The Discovery of an Ancient Christian Document.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 206, 4 September 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Discovery of an Ancient Christian Document.

Last. Saturday we gave an account of the recent discovery in Egypt of a papyrus leaf, believed by scholars to be the oldest piece of Christian writing existing, and containing fragments of the Logia or sayings of Christ. We are now able to reproduce a fac-simile. of this most interesting document. As we have already stated, ii was found last -winter by two Oxford graduates, Messrs Bernard P. Grenfell, M.A., and A. S. Hunt, M.A., working on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund, at a village called Behne.sa, that stands upon the ruins of Oxyrhynchus, once a great city, and one of the chief centres of early Christianity in Egypt. In the rubbish heaps of- this long dead town once the capital of the nineteenth Nome, or province, 120 miles south of Cairo, preserved by the dry sand of the Libyan desert with other documents of various ajres, the explorers found this priceless leaf and now they have translated, edited, and explained it in a 2'J-pHgr pamphlet just issued by Mr Henry L'rowde, of Amen Corner, E.C. The fragment, a facsimile of which is given in two plates in the, pamphlet, measures s?in by 3Jin, and as the question of its age is of the greatest importance, it will be well to quote what the editors say concerning ii: —

The document was found in a mound which produced a great, num-

ber of papyri belonging to the first three centuries of our era, those in the immediate vicinity of our fragment belonging to the second and third centuries. This fact, together with the evidence, of the handwriting, which has a characteristically Roman aspect, fixed with certainty TUX) A.I), as the lowest limit for the date at which the papyrus was written. The general probabilities of the case, the presence of the usual contractions found in Biblical MSS., and tiie fact that the papyrus was in book not roll, form, put the first century out. of the question, arid make the first half of <],;■• ocviury unlikely.

KAI TOTS AIABA6TQC €KBAA€!N TO KAP4>OG TO £N TO) OOBAAMCO7 TOY AA£A4>OY COY A6F6I ft €AN MH NHCTGYCH TAI TON KOCMON OY MH eYPHTAI THN BACIA6I X portion of fbe Text as restored by the discoverers. 1 j The date, therefore, probably falls within the period 150—300 A.D.

Some of the sayings it contains ar« practically the same that are given us as the words of Christ in our Gospels, such as Luke iv., 24, and Matthew v., 14, but others are entirelynew and very curious, one being:— Jesus saith, Except ye fast to tha world, ye shall in no wise find the kingdom of God; and except ye keep the Sabbath ye shall not see the Father.

Concerning this text the editors conclude that the term "fast" must not be taken literally, and regarding the Sabbath that "possibly the phrase has here a hidden meaning— 'make the Sabbath a real Sabbath.'" They conclude that the most satisfactory view, "though not free from difficulties, is that this fragment is whafc it professes to be, a collection of some of our Lord's sayings. These judging from their archaic tone and framework were put together not later than the end of the first or beginning of the second century; and it is quite possible that they embody a tradition independent of those which have taken shape in our Canonical Gospels." Altogether the discovery is one of the most important that has taken place for many years, and the low price at which the pamphlet is issued will enable even the poorest to realise its value for themselves. ■