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Sunday, June 20, 2004 |
The Amusing Agraphon
I've been reading Bart Ehrmann's Lost Christianities, a good survey of
the various books that didn't make the cut to beomce part of the New
Testament. It's good stuff.
(You can find a lot of those books at earlychristainwritings.com,
by the way My favorite is the wonderful Infancy
Gospel of Thomas, which reads like something out of classic
National Lampoon.)
One little passage in Ehrmann's book got a belly laugh out of me.
Ehrmann is talking about "agraphons," which are quotes from Jesus that
don't appear in the gospels. An example is "It is more blessed to give
than to receive," which appears in Acts, but not in a gospel. Ehrmann
talks about an "amusing agaphon" that appeared in a scholarly journal
in 1950:
The "amusing agraphon" was allegedly
found in a manuscript that contained a set of sermons on the Gospel of
Matthew. The author of the article was a respected professor of
classics at Princeton University, Paul Coleman-Norton, who indicated
that in 1943, while with the U.S. armed forces in the town of Fedhala,
Morocco, he was visiting a Muslim mosque and was shown there a peculiar
thick tome filled...with Arabic writing. But inserted among its leaves
was a single parchment page containing a Greek text, a fragmentary copy
of a Greek translation of a set of originally Latin homilies on Matthew
chapers 1-13 and 19-25. Given the situation...he was not able to
photograph the page, but he [did] make a careful transcription of it.
Later...he found that it contained a striking and previously unknown
agraphon.
In Matt. 24:541, after Jesus' famous warning about the one who will be
"cast into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth," the manuscript indicated that Jesus' conversation continued.
One of the disciples, puzzled by Jesus' statement, asked a question
that may have occurred to others over the years: "But Rabbi, how can
this happen for those who have no teeth?" Whereupon Jesus is said to
have replied: "Oh you of little faith! Do not be troubled. If some have
no teeth, then teeth will be provided." [page 69]
Of course, the manuscript probably didn't exist, as I this was a mot
that had circulated among biblical scholars before. But something
struck me really funny when I read it. Maybe my mood because I didn't expect to find something like that in this book.
10:05:26 PM Permalink
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Busy Weekend
A full weekend.
Friday night watched Lady Without a Password
on the Tivo from TMC. Mick LaSalle said a week or so ago that Hedy
Lamaar was the most beautiful woman to ever appear in movies, so I put
in a season pass for her movies. He may be right. This movie, though,
was nothing to jump up and down about. It's the story of a European
refugee (Lamaar) stuck in Havana, trying to get to the US. An INS agent
is sent to Havana to find out what's happening with some who are ending
up dead, and becomes involved with her. The movie started out well,
with some good dialog (a Cuban cop says "there are nine ways to skin a
cat"), and a lot of nice exterior location shots of Havana, but becomes
boring pretty quickly, and we had pretty much lost interest by the
third act.
Saturday was first Lydia's high school graduation party, which was fun,
then in the evening Martha and Tom's solstice party, and Tom's 50th.
Some nice folks there, too.
Lyal and Richard came over today for father's day, and we had a nice
(but expensive with lackluster service) brunch at the Doubletree, then
went for a walk along Crissy Field in San Francisco. Georgeous day, if
windy. Some sailboats were racing, apparently, around the bay, and
bunches of them were swooping very close to the beach.
Then tonight Margaret and Genevieve and I saw Harry Potter and
the Prisoner of Askaban, which is probably the best of the bunch.
Getting the different director was a good move, and he was able to
refer to some standard Harry Potter set pieces (the muggle family, the
Quidditch game) without having to make too much of them, yet still keep
them interesting. To me, the weak part in this movie was the actor
playing Harry; he just didn't seem up to it some times. Still, a really
enjoyable movie.
9:34:34 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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