Sunday, March 24, 2013

The New New Testament

GOOFY HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Dead Sea Scrolls part of pastor's 'New New Testament' (Deseret News).

Er, no. The Dead Sea Scrolls don't contain any New Testament texts, even noncanonical ones. What the article is trying to say is that this book includes translations of Coptic Gnostic Christian scriptures from the Nag Hammadi Library (in Egypt) among the canonical New Testament books. These are definitely not Jewish Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures etc. from the Dead Sea region. The Amazon page for the book has more information on the book and the project. It seems a little gimmicky to me, but I'm always happy to see the noncanonical scriptures get more attention.