The Book of Acts Gets a CT Scan

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The Book of Acts Gets a CT Scan

Taking the Trouble to Understand the Bible

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ERIC METAXAS

with
stan guthrie

How much trouble would you take /to understand the Bible just a little bit better?

Pierpont Morgan was perhaps the most influential financier /in American history. During the latter part of the 19^th century, Morgan began using some of his extraordinary wealth /to become a collector—of rare books, manuscripts, drawings, prints, and ancient artifacts—for his personal library.

In 1924, his son, J.P. Morgan, donated his late father’s library and all its treasures to the public. It became known /as the Morgan Library and Museum, or “the Morgan,” for short. And it’s right here in New York //where I live.

* late; dead, especially if only recently deceased:

Back in 1962, the Morgan added /to its collection of rare manuscripts /by purchasing a clump of charred parchment leaves. The artifact is a codex, or ancient book, written in the Coptic language, that dates between A.D. 400 and 600 from Egypt, before the Muslim invaders arrived. The codex contains a copy of the New Testament’s Book of Acts, as well as another work yet to be determined.

* date; put a date on, determine the date of, assign a date to, fix the period of

But the condition of this codex, known as M.910, is so fragile—a journalist said it “looks as delicate as a long dead flower”—that no one has dared to open it, for fear of causing further damage. Until now.

In December, W. Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, began using a CT scanner and his own software to, according to The New York Times, “model the surface of a contorted piece of papyrus or parchment /from X-ray data and then derive a legible text /by assigning letters to their proper surface.”

In other words, Seales has [the technology /to read a crumbling book //that has been closed /for a millennium and a half]—even while it remains closed—Amazing! The technique, Seales says, “can turn [things /thought to be of no value] /into precious objects.”

We should begin [to receive the results for M.910 very soon]. The findings are expected to shed light /on the formation of the New Testament canon, as well as the original Greek text of the book of Acts—no small matters to Christians! And who knows what we might learn from the other work //that may be concealed / along with Acts in this ancient codex?

Uncovering the secrets of ancient artifacts such as M.910 is fabulous. As the Proverbs 25:2 tells us, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” And [the fact //that a secular organization, the Morgan Library and Museum, would devote so many of its resources /to this task] demonstrates just how valuable to human civilization [biblical texts] really are. As Samuel Chadwick stated, “No man is uneducated //who knows the Bible, and no one is wise //who is ignorant of its teachings.”

* 술부가 짧아서 주어수식 형절이 동사 뒤에 쓰인 경우임

No man is uneducated //who knows the Bible

No man //who knows the Bible is uneducated

* 과분사는 수동태가 아니고 단지 형용사역할임; 교육을 못받아 무식한

This brings up a very natural follow-up question: How valuable is God’s Word to you? And a second is like unto it: What pains are you willing to take /to understand that Word?

* like onto = similar to quotations  영어고어

If a museum will buy a crumbling, basically unreadable biblical text and hold it for over five decades /in the hope that somehow, some day a technology will be invented so that its pages can be opened and its history understood, what are we doing with our perfectly good Bibles?

It’s almost funny—we sometimes treat our Bibles /as if they are museum pieces, and only infrequently do we dust them off and look for the precious treasures hidden inside their pages. A real museum, however, spares no expense and works diligently, knowing that [what it finds] could change [how we understand the world].

And by the way, [what we find in the Bible today] could change our world.

Of course, you have to read it.