Sunday, April 16, 2006

SCENIC TULSA: CHURCH SIGN ROUND UP SINGING, DANCING, AND STIGMATA—WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED? Church signs are the thought balloons of pastors.  The messages posted often read like a punchline without joke, or a caption without a cartoon.  I keep an eye on the church signs around town; when I think they think they've been particularly clever, or have an especially wise saying, I stop and take a picture. 11:51:11 PM    comment []

SCENIC TULSA: LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS SCAWY WABBIT, ANTIQUE SHOP, 20TH & HARVARD Kill the Wabbit! 2:06:52 AM    comment []

THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS VIA NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Lost for nearly 1,700 years, a crumbling papyrus manuscript presents the most hated man in history in a new light. Hands trembling slightly from Parkinson’s disease, Professor Rodolphe Kasser picked up the ancient text and began reading in a strong, clear voice: “pe-di-ah-kawn-aus ente plah-nay.” These strange words were Coptic, the language spoken in Egypt at the dawn of Christianity. They had gone unheard ever since the early church declared the document off-limits for Christians. This copy somehow survived. Hidden over eons in the Egyptian desert, it was finally uncovered late in the 20th century. Then it vanished into the netherworld of antiquities traders, one of whom abandoned it for 16 years in a bank vault in Hicksville, New York. By the time it reached Kasser, the papyrus—a form of paper made of dried water plants—was decaying into fragments, its message on the verge of being lost forever. The 78-year-old scholar, one of the world’s leading Coptic experts, finished reading and carefully placed the page back on the table. “It is a beautiful language, is it not? Egyptian written in Greek characters.” He smiled. “This is a passage where Jesus is explaining to the disciples that they are on the wrong track.” The text has entranced him, and no wonder. The opening line of the first page reads, “The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot...” One day he (Jesus) was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples gathered together and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed.   The disciples said to him, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of  thanksgiving? We have done what is right.”   He answered and said to them, “I am not laughing at you. You are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god will be praised.”   They said, “Master, you are the son of our god.”   Jesus said to them, “How do you know me? Truly I say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.” DOWNLOAD THE TEXT Jesus said to him (Judas), "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal." The shortest verse in this Gospel is not "Jesus wept" but "Jesus laughed." I can't recall that Jesus ever laughs in any of the four canonical Gospels. 1:26:07 AM    comment []