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00:00Egypt, the setting for a unique and historic quest, the quest to find ancient scriptures
00:10in support of the largest religion in the world, Christianity.
00:19At stake, the faith of millions with the Bible at its heart.
00:24But there were deep divisions between those who consider the Bible to be the absolute
00:29word of God, and those who take a less literal view of its teachings.
00:40Two hundred years ago, for the first time, the historical story of Jesus and the reliability
00:46of New Testament Gospels came under attack.
00:50To defend the authority of the Bible, Bible hunters scoured the monasteries of Egypt in
00:56search of the world's oldest biblical manuscripts.
01:00What they found were challenging variations between ancient and current biblical texts.
01:06The threat that the Gospels may not be the pure word of God was received like a bombshell.
01:16But what if it wasn't just variations between the biblical texts we have today and those
01:21they'd rediscovered?
01:24What if they found whole new texts and Gospels?
01:28In effect, a lost alternative Christianity.
01:33I'm Jeff Rose, an archaeologist and a historian.
01:37I want to explore what the Bible hunters discovered, and ask just how this affects the very foundations
01:43of the Christian faith.
01:57This is the abandoned city of Oxyrhynchus, in the desert of Egypt, south of Cairo.
02:01A center of early Christianity, the site was a magnet for 19th-century Bible hunters.
02:15In 1897, two British archaeologists, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, came here to dig.
02:24They were looking for the world's oldest Bibles.
02:26In their own words, someday or another, a New Testament of the 2nd century must turn up
02:33in Egypt.
02:38In an ancient rubbish pile, they found over a half million fragments of Greek papyri.
02:45One of them, a sensational text from the 2nd century A.D., with sayings attributed to Jesus.
02:53Jesus said,
02:57My soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart.
03:05Some of the Jesus sayings found at Oxyrhynchus were known and quoted in the Gospels of the
03:10New Testament.
03:12But other sayings were completely new to Bible readers.
03:15If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom of God.
03:22And if you do not keep the Sabbath a Sabbath, you will not see the Father.
03:29If these new sayings of Jesus were genuine, they threatened the authority and reliability
03:34of the Bible text.
03:35Devout Christians believe that the Bible contains the absolute word of God.
03:43Yet here was startling evidence of sayings attributed to Jesus, which never even appear
03:48in the Bible as we know it.
03:49To understand the full importance of this discovery, we have to travel back in time, to the earliest
04:04centuries of Christianity, the time of Jesus' crucifixion in Jerusalem, around 33 A.D.
04:10It was shortly before the Jewish Passover that Jesus, a radical and controversial Jewish preacher,
04:21came to the city.
04:23Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, and it's clearly that his arrival has caused great excitement.
04:30And the message is very clear that there is going to be some form of transformation,
04:34a new kingdom is at hand.
04:36But within a week, this movement is completely, apparently snuffed out.
04:40There is no more humiliating way of destroying someone than to crucify them.
04:54Something happened in the 36 hours after the crucifixion that made the followers of Jesus
04:59believe that he was God's Messiah, God's divine savior, and the bringer of a new world order.
05:05At some point, there is the idea that there is an empty tomb, and that there is a possibility
05:15that in some way Jesus has survived, has become alive even, possibly even in the physical sense,
05:21that although he appears to be dead, he has triumphed in some way.
05:25The story of the resurrection of Jesus comes down to us through the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
05:33written several decades after the crucifixion, when Jesus' disciples were getting old.
05:38Those Gospels essentially arose at a time when Jesus' followers, the apostles, they were dying out.
05:51And therefore, it was felt that there needed to be something of Jesus' words, his teaching, his deeds,
05:58that needed to be recorded for posterity, as it were.
06:01The four Gospels are a key part of the official text of the New Testament, the canon.
06:09For almost 2,000 years, they had the monopoly on the story of Jesus,
06:14until the discovery of the new sayings of Jesus in 1897.
06:22In Europe, the introduction of a new biblical text caused a storm.
06:26Scholars and believers were in the midst of an acrimonious debate about the Bible and the Christian faith.
06:35In the 19th century, there was the most febrile debate about religion.
06:40It was really the thing that fired everybody up.
06:43It was about your very self, your soul.
06:46It was the most violent disagreement about religion since the Reformation.
06:50Under scrutiny was the historical reliability of both the New Testament
06:57and of the Old Testament, written by ancient Israelites long before the appearance of Jesus.
07:05Critical history really challenged the foundations of Christianity
07:09by looking at the fundamental texts of Christianity
07:12and wondering if they were original, true, authentic.
07:16But why was this debate about the truth of the Bible happening in Europe?
07:22And why were Bible hunters heading for Egypt?
07:28It had all started 100 years earlier
07:31because France had imperial ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean.
07:37In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived here with an army of 40,000 soldiers.
07:46Although he failed to establish a permanent foothold in Egypt,
07:49he opened this ancient and mysterious country to an army of Bible hunters.
07:57He's definitely here for political reasons.
08:00He's definitely here for military reasons.
08:02But any voyage into Egypt in the 19th century is going to be shrouded with Romanticism.
08:08Egypt is seen very much as the birthplace of the arts and sciences.
08:12It's a land that hasn't been accessed freely since classical antiquity.
08:17Among Napoleon's army was the surveyor Vivant Denon,
08:21a trailblazer for the Bible hunters.
08:24His drawings alerted the world to the wonders of Egypt
08:27and challenged long-held views of history.
08:31The French, the British, and the Germans were obsessed with the idea
08:34that they were the natural heirs to the great civilizations of Rome and Greece.
08:38But Denon's drawings revealed an older, more spectacular civilization, ancient Egypt.
08:54360 miles south of Cairo, Denon happened upon the ancient temple of Dendera.
08:59He was awestruck.
09:15This monument seemed to me to have the primitive character of a temple in the most perfect state.
09:20In the ruins of Dendera, the Egyptians appeared to me like giants.
09:29Dendera was full of mysterious images and hieroglyphs, which Denon couldn't decipher.
09:49He had no idea that he was about to make one of the most controversial discoveries of the age,
09:59a direct challenge to the authority of the Bible.
10:01Deep within the main temple, something truly spectacular awaited him.
10:12A narrow stairwell leads upward.
10:15On top is a small room.
10:18On its ceiling, a sensation.
10:24A zodiac.
10:25A circle of animals representing the constellation of the stars at a specific date in history.
10:31Dendera made a sketch of the zodiac, so he could show it to French scholars.
10:39They were so impressed that a treasure hunter was dispatched to retrieve the zodiac for the French nation.
10:45What you see here isn't the original zodiac.
10:48That one was removed oh so carefully using explosives and then brought back to France.
10:55The zodiac ended up in the Louvre, where Denon became director after his return to France.
11:01Soon, he was embroiled in a heated controversy about the age of the zodiac with huge implications for the authority of the Bible.
11:11In the 19th century, Christians believed the world was created in 4004 B.C.
11:18This precise date was proposed by the Irish bishop Usher after he meticulously calculated a timeline using all of the genealogies in the Bible.
11:28But if the Dendara zodiac was older than 4004 B.C., this implied that the Bible was wrong.
11:34French scholars read the zodiac as a clear representation of the night sky as seen at the time that it was carved.
11:45Through astronomy, they concluded that it was far older than 4004 B.C.
11:50The date that they give to this monument is about 15,000 B.C., so long before the biblical creation.
12:01So this is really dangerous material for Bible-believing Christians.
12:04And it causes a huge battle in France between the conservative Catholic Church, who want to argue that this is a much, much later monument,
12:13and the atheists and radicals in France, who are committed to this date of 15,000 B.C.
12:21The controversy surrounding the zodiac raged for more than 20 years,
12:26until the brilliant French scientist Jean-Francois Champollion got involved.
12:31So Champollion looks at these images of the Dendara ceiling, and he finds there a word, autocrata.
12:41This is a Greco-Roman title.
12:45So Champollion argues that this has to be a Roman age temple.
12:50He, Champollion, the great radical, ends up defending the church and demonstrating this to be a much later monument.
12:57The Pope was so pleased, he offered to make him a cardinal, which is a nice gesture.
13:06But Champollion was both married and an atheist.
13:10But the damage to the Bible's reputation had been done.
13:14Scholars had started to question if the stories of the Bible were true.
13:18Dendara challenges the Old Testament.
13:21The idea of taking this challenge to the Old Testament and moving it to the New Testament Gospels,
13:28that only comes with the German scholar David Friedrich Strauss in the 1830s.
13:34Strauss' book, The Life of Jesus, shocked the faithful when it was published in 1835.
13:40Strauss' claim is that the Gospels are unreliable sources in two ways.
13:51Firstly, they're full of inconsistencies.
13:54Different Gospels say different things about the life of Jesus.
13:58Secondly, they're full of miracles.
14:01And in making that argument, it helped Strauss to be able to claim that the Gospels were very late texts,
14:10the end product of a long period of myth-making.
14:14He thinks that the events of the Gospels, especially those events that don't seem historically viable,
14:27like miracles, are myths.
14:29And he's quite willing to use those words about them.
14:35Defenders of the Christian faith were stung by Strauss' criticism.
14:39Some set out to search for the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world
14:43to prove the truth and historical accuracy of the Bible.
14:48The first of these was the young Lord Robert Curzon.
14:56Robert Curzon had studied classics at Oxford, but failed to complete his degree.
15:03In many ways, he was very typical of his age.
15:06Young aristocrat, bored, couldn't find a role for himself.
15:11His family had no sense of what he should do.
15:15And so he was clearly seeking some sort of purpose in his life.
15:21Disenchanted by the perpetual gloom of England,
15:24Curzon wrote,
15:24The solitariness of my existence is unendurable.
15:28It's like living in a madhouse.
15:30So he packed his bags and set off for an exotic land to resurrect his broken spirit.
15:40In 1833, Curzon went for a grand tour that took him through Europe,
15:44then across the Mediterranean all the way to Egypt and the majestic pyramids.
15:53You can't not be amazed, standing in the presence of these giant stone monsters.
15:59But Curzon wanted to do more than just marvel at the wonders of ancient Egypt.
16:03Curzon had a special interest in ancient biblical texts and believed that the best way to preserve them
16:14was to bring them home to England.
16:17He hoped to find them at the country's Christian monasteries,
16:21some of the oldest in the world.
16:25Egypt was a key player in the formation of early Christianity,
16:28and it's here that the monastic movement began.
16:31Monks who had gone out to the desert to live in solitude
16:34banded together in self-sufficient communities,
16:37and those became the first monasteries.
16:44Curzon traveled west of Cairo to the Syrian monastery,
16:48part of Egypt's 2,000-year-old Coptic church.
16:52He'd heard that its library was in poor condition
16:55and wanted to preserve whatever texts he might find there for posterity.
17:01When Curzon visited the library, he found the place in complete disarray,
17:16with manuscripts just littering the floor.
17:18In his own words, he saw himself as a kind of biblical knight-errant,
17:23there to save the texts from the thralldom of ignorant monks
17:26kept in their dark monastic dungeons.
17:31The librarian of the monastery, Father Begul,
17:34knows of the chaos that Curzon encountered.
17:37At that time, the monastery was in a poor condition,
17:40very, very poor condition,
17:42not only the monastery, but the whole Egypt.
17:44Nobody had enough money for food,
17:46so very poor condition books were put in the pernum,
17:52because they haven't enough wood.
17:59During Curzon's visit,
18:00a blind monk showed him some of the library's collection,
18:04a scene illustrated in one of Curzon's books.
18:08According to Curzon,
18:10the young English lord plied the blind monk with sweet liqueur
18:14so he would lead him into the deepest recesses of the vaults.
18:27Taking the candle from the hand of one of the brethren,
18:31I discovered a narrow low door
18:33and entered into a small closet
18:36with the loose leaves of ancient manuscripts.
18:39Curzon bought dozens of rare Christian manuscripts from the monks,
18:49including a precious 9th century gospel fragment.
18:54The texts are now in the British library,
18:57more than 2,000 miles from where they were found.
19:00How do you feel about that?
19:02I think Curzon himself,
19:04in his mind,
19:05would like to save this collection.
19:08Maybe if they were stayed in the monastery,
19:12now it was in the fire.
19:15So I'm very happy that these manuscripts
19:18are still alive,
19:21wherever it's in the Ralsurian or in the British life.
19:28Curzon's cache of manuscripts included a surprise,
19:32a Christian text no one had seen before,
19:36the Acts of Peter and Paul,
19:38although they are important characters in the New Testament,
19:41the Acts of Peter and Paul were never included in the Bible.
19:47The Acts of Peter and Paul have Peter and Paul in Rome as brothers,
19:51which is extraordinary,
19:53because Peter, of course,
19:54is the original Jewish apostle
19:57who is given the order by Jesus to go and leave the church after his death.
20:04Paul is representing something very different.
20:06He's representing the Gentile Christianity.
20:08They actually have a row together.
20:11Bringing these two together is absolutely essential for the unity of the church.
20:16The question was why this important Christian text
20:22was not included in the Bible,
20:24and how many more texts not included in the canon were out there,
20:28waiting to be discovered.
20:33Bible hunting now focused on the white monastery near Sohag.
20:37It had its heyday between the 4th and 7th centuries A.D.,
20:42when Christianity was the dominant religion of Egypt.
20:47It's here that I meet Father Schnuda,
20:50a local monk who provides a window back in time.
20:53Monastered life started here in Egypt
20:57and then spread all over the world.
21:03Ah, yeah, you can see the old and then the new top.
21:07In the hills above the monastery,
21:09Father Schnuda takes me to an old cave
21:11cut into the rock thousands of years ago.
21:15This is St. Mark who tells us about the Christianity.
21:18This is unbelievable.
21:20This cave became a center for Christian worship
21:23when Christianity became the state religion of Rome
21:26in the 4th century A.D.
21:29But this whole cave is carved out by hand.
21:33Yes.
21:33By people.
21:34Yes.
21:35This cave is very important for Christians here in Egypt.
21:41Egypt was full of monks, full of monasteries.
21:45You know, you can hear the pill of the churches
21:48from Alexandria to Aswan means 1,000 kilometers.
21:55It means that Christianity was very spread all over.
22:00Isn't it interesting that this cave here
22:02was started by the pharaohs?
22:04They are still working, yes, the same.
22:07Because when the era of the pharaohs is being finished,
22:11the Christians, they complete this wonderful work
22:16and clever work.
22:17That means that we are the sons of the pharaohs.
22:20We are the original of these lands.
22:24In the valley below the cave,
22:26Lord Curzon visited the White Monastery in the 19th century
22:29but failed to find any significant Christian manuscripts.
22:32But the French Egyptologist, Emile Amélinot and his team,
22:38refused to give up the search for biblical treasures.
22:41Look.
22:43Check out these hieroglyphs.
22:45It's like everything in Coptic Christianity,
22:48built on the ruins of the ancient pharaohs.
22:51Visiting the site,
22:52these Egyptologists came across the monastery's old church.
22:55It's still a place of worship for Coptic Christians.
23:08It once boasted a large library
23:10until the collection was consumed by fire in 1798.
23:19But following a trail of parchment leaves,
23:22the Egyptologists knew that some Christian texts
23:25had survived there.
23:28In 1885, Emile Amélinot discovered a secret room.
23:32Inside, a large cache of manuscripts.
23:36It included an extraordinary text written in Coptic,
23:41the language of Egypt's Christians.
23:44The text was attributed to the disciple Bartholomew,
23:48but it was not included in the Bible.
23:51The questions of Bartholomew, which has survived,
23:54a rather interesting document,
23:55because these are questions which Bartholomew is supposed to have made to Jesus
23:59after the resurrection.
24:00Very searching questions about the meaning of Jesus himself
24:05and what the resurrection meant,
24:06but also has a lot of material about the descent into hell.
24:09The Bartholomew text includes the following passage.
24:14Blessed are you, Bartholomew, my beloved,
24:16for when I vanished from the cross,
24:18then I went down into Hades,
24:20that I might bring up Adam and all those who are with him.
24:24The Bartholomew text was further evidence
24:27of early Christian manuscripts
24:28that had not been included in the Bible.
24:30It raised questions over the way that the Bible text,
24:37the canon, was fixed.
24:40In Britain in particular,
24:42religion was a hotly debated topic.
24:45It's the one side of the 19th century
24:47that costume drama, popular images of the country
24:50have tended to forget.
24:52Religion went right to the heart of who you were.
24:55It was the sort of subject
24:56that every student talked about,
24:58that there were articles in the paper about.
25:00People burnt books.
25:01There were rats in the streets after sermons.
25:04It was the topic that defined
25:06who you were in 19th century England.
25:12In the face of this acrimonious debate,
25:15the discovery of Christian texts
25:17that were not included in the Bible
25:18added further uncertainty to the Christian faith.
25:22This was a ticking time bomb
25:24that could further undermine
25:26the version of the Bible
25:27that was in most people's houses in those days.
25:32The discoveries at the White Monastery
25:34inspired French archaeologists in Egypt
25:37to find out more.
25:49In 1886, the French scholar Urbain Boréon
25:53traveled south along the Nile.
25:59He could read Coptic
26:00and was an expert in the new science of paleography,
26:03the study of ancient writing.
26:07His quest for ancient Christian texts
26:10brought him to Akmim,
26:11a former center of Christianity,
26:14300 miles south of Cairo.
26:15I'm curious to see the cemetery here in Akmim,
26:21because even though they're Christians,
26:22the way they bury their dead
26:23is the same as they've been doing for 5,000 years.
26:26Boulian's dig report recounts how he excavated
26:46a Christian tomb in the city.
26:49There's a good chance he was looking around here,
26:52the city's main cemetery.
26:53I check out one of the tombs.
27:09Apparently, this one contains the coffins of foreigners
27:12who died in the city.
27:17Searching through the tombs of Akmim,
27:20Boréon eventually made a major discovery.
27:22Beside the mummy of a Christian monk,
27:26he found an 8th century papyrus
27:28with a 2nd century text.
27:33He discovered the Gospel of Peter,
27:35another important text
27:37not included in the New Testament.
27:38The Gospel of Peter takes us back
27:45to a pivotal moment of Christianity,
27:47the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
27:52Technically, none of the Gospels
27:53gives us an account of the resurrection.
27:55The women go to the tomb,
27:57and it's already happened.
27:59There's an angel who tells them it's happened.
28:01The tomb is empty.
28:02He's gone.
28:02In the Gospel of Peter,
28:04it purports to give you a kind of visual of the event.
28:08So Jesus is pictured as actually coming forth out of the tomb
28:10with angels accompanying him.
28:13He does so in a very spectacular way.
28:16He comes out as a giant with two others beside him,
28:20and his head reaches above the sky,
28:22and then behind them comes a cross which proclaims Jesus,
28:27which actually speaks.
28:28And they heard a voice out of the heavens saying,
28:32Have you preached unto them that sleep?
28:35The answer that was heard from the cross?
28:37Yes.
28:39This story is so much more fantastical
28:42than any of the resurrection stories
28:44you'd find in the modern Bible.
28:46The Gospel of Peter was published in 1891,
28:50not long after its discovery.
28:52It was the first gospel to appear in print
28:54that was not in the New Testament.
28:56Now people were beginning to talk about new Christian texts
28:59that had never been seen before.
29:03Wealthy Christian donors,
29:04challenged by these new revelations,
29:07threw their energies and money
29:08into Britain's Egypt Exploration Fund,
29:10established in 1882.
29:14The Egypt Exploration Fund was set up
29:17precisely to prove the truth of the Bible
29:21by finding material evidence
29:24that would justify the belief in the Bible.
29:26So biblical archaeology was established
29:29as an attempt to say,
29:30No, look, there's a real world
29:32that will justify this belief.
29:34And they tried very hard to find such things.
29:38All the EEF needed was a leader in the field.
29:42So the search was on for a dynamic archaeologist
29:45who could spearhead their research,
29:47but also one who was sympathetic
29:50to a Christian agenda.
29:54They hired a rising star of archaeology,
29:57William Flinders Petrie,
29:59the British-born son of an electrical engineer.
30:03He'd been surveying ancient sites
30:04since he was a teenager.
30:07Flinders Petrie is often treated
30:09as the great originator of Egyptian archaeology
30:13and is still revered
30:14as the first serious archaeologist.
30:17And he deserves that reputation,
30:19but it misreads a fundamental aspect of his work.
30:23For Flinders Petrie was also a serious Christian
30:27intent on discovering the real roots
30:32of Christian and Jewish religion in the region.
30:39Petrie's search eventually led to Amarna,
30:45the capital of Egypt in the 14th century BC.
30:56Amarna was ruled by the pharaoh Akhenaten
30:59and his queen, Nefertiti.
31:09It's a lot more impressive up close
31:13than it is from down below.
31:21This is a boundary stela,
31:23marking the edge of the city.
31:24On the left there is Nefertiti,
31:26and on the right is Akhenaten himself.
31:35Once this great city stretched for miles,
31:37some of its foundations are still visible today.
31:47In 1891, Petrie got permission
31:50to excavate the royal palaces.
31:53It was here that he made a remarkable discovery.
31:59While he was excavating the library here
32:01in the royal palace,
32:02Petrie found an archive of clay tablets
32:04called the Amarna Letters.
32:05They were diplomatic correspondences
32:07with foreign rulers.
32:09In the Amarna Letters
32:11was a reference to a group called the Habiru.
32:14Habiru sounded very much like Hebrew,
32:16the name sometimes given
32:17to the biblical Israelites.
32:22Petrie believed this was the proof
32:23he had been looking for,
32:25evidence supporting the Bible story
32:27of the Exodus.
32:28How was Petrie's work received back in the UK?
32:33Well, with extraordinary enthusiasm.
32:35The demonstration of biblical accuracy
32:37that seems to come from the Tel El Amarna Letters
32:39just works perfectly
32:41for kind of reinforcing the worldview
32:44of those who believe
32:45in the literal truth of the Old Testament.
32:49In Britain,
32:50finds like the Amarna Letters were hailed as
32:52the most serious effort yet
32:54to stem the advancing tide
32:57of Old Testament criticism.
32:59Encouraged by their success at Amarna,
33:02the Egypt Exploration Fund
33:03decided to search for biblical texts
33:05that would support the New Testament as well.
33:08In their own words,
33:10someday or another,
33:11a New Testament of the 2nd century
33:13must turn up in Egypt.
33:14Flinders Petrie directed the EEF
33:19to a site he had briefly excavated
33:21south of the Fayoum Oasis,
33:28the abandoned city of Oxyrhynchus,
33:31a center of early Christianity in Egypt.
33:37Oxyrhynchus was a known Greco-Roman town.
33:40It was a regional capital,
33:41pretty big place.
33:42Oxyrhynchus had the largest
33:45number of churches in Egypt,
33:48more churches than any other city.
33:50The Fund dispatched
33:52two young archaeologists to Oxyrhynchus,
33:55Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt,
33:56to search for Christian manuscripts.
34:02Dr. Dirk Obink is an expert on the expedition.
34:08They were the perfect collaborators.
34:10Hunt was silent and studious.
34:14Grenfell was fiery and gregarious.
34:18But they always worked in concert.
34:21And they discovered the principle
34:22that two pair of eyes are better than one.
34:28Grenfell and Hunt hired 100 men
34:30and started to dig.
34:32More than a century later,
34:34archaeologists are still excavating the site,
34:37using the same methods as in the 19th century.
34:43We've got all kinds of new toys and gadgets in archaeology,
34:46and there's even people who can find sites from space using satellites.
34:50But ultimately, you're going to have to move the dirt,
34:52and it comes down to shovels and buckets.
34:54I'm told that this is the backdirt pile,
35:01the rubble that was left behind
35:02by Petrie's excavations in the 1890s.
35:07It covers a recently detected Greek building
35:09and has to be removed.
35:13It's a pretty neat feeling
35:14to be digging through Petrie's old backdirt pile.
35:16For an archaeologist, it's pretty cool.
35:18At first, Grenfell and Hunt
35:26failed to find anything of interest
35:28until they tried their luck
35:29in an oddly uneven stretch of desert nearby.
35:36So they went out to where the rubbish mounds were,
35:40some of them 30 feet tall,
35:43like these over here.
35:44Not sand dunes.
35:46They're actually layers of ancient rubbish.
35:49You can see the horizontal layering in them
35:51of what's called sabak,
35:53which is the Arabic name for ancient garbage.
35:59Grenfell and Hunt ordered their workers to start digging.
36:02Within minutes,
36:03piles of papyri appeared out of the ground.
36:07The papyri came in torrents.
36:10That's how they describe it.
36:11Torrents of papyri streaming from the mounds.
36:13They employed teams of up to 50 local workers,
36:18used them as diggers to clear the mounds,
36:21move them 50 feet to one side,
36:23and in the process,
36:24sift out all of the papyrus fragments.
36:27The Oxyrhynchus dig
36:29would unearth treasures for years to come,
36:32one of the most revealing rubbish dumps
36:34in the history of archaeology.
36:36All the other materials that were thrown away
36:39were in with them.
36:40People's clothes, wood implements,
36:43shoes, tools.
36:45They found a Ptolemaic plow,
36:47shield, weapons,
36:49and of course,
36:50800 years of pottery fragment
36:52charting the chronology of the whole site.
36:56Hunt stayed up all night
36:57working on them in his tent,
36:59and he wrote that during the first season
37:01they found so many during the day
37:03that he couldn't sort them all out
37:05and catalog them at night.
37:07They just had to start packing them up in boxes
37:09with sand and debris still clinging to them.
37:14The dig at Oxyrhynchus
37:16revealed well over 50,000 Greek manuscripts,
37:19many torn into fragments.
37:20They included tax records,
37:24ancient plays,
37:25and religious texts.
37:30They sifted through this,
37:32moved it aside,
37:33and picked out only the papyrus fragments,
37:36filled them up in tin boxes,
37:37and shipped them by the hundreds
37:40back to Oxford to work on.
37:41The most important papyrus
37:46was found at the start of the dig,
37:48a sensational biblical manuscript.
37:51It contained sayings attributed to Jesus.
37:57Jesus said,
37:58I stood in the midst of the world,
38:01and I found all men drunken,
38:03and my soul grieveth over the sons of men
38:06because they are blind in their heart.
38:08It was a dream for any archaeologist,
38:13Greek papyri fragments
38:14with the sayings of Jesus.
38:16Some of the sayings were familiar
38:18to readers of the Bible at the time,
38:19but four other sayings
38:21weren't included in the Bible
38:22and had never been seen before
38:24until that day.
38:27The text was dated to the late 2nd century.
38:31The new sayings of Jesus
38:33proved to be a sensation in Britain.
38:35As one writer commented,
38:37the possibility of recovering
38:39forgotten sayings of Christ
38:40strike the imaginations
38:42of even the man in the street.
38:44Of all the vast material
38:45found at Oxyrhynchus,
38:47this fragment would be designated
38:49as papyrus number one.
38:51The British press were ecstatic.
38:54Here we have,
38:55in the brief space of a few lines,
38:57a record of Jesus Christ
38:58which takes us closer to his life
39:00than any manuscript
39:02at present in existence.
39:03But the discovery also worried
39:10many defenders of the Bible text.
39:13How would these new sayings of Jesus,
39:15not included in the Bible,
39:17affect the faithful?
39:20These texts weren't
39:21in the canonical Gospels,
39:23so what was their status?
39:24Did this even mean
39:25that the Gospels themselves
39:26didn't transmit
39:27the whole of Jesus' teaching?
39:29So once again,
39:31this was risky territory
39:32for Bible-believing Christians.
39:35The whole religious world
39:37has been agitated
39:38by the publication
39:39of the reputed
39:40sayings of our Lord.
39:49After the discoveries
39:50at Oxyrhynchus,
39:51the search for early Christian manuscripts
39:53continued with great fervor.
39:54Such was the demand
39:56that similar papyri
39:57were now sold
39:58on the open market
39:59by the dealers of Cairo souks.
40:02But nothing as controversial
40:04as the sayings of Jesus
40:06would emerge
40:06for almost 60 years.
40:11Two world wars
40:12and a global depression
40:13put a significant dampener
40:15on the business
40:15of Bible hunting
40:16until a spectacular discovery
40:18surfaced in 1946.
40:20That year,
40:24an Egyptian dealer
40:25visited the Coptic Museum
40:27in Cairo.
40:28He had several
40:29ancient manuscripts for sale,
40:31many of them dating
40:32back to the 4th century.
40:35They were part
40:36of a larger collection
40:36of codices
40:37that had been discovered
40:38somewhere in the region
40:39of Nag Hammadi
40:40in Upper Egypt.
40:44These manuscripts
40:45would be the focus
40:46of scholarly attention
40:47and controversy
40:48for decades to come.
40:50The Nag Hammadi discoveries
40:53have revolutionized
40:54our understanding
40:55of early Christianity.
40:56A fascinating collection
40:58of texts,
40:58most of which
40:59have never been known before.
41:01They were written
41:02in Coptic,
41:03which is Egyptian,
41:04written in Greek letters.
41:05They are translations
41:06of the original Greek
41:07and so we can go back
41:08and get a great deal
41:09out of them.
41:15One of the documents
41:16was titled
41:17The Gospel of Thomas,
41:18Named after one of
41:20Jesus' disciples.
41:22A mystery was about
41:24to be solved.
41:31In the Gospel of Thomas,
41:33scholars discovered
41:34114 sayings of Jesus,
41:37including the eight sayings
41:38that had been found
41:3960 years earlier
41:40at Oxyrhynchus.
41:41At last,
41:44the author of the famous
41:45sayings of Jesus
41:46had a name,
41:48Thomas.
41:50The Gospel of Thomas
41:52begins with the following line.
41:54These are the hidden words
41:55that the living Jesus spoke
41:57and Didymus Judas Thomas
41:59wrote them down.
42:00It suggests the possibility
42:02of an alternative version
42:03of Christianity.
42:04But where did the text
42:06come from?
42:08It would take another
42:0830 years
42:09for the full story
42:10to emerge.
42:12Ever since the late 1940s,
42:15scholars searched
42:15for the place
42:16where the manuscripts
42:17had lain hidden
42:18for almost two millennia.
42:20But it wasn't until
42:22the 1970s
42:23that the American
42:24professor of religion,
42:25James Robinson,
42:27made headway.
42:29He scoured the region
42:30surrounding the town
42:31of Nag Hammadi
42:32in Upper Egypt.
42:35It's known for sectarian strife
42:37and feuds
42:37between rival clans.
42:47After years of hunting
42:49for the source
42:49of the manuscripts,
42:51Robinson's search
42:51brought him to the village
42:52of Falk Kibli.
42:54It's here
42:54that he met a priest
42:55who tipped him off
42:56about a local farmer
42:57named Muhammad Ali.
43:01Muhammad Ali's account
43:03led the investigation
43:04to the edge
43:05of the Nile Valley,
43:06to the cliffs
43:07that separate
43:07the fertile land
43:08from the desert.
43:09And it's here
43:10that the story began.
43:18Muhammad and his brothers
43:19were out looking
43:20for fertilizer.
43:21They made an amazing discovery.
43:23Underneath a boulder,
43:24they found a sealed clay pot.
43:27Now, the other guys,
43:28they didn't want to touch it
43:29because they were afraid
43:30there might be genie inside.
43:32But Muhammad was more
43:33interested in money.
43:34So he picks up a rock,
43:35smashes the thing.
43:37You can imagine a surprise
43:38when he saw
43:38what was really inside.
43:42He found the manuscripts
43:43that would become
43:44the famous
43:4513 Nag Hammadi codices.
43:51Muhammad took the documents home,
43:53but he and his family
43:54had had trouble
43:55with the local police,
43:56and he was concerned
43:57that they might confiscate
43:58his valuable find.
44:01So they decided
44:03to deposit
44:03the manuscripts
44:05into one of the local monks
44:08in the village
44:08because he is the only person
44:10not going to be searched
44:11in the village.
44:12And that's how
44:13the codices
44:14were known
44:16from this family house
44:18to the other house
44:20to another house.
44:21And so many hands
44:22got involved in that.
44:23And the codices
44:24traveled to Cairo.
44:25Muhammad Ali's testimony
44:29explained how the codices
44:30had found their way
44:31to the Coptic Museum.
44:34But a deeper mystery
44:35remained unsolved.
44:42The question was,
44:43why somebody decided
44:45to hide the codices
44:46in a clay pot
44:47at the edge of the desert?
44:48Could it be
44:49that these manuscripts
44:49were prized possessions
44:51that somebody wanted to protect?
44:52And if so,
44:55who do they want
44:56to protect the manuscripts from?
44:59To find clues,
45:00we have to revisit
45:01the early centuries
45:02of Christianity.
45:12In the late 4th century,
45:14Bishop Athanasius
45:15of Alexandria
45:15was one of the most
45:17powerful men
45:17in the Church.
45:18He saw that Christians
45:22would need a fixed canon
45:23as their guide to the faith
45:24and set about deciding
45:26which text
45:27should be included
45:28and which should be excluded.
45:32This was the time
45:33when Christianity
45:34was being molded
45:35into the state religion
45:36of the Roman Empire
45:37and when the first Bible
45:39started to appear.
45:40In 367 A.D.,
45:48Athanasius sent a letter
45:49to all the churches
45:50and monasteries in Egypt
45:51that laid out
45:52the 27 books
45:54of the New Testament
45:54that are still
45:55in the Bible today.
45:57As a result
45:58of letters
46:00like the Festival Letter
46:00of 367,
46:02the other Christian texts,
46:04many of which
46:05were still being used,
46:06were condemned
46:07to oblivion.
46:08The classic case
46:09of this is
46:10the Nag Hammadi texts
46:11because they are buried
46:12very much at the same time
46:13as Athanasius'
46:14festal letters.
46:16Quite clearly
46:17the monasteries
46:18were pretty frightened
46:19of what he was
46:20trying to do
46:20and whether they
46:21would be rounded up
46:22and excommunicated
46:23if they went on
46:24using these texts,
46:25which is why
46:26they were hidden
46:26in a jar
46:27and buried
46:28not far from the monastery.
46:30But what was
46:31in the Nag Hammadi texts
46:32that might have upset
46:33the bishop?
46:34In the Gospel of Thomas,
46:36Jesus says,
46:37I have cast fire
46:39upon the world
46:40and see I am guarding it
46:42until it blazes.
46:44Essentially,
46:44what we have
46:45are a number of writings
46:46very often distinguishing
46:48themselves
46:48from more familiar
46:50versions of Christianity.
46:52Tends to have
46:52a kind of elitist outlook,
46:54in other words.
46:55Jesus said,
46:57It is to those
46:58worthy of my secrets
46:59that I am telling
47:00my secrets.
47:02Do not let your left hand
47:03understand
47:04what your right hand
47:05is doing.
47:07Another reason
47:08why some of the texts
47:09may have caused offence
47:10was their pessimistic
47:12view of the world.
47:14In one of the sayings
47:15of Jesus
47:16in the Gospel of Thomas,
47:17he speaks of the world
47:19as being a corpse,
47:20as being a dead thing
47:21because it kind of reflects
47:22a view of materiality
47:25as in itself bad
47:26and as something
47:27to be escaped from.
47:29Jesus said,
47:30Whoever has become
47:32acquainted with the world
47:33has found a corpse,
47:35and the world
47:36is not worthy
47:37of the one
47:37who has found the corpse.
47:40The Gospel of Philip,
47:42also part of the
47:43Nag Hammadi fight,
47:44might have seemed scandalous.
47:48It suggested
47:49that Jesus might have
47:50been close to Mary Magdalene
47:51and that he
47:52loved Mary Magdalene
47:55more than the rest
47:56of the disciples
47:56and used to kiss her
47:58often on the mouth.
47:59The Nag Hammadi codices
48:05even contain a text
48:06attributed to Mary Magdalene,
48:08the Gospel of Mary.
48:10The Gospel of Mary
48:11is very unusual
48:13and very significant
48:14in the extent
48:16to which it gives prominence
48:18to a woman disciple
48:19of Jesus.
48:23Mary Magdalene
48:24is one of the most
48:24important women
48:25of the New Testament.
48:26She's still widely revered
48:31by many Christians.
48:33According to the New Testament,
48:35Mary Magdalene
48:36travelled with Jesus,
48:37she was present
48:38at the crucifixion,
48:40and she was the first
48:41to see him
48:41after the resurrection.
48:42The Gospel of Mary
48:47describes a conversation
48:49between her
48:50and the disciples.
48:53What's interesting
48:54is that she occupies
48:55the major role
48:56in this exchange.
48:58She's the one
48:58who has the revelation,
49:00she's the one
49:00who's speaking,
49:01she is the one
49:02who is being interrogated,
49:04and that gives her
49:05a prominence
49:06that we don't find
49:07in any of the other
49:08Gospels.
49:10It's a fascinating document
49:11in a way
49:12because it shows
49:12that Jesus was having
49:14special knowledge
49:15that he was imparting
49:16to Mary,
49:17and therefore,
49:18not only you can talk
49:19about the relationship
49:20he had,
49:20but it also shows
49:21that women may have
49:22been seen in the early church
49:24as repositories
49:25of spiritual knowledge.
49:28So, you do get
49:30the beginnings
49:31of the idea
49:32that there is possibly
49:34a suppression
49:34of women's voices
49:36because these documents
49:37suggest that
49:38women were perceived
49:40to have special roles
49:41within the church
49:41which have now disappeared.
49:44The people associated
49:46with the Nag Hammadi texts
49:47were the Gnostics,
49:49an elite group
49:50of Christians
49:50who believed
49:51in salvation by knowledge.
49:55We often use
49:56the word Gnostic,
49:57which means,
49:57Gnosis is knowledge.
50:00In this context,
50:01it means secret knowledge,
50:02knowledge imparted
50:03to a few,
50:04and this is the Gnostic texts.
50:07One of their main themes
50:08runs all the way through.
50:10We are privileged
50:11to special ideas,
50:13but we live
50:15in an evil world,
50:16and we are the ones
50:17who have the possibility
50:18of escape from that
50:20because we have
50:21the special knowledge.
50:24Jesus said,
50:25Gnosticism is all to do
50:39with secret knowledge.
50:41It was part
50:42of a philosophical,
50:44intellectual movement
50:45around the ancient Near East,
50:47and many, many, many fathers
50:49in Egypt
50:49were Christians
50:51in their heart
50:52but also Gnostic
50:54in their mind.
50:55And this is the conflict
50:57between Orthodox Christianity
50:59versus the intellectual
51:01free thinkers.
51:03But as the Church
51:04consolidated its power
51:05in the Roman Empire,
51:06the Gnostics
51:07were increasingly
51:08under pressure.
51:10Their intellectual take
51:11on Christianity
51:12didn't tally
51:13with the official
51:14Church doctrine.
51:15By the 5th century,
51:20there was a fixed version
51:21of the Bible.
51:22Gnosticism had lost out
51:23to a dominant orthodoxy,
51:25and it was the Orthodox
51:26who would shape
51:27the future of Christianity.
51:30So one of the reasons
51:31for the success
51:32of what became
51:32Orthodox Christianity
51:33was its ability to,
51:35you might say,
51:35mass market
51:36a message that could
51:37be understood,
51:38that was meaningful.
51:40They weren't mystical.
51:41They weren't so esoteric.
51:43They were digestible.
51:44in a survival
51:45of the fittest
51:46sort of thing,
51:47the emergent
51:48Orthodox Christianity
51:49won because they were
51:51simply more effective
51:52at the game
51:52than any other version
51:53of Christianity.
51:56In general,
51:57the Orthodox Church,
51:59as it defined itself,
52:00won.
52:01And as such,
52:02it defined the Gnostics
52:04to the dustbin of history.
52:05And it did so
52:07often with intense violence.
52:09One thing one forgets
52:11about turning the other cheek,
52:12it doesn't necessarily
52:14stop you burning people
52:15to death.
52:17Under pressure
52:18from the Church,
52:19Gnostic texts
52:20were destroyed
52:21or hidden away.
52:23Gnostic ideas
52:24and the lost Christianities
52:25they represent
52:26were completely suppressed.
52:28But thanks to the discoveries
52:29of the Bible hunters,
52:31their voices can be heard again.
52:33We now know
52:33that from the very beginning,
52:35there was never just
52:36one kind of Christianity.
52:38Before the 5th century,
52:39there wasn't even
52:40an authorized version
52:41of the Bible.
52:44Today,
52:45some 200 years
52:46after Napoleon
52:47first set foot in Egypt,
52:49modern-day Bible hunters
52:50still seek answers
52:51to fundamental questions
52:53about Christianity.
52:57At St. Catherine's Monastery
52:58in the Sinai,
53:00monks and scientists
53:01are scrutinizing
53:02the monastery's palimpsests,
53:04ancient texts
53:05that lay hidden
53:06under more recent writing.
53:10We're using
53:10multispectral imaging
53:12to try to recover
53:13writing that was erased
53:14sometimes 1,000 years ago,
53:16sometimes 1,500 years ago.
53:18And multispectral imaging
53:20involves illuminating
53:21an object like this manuscript,
53:22a palimpsest,
53:24with erased layers of writing.
53:25We illuminate it
53:26with different wavelengths
53:26of light,
53:28so as to see things
53:29that the human eye
53:29normally can't see
53:30on this manuscript.
53:32There's a language
53:32in these palimpsests
53:33called Christian-Palestinian-Aramaic.
53:35It was the language
53:36of the Christian churches
53:37in Palestine
53:38from about the 3rd
53:39to about the 8th century.
53:41So you're able
53:41to resurrect dead languages?
53:43Resurrect dead languages,
53:44and not only that,
53:45but the people
53:46who spoke and used them,
53:48they had literature,
53:49they had philosophy,
53:50they had art,
53:51they had ideas,
53:52and they affected
53:53the communities
53:53that are still surviving today.
53:56More than 100 years
53:58after Grenfell and Hunt,
53:59the search for biblical manuscripts
54:00also continues in Oxford,
54:03where the Oxyrhynchus papyrii are kept.
54:05We systematically sift through
54:12the unpublished part
54:13of the collection,
54:14and so far out of the
54:16a little more than a million
54:17fragments that we have,
54:19we've published 5,000,
54:21so it's really
54:21a drop in the bucket.
54:23We've now loaded them
54:24onto the internet
54:25in an interface
54:27where interested members
54:29of the public
54:30do a bit of transcription
54:31with an on-board keyboard.
54:33We've speeded up
54:34our process of identification
54:35by something like 10 times,
54:37and have already begun
54:38to identify new,
54:40uncanonical versions
54:41of the Gospels.
54:42It's one of the largest
54:43unfinished archaeological
54:45projects in the world,
54:48and there's still decades,
54:50if not centuries,
54:51to go on it.
54:53And Bible hunting
54:54with a trowel in the dirt
54:55is still uncovering
54:56new treasures.
55:02In 2005,
55:04a group of Polish archaeologists
55:06excavated the site
55:07of Elgorna
55:07in Upper Egypt.
55:13It's an ancient burial site
55:15home to Christian monks
55:16between the 6th and 8th centuries A.D.
55:22The Polish archaeologists
55:23found some of the monk's scriptures
55:25preserved just beneath the sand.
55:30They discovered
55:31a 4th century codex
55:32with a text called
55:33the Acts of Peter,
55:34another Christian text
55:35not included in the Bible.
55:39The text was very similar
55:41to the Acts of Peter and Paul
55:42discovered in 1838
55:44by the pioneer Bible hunter
55:46Lord Curzon.
55:50The biblical texts
55:51and lost Gospels
55:53rediscovered by Curzon
55:54and all the Bible hunters
55:55who set out to prove
55:56the validity of the Bible
55:58may have actually done
55:59the opposite.
56:02From variations
56:03between ancient
56:04and modern Bibles
56:05to radical lost Gospels,
56:08their finds failed to prove
56:10that the Bible
56:10was the undisputed
56:12Word of God.
56:13After everything
56:16we've learned
56:16in the last 150 years
56:18or so of Bible hunting,
56:19is it even possible
56:21to defend the historical
56:22accuracy of the Bible?
56:24Yes and no.
56:25If you're content
56:26to say,
56:27can we know the basics
56:28that Jesus of Nazareth
56:31lived,
56:32that the apostles
56:33probably taught,
56:34early Christian beliefs
56:35and developments,
56:36if you're content
56:36with that,
56:37then yeah.
56:38If, however,
56:39your notion
56:40of historical accuracy
56:41is that every single
56:43incident as reported
56:45must have happened
56:46that way,
56:46you know,
56:46as if it is some sort
56:47of CCTV footage
56:49of an actual event,
56:50then you're going
56:51to be in big trouble.
56:55These textual variations
56:56and rediscovered Gospels
56:58paint a more fluid picture
57:00of the Bible
57:00in its early days
57:01than the Bible
57:02we have today.
57:04But could these discoveries
57:05have also played a part
57:07in some people's shift away
57:09from the Christian faith?
57:11In Christianity
57:12in Western Europe,
57:14we would see secularization
57:16as one answer.
57:17In fact,
57:18across the world,
57:19that's not necessarily true.
57:20But for the people
57:21who experience
57:22the shock of Sinaiticus
57:24and the other discoveries,
57:25secularization
57:26has been one consequence.
57:35For over 2,000 years,
57:37the Bible has been a source
57:38of comfort,
57:39inspiration,
57:40and guidance.
57:41It helped shape civilization.
57:43It's been the cause
57:44of profound conflict
57:45and division.
57:46The discoveries
57:47of the Bible hunters
57:48began a controversial
57:50reassessment
57:50of Christianity's
57:51sacred scripture,
57:53hailed by some,
57:54dismissed by others.
57:56Certainly,
57:57the search for biblical truth
57:58continues to raise
58:00more questions
58:00than answers.
58:02There's a lot at stake
58:03as the controversy
58:04over the Bible
58:04as the Word of God
58:05rages on.
58:16Jack Dee,
58:16Bill Bailey,
58:17David Mitchell,
58:18Alan Davis,
58:18and of course,
58:19your pilot of the airwaves,
58:20Stephen Fry,
58:21with QI next.
58:22And over on BBC4 now,
58:24he loathed post-war
58:25architectural mediocrity,
58:27The Man Who Fought the Planets,
58:28the story of Ian Nairn.
58:29The Man Who Fought the Planets,
58:43The Man Who Fought the Planets,
58:44the theory of WWW or the Alien Bill
58:48of the Spirit.
58:49The Man Who Fought the Planets
Recommended
58:39
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