Posted on 09/02/2014 10:11:49 AM PDT by CorporateStepsister
It has laid largely unstudied in a university library for more than 100 years.
But now a 1,500-year-old papyrus has been identified as one of the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms.
The ‘remarkable’ document contains some of the earliest documented references to The Last Supper and sheds new light on early Christian practices, experts say.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Actually, during the time of the disciples they did have the Greek Old Testament (the “Septuagint”), and Liturgies which preserved the heart of the gospel. In fact, many surmise that the difficulty in the flow of the timeline of the gospel of St John stems from the supposed fact that the gospel of pastiche of older passages used in liturgies, finally written as a single work as St. John felt his death was becoming imminent.
This is simply not true!
From Geisler, N. L., & Nix, W. E. (1986). A General Introduction to the Bible (Rev. and expanded., p. 388). Chicago: Moody Press.
JOHN RYLANDS FRAGMENT (C. A.D. 117–138)
This papyrus fragment (2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches) from a codex is the earliest known copy of any portion of the New Testament. It dates from the first half of the second century, probably A.D. 117–138.
The original text contains a photo of the fragment.
Yes. I’m just referring to the idea that some of Paul’s letters had not even been written yet, likewise, Revelation.
Not every Christian has had a complete bible and many (think Gentile converts) never saw any “old testament” writings. The bible is a powerful tool, but a person can be a Christian without having ever seen a bible or read a word of its content.
Faith—Not Magic. Egyptian Gnostic Christian book—blending Ancient Egyptian Beliefs with Christian Thought—an early protestant movement that was snuffed out by Byzantines. So they didn’t survive but their is beauty in their ideas—Like that Christ wasn’t on the Cross at all—that was someone else. He was hurt though—by the mental angush -—The believed in an all spirit Jesus and debated if he even left footprints in the dust.
I’ve been reading Kostenberger’s “The Lion and the Lamb” which is an introduction to the New Testament. I just finished the section on John yesterday.
There is quite a bit of structure in each of the Gospel accounts. Conservative scholars attribute differences in the flow of the timeline to differences in emphasis for each of the Gospel writers.
Culturally, telling “linear” stories was not high on the list of important things in the mind of the writer.
Even though accounts were written long after the events, they are regarded as true accounts because they were divinely inspired by God.
Thank you for that explanation.
>> Do you think they called each other “Saint” all the time? <<
Of course not! It would be an outrageous presumption! Since true faith preserves unto death, and they knew of apostates and heretics, how could they know before someone died that a given individual was a saint? Hence, St. Paul asks for prayers for the saints of a given church, but never refers to any individual as a saint.
That’s one of the great misunderstandings of Catholicism: It’s not that people aren’t saints while they are alive; it’s only that they can only be certainly known to be saints after they die. Oh, what a horrifying world it would be if only the persons who were eventually declared to be saints were actually saints!
Excellent comments in #7 along your line of thought.
“Dr Mazza said: ‘This is an important and unexpected discovery as it’s one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context and the first charm ever found to refer to the Eucharist - the last supper - as the manna of the Old Testament.
The text of the amulet is a combination of biblical passages including Psalm 78:23-24 and Matthew 26:28-30 among others.
It includes the words: ‘Our God prepared a sacred table in the desert for the people and gave manna of the new covenant to eat, the Lord’s immortal body and the blood of Christ poured for us in remission of sins.’
Dr Mazza said that some Christians still use passages from the Bible as protective charms, so the amulet marks the beginning of a trend in Christianity.
‘Though we know almost nothing about the owner of the charm, we think it could have been owned by a resident of the village nearby Hermopolis (el-Ashmunein),’ she said.
‘We can say this is an incredibly rare example of Christianity and the Bible becoming meaningful to ordinary people - not just priests and the elite.
‘It’s doubly fascinating because the amulet maker clearly knew the Bible, but made lots of mistakes: some words are misspelled and others are in the wrong order. This suggests that he was writing by heart rather than copying it.
‘It’s quite exciting. Thanks to this discovery, we now think that the knowledge of the Bible was more embedded in sixth century AD Egypt than we previously realised.’”
Thanks for the ping.
As dangus said above, the really early church had the Greek Septuagint, which was a ~250 BC Greek translation of the Old Testament. Literacy was at best 10%. So the early church was still highly oral in tradition.
The early church did not compile the various writings which now comprise the New Testament until after a couple of hundred years. But they did circulate the letters and Gospels between churches from the beginning. Paul encouraged it in his writing. Part of the "fullness of time" cited by Christ was the preparation of the world for the planting of the church. Briefly, the preparation included: (1) dispersion of Jewish communities around the Mediterranean, (2) Pax Romana allowing peaceful travel, (3) Roman road system, (4) translation of the Old Testament into Greek, and (5) universal use of Greek around the Mediterranean.
Notice that the groundwork for many of these prerequisites was laid centuries before the first coming of Christ! :)
“Dr Mazza said: ‘This is an important and unexpected discovery as it’s one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context and the first charm ever found to refer to the Eucharist - the last supper - as the manna of the Old Testament.
The text of the amulet is a combination of biblical passages including Psalm 78:23-24 and Matthew 26:28-30 among others.
It includes the words: ‘Our God prepared a sacred table in the desert for the people and gave manna of the new covenant to eat, the Lord’s immortal body and the blood of Christ poured for us in remission of sins.’
Dr Mazza said that some Christians still use passages from the Bible as protective charms, so the amulet marks the beginning of a trend in Christianity.
‘Though we know almost nothing about the owner of the charm, we think it could have been owned by a resident of the village nearby Hermopolis (el-Ashmunein),’ she said.
‘We can say this is an incredibly rare example of Christianity and the Bible becoming meaningful to ordinary people - not just priests and the elite.
‘It’s doubly fascinating because the amulet maker clearly knew the Bible, but made lots of mistakes: some words are misspelled and others are in the wrong order. This suggests that he was writing by heart rather than copying it.
‘It’s quite exciting. Thanks to this discovery, we now think that the knowledge of the Bible was more embedded in sixth century AD Egypt than we previously realised.’”
Literacy was at best 10%. So the early church was still highly oral in tradition.
I am trying to study events that took place locally in 1775.
The primary people and events are pretty much the same but the details are often contradictory. Even depositions by people that were present at the same event are different in many respects.
It is true that Luke was probably not an eye witness, but he states that he interviewed lots of eye witnesses in order to produce an accurate account. He served as a reporter. The rest of the Gospel writers were there.
So any infusion of inaccuracy would be in the transmission of the original autographs. The question at hand is whether we have reliable text. "Textual criticism" is the body of scholarship which deals with this problem.
Textual critics fall in both camps. There are those that argue that we do not have reliable texts as well as those who contend that the texts are reliable.
There are enough early manuscripts around to result in two major schools of thought within the Church. There are those who support the use of Byzantine texts, which are more numerous, from the area of modern Turkey. The other, more modern school, wants to use older manuscripts from Alexandria.
Recent New Testament translators have leaned toward the use of the Alexandrian texts. However, there are NO MAJOR DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES SUPPORTED BETWEEN THE TWO SETS OF MANUSCRIPTS. So we are talking about nits and nuances.
It should also be pointed out that there is a large body of manuscripts from the early church fathers. They quoted the manuscripts which later were adopted as the New Testament so frequently that most of the entire text of the New Testament can be reconstructed simply be resorting to these quotations.
“Early Christians had no bibles. But they had prayer, and a personal relationwhip with their Creator. The bible helps, but it is not a requirement.”
The first Christians had the Hebrew Scriptures, the Apostles teaching them, and the circulating letters and writings of the Apostles. What they didn’t have was everything collected, printed in nice fonts, bound and distributed at a reasonable price.
Just to tweak: the ancient Christians *did* continue the Jewish method of proclaiming the Word in their Liturgies. By the 2nd century, there were moves to standardize which texts were worthy of inclusion into liturgies. So while it’s true that most early Christians probably never laid hands on a bible, it was central to early Christian worship.
On a tangent I hope you’ll find interesting:
As I noted before, The Gospel of St. John probably consists of several liturgical readings compiled together as John’s death approached. The existence of such proto-gospels before their canonical publication probably explains much of the relationship between their texts:
Church fathers (Irenaeus IIRC?) attest to a Hebrew version of St. Matthew as early as AD 50. And indeed, many textual analysts find that portion seem less natively Greek than others. What’s odd is that it’s the most Greek portions that parallel St. Mark perfectly. Why would Mark condense Matthew using only the most Greek portions? Answer: it happened the opposite way. Matthew added almost all of Mark’s writings to his own. But why? Because Mark wrote with the authority of St. Peter! (or at least his popularity). As Mark spread throughout the Roman world, Matthew aligned his local version to Mark’s. (Indeed, Mark would later script the liturgy.)
Likewise, St. Luke recognized the Hebrew nature of St. Matthew, and sensed that the very literal Greek audience would misunderstand the mythological style of Matthew, and become scandalized by it. So he wrote a very historical gospel: Whereas Matthew traced Jesus’ lineage through the Kings of Israel, Luke does so through the lowly origins of Jesus. Luke uses existing stories from Matthew, but also possibly from the Blessed Virgin Mary herself, and St. John, in addition to his own eye-witness.
[This is NOT to say Matthew is partly fictitious! He never actually wrote “... was the father of ...,” but simply “... begat ...” Nothing implies the immediacy of “was the father of.” Hence, Matthew was able to confirm the geneaology to the numerological expectations of the contemporary Hebrews.]
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