THE RECENT PAPTRIC DISCOYEKY

Otago Witness, Issue 2272, 16 September 1897, Page 22

THE RECENT PAPTRIC DISCOYEKY

We published a few weeks ago a cablegram .announcing the discorery in »£gypt of a number of ancient papyri, one of which on being deciphered had been found to contain a record of eight "Sayings" of Jesus Christ, — "gome of them," the message went on to say, "being entirely new." The information which has since accumulated concerning these strangely recovered records of a distant past certainly doe's not tend to diminish the •weird interest aroused by the original * announcement. 'I he discovery was not an accidental one, but the direct result of that patient and wisely directed system of research into Egyptian antiquities which during the last halfcentury has thrown such a flood of light upon the very earliest available history of mankind, and has revealed the existence oE a high condifcipn of civilisation and of an advanced knowledge of science and the arts thousands of years before the Christian era. The locality of the find was sta.ted to be the borders of the ILibyan desert, and this proves to be correct ; but this time it was not to a chance wanderer in a desert (as was alleged in the case of the Shapira forgeries of a few years ago) that we owe what is now believed to be a " priceless possession. It had become known among Egyptologists that certain rubbish heaps near the village of .Behnesa (some two or three days' journey south of Cairo) contained, among other things, a mixture of Koman and of Arab types of ancient pottery, and thus afforded possibilities tempting to the scientific excavator ; while curiosity and hope were further stimulated by the fact that this village was known to occupy the site of the i ancient Oxyrhynehus, a .Roman town which seems in early Christian tiroes to have been one of the recognised centres of the new faith. Two young Oxford scientists undertook the exploration, and in due time were rewarded by coming upon a very large number of manuscripts, inscribed oh the well-known " paper " of the Egyptians, • and . apparently ranging in date from as far back as the first century of our era to perhaps the eighth. It was one of these papyri-^-a- mere scrap, about the size of an ordinary cabinet photograph — that has so suddenly and powerfully arrested the attention of the Christian world and of all students of antiquity and of Biblical lore. A facsimile of it issued by the Egyptian Exploration Society clearly shows it to be written in Greek characters of the uncial variety, and from the characteristics of the writing (which covers both sides of the papyrus, j aa is usually the case) it has been clearly assigned by the experts to a period between A.D. 150 and A.l). 300. This renders it exceeding probable that in the torn and soiled fragment of an ancient sedge-plant, grubbed out with infinite patience by highly trained scholars of an alien racejvho had come thousands of miles to make the search, we have the very earliest original record extant of the Gospel history. That fact alone confers an alniO3t unique interest upon the discovery. It is M;ell known that modern research into the history of the Gospels has resulted in a general recognition of the fact that .the three so-called "synoptical" Gospels (that according to St. Joust is invariably accorded separate treatment by theological critics) arose originally from a number 'of more or less disjointed jottings of the "Logia" or Sayings of Christ made either by one of the apostles, or by a scribe deriving his information from one or more of that body, some considerable time after the date of the crucifixion. The delay in collecting and recording these " JLogia " is generally attributed to the universal prevalence among the early Christians of an immediate expectation of their Master's return. But however this may be, it appears to be accepted among theologians that no written record existed of Christ's teaching until late in the first century, and that our present Gospels themselves do not represent that written record, but rather an adaptation or elaboration of it, woven into a connected narrative of Christ's career by the aid of oral tradition and possibly other written memoranda of His. life on earth. But the existence of these written *"L.ogia" been deduced solely from the evidence afforded by research ; and until the' "Libyaa discovery the other day no- trace of them has actually been known to exist.- It will therefore be seen that the interest of the" discovery does not lie (as might have, been inferred from the originalcable message) in the fact of some of the " sayings " on the Libyan papyrus being new ; nor does it consist (as in the case of all previous similar " finds") in the mere supplementing of existing

compilations by new and independent vei'sions of their text. The new papyrus is far more than this : it carries us one whole stage back in the evolution of the Gospel story. If we may use a I scientific analogy, it corresponds in ini- [ porfcance to the discovery of the fossil I skeleton of the primeval horse in t relation to the race - history of that animal as elaborated long before j by Huxley and others from data much t less directly convincing. It is as though some experimenter of the present day should make actually visible to the eye of man those supposed undulations of the hypothetical ether upon which, though neither the waves nor i the ether itself have ever been caught "in questionable shape," the whole | science of light and vision is based to-day. Besides, moreover, being the very first of the recorded sayings ever brought to light, the Libyan document possesses, as we have already said, the further unique interest of being by a very -long way the most ancient Christian record known to exist. . The Codex ' Slnaiticus, found by M. Tischisndori 1 in 1849 in St. Katherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, was previously the oldest Scripture manuscript in existence ; but its date was not earlier than the fourth century, or, in other words, probably from 50 to 200 years later than the papyrus now brought to light. Very great interest will, of course, attach to the text of the document, which lias been partially deciphered by the finders, and published by the Egyptian Exploration Society, The authenticity of the record as an actual transcript of some of Cubist's sayings need not be here dealt with. Jn all probability they are at best highly fallible notes of loosely handed-down traditionary sayings of the Master, who may either have never said anything like them, or may have uttered sentiments only faintly suggestive of those which have been ~ deciphered from this aged scroll. The possibility, nevertheless, of their being on a level as regards authenticity with the other recorded sayings upon which the four evangelists based the existing Gospels is by no means a shadowy one, and is increased by the resemblance which some of the verses bear to passages in the canonical records. There are altogether eight sayings or verses, each beginning with the words, " Jesus saith." Of these, the fourth- and eighth cannot yet be made out, and the fifth is only incompletely read. The first verse repeats in substance the familiar warning o£ the necessity for self-examination before- finding fault with "thy brother." The second saying is?, "Except ye fast •to the world ye shall not find the Kingdom of God, and except ye keep the Sabbath ,ye shall not see the Father," a passage already, as was inevitable, beginning to excite theological controversy, the recognition by Christ of the Jewish Sabbath not being elsewhere distinctly recorded. In the third saying Christ tells how in the world "I found all men drunken, and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart." The next Logion poetically records the Divine Omnipresence in Nature : " liaise the stone, and there thon shalt find me ; cleave the wood and there. am I"; and in the sixth and seventh there are passages strongly suggestive of particular sayings already recorded in the .New Testament. Both the divergencies and the correlations of the new sayings wil;h respect to the "canonical Gospels will, no doubt, be keenly discussed ; but although a repetition of such discoveries would possibly compel attention to the question of a revision of the canon, it is on the whole unlikely that any formal recognition will be added by the churches to the extraordinary interest which already attaches to the Libyan papyri. It may, however, be mentioned as a suggestive fact that already, among other papyri found and deciphered by the same explorers, there has been discovered a part of Matthew's Gospel antedating the earliest known manuscript of that book ; while literally hundreds of papyri found with these have still to be unrolled and-eubmitted to the light of modern research. Altogether, the. story is one of absorbing interest, and may well stimulate not only the fortunate explorers themselves, but even the' most inveterate advocate of strictly " practical 5> enterprises, to promote in every way the further prosecution of a research already so richly rewarded.

Mr W. H. Montgomery, M.H.R. for Ellesmere, »nd Mr R. M'Nab, ex-member for Mataura, who were present in England at the Jubilee celebrations, haves both arrived back in the colony.