This came up in my Vista sidebar news feed, found it pretty interesting ^_^
| Quote: |
A bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., is engraved with what may be the world's first known reference to Christ. The engraving reads, "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which has been interpreted to mean either, "by Christ the magician" or, "the magician by Christ."
A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that is engraved with what they believe could be the world's first known reference to Christ.
If the word "Christ" refers to the Biblical Jesus Christ, as is speculated, then the discovery may provide evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world.
The full engraving on the bowl reads, "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which has been interpreted by the excavation team to mean either, "by Christ the magician" or, "the magician by Christ." |
And a picture is always good:
Source
What do you think? hmmm curious to say the least, but I wonder if the word "magician" is really the closest meaning of the word?
hm is this a sister cup of the holy graal!?????
hm it would be great to have that cup at work for coffee!!!
Do they have any evidence for when the bowl was engraved?
It might be that it was made in the 2nd century, but carved in the 16th.
| Aredon wrote: |
| hmmm curious to say the least, but I wonder if the word "magician" is really the closest meaning of the word? |
Yes and no?
i don't know anything about this cup, but i have studied ancient writings quite a bit. Yes because magicians were bountiful in the time and would certainly have warranted having their names inscribed. No because our understanding of the term is not the same as the understanding from back then.
In those days a magician was not a conjurer or a trickster. They were prophets, astrologers, "wise men" (you know, the wise men from the east in the nativity story were magicians), philosophers (before philosophy was a real discipline)... all in all, they were the intellectual leaders of the time. Most of the early philosophers like Thales and Pythagorus would have been called magicians.
So if this Chrstou was a magician, he would have been a teacher, a mathematician, a thinker, an astrologer, and maybe (if he were religiously inclined) a prophet (according to our use of the term - they would not have called someone a prophet lightly back then, because it had a specific and special meaning). Such a person would have probably been influential and noteworthy enough to deserve having their names inscribed on dishes.
But does Chrstou == Christ? i seriously doubt it. First of all, the name is incredibly common, and it came in many forms - Cristo, Chrestus (nowadays in our extremely literate society it may seem weird for there to be so many alternate spellings for a single name - sure we have names with alternate spellings... but nothing like it was back then).
From the flip-side, assuming this was actually Jesus Christ, would he have been called a magician? No, certainly not - not if the gospel accounts are even remotely accurate. A magician was a big-shot in the society - they were the elite, powerful and usually quite rich (remember the wise men's gifts?). Does that sound like Jesus? Hardly. Magicians were highly educated individuals - usually the upper crust philosophers and mathematicians of the day. They were not dirt-poor carpenters who moonlighted as street preachers.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
Do they have any evidence for when the bowl was engraved?
It might be that it was made in the 2nd century, but carved in the 16th. |
Interesting theory.
i'm gonna go with no, though. Why? Because there are a number of factors in considering why this is probably not a hoax of that sort. First... would anyone in the 16th century have been able to pull it off? First of all, how would they know that it was from the right period? They had no carbon dating in the 16th century, so how would they know the bowl was not from the 15th? In fact, if someone wanted to pull of a hoax then, they could just as easily have made the bowl the day before and done some faux weathering to make it look 1500 years old.
Ok, maybe they had it as a religious artifact stored somewhere so they knew they date (extremely doubtful), or maybe it's just a fluke that the dates worked out right (also unlikely). The next problem is whether or not they would have been able to write the message in convincing Aramaic. The answer is probably no. What a lot of people don't realize is that the Bible is written in truly dead languages. Of the three languages the Bible is written in: Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek, only Koine Greek has never been truly lost - it just evolved into later forms of Greek. Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, on the other hand, those were literally lost - dead, gone. As in, there is no direct line between Biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew (as there is between Koine Greek and modern Greek) - and Aramaic just went the way of the dodo completely. Reconstructing Koine Greek is easy, because we can see how it became modern Greek and work back... but in order to reconstruct Biblical Hebrew, it actually had to be reconstructed almost from scratch (similar to the reconstruction of Ancient Egyptian from the Rosetta Stone). For centuries, Hebrew was only used for Jewish rituals... and then eventually modern Hebrew grew out of that. How well did Biblical Hebrew survive all the centuries as an obscure ritual tongue before it got reanimated into a live language? How close is modern Hebrew to Biblical Hebrew... we honestly have no idea.
So could someone in the 16th century have written a message in Aramaic so convincing it would pass today? Not bloody likely. Thus, i think it's pretty safe to assume it was written back around 1 BCE, not faked in the 16th.
i dunno, i'm tempted to think the bowl is either authentic as is - or a forgery from a far more recent date, like 19th century or later. i'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's authentic.
But... that doesn't mean it has any relationship to Jesus. | Indi wrote: |
So could someone in the 16th century have written a message in Aramaic so convincing it would pass today?
|
Well, they have two things that would have helped for that around that time (very loosely around that time; 16th century was just an arbitrary date) 1: Scribes used to copying things exactly and 2: A great respect for religious relics.
Perhaps they had something else with the same words written or carved on it, and copied it.So there is no evidence to the date of the craft. Well, I'm sure most christions will believe it to be true, but I'm looking for actually facts. Did they try to do some dating technique.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Indi wrote: |
So could someone in the 16th century have written a message in Aramaic so convincing it would pass today?
|
Well, they have two things that would have helped for that around that time (very loosely around that time; 16th century was just an arbitrary date) 1: Scribes used to copying things exactly and 2: A great respect for religious relics.
Perhaps they had something else with the same words written or carved on it, and copied it. |
The problem is that the texts they were copying so meticulously were all in Latin or Greek. To my knowledge, they didn't even have any Aramaic texts in wide availability. They had the Masoretic Text of the Tanakh in the sense that it existed, but it wasn't distributed - the copies that floated around were already translated into Latin, and not the original Hebrew/Aramaic. i suppose it's possible that someone that did have access to the Masoretic Text in its original languages could have done it, but...
... there's still the problem with the date of the bowl. Yes, it's true that they kept religious relics like they were... well... religious relics... but the thing is they didn't start keeping religious relics until at the very earliest the 4th century. Before that Christians were just another long-hair doomsday cult - and often the victims of serious persecution. To presume that these disorganized hippies managed to preserve a bowl for four hundred years through all of that strife... it's a bit of a stretch.
But the real problem with the hoax theory comes up when you put yourself in the shoes of the a person from that time... and ask why you would want to make a hoax cup out of a really, really old bowl. Unlike today, back then the question of Jesus's existence wasn't a question at all. It was a done deal. So why create fake evidence? Ok, maybe it wasn't intended to provide evidence of Jesus's existence - maybe it was just one of those false relics like a plank of wood from the cross that you charge people to see. But if that's the case... why write the message in grammatically correct Aramaic? People couldn't even read their native language.
Eh, it could be a hoax... but that seems like a bit of a stretch to assume that when it's so much easier to assume it's legitimate. A magician named Chrstou in between 2 BCE - 1 CE? There were probably a dozen or three. | Indi wrote: |
Eh, it could be a hoax... but that seems like a bit of a stretch to assume that when it's so much easier to assume it's legitimate. A magician named Chrstou in between 2 BCE - 1 CE? There were probably a dozen or three. |
That is more likely the case... I think I remember reading about how there were several impostors claiming to be the risen Christ and doing magic tricks in those first few centuries... Such a person would have somewhat of a motive to make something like this.I think you are missing Indi's point. It may have nothing to do with Christ or any imposters that may or may not have existed. The name could be a complete coincidence.
For example, lets say you went to college, and you had a professor named Steve. Years later you come across a coffee mug at a yard sale engraved "property of Steve the professor." What are the odds that that mug belonged to the exact professor who taught you, considering the commonality of the name, the lack of an exact date, and the sheer number of college professors in the world?
On a side note: I'm not certain if Arimaic has any linguistic relation to Greek, but I wonder if the word "GOISTAIS" has any ties, lingustically speaking, with the Greek word "Gnosis," meaning knowledge. Would seem to make sense since a Magician is "One who Knows." Probably just a coincidence, though.
