C. The Proof is in the Papyri?

Proof of Christianity’s once-prevailing diversity and of the efforts of later Christians to “rewrite the history” is often believed to reside in the discoveries of early Christian papyri.¹⁷ These are the exciting archaeological finds, like the Gospel of Judas, or more recently in 2012 the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, that seem to pop up with regularity, especially right before Christmas and Easter. In 2004, noting the existence of a relatively large number of extracanonical Christian writings unearthed at the famous site of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, Eldon J. Epp wrote, “The collocation with our so-called ‘New Testament’ papyri of such recognized or possible candidates for canonicity raises serious issues, such as the propriety of designating two categories of writings in this early period: ‘New Testament’ and ‘apocryphal….’”¹⁸ Not only are “New Testament” and “apocryphal” writings found at the same archaeological sites, some scholars see the latter as outnumbering the former. When the Gospel of Judas was published in 2006, Ehrman stated it bluntly: “Amazingly,” he wrote, “virtually every time a new document is found, it is ‘heretical’ rather than ‘proto-orthodox.’”¹⁹

With the “artifactual” evidence in mind, Epp continued in his 2004 article, “there is no basis … to claim that the ‘New Testament’ manuscripts stand out as a separate or separable group” from the others.²⁰ In other words, the dispassionate and impartial discoveries of archaeology are thought to show us what was really happening, on the ground, despite what biased theologians like Irenaeus, Origen, or Eusebius might have wanted their readers to believe. Prior to the fourth century, in the view of many scholars writing today, Christian literature was flowing freely and believers were making no distinctions between books like the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Mary, Paul’s letter to the Romans, and the letter of Ptolemy the Valentinian to a woman named Flora.

What should we say about the archaeological discoveries? One of the first things we should say is that there is always a temptation to generalize too much from randomly discovered archaeological evidence. Such evidence has the advantage of being unbiased, but the disadvantage of being haphazard and largely in need of context. And yet, there is certainly a great deal to be gained from this important and growing body of artifactual evidence. Here I would like to summarize our current state of that evidence, focusing on the Gospels.²¹

We have four Gospels we now call canonical. Scholars point out, from references to other Gospels found in surviving literature, that there may have been eight or ten or maybe even twelve other Gospels circulating in the second and third centuries, so, two to three times as many non-canonical as canonical ones. But simply estimating the number of Gospels in existence does not tell us how many people or churches were using each one, or for what purposes they might have been using them. Currently, archaeologists have dug up ten fragments from one of the maybe eight to twelve non-canonical Gospels dated to the second or third centuries. The number of fragments of one of the four canonical Gospel from the same period is about forty, so a ratio of four to one. This suggests that, even though there were more “alternative” Gospels than canonical Gospels in existence, apparently these others weren’t being copied and circulated as much as the four. But this only tells us part of the story.

Is it really the case that there is nothing that differentiates the “canonical” from the “non-canonical” ones? (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Two Early Gospel Fragments

One does not need to know one iota of Greek in order to see that there is a clear, visible difference between these two contemporary Gospel fragments from the third century. Gospel A exhibits a rapidly-written, informal, cursive hand, the kind customarily used for bills of sale and other documentary records. This copy of the Gospel of Mary (P. Oxy. 3525) was clearly intended for private and not for public reading.

Gospel B is written in a clear, upright, very regular, even calligraphic hand, an early example of a formal book hand often called “biblical majuscule.” The scribe, clearly a professional, produced a formal and easily-readable transcription. This copy of the Gospel of John (P. Oxy. 1780 also known as P³⁹) was almost certainly intended for public reading, no doubt in a gathering for worship.

This comparison is a bit extreme: most early manuscripts of canonical writings are not so well-executed as this copy of John, and most non-canonical manuscripts are not as sloppy as this copy of the Gospel of Mary (although there is no early, non-canonical Gospel manuscript so “high-class” as P³⁹). I’ve selected these two examples to illustrate the simple point that there can be and often are clear differences between manuscripts, differences which can suggest quite different circumstances of manufacture and differences in intended use. And perhaps more important than the obvious difference between these two in the care and skill in writing is something you cannot see from the photographs: Gospel A (P. Oxy. 3525, Gospel of Mary)²² is written on a roll, Gospel B (P³⁹, Gospel of John)²³ on a codex.