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World's oldest book
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Does anybody know the world's oldest book?
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According to a news release by BBC:
A book thought to be the oldest surviving printed book in the world has gone on display at the British Library.
The Diamond Sutra, which bears the date 868 AD, was found in a walled-up cave in Dunhuang, north-west China, in 1907, along with other printed items.
It consists of a scroll of grey paper printed with Chinese characters, wrapped around a wooden pole.
The scroll forms part of the Library's Silk Road display, which focuses on the art and culture of the region.
It was discovered by the Hungarian born explorer Sir Marc Aurel Stein, and is thought to be part of a library which was walled up in the cave around the year 1000AD.
Actually the oldest surviving example of the Old Testament was hand written and is dated around 680 AD, but with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a copy the Old Testament book of Isaiah is now dated at 150 BC. But, these of course, as mentioned, were hand written. The Koran wasn't originally written until about 652 AD, some twenty years after death of Mohammed, its author...
If by "book" you mean work of literature, rather than the physical pages then, the oldest part of the Old Testament is the book of Job. However I think the epic of Gilgamesh probably predates this. The story was told and retold over many generations before being writen down, and those original writings are lost, so we still have an oral connection with the original.
Unlike Job, the story of Gligamesh and Enkidu is uplifting and surprisingly optimistic, even though it has sad parts and contains some suffering. Rather than an appeal for the listener to adhere to some moral code or belief system, It is a real love story with adventure, historical exposition, natural disaster (flood, same as Noah?), death and adversity and the triumph of human nature and a beacon of hope in an uncertain world. Nothing much changes, eh?
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