Tuesday, February 05, 2008

THE MORE OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA PROJECT got some media coverage today in a nice article in the Scottish Daily Express. Unfortunately it's not online, but I'll type out the first part:
Scots Scholars unlock ancient texts' secrets

by Tom Fullerton

THEY'RE not light reading, but they are tomes worth persevering with since they reveal warnings of the Apocalypse and mysteries of the Final Judgment and Hell.

The oldest of the texts being pored over by Scots experts was written between 700 and 800 BC and and has a "vision of the gods" portending disaster and the overturning of human institutions.

For two years, 40 academics from eight countries, led by experts from St. Andrews University, have been translating more than 60 ancient documents in order to understand early religious thinking.

The papers have titles such as Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens, Queen of Sheba, Visions of Heaven and Hell, and the Cave of Treasures.

One even claims to provide clues to the treasures of the Lost Ark, gold and silver tables and vessels sacked from Solomon's Temple by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

[...]
The text with the "visions of the gods" is the Balaam Text from Deir Alla, edited for the MOTP Project by Ed Cook. The one about the Temple treasures is the Treatise of the Vessels, which I am editing. The article names both texts, and it does make clear that the clues about the Temple treasures are only legends!