A review from the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/feb/14/bible-hunters-the-good-wife-tv-reviewI'll be honest. If I hadn't been called upon to review it, I probably would have kept a very safe distance from a documentary called Bible Hunters: the Search for Bible Truth (BBC2). Which only goes to prove what a tit I can be because – but of course – it was wonderful. That's one of God's neater little tricks, I reckon.
Archaeologist and historian Dr Jeff Rose guided us through the story of how the notion of the Bible as the absolute and literal word of God, handed unchanging down the ages, was challenged by and eventually disintegrated under the weight of new manuscripts found and discoveries made by various intrepid explorers to Egypt, where the combination of dry desert air and the world's oldest monasteries had combined to provide a vellum'n'papyral (and if that's not a word, it should be and it is now) treasure trove for questing biblical scholars.
Constantin von Tischendorf from Swindon – no, I'm kidding, he was German – reached Alexandria in 1844 and followed his nose round various ancient libraries, the bookshops and bazaars of Cairo, and eventually ended up at St Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, whose library had gone untouched by covetous European hand for 1500 years. There he found and took back with him a few tantalising leaves of a 4th-century manuscript. He spent the next 15 years working on them and planning a return visit.
In 1859 he travelled back to St Catherine's and found what would become known as the Codex Sinaiticus – a mid-4th-century edition of much of the Old Testament and a complete version of the New. Between them they had 35,000 edits and corrections made by three or four different scribes, including one to the words spoken by Jesus on the cross – marked as doubtful by one of the writers, and reinstated later by another. Imagine finding a big question mark beside "Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do." You'd have to take a moment, wouldn't you? The greatest body blow for literalists, however, was the fact that the Gospel of Mark lacked its rather crucial final 12 verses, in which Jesus is resurrected and his divinity thus proved.
After that, all bets were off and just about anyone who had the time, money and an ounce of curiosity hightailed it to Egypt to sift through the stuff for themselves. Among their number (and honestly, I can't tell you what fun I was having by this point as the programme took on the unmistakeabley jaunty air of an Indiana-Jones-meets-The-Da-Vinci-Code-movie while remaining both true, intelligent and firmly in control of its material) was a pair of redoubtable, independently wealthy Scottish Presbyterian twin sisters, Agnes and Margaret Smith. They had quickly taught themselves enough Syriac (a Middle Aramaic dialect, dummy) to enable them to recognise an authentic ancient gospel when they saw one before hitting Cairo, packing a teapot and enough water, chickens, wine, ducks, animal feed, tablecloths, tea cups and glass plates for their camera to see them through the fortnight's trek to Mount Sinai, and setting off. At the monastery they discovered in a dark cupboard a Syriac codex so old its pages had fused together. They steamed them apart with the teapot. You thought I was joking about that, didn't you? Friends, I never joke about Scottish Presbyterian twins and I would advise you to do likewise.
They realised they had found a palimpsest, whose scraped and re-used vellum sheets revealed gospels that rivalled the Codex Sinaiticus in age and again had Mark missing those vital dozen verses. They set off a new wave of biblical study and hunting.
By the end of the 19th century, it wasn't just European gentlemen explorers, but American millionaires who were flooding into Egypt. One of them, Charles Lang Freer, made headlines when he unearthed a wooden-bound copy of the gospels dating from the fifth century that had the "proper" ending for Mark, plus a few extra verses in which Jesus says that Satan's days are over. Satan's dead! Jesus said so! Cat, pigeons, cans, worms – you name it, it followed. Next week, we're going to meet the people who found entire excised gospels and lost versions of Christianity itself. I shall bring popcorn and grab myself a front row seat. I urge you to do the same and have faith that you won't be disappointed.
Topic: Bible Hunters: the Search for Bible Truth and the Search for Lost Gospels