I went to see Scott Carol last night (I'm writing this about 3AM, so it was last night, I just finished a lab report on electron spin resonance spectroscopy). Scott Carol is a PhD archeologist with several digs and museum exhibits. He came and spoke on the validity of the Bible. It was really refreshing to hear something positive about the Bible. It is very easy to criticize the Bible, to say it has tons of inaccuracies and how it has no historical weight. Listening to a man who has real knowledge of how things were done in the ancient world talk about it and give proof to its validity was incredible. I'm going to see him talk more on Sunday night.

He has been to Egypt, Iraq, Israel, and a few other places, but those are the most notable. He brought artifacts with him. Like, some several hundred years old, some artifacts that are several thousand years old. They were on loan from some very wealthy people. These people realize how valuable the artifacts were, but they were OK with them being passed around. Scott come from the British school of thought in archeology, which means he feels that there is no real problem with people handling things. This is huge when compared to the American school of thought which says that the human oils are destructive, you need to have white gloves and be pretty much a hazmat suit and only certain people are allowed to actually touch them. The owners felt that the cost of the risk was insignificant compared to the value that could be potentially gained by having somebody actually able to handle the history. I can't believe it, I actually was handling a few parchment scrolls that were hundreds of years old. Scrolls written in copic and hebrew. An old jewish phylactery was passed around. Sealing rolls, the kind a man would roll on wax to mark his name, were in my hands. Can you guys believe it? It is hard for me to wrap my head around it. I actually had my hands on history. He didn't bring his Gutenberg (to think he has a Gutenberg bible is incredible, for those who don't know a whole lot about old books). He didn't pass it around, but he brought the oldest scroll that was a copy of the book of Ester in the western hemisphere with him. This scroll was handed down through Jewish families, it was found in post-war Germany. For those who don't know, Ester is a book of the Bible (the only one that does not mention God explicitly, but you can see God move throughout it) in the old testament about how Ester became wife to king Xerxes of the Persian empire and God used her to save her people, the Jews, from a genocidal maniac. This was found to survive the Holocaust. Isn't that amazing? And I got to see it! At the end of his talk we had a short question and answer session. He picked out three questions written down on cards and answered them. I was really lucky and had my question picked. I'm very satisfied with the answer he gave. I'm really excited to see what he is going to show us on Sunday.