Category Archives: Museums

In Rome, Centuries’ Worth of Vatican Secret Archives Revealed – NYTimes.com

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In Rome, Centuries’ Worth of Vatican Secret Archives Revealed – NYTimes.com.

I would love to be able to see these documents, they shaped the world, and still do.  Amazing stuff.

The Vatican Secret Archives were established four centuries ago to house the Holy See’s official documents. Spanning 12 centuries and occupying a cumulative 50 miles of shelf space, the Archives’ contents range from the quotidian to the controversial.

Through September, the Capitoline Museums (Piazza del Campidoglio; 39-060608) will host “Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archive Reveals Itself.” The exhibition will feature 100 documents of historical and cultural interest, which will be shown outside the Vatican for the first time.

The selection of letters, manuscripts and codices document the political and spiritual power wielded by the church throughout the Middle Ages until the late 19th century. Though mentions of contemporary scandals are conspicuously absent, there are centuries’  worth of papal ruthlessness to behold.

Visitors to the exhibition will find the record of Galileo’s conviction, the case against the Knights Templar and the order for Martin Luther’s excommunication. Tamer pieces include letters from world leaders, including  Abraham Lincoln, and publications of church dogma.

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‘Jesus Discovery:’ Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity

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‘Jesus Discovery:’ Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity.

The following is an excerpt by James D. Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici, authors of The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity

On the morning of Tuesday, June 29, 2010, outside the Old City of Jerusalem, we made an unprecedented archaeological discovery related to Jesus and early Christianity. This discovery adds significantly to our understanding of Jesus, his earliest followers, and the birth of Christianity. In this book we reveal reliable archaeological evidence that is directly connected to Jesus’ first followers, those who knew him personally and to Jesus himself. The discovery provides the earliest archaeological evidence of faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the first witness to a saying of Jesus that predates even the writing of our New Testament gospels, and the earliest example of Christian art, all found in a sealed tomb dated to the 1st century CE.

We refer to this tomb as the Patio tomb, since it is now located beneath an apartment patio, eight feet under the basement of a condominium complex. Such juxtapositions of modernity and antiquity are not unusual in Jerusalem, where construction must often be halted to rescue and excavate tombs from ancient times. The Patio tomb was first uncovered by construction work in 1981 in East Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem less than two miles south of the Old City.

Our discoveries also provide precious new evidence for evaluating the Jesus son of Joseph’s tomb, discovered a year earlier, which made international headlines in 2007. We refer to this 1980 tomb as the Garden tomb, since it is now situated beneath a garden area in the same condominium complex. These two tombs, both dating to around the time of Jesus, are less than two hundred feet apart. Together with a third tomb nearby that was unfortunately destroyed by the construction blasts, these tombs formed a cluster and most likely belonged to the same clan or extended family. Any interpretation of one tomb has to be made in the light of the other. As a result we believe a compelling argument can be made that the Garden tomb is that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. We argue in this book that both tombs are most likely located on the rural estate of Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy member of the Sanhedrin who according to all four New Testament gospels took official charge of Jesus’ burial.

Who was Joseph of Arimathea and how did he enter the historical picture? The Jesus Discovery explores the answers to this and a series of related questions. The recent discoveries in the Patio tomb put the controversy about the Jesus family tomb in new light. We now have new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus’ earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away. This might sound like a contradiction, but only because certain theological traditions regarding the meaning of resurrection of the dead have clouded our understanding of what Jesus and his first followers truly believed. When we put together the texts of the gospels with this archaeological evidence, the results are strikingly consistent and stand up to rigorous standards of historical evidence.

Accessing the sealed Patio tomb was a tremendous challenge. The technological challenge alone was daunting. Our only access to this tomb was through a series of eight-inch drill holes in the basement floor of the condominium. We were not even positive these probes would open into the tomb. We literally had only inches to spare. Investigating the tomb required getting agreements from the owners of the building over the tomb; the Israel Antiquities Authority, which controls permission to carry out any archaeological work in Israel; the Jerusalem police, whose task is to keep the peace and avoid incitements to riot; and the Heredim, the ultra-Orthodox authorities whose mission is to protect all Jewish tombs, ancient or modern, from any kind of disturbance. None of these parties had any particular motivation to assist us and for various reasons they disagreed with one another about their own interests. Any one of them could have stopped us at any point along the way, and there were many anxious times when we thought the exploration would never happen. Ultimately we were able to persuade each group to support the excavation. That we succeeded at all is more than a minor miracle. At the same time we had no evidence that our exploration of this tomb, if it were possible, would yield anything of importance. But we both agreed it was a gamble worth taking.

At many points the entire operation seemed likely to collapse. We pushed on, however, not because we knew what was inside the tomb, but because we could not bear the thought of never knowing. Since that time we have begun to put the entire story together and a coherent picture is emerging that offers a new understanding of Jesus and his earliest followers in the first decades of the movement.

Archaeologists who work on the history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity disagree over whether there is any reliable archaeological evidence directly related to Jesus or his early followers. Most are convinced that nothing of this sort has survived, not a single site, inscription, artifact, drawing, or text mentioning Jesus or his followers, or witnessing to the beliefs of the earliest Jewish Christians either in Jerusalem or in Galilee.

Jesus was born, lived, and died in the land of Israel. Most scholars agree he was born around 5 BCE and died around 30 CE. We have abundant archaeological evidence from this period related to Galilee, where he began his preaching and healing campaigns, and Jerusalem, where he was crucified. There is evidence related to Herod Antipas, the high priest Caiaphas, and even Pontius Pilate, who had him crucified, but nothing that would connect us to Jesus himself, or even to his earliest followers — until now. Our hope is that these exciting new discoveries can become the catalyst for reconsidering other archaeological evidence that might well be related to the first Jewish-Christian believers.

The oldest copies of the New Testament gospels date to the early 4th century CE, well over two hundred years after Jesus’ lifetime. There are a few papyri fragments of New Testament writings that scholars have dated to the 2nd century CE, but nothing so far in the 1st century. The earliest Christian art is found in the catacomb tombs in Rome, dating to the late 2nd or early 3rd centuries CE. Our discovery effectively pushes back the date on early Christian archaeological evidence by two hundred years. More significantly, it takes us back into the lifetime of Jesus himself.

This has been the most extraordinary adventure of our careers, and we are pleased to be able to share with readers the surprising and profound story of The Jesus Discovery.

See More Photos of the Archeological Dig and Earliest Christian Images

Museum events kick off Buffalo Bill’s birthday bash

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Museum events kick off Buffalo Bill’s birthday bash.

Master printer Mike Parker arranges the letters in his California Job Case before giving elementary school students a printing demonstration at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center on Wednesday.

Master printer Mike Parker arranges the letters in his California Job Case before giving elementary school students a printing demonstration at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center on Wednesday.

When a busload of students from Cathy McKenzie’s fourth-grade class at Parkside Elementary in Powell streamed into the Buffalo Bill Historical Center on Wednesday, Mike Parker tightened his apron and grinned.

The master printer had prepared for their arrival, spreading black ink on the face of his two pilot presses, arranging the 12-point type in his California Job Case, and ensuring the verse he intended to print in demonstration — “a penny saved is a penny earned” — was correctly spelled.

But how do you explain arcane details of obsolete printing technology to young students whose appreciation for vowels stems from ”Wheel of Fortune?” Whose understanding of printing and its rich history is based on their Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 1000?

If you’re Parker and you’ve been asked by a prestigious museum to demonstrate now-ancient printing terms and technology for two consecutive days, you just tell how it is and hope the students understand.

“You know what they say about small-town papers — we print the truth, the whole truth and anything but the truth,” Parker joked. “The other thing is, when I was young, we’d put the paper out once a week and jokingly call them tri-weeklies, because we’d try weekly to get the paper out.”

Pressman jokes, all of them.

In anticipation of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody‘s birthday this weekend, the museum named for him kicked off Buffalo Bill’s Birthday Museum Adventure on Wednesday, hosting hundreds of elementary students from Powell, Cody and Wapiti.

Museum staff and volunteers dazzled the students with historical facts and displays, Wild West games, town building, making hats, Buffalo Bill in the movies, and Parker’s old printing press.

The students stepped up to Parker’s press — loaded with 20th Century bold font and black ink — and pulled the lever.

“We have some letters in the English language we use more than others,” Parker explained while surrounded by students. “The most commonly used letter in the language is E. The rarest are Q, X and Z.”

Scrabble players holding the three letters understand the difficulty of putting them to use, and Parker’s California Job Case is no different. The division of boxes reflects the frequency of each letter, E taking up the most space, Q, X, and Z relegated to the smallest containers.

Back in the “olden days,” Parker said, printers arranged their letter cases in stacks. The selection of capital letters was in the “upper case,” the small letters assigned to the “lower case.”

The terms are still used today, of course. Parker said the cases were combined side-by-side by printers heading to California who didn’t have room to spare; hence the term California Job Case.

“I started delivering newspapers in south-central Kansas — the Winfield Daily Courier — when I was 10,” Parker said. “I would go up to the pressroom to watch and I was up there enough that the production foreman asked me ‘What do you want to know?’ I told him I wanted to know everything he knew.”

That was more than 50 years ago, when typesetters placed each letter by hand and fed galleys of lead type to the editor for proofing and the press operators for printing.

The work is now done with the stroke of computer key before it passes under the watchful eye of an editor and heads to the pressroom, where operators turn out thousands of newspapers an hour on multimillion-dollar machines.

“It’s no fun anymore,” Parker mused. “The printers don’t touch the paper like we used to. We used to touch every sheet that went into the press. Modern-day printers don’t do that. It’s a totally different thing.”

Parker’s printing days took him from the Winfield Daily Courier to the Leoti Standard and the Peabody Gazette Herald, a weekly that also printed five other newspapers on a sheet-fed press.

His love of printing eventually led him to teach the trade at Northwest College in Powell. He ran his own Wyoming print shop for more than a decade.

As one might expect from a master printer inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, Parker’s knowledge of printing history runs deep. His pilot press — an 1895 Craftsman — is a descendant of Franklin’s own printing invention.

“Back in the days of the Old West, there was a press just a little bit bigger than this that went across South Pass,” Parker said. “At one time, there was 1,000 newspapers out here in the intermountain West. For every wagon train that went across South Pass, there had to be at least one printer on board to fulfill that need.”

Parker asks the elementary students to thank the ancient Phoenicians for much of our modern alphabet.

He said the word “news” dates back to the gathering of events from the north, east, west and south (NEWS).

“Buffalo Bill recognized the value of publication for promotion,” Parker said. “His sister had a printing press in Duluth, Minn. The paper went belly up, so he brought that printing press out here to start the Cody Enterprise.”

Every town across the region, from Cody, Wyo., to Helena, Mont., has a similar story to tell, and there remains a brotherhood of typesetters and press operators across the region who once loaded the galleys by hand to print and share the weekly news.

“When Cody brought that press out here in around 1896, there were 11 people living in the sagebrush at that time,” Parker said. “Cody asked them to print extra copies of the paper.

“When he bumped into people, he’d give them a complimentary copy of that weekly. Within a year, 1,000 people were living in Cody just because of those complimentary copies.”