Ancient Greek, Roman & Egyptian texts become legible under IR photography.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165
We shall soon see a flood of new info about he Classical Civilizations.
Warms my heart. 
Looks like you and I are thinking along the same lines, Bosda. 
Mods, will you delete my thread?
I cannot believe how fucking cool this is. I won’t be able to stop thinking about it all day.
What if there really are early Christian writings? What if they contradict (gasp) what’s already in the Bible? What contortional writhings will the Bible literalists go through to protect their beliefs? I can’t wait!
I, of course, am hopeful they will find lost historical chronicles hidden away at Oxyrhynchus. Imagine finding Ptolemy’s memoirs of his adventures with Alexander the Great!
And you and I are thinking along the same lines, as well 
I can’t wait either.
best to all,
plynck
Art historians have been using IR Reflectography since the ‘70s are so-- It’s easier with painted panels, but they’d been doing a bit with manuscripts. It’s cool because you can see where the master drew in all the contour lines are wrote a big “R” where he wanted the journeymen to paint the shirt red. Or you can see where he decided to move the hand around, or remove the planned inclusion of a portrait of the now-ex-wife.
It’s also good for figuring out who painted what when so many painters’ styles are alike becasue of the current popular trends-- even if they all want the finished product to look a certain generic way, they tend to have different drawing styles and since the underdrawing won’t be seen they just do whatever they like down there.
(I was talking, fyi, about something related and slightly different than the article-- with infrared you can see below the top layers of paint and see the denser carbon-black drawn layer below. In case I confused anyone)
I agree with the sentiments expressed by the others…this is just too freaking COOL!
Somewhere out there might be a branch library of Alexandria!
I wonder if they could use this on the texts they’ve been recovering from that villa near Pompei. (Or was it Herculaneum? I forget, and now I must Google to find out.)
Wow!
I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for something directly contradictory like, “and then Jesus retired and lived off his 401(k)”. I would think they would be more likely to find something like the theorized gospel that presumably the authors of Mathew and Luke both used as a source (besides Mark), and perhaps other texts used as sources by any of the four authors. IIRC the author of Luke, comes right out and says he was improving the records he had seen. Besides, why would you hope for the discomfiture of others?
Just relax, and be prepared to enjoy the intellectual offshoots of this great new technique. Surely it can be applied to many more texts, also.
All I can say is 
and that I can’t wait to go back to school. This rocks!
Oh, sure. Then they analyze the texts and realize it’s all “Dear Penthouse Forum, Aeschines and I were painting the shrine of Athena naked the other day when all of a sudden Pluton and Agrippa came in holding a cage of ferrets…”
And that’s a bad thing?
Do you think this means that there are actual completed works in there, and not just fragments? Imagine a complete Sophocles or Euripides play!
Kind of a repost, as I said the same thing before the other thread was locked :smack:
I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for something directly contradictory like, “and then Jesus retired and lived off his 401(k)”. I would think they would be more likely to find something like the theorized gospel that presumably the authors of Mathew and Luke both used as a source (besides Mark), and perhaps other texts used as sources by any of the four authors. IIRC the author of Luke, comes right out and says he was improving the records he had seen. In short, I would think they are more likely to find evidence confirming or disproving various reconstructions of the early history of Christianity. Since any biblical scholar could claim whichever text is found was spurious or anomolous, and there is a reason it wasn’t better preserved, I doubt any literalist would reconsider their beliefs. Besides, why would you hope for the discomfiture of others?
Just relax, and be prepared to enjoy the intellectual offshoots of this great new technique. Surely it can be applied to many more texts, also.
A very exciting development. I studied some of Sophocles’ plays when I did Ancient Greek at school. It would be fantastic if more of his work were discovered. It’s unlikely though, I suspect, that it would be anything more than fragments.
err I know you have a slow thining mind and all that, but um…whats with the multi postan hour apart? Just wondering
also this kicks all kinds of awesome booty.
To quote an ancient greek whose name has been lost to history. This is pretty bitchin’.
Oooh! Cool! So very very cool!
Heh. I go to “The Great Books school”, where we all study the classics (in pretty much all subject areas), read some of them in the original greek, etc. I just finished a major paper on Sophocles’ Ajax…
A group of college students should not be this excited about a bunch of greek texts getting turned up.