Thursday, July 09, 2009

extra, extra, read all about it

A couple of pretty newsworthy events have happened this week in the life of the Christian church.

The first event I heard about was the online release of the Codex Sinaiticus. This is "a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament." Leaves and fragments of this manuscript have been held in four different locations around the world. All the available pages have now come together in the digital world - yeh technology!

I know I can't read these pages directly and they don't provide English translations for all of the pages, but I love the idea that they are there and available for all. And, I am intrigued by the books it includes that are not in our modern Bible and how it's been "heavily annotated by a series of early correctors."

The second event was the release of an Encyclical Letter "Caritas in Veritate" by Pope Benedict XVI. I'd never heard of this letter or ever really been a fan of the pope, but apparently he planned this "Charity in Truth" message to coincide with the G8 summit hoping to rattle a few cages. It's a pretty rambling document, written in a male-dominated voice, but it appears there are a few gems.

Here's what some other bloggers are saying about it:

BTW - is it weird that I learned about these things from listening to the BBC and not the US news?

No comments: