Via Twitter I learn of a bit of a buzz about a papyrus. That’s always a good thing in principle – public interest means funding! Indeed the whole Oxyrhynchus papyri project came about because the public got interested in “new words of Jesus” and a newspaper raised the money to find more. So what’s this one about?
What was left of the hymn, archeologists found 100 years ago in ancient Egyptian ruins on a scrap of tattered papyrus, long buried by desert sand. The discovery was sealed in a climate-controlled vault at Oxford University until John Dickson came along.
Dickson, who joined Wheaton College in 2022 as the inaugural Jean Kvamme Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies and Public Christianity, began to realize the importance of the papyrus for today’s Christians.
“I’m thinking, why has no one brought this back to life? You know, this is a song from before there were denominations,” he told Baptist Press. “And it’s thoroughly Orthodox Christian theology.”
Archeological dating could certify without a doubt, Dickson said, that the hymn dated to the mid-200s, owing to paleography and “a corn contract on the back” of the papyrus. About a fifth of the words, the beginning lines, were missing, he said, as well as the corresponding tune to the missing lyrics. But the rest, including a tune that would have resonated with pagans of the day, was intact.
What is most notable, Dickson said, is the certainty with which the song presents the Trinity, although it predates by generations the Council of Nicaea, in 325 AD, which scholars say confirmed the Trinity.
But Dickson’s challenge was rebirthing the hymn in tune and lyrics for today’s Christians, while maintaining the high praise of the early Christians…. Chris Tomlin, whom Time Magazine has hailed as “potentially the most often sung artist in the world,” and Ben Fielding of Australia….
The massive collaboration comes together in a song, The First Hymn Project, releasing April 11 worldwide, and the accompanying documentary featuring a cast of scholars streaming April 14 in the U.S. on Wonder. Special documentary showings and concerts are scheduled 7-9 p.m. April 14 at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and April 15 from 7-9 p.m. at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
And another site here. The razzmatazz is a little alien to the world of scholarship, but if it brings interest and money to papyrology then only a fool could disapprove. (Although past experience suggests that papyrology actually does contain a significant number of elitist fools….)
The articles tend to give the impression that this is a fresh discovery. But it is not.
It is in fact P.Oxy 1786, published in 1922 in volume 15 of the Oxyrhynchyus papyri. It is held in the Sackler Library in Oxford. There are pictures online at the Oxyrhynchus site here. There is even a Wikipedia article about it.
Well done, John Dickson.