Dear Georgios et al,
I've mangaged to do a bit of writing. Been very busy today with preparation and meetings for the Xmas eucumenical evening here in Plaigne. I wrote this rather hurriedly so I'm sorry if it doesn't 'flow' well.
Arcadia is a region in the Peloponesus,
conceived by poets to be a land of shepherds and shepherdesses.
The
adjective Arcadian means simple, ideally rustic and innocent.
Arcady means an ideal rustic place.
I’ll come
back to this later.
The Dead
Sea Scrolls are the most useful aids that we have today for understanding the
Judaean culture of the pre-Gospel era.
They were
discovered in 1947, in hidden jars. In
all, the jars contained about 500 Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts.
Forming a
complement to these discoveries, was the find, two years before, in Egypt, of post-Gospel
era manuscripts.
They were
found by two peasant brothers, digging for fertilizer, in December 1945, in a
cemetery near the town of Nag Hammadi.
A large sealed jar was found with thirteen leather-bound books in it. The books
became known as the Nag Hammadi Library.
The books
were written in the ancient Coptic language of Egypt which was used during early
Christian times. They had papyrus pages and were various scriptures, written in
the Gnostic tradition. They were
Christian works with Jewish overtones.
The Coptic Museum
in Cairo found
that they were copies of much older manuscripts, originally written in Greek.
Some of the texts had very early origins with traditions of before AD 50. There
are various religious texts, including some Gospels that had never before been
seen.
The
environment described is very different to that in the Bible. For example, Sodom and Gomorrah
are portrayed as great cities of wisdom and learning.
Mary
Magdalene and Jesus are an "item" and a lot more……..
(I've got to get on with some other work so I'll continue with my findings later).
Benton, thanks for the info.
Blessings,
Sarah