[HN Gopher] Ethiopian quest to re-create ancient manuscripts
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Ethiopian quest to re-create ancient manuscripts
Author : Caiero
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-06-15 04:05 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aljazeera.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aljazeera.com)
| ridgeguy wrote:
| I hope this isn't a contemporary project along the lines of "The
| Nine Billion Names of God". [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God#....
| atourgates wrote:
| Lol. Unlikely to cause the world to end, but interesting to see
| that these scribes treat the actual work of transcribing
| scripture as a spiritual practice, in the tradition of
| thousands of years or scribes before them.
|
| With the notable distinction that the vast majority of those
| past generations or scribes were working before the advent of
| the printing press.
| atourgates wrote:
| This is fascinating, as is (to me) the whole history and modern
| practice of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
|
| If you were raised in Protestant Christianity, as I was, it's
| such a mind-blowing experience to learn how broad the tent of
| "Christianity" actually is.
|
| Ethiopic orthodoxy, for example, gets 18 extra books that the
| Protestant Bible doesn't have! And it's treated so much
| differently than in Protestantism. Heck, you can't even go out
| and buy an "Ethiopian Orthodox Bible" with all 81 books in it,
| since such a book doesn't exist. Or at least hasn't been
| published.
|
| If you're at all interested in illuminated manuscripts, check out
| the fascinating history of the Garima Gospels[1], a set of
| Ethiopic biblical illuminated manuscripts that have been radio
| carbon dated to 390-660.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garima_Gospels
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Thank you very much for this post. I've got some new reading to
| do!
|
| Interestingly, to me, is that Ethiopian history and religion
| has long been revered by Rastafarians. To the extent that
| Damian Marley added Amharic subtitles to some of his music
| videos [0].
|
| If you are a scholar you may be interested in the documentary
| Bible Hunters [1] which I thoroughly enjoyed when it was first
| released.
|
| [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=ebfeumBDymc
|
| [1] https://imdb.com/title/tt3552332/
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| There was some strange stuff when Christianity was new. The
| Gnostics? alone are something.
| atourgates wrote:
| Gnosticism was wild! But also kind of makes sense in the
| context of plenty of contemporary cults/religions/conspiracy
| theories that appeal to their adherents on the basis of "I
| have secret knowledge that you don't."
|
| On the other hand, the more I learn about early Christian
| "heresies" like Marcionism (the supreme beings described in
| the old and new testaments were not the same) or Arianism
| (that when the New Testament described Jesus as being
| begotten by God the Father, it's reasonable to hold a
| doctrine that Jesus was created at some point and didn't
| always exist).
|
| Which is all to say that the historical study of the
| development of early Christianity is a lot like other fields
| of historical study, where you find things they are both very
| familiar and strange to your modern worldview, with a special
| personal twist if you happened to be raised in a Christian
| tradition.
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