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I know I'm coming in late and I had to go through ALL the posts. If the Goths sacked Rome in 400 and carried away the treasury, how could the Vatican claim to have manuscripts dating back before this? Would the Goths have taken or burned these as well?

Goths being Goths and therefore illiterate, they went for portable objects of obvious intrinsic value - gold, jewels, etc.

A bunch of dirty parchments and papyri with chicken scratches on them would have excited zero interest, unless they needed to burn a few to keep warm . . .

The thing I don't understand in all this speculation is that the Roman government of A.D. 70 was not Christian - indeed if anything it was anti-Christian. Why would the Vatican wind up with any surviving treasure - if indeed the Goths or the Vandals didn't get it?

143 posted on 01/16/2004 5:20:27 PM PST by AnAmericanMother (. . . sed, ut scis, quis homines huiusmodi intellegere potest?. . .)