Newfound Book of Psalms Doesn't Predict Doom, Experts Say
Blake de Pastino
National Geographic News
July 27, 2006
It's not the end of the world, experts announced today. The opening passage of a thousand-year-old Christian prayer book discovered in Ireland does not say that doomsday is near.
When the medieval text—a Book of Psalms dated to about A.D.1000—was unearthed by a construction worker in a bog last week, archaeologists described the find as a miracle. But the discovery has since met with some nervous speculation about its possible religious significance.
Doomsayers have focused on the passage that the 20-page text, written in Latin, was opened to when it was first uncovered: Psalm 83.
In the King James Bible, the psalm is a lament to God describing the attempts of nations to wipe out the name of Israel.
"Thine enemies … have said, Come, and let us cut
off from being a nation," the psalm reads, "that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.'"
Given the current conflict in Lebanon between Israeli troops and Islamic Hezbollah guerrillas, this detail struck some observers as particularly ominous...cont'd
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