Papyrologists date the fragment to the second century CE, making it one of the earliest examples of Christian writing, even before the formation of the New Testament.
. The contents show that, much like us, early Christians were plagued by life’s worries.
For an artifact that was only published this week, the fragment has an unusual history. Sometime during the 1960s-1980s the papyrus fragment was cataloged and photographed in Oxford. In 2010 one section was sold to Hobby Lobby, Inc. by former University of Oxford faculty member and MacArthur-winning scholar Dirk Obbink.—the museum established by the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby—returned the papyrus to the EES in 2019 after a joint investigation confirmed that it belonged to the EES.
Then there are the contents of the papyrus. Although the fragment does not include the phrase “Jesus said,” it appears to be a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. As the fragment is so short, it is difficult to determine exactly what kind of text it was. There is no narrative content, but the fragment might have been part of a previously unknown Gospel or instead part of a text by an early Christian writer that quoted sayings of Jesus.
What is certain is that this text was at least partly concerned with the problem of worries of the world, or as ancient philosophers would put it, the care of the soul. The contents parallel passages of both canonical and non-canonical Gospels around this theme: specifically, an instruction not to worry about your life, food, or clothing ; to emulate birds and their lack of cares ; and a saying in the Gospel of Thomas that cautions people that even a rich man who amassed wealth still met death .
An alternative view might see the fragment as evidence of early Christian reading and writing practices. Some early Christians seem to have been engaged in thematic excerpting and reorganizing of material from the Gospels. Why would they do this? Perhaps as a form of entertainment, perhaps to display their intellectual chops, or perhaps as a mental or spiritual exercise.
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