Here is a link for an online tour of the this great museum. Unfortunately, you can’t get closeups of the objects, but it’s still a great site.
Pope Gregory XVI had the Gregorian Egyptian Museum founded in 1839. It houses monuments and artefacts of ancient Egypt partly coming from Rome and from Villa Adriana (Tivoli), where they had been transferred mostly in the Imperial age, and partly from private collections, that is purchased by nineteenth century collectors. The Popes’ interest in Egypt was connected with the fundamental role attributed to this country by the Sacred Scripture in the History of Salvation. The Museum occupies nine rooms divided by a large hemicycle that opens towards the terrace of the “Niche of the Fir Cone”, in which there are numerous sculptures. The last two rooms house finds from ancient Mesopotamia and from Syria-Palestine.
well, I do agree with not dumbing the class down. It seems as though adding some divergent works is not a bad idea though. Nor is it bad to move beyond worldview questions by themselves. IT is beneficial in our time with Bart Ehrman books coming out to have pastors / etc educated with more knowledge of textual criticism. By the way, what do you think of the book Misquoting Jesus, have you read the JETS review yet?
David,
Some divergent stuff is alright and even desireable in an intro class, but I would argue that it should be treated minimally. Especially textual criticism. To be honest, I’m not sure that undergrads taking an intro course (which is the situation that I was addressing) have the basic skills needed to successfully undertake textual critical issues. To do this right, one needs to be very proficient in the main language as well as at least several cognate languages, familiarity with the different translation philosophies and methodologies of the various witness texts is essential, and one must be able to use various secondary resources. I think that it would be good to give a conceptual overview of textual criticism in an intro course, but not much more.
I have read the review of Ehrman in JETS and I think the review is right on the mark.
Thanks for you great comments!