Friday Night Fun (with P52)

Ok, so it’s not everyone’s idea of fun.  But tonight was the second part of Where did the Bible come from?

Tonight we read some of the “Lost Gospels” … including this passage from the Gospel of Thomas that’s always a hit:

Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.”

Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males.  For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

Needless to say, that wasn’t a favourite with the women present.  🙂

But we did discover why we can have a lot more confidence in the four Gospels of the Bible than these other “Gospels”, and we cleared up some confusion amplified a few years ago by Dan Brown.

Here I am – dressed for my study with ancient papyri on my shirt and a replica of P52 in my hand (a fragment which Shari and I have now seen – housed in Manchester, England).  Yes, pretty nerdy. 🙂

P52 is, for the uninitiated, a fragment of the Gospel of John.  It’s from a copy made around 120AD.  Absolutely amazing.  It has survived for almost 2000 years, thanks to the dry deserts of Egypt.  You can read about P52 here.

There’s so much that’s fascinating about that little fragment of papyrus alone – but I guess you’ll have to come to the class to hear more. 😉