sign of a meteorite impact, scientists now think an extraterrestrial object of some kind must have exploded above Tunguska. Wasson wondered if a similar aerial burst could have produced enough heat to turn the ground to glass in the Egyptian desert.
When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.
When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.
With my second trip to India coming up next week I have been somewhat distracted from regular Theosebes posting. I fear it shall only get worse while I'm there. I do plan to have the laptop, and I hope to post as opportunity and Internet access will allow.[O]nly two other American women have reached the pinnacle of a religion's organizational chart: Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science in 1879, and Ellen White, who helped to found the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863.
Archaeologists on Wednesday fully unveiled the first ancient chamber discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in more than 80 years, and cracked open the last of seven sarcophagi inside to reveal embalming materials and jewelry.
"This is even better than finding a mummy — it's a treasure," said chief curator Nadia Lokma, beaming at the sarcophagus packed with fragile remains that would crumble into dust if touched.
"It will tell us about the religious plants and herbs used by ancient Egyptians, what they wore, how they wove it, how they embalmed the dead," she said....
It is believed to be more than 3,000 years old....
Instead of the expected mummy, the coffin revealed embalming materials, dozens of necklaces made from woven flowers and various other religious artifacts.
A team of Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah's Ark in Iran's Elburz mountain range.
"I can't imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark," said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.
Bonnema and the other B.A.S.E. Institute members hiked for seven hours in the mountains northwest of Tehran, climbing 13,000 feet before making the apparent discovery.
"We got up to this object, nestled in the side of a hill," said Robert Cornuke, a member of the B.A.S.E. Institute. "We found something that has my heart skipping a beat."
At first, they didn't dare to hope it was the biblical boat.
"It wasn't impressive at first," Cornuke said. "Certainly didn't think it to be Noah's Ark. But when we got close, we were amazed. It looked similar to wood."
In addition, some B.A.SE. members say, their discovery didn't look very distinctive.
"It looked like the deck of any boat today," Bonnema said.
William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!," Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," and Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" are literary works included on the syllabi for many English courses for which professors say knowledge of the Bible is valuable.
"Regardless of a person's faith, an educated person needs to know about the Bible," was the response of a professor quoted in the Bible Literacy Report II: What University Professors Say Incoming Students Need to Know. The report was released June 1 by the Bible Literacy Project at an academic symposium on the Bible at Baylor University.
In addition to being a sacred scripture to millions of Americans, the report said the Bible is "arguably the most influential text in all of Western culture." Not knowing about the Bible impedes a student's ability to understand classic and contemporary literature, the report said.
Nevada English scholars agree with the findings, but a Washoe County School District administrator voiced concern about teaching the Bible in public schools.
Assistant Superintendent Jerry Holloway said there are other means for students to get access to the Bible outside of the school system.
"We need to be careful that we're not putting anything in place that is specific," said Holloway, curriculum director for 25 years. "The world is not all Christian."
The Bible's place in the classroom can be justified by the importance of students having cultural literacy and becoming critical thinkers, said Dan Halcomb, English and journalism teacher at Reno High School. That does not mean teaching a course solely on just the Bible, he said.
"What every good teacher tries to do is teach students how to interpret things on their own," he said. "Nothing should be left out of that discourse, and that includes the Bible."
Halcomb said students seem poorly informed about many biblical references in literature, including the Genesis story of Adam and Eve.
Western literature is filled with biblical references, whether it's Shakespeare with its estimated 1,300 biblical references or Melville's characters of Ahab and Ishmael.
"To not understand the references we often find in western literature is to not understand the literature itself," Halcomb said.
