Papyrus

PAPYRUS. - Writing material obtained from the filaments enclosed in the stalk of the cyperus papyrus, a plant of the order Cyperaceae, which grows in hot and humid places and, among others, in great abundance in Egypt. The filaments, arranged in two series superimposed at right angles to one another and suitably pressed and dried in the sun, produce the paper of papyrus, χάρτης, as the Greeks called it (cf. Pliny, Nat. hist., XIII, 11-13); the paper, made up into rolls (v.) or, later, into a book, served the most varied writing uses in different languages (v. PAPYROLOGY); the particular dryness of the soil in certain regions of the ancient world (and especially in Egypt, and also at Dura Europos on the right bank of the Euphrates) favored the preservation of papyrus papers, which now, surviving in such large part, can serve admirably to document the material and spiritual life of antiquity in the most diverse fields.

As regards Christianity, the surviving papyri (Greek, Latin and Coptic) relate to texts of authors (scriptural, liturgical, patristic), to documents concerning the functioning of the Christian Churches and monasteries in Egypt (correspondence, accounts, denunciations, petitions, etc.), to various manifestations of Christian life (private letters, amulets, etc.).

The scriptural texts are quite numerous, whether they relate to the Old Testament (in the Septuagint version) or to the New. The Greek Old Testament is represented by nearly 150 papyri and ostraca, almost all of the 3rd and 4th century A.D.; important is a papyrus of Deuteronomy of Ptolemaic age from the 2nd century B.C. (P. Ryl., III, 458); the most widely represented book of the Old Testament is that of the Psalms, with more than 60 papyri especially of the 4th and 5th century; fragments of more than half of the Psalms are reported there, and more frequently of those of the first of the traditional series. Next in frequency is the book of Genesis with about twenty papyri, among which is a fragment of a Latin translation and a commentary of Origen on Genesis itself; among the prophets it would seem that Isaiah is the best known; the interest of all these biblical papyri lies in the fact that they enter usefully into the innumerable questions concerning the manuscript tradition of the books and their various philological and exegetical problems. A surviving text of the 3rd century A.D. (P. Oxy., XVII, 2070) contains a Christian treatise in polemic with the Old Testament, on the model of the Dialogue of Justin with Trypho the Jew.

The papyri of the four canonical Gospels are also numerous; Matthew has more than a dozen fragments from the 3rd to the 7th-8th century; and in the text they are closer to the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus than to the Syriac; Mark has only 4, from the 4th to the 6th century; Luke about a dozen also from the 4th to the 6th; but above all frequent is the representation of the Fourth Gospel with more than 15 fragments and, a most notable thing, with a fragment already from the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. (v. RYLAND), which serves to bring its composition ever closer to the end of the 1st century, something that several, before the discovery of the papyri, did not seem disposed to accept (cf. C. H. Roberts, An unpublished fragment of the IV. Gospel, Manchester 1935 [*P. Ryl., III, 457]); others of these manuscripts are of the 3rd century; the most recent is of the 7th century; the Egerton papyrus 3 perhaps also contains a fragment of a commentary on the Gospels. More than ten are the papyri so far surviving of the Acts of the Apostles, from the 3rd to the 6th century; interesting is the fact that the "Western" text of the Acts appears among them. Of the letters of St. Paul the most represented are those to the Romans and then that to the Hebrews, in copies sometimes important even from the 3rd century; then especially those of St. James; those of St. Peter and of St. John are also sometimes represented; the Apocalypse has as many as six papyri from the 3rd to the 7th century with the commentary of Oecumenius in a Michigan papyrus (H. Ch. Hoskier, The complete Commentary of Oecumenus on the Apocalypse*, Ann Arbor 1928).

A series of apocryphal Gospels is then represented in the papyri; one of the most notable is the so-called Egerton papyrus (v.), another is the Protevangelium of James, surviving to a notable extent in a papyrus of the 4th century, and there still exists a Gospel of Mary in the Ryland papyri of the 3rd century, and perhaps a Gospel of the Egyptians; there are also in the papyri some Loghia Iesu, which are read in the papyri of Oxyrhynchus (v. OXYRHYNCHUS).

There also appear Acts of John, Acts of Peter and above all the Acts of Paul, preserved among others in an important manuscript of ca. 300 (Πράξεις Παύλου, ed. Schubart and Schmidt, Glückstadt-Hamburg 1936) and in other papyri.

The papyri also preserve hymns, prayers and various liturgies: hymns to the Savior, to the Virgin, to the Trinity, to the martyrs; one consisting of a cento of Psalms, discovered among the Berlin papyri of the 7th-8th century (Berl. Klass. Texte, 8, XVI); another, quite notable, contains the most ancient passage of Christian music known up to now (P. Oxy., XV, 1786; cf. G. B. Pighi, Ricerche sulla notazione ritmica greca. L'uno cristiano del P. Oxy. 1786, in Aegyptus, 21 [1941], p. 189 ff.). The liturgical texts are more than twenty, and among the others one is written in Latin (P. Ryl., III, 472) and belongs to the 3rd-4th century; another, which sets out the liturgy of Christmas, is found among the Berlin papyri and belongs to the 7th century (Berl. Klass. Texte, 6, VII, 2); a συναπτή of great use in the Byzantine liturgy was recognized in a Florentine papyrus (cf. A. S. Mercati, Frammenti della συναπτή in un p. fiorentino, in Aegyptus, 20 [1940], p. 212 ff.). For the liturgical papyri cf. C. Del Grande, Liturgiae, preces, hymni Christianorum e papyriis collecti, Naples 1938. Amulets in papyrus, with verses of the Gospel and of other canonical texts, sometimes mixed with pagan invocations, are also surviving in the material that has come to light so far.

A certain number of papyri, not frequent moreover, contains passages of Christian orations and homilies from the 3rd to the 6th century: about twenty of them have been traced (cf. G. Ausenda, Contributo allo studio dell'omiletica cristiana nei p. greci dell'Egitto, in Aegyptus, 20 [1940], p. 43 ff.): among them figure Origen and Chrysostom.

Sacred writers also appear in the material of the surviving papyri: Athanasius, Cyril, the Apology of Aristides, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Irenaeus, the Didache and especially the Pastor of Hermas, which is preserved in about ten papyri from the 2nd to the 6th century and thus proves to have been widely read in Egypt (cf. L. Alfonsi, Ermia, Brescia 1947). Some papyri contain Acts of martyrs: Abraham, Nabrahe, Julian of Anazarbus, Paphnutius the anchorite, St. Christina and perhaps others.

Another category of papyri that concern the life of the Church are the texts of the Nicene Creed (P. Ryl., I, 6 is the oldest) and of the Constantinopolitan Creed; the fragment of a festal epistle of 577 addressed by a patriarch of Alexandria to the Church of Egypt (P. Grenfell, II, 112) and a paschal letter of another Alexandrian patriarch, quite extensive, in the Berlin papyri (Berl. Klass. Texte, 6, VI, 3); an ecclesiastical calendar of 535-36 also survives (P. Oxy., XI, 1357; cf. H. Delchaye, in Anal. Bolland., 42 [1924], pp. 83-99).

The series of nearly a hundred libelli of the so-called persecution of Decius of 250 brings one more directly into contact with the time and manner of the struggles against the nascent Church (v. A. Bludau, Die ägyptischen Libelli und die Christenverfolgung des Kaiser Decius, in Röm. Quartalschrift. Suppl., 27 [1931]).

Very numerous administrative documents concern the Egyptian Church and the monasteries of every century and have for the most part been studied (v. P. Barison, Ricerche sui monasteri dell'Egitto bizantino e arabo, in Aegyptus, 18 [1938], pp. 29-148; L. Antonini, Le chiese cristiane in Egitto dal IV al IX secolo secondo i documenti dei papiri greci, ibid., 20 [1940], pp. 129-208). The Christian letters that have appeared in the papyri have also been collected and studied, and the subject would deserve to be taken up again now (v. G. Ghedini, Lettere cristiane da p. greci del sec. III e IV, Milan 1923).

Aristide Calderini