Papyrus

The theme of this week at College seems to be archeology. As we study the Old Testament, as we move (relatively quickly) through our overview of the books and sections of the Bible, we pause momentarily at various points to put what we are learning in its historical context. Much of this involves thinking about archaeology and what place it has in coming to understand the Bible. Some people find it a bit boring- but I love it! It is amazing to think about God, working in and through history to enact his purposes. Its helpful to think about what archeology can and can't prove (it doesn't-reasonably enough- always seem to want to answer the questions we want to ask)- and yet the little evidence mixed in with the Biblical account gives me comfort that God's word truly describes what happens.

But the most interesting archaeological discovery I had this week was in a lecture about Papyrus. You see, for many, many years- there was a lot of mystery as to how to understand many words in the Greek New Testament (around 760!) that only ever appeared in the Bible. People would try to work it out from context and from earlier translations- but this process was fraught with error. People even talked about "New Testament Greek" like it was a language all of its own that couldn't be compared to anything.

One of the problems was that the writings of New Testament days often did not last because the paper would rot away from connection with water- either rain or flooding depending where it was found.

But in Egypt there was a town by the name of Oxyrhynchus. Oxyrhynchus got its water from a canal off the Nile- and so unlike the rest of Egypt it was not subject to flooding. And being in the dessert- they never got any rain. So when the people of Oxyrhynchus dug holes in the dessert sand and buried their papyrus documents (everything from bills to religious documents)- 2000 years later archaeologists were able to find it completely in-tact!

The Oldest copy of a part of the New Testament was found in Oxyrhynchus- a section of the gospel of John that appears to be copied with decades of John penning the original! And those 760 Greek words that were only found in the New Testament were almost all found in the Oxyrhynchus documents- so that we can now have an even better understanding of what the writers of the New Testament meant when they used certain words- and can be more confident that our translations are correct.

Archeology doesn't seem to always answer the questions that we want to ask- and sometimes can be frustrating. But this week was a real reminder that God is in control of all of it- and provides for his people.