quote:
Vatican Scholars Prepare to Rewrite the BibleVatican scholars are preparing to rewrite the Bible by incorporating revelations contained in ancient scrolls discovered beside the Dead Sea in Palestine. A team of theologians and historians will gather in Italy later this month to start the potentially explosive task of inserting
new details about the life and times of Jesus Christ. The influence of radical Jewish groups who wanted to overthrow Roman rule is likely to be included in the new Bible, bolstering those who interpret Christ as a revolutionary who fought political oppression.
The Bible is based mostly on manuscripts written centuries after Christ lived, but the Dead Sea scrolls, found at Qumran by shepherds in 1947, have been dated to the decades before and after his crucifixion. The 800 documents, written by the Essenes, a Jewish sect, date from 170 BC to AD
68, and chronicle the turbulence of the Roman occupation of Judea.
Gianluigi Boschi, a Dominican priest and Vatican biblical scholar, told La Stampa, a Turin, Italy, daily newspaper, that an international commission of scholars had been given the green light to update the
Bible by culling material from the scrolls. The initiative will be officially announced at a conference at the University of Modena on Sept. 26.
Martyn Percy, a canon doctor at Sheffield University, welcomed the initiative but suggested the results may be less than dramatic. "There has never been a settled, definitive version of the Bible, it has been
an evolving book which has gone through many translations."
(Source: La Stampa)
C U R R E N T N E W S S U M M A R Y
by the Editors of ReligionToday
September 17, 2001
In The Blessed Hope
Avalee
[This message has been edited by Avalee (edited September 17, 2001).]