Sign o' the times

With the week that's in it, we wonder if some of the more rapturist readers of the New York Times will see another nod from above that everything is going to according to God's design -- in a message from an Irish bog:

The [1200 year old] manuscript, containing approximately 20 pages, was discovered last Thursday in the Irish Midlands when the construction worker noticed it while excavating for commercial potting soil. Museum officials declined to specify the bog’s location, explaining that archaeologists were still exploring the site.

The museum said that the bound pages had slipped outside the book’s wraparound cover, made of vellum or leather, and that the psalms were written directly on vellum and the book was found open at a page showing Psalm 83 in Latin.

In later English-language versions, Psalm 83 exhorts God to act against conspirator nations plotting to wipe out "the name of Israel."

UPDATE: The NYT was apparently more careful than many other accounts, in noting that the Israel phrase only appears in the later King James version of the corresponding Psalm, but did not appear in the manuscript itself. And more on the find, more focussed on the preservation aspects, from Sunday's NYT.