The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a hilarious and serious look at various ways how we humans construct the meaning of our existence. The writer of the BBC radio 1978 comedy Douglas Adams (1952-2001) could hardly have foreseen what a chord he was about the strike in the hearts of so many. It became a cultural phenomenon for modern man, a series of books was published and the 2005 movie did quite well in the box office, thank you! (The movie's total box office gross was $104,478,416 worldwide as of December 2006).
Despite of its humorous approach the Guide discusses quite serious matters and tackles in a most wonderful and memorable way the most basic question of humanity. A super-intelligent pan-dimensional race of beings has constructed a supercomputer Deep Thought to give the
Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything
Douglas Adams told later that this today quite well-known answer to the Ultimate Question was actually a joke trying to calm down those readers who were desperately seeking the true meaning of this intriguing answer.
That people actually began to ask the meaning of 42 is, of course, another proof of something very fundamental in our species: homo sapiens tries to explain the meaning of life, universe and other such things. It is not a superficial characteristic in us but rather a biological wiring in our brains that no anti-religion or anti-philosophy school teaching or brainwashing can remove from us as individuals or as a society.
Soviet Union made a valiant effort to do just that, to teach atheism to children and remove from their minds ancient religious attitudes and stupid questions that brilliant materialistic atheism and just communism have long ago solved to the satisfaction of every scientifically thinking man and woman.
Even atheists, such as Douglas Adams or Richard Dawkins ask that question and Dawkins dedicated his book "God Delusion" to Adams.
______________
Well...
I humbly announce that I have not only found out that the answer tgiven by Deep Thought computer after ten million years of calculations in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy is off by ten... but that I believe that I actually know the Question and the correct answer to it
This is the name given to the tiny fragment of papyrus which is the oldest known manuscript of the New Testament. The papyrus was unnoticed among the documents that Bernard Pyne Grenfell (1869–1926) purchased in Egypt in 1920 and brought to the John Rylands University Library in the University of Manchester. The papyrus was first noticed only in 1934 when Colin H. Roberts argued on geographical grounds that p52 is Hadrianic and could thus date to the beginning of the second century AD. The early date has been disputed since then but today there seems to be among scholars a relatively broad consensus that papyrus p52 was indeed written during or near the time of Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD).
(Images of the papyrus and text are from wikipedia)This oldest known fragment of New Testament holds a truly majestic section from the Gospel of John where Pilate is questioning Jesus.
P52 recto
Gospel of John 18:31-33 (recto)
ΟΙ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ ΗΜΙΝ ΟΥΚ ΕΞΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΠΟΚΤΕΙΝΑΙ
OYΔΕΝΑ ΙΝΑ Ο ΛΟΓΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΙΗΣΟΥ ΠΛΗΡΩΘΗ ΟΝ ΕΙ-
ΠΕΝ ΣHΜΑΙΝΩΝ ΠΟΙΩ ΘΑΝΑΤΩ ΗΜΕΛΛΕΝ ΑΠΟ-
ΘΝHΣΚΕΙΝ ΕΙΣΗΛΘΕΝ ΟΥΝ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΙΣ ΤΟ ΠΡΑΙΤΩ-
ΡΙΟΝ Ο ΠIΛΑΤΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΦΩΝΗΣΕΝ ΤΟΝ ΙΗΣΟΥΝ
ΚΑΙ ΕΙΠΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ ΣΥ ΕΙ O ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΙΟΥ-
ΔAΙΩN
...the Jews, "For us it is not permitted to kill
anyone," so that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he
spoke signifying what kind of death he was going to
to die. Entered therefore again into the Praeto-
rium Pilate and summoned Jesus
and he said to him, "Thou art king of the
Jews?"
p52 verso
Gospel of John 18:37-38 (verso)
ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΕΙΜΙ ΕΓΩ ΕΙΣ TOΥΤΟ ΓΕΓΕΝΝΗΜΑΙ
ΚΑΙ (ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ) ΕΛΗΛΥΘΑ ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΚΟΣΜΟΝ ΙΝΑ ΜΑΡΤY-
ΡΗΣΩ ΤΗ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΠΑΣ Ο ΩΝ EΚ ΤΗΣ ΑΛΗΘΕI-
ΑΣ ΑΚΟΥΕΙ ΜΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΦΩΝΗΣ ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΩ
Ο ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΚAΙ ΤΟΥΤO
ΕΙΠΩΝ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΞΗΛΘΕΝ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΟΥΣ ΙΟΥ-
ΔΑΙΟΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΟΙΣ ΕΓΩ ΟΥΔEΜΙΑΝ
ΕΥΡΙΣΚΩ ΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ ΑΙΤΙΑΝ
...a King I am. For this I have been born
and (for this) I have come into the world so that I would
testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth
hears of me my voice." Said to him
Pilate, "What is truth?" and this
having said, again he went out unto the Jews
and said to them, "I find not one
fault in him."
###############
The Question that Adams is looking in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is given at the end of this remarkable text
WHAT IS TRUTH?
Douglas Adams asks it in his hilarious and thoughtful way, Richard Dawkins asks it in his well-known ways and every human being asks it each in his or her own way.
Pontius Pilate asks this question in the Gospel of John. He was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Palestine 26-36 A.D. and not a particularly popular character among the Jews whose land the romans had occupied 63 B.C. For example, the confiscation - outright robbery - of money from the Temple treasury for the construction of a system bringing water to the city had caused a bloody riot.
Now in front of this educated civilized Roman stands a religious character, another candidate being the national savior, the Messiah of the Jews, who perhaps could lead the people into a rebellion. The Jewish leaders themselves had bought the man to him fearing just such a thing (which happened about 40 years later with disastrous consequences and then again at Hadrian's time with Bar Kochba claiming to be the Messiah).
The text is very short but still we can feel kind of skeptic - not the voice of an agnostic but the mentally cancerous disbelief of a skeptic who cannot believe anything - in his question, what is truth?
Perhaps he considered himself an intelligent man in dismissing man's ability to know the truth, I do not know what he was thinking. Whatever was in his mind, the end result of this attitude towards truth was catastrophic - Pontius Pilate committed the worst miscarriage of judgment in the history of mankind.
Well
if the question is What is the truth?
so what is the answer in p52?
let me put it this way
Truth was standing in front of Pilate, who did not recognize it
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