Christian Papyri And The Ancient Church -- By: Timothy N. Mitchell

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 173:690 (Apr 2016)
Article: Christian Papyri And The Ancient Church
Author: Timothy N. Mitchell


Christian Papyri And The Ancient Church

Timothy N. Mitchell

Timothy N. Mitchell is a Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham and Associate Editor of Scripture and Interpretation for Eleutheria, the graduate student journal of Liberty University’s School of Divinity.

Abstract

Modern scholarship and popular media outlets often depict the earliest Christians as holding wildly divergent beliefs about Jesus and as reading and writing secret gospels that never made it into the New Testament. This view fails to consider the material remains of early Christian manuscripts from the second and third centuries that have been discovered in Egypt. These manuscripts mainly consist of New Testament writings and contain certain paralinguistic and formatting features that highlight unique socio-cultural aspects of the early Christians that stand in stark contrast to these modern theories of Christian origins.

The earliest Christians often appear enigmatic and elusive. Popular media today, like the History Channel’s Bible Secrets Revealed1 or best-selling novels like The Da Vinci Code,2 often depict the early Christians of the second and third centuries as holding wildly divergent views of Jesus and as reading and writing differing gospels and books that never made it into the New Testament.3 This perspective has been popularized by New Testament scholar and best-selling author Bart Ehrman, who wrote:

One of the competing groups in Christianity succeeded in overwhelming all others. This group gained more converts than its opponents and managed to relegate all its competitors to the margins. . . . This group became “orthodox” and once it sealed its victory over all its opponents, it rewrote the history of the engagement—claiming that it had always been the majority opinion of Christianity, that its views had always been the views of the apostolic churches and of the apostles, that its creeds were rooted directly in the teachings of Jesus.4

To be sure, early Christianity was no monolithic affair. There were communities that held different beliefs about Jesus than are common in Christianity today. But were these divergent views of Jesus the real Christianity that was suppressed by the church fathers? Which writings of the early church leaders reflect the beliefs of everyday Christians? Thankfully, there is a way to answer these questions, circumvent the “official” de...

You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
Click here to subscribe
visitor : : uid: ()