God's library: the archaeology of the earliest Christian manuscripts

416 Pages·2018·81.309 MB·English

by  Nongbri, Brent

g o d ’ s l i b r a ry
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GOD’S
LIBRARY
The Archaeology of the Earliest
Christian Manuscripts
B R E N T N O N G B R I
New Haven and London
Published with assistance from the foundation established in
memory of Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College.
Copyright © 2018 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections
107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for
the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Quotations from Legends of the Centuries, by Charles Méla (Fondation
Martin Bodmer), English translation by David Macey, © 2004
Éditions Cercle d’Art, Paris.
Quotations from Carl Schmidt, “Die neuesten Bibelfunde aus
Ägypten.” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 30 (1931):
285–293, De Gruyter, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft,
Walter De Gruyter GmbH Berlin Boston, 1931. Copyright and all
rights reserved. Material from this publication has been used with the
permission of Walter De Gruyter GmbH.
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Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963318
ISBN 978-0-300-21541-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Mary Jane Cuyler
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Map Showing Locations in Egypt xii
prologue Reintroducing the Earliest Christian Manuscripts 1
1. The Early Christian Book 21
2. The Dating Game 47
3. Finding Early Christian Books in Egypt 83
4. A Discovery “Which Threw All Others in the Shade”:
The Beatty Biblical Papyri 116
5. An Elusive Collection: The Bodmer Papyri 157
6. Excavating Christian Litter and Literature
at Oxyrhynchus 216
7. Fabricating a Second-Century Codex of the
Four Gospels 247
epilogue The Future of Ancient Christian Books 269
Appendix: Christian Books from Oxyrhynchus 273
Notes 281
Bibliography 353
Index of Subjects 385
Index of Manuscripts 395
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Acknowledgments
i am grateful first of all to Alanna Nobbs, Larry Welborn, and
the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University for tak-
ing a risk and bringing me out to Australia to work on early Chris-
tian manuscripts. This book definitely bears the stamp of the unique
environment of Macquarie’s Department of Ancient History, where
the study of the papyrological and epigraphic record of ancient
Christians has been central for decades. I also owe a huge debt to
Gill Ellis and the whole Arts Research Office at Macquarie for teach-
ing me how to navigate the Australian grant system, a system to
which I am equally indebted. Funding that supported this research
came from the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie, the
Society for the Study of Early Christianity, a Macquarie University
Research Fellowship, and a Discovery Early Career Research Award
from the Australian Research Council.
The last revisions on the book took place during an enjoyable
stay at Aarhus University. I am obliged especially to René Falken-
berg and Kasper Bro Larsen for making that happen. Special thanks
are due to Paul Dilley, Melissa Moreton, and everyone at the Uni-
versity of Iowa involved in the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on manu-
scripts across premodern Eurasia, which was an eye-opening expe-
rience that helped to broaden my perspective on the history of book
production at a key moment of the project.
Many of the ideas presented in this book were first hammered
out in talks presented at Fordham University, Princeton University,
Trinity College Melbourne, the University of Manchester, the Uni-
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