LAW AND ORDER: The Greek papyrus discovered in the Judean Desert. Courtesy Shai Halevi, IAA.

A lengthy papyrus, found in the Judean Desert, sheds light on law and order in the Roman provinces of Judea and Arabia. Translated by a joint Israeli-Austrian team, and published in the journal Tyche, the papyrus dates to between 129 and 132 CE and details a gripping legal case involving forgery, tax evasion, and the fraudulent sale and manumission of slaves. According to Avner Ecker, one of the text’s translators, “This is the best-documented Roman court case from Judea apart from the trial of Jesus.”

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Forgery and Fraud in the Second Century

The papyrus, which contains 133 lines of preserved text, is the longest Greek papyrus ever uncovered in the Judean Desert, although for decades it had been misclassified as a Nabatean text and practically lost in the archives of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). It was only while perusing the archives that Hannah Cotton Paltiel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem noticed the unique document. “When I saw it, marked ‘Nabataean,’ I exclaimed, ‘It’s Greek to me!’” remarked Cotton Paltiel in a press release.

Upon translation, the team that Cotton Paltiel put together realized the papyrus preserves an incredible snapshot into the Roman legal system and life between two Jewish revolts against the Romans: the Diaspora Revolt (c. 115–117 CE) and the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (c. 132–136 CE). The papyrus, which pertains to a legal case brought before a Roman court, contains the prosecutor’s trial notes and a rapidly drafted transcript of the judicial hearing itself.

The case consists of charges of corrupt dealings against two Jewish men, Gadalias and Saulos. Gadalias had a criminal history involving violence, extortion, counterfeiting, and inciting rebellion. Saulos, his collaborator, orchestrated the fictitious sale and manumission of slaves without paying the requisite Roman taxes. To conceal their activities, the defendants forged documents. “Forgery and tax fraud carried severe penalties under Roman law, including hard labor or even capital punishment,” explained Anna Dolganov of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who was part of the translation team. It is unclear what the purpose of freeing the slaves was or exactly who the slaves were, but it could have involved human trafficking or possibly reflected the biblical duty to redeem enslaved Jews. As pointed out by Ecker, “freeing slaves does not appear to be a profitable business model.”

Detail of the infrared image of the Papyrus Cotton. Courtesy IAA.

In addition to the papyrus’s fascinating story, it also sheds light on Roman legal practices in the region at the time, showing the empire’s ability to exercise legal control and regulate private business even in remote regions. The text further suggests that both men were suspected of having been involved in rebellious activities against the Romans, during Emperor Hadrian’s visit to the region in 129. It is unclear if they participated in such activities, but the accusation highlights the suspicion of possible conspiracies during a period of increased unrest. The preserved lines of the papyrus make no mention of the trial’s outcome, which may have been interrupted by the outbreak of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt.

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Due in part to the papyrus’s mistaken classification in the IAA archives, its exact history has unfortunately been lost. However, examining excavation records and other papyri in the archive, the team suggests that it was probably discovered in the 1950s or ‘60s in the caves of Nahal Hever where many similar papyri were found.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

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Dead Sea Scrolls History: Looking Back on the Last 75 Years

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The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity: Part One

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity: Part Two

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4th century papyrus containing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Courtesy Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Public Domain Mark 1.0.

While working through collections of unstudied papyri at the Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky State and University Library in Germany, two scholars made a shocking discovery: the earliest known copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Although the small papyrus contains only 13 lines of fragmentary Greek text, it provides an incredible window into the history of this early Christian apocryphal gospel.

An Early Apocryphal Gospel

Publishing in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, the scholars date the papyrus to the fourth or early fifth century based on its paleography. This would make it the oldest known copy of the text by a century and the earliest Greek version by half a millennium.

Containing stories of the early childhood of Jesus, the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas is thought to have been written in the second century, likely in Greek. It quickly gained popularity and was translated into multiple languages, including Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, Gaelic, and Slavonic. The linguistic plurality of the gospel has made it difficult for scholars to reconstruct the original text. Even the language of the original is debated.

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“Our papyrus is a unique artifact of an early Christian text,” Lajos Berkes, papyrologist and co-author of the paper, told Bible History Daily. “It contains the earliest copy of the text in any language; thus, this fragment is the closest we can get to the original. It strengthens the view that the text was originally written in Greek and not in Syriac as some scholars had assumed. Furthermore, it gives very important insights into the textual history of the gospel, which allows a reconsideration of the language and style of its earliest version.” Although the papyrus contains only 13 lines and has only about ten letters on each line, it is closer in form and style to a later, ninth-century Greek version than it is to earlier versions of the text.

Reconstructing several lines of the papyrus, the scholars suggest it contained a section from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas known as the “vivification of the sparrows.” The story recounts an episode from Jesus’s childhood in which Joseph finds the young Jesus molding doves out of clay near a stream on the Sabbath. When asked why he is doing such a thing on the Sabbath, Jesus responds by clapping his hands and bringing the doves to life.

The early dating of the papyrus is not its only interesting feature, however. Measuring about 4 by 2 inches, the papyrus does not appear to have been part of a codex but rather was a single sheet with writing on one side, varying letter sizes, sloping lines, and multiple erasures. Analyzing the handwriting and style of the papyrus, the scholars concluded that, in all likelihood, “the text was copied on a loose sheet as a writing exercise, perhaps in a school or monastic context… Hands of this type are usually attempts by already experienced, but not expert, students at writing in a formal (book hand) style, which is done with some degree of fluency, but still shows unevenness.” As such, the papyrus was likely an extract from a more complete copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The use of such extracts, especially from biblical books and gospels, was a common practice.

One of many early apocryphal gospels, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is generally considered to be Gnostic in origin and is different than the similarly named Gospel of Thomas, which was found near Nag Hammadi in the 20th century. Despite its widespread popularity, it was generally considered heretical by the early Church, with Pope Gelasius I even placing it on a list of heretical books in the fifth century.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

The Gospel of Thomas’s 114 Sayings of Jesus

The Nag Hammadi Codices and Gnostic Christianity

The post Early Copy of Infancy Gospel of Thomas Identified appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Last Supper by Bartolomeo Schedoni (1578–1615). Courtesy Met Museum.

A small papyrus fragment might contain one of the earliest known lists of sayings of Jesus. Dated by papyrologists to the second century, the fragment, dubbed the “Sayings of Jesus,” includes sayings that closely parallel the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well as the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas.

Examining an Intriguing Text

While the relationship between the Sayings of Jesus text and other early Christian writings is not yet clear, the fragment provides new information about the written sources and oral traditions that circulated among early Christian communities. The text includes a number of sayings about leaving behind the cares of the world. Some of these sayings resemble passages in Matthew 6 or Luke 12, while other sections closely resemble sayings known from the Gospel of Thomas. Significantly, however, the sayings do not appear to quote directly from these sources, which suggests they originated from a common oral tradition, were written down from memory, or were intentionally altered by the author.

“The papyrus is about freedom from anxiety,” Jeffery Fish, one of the translators of the text, told Bible History Daily. “And despite some theological and perhaps anthropological differences, the overall thrust is really not very different from what we find in the canonical parallels, especially Luke. The text on this papyrus was apparently preceded by a parable about someone who mistakenly thinks that [safety] comes from amassing resources for yourself. Luke has a similar parable, but this text seems to reflect the version we know from the Gospel of Thomas. That’s a challenging message.”

The scholars, who published their research in the series The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, suggest the fragment dates to the second century. The papyrus is one of more than half a million fragments discovered at the archaeological site of Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt in the late 19th century. The collection of writings from Oxyrhynchus was a seismic discovery, containing some of the earliest written copies of New Testament texts and other early Christian writings, including the first-ever copy of the Gospel of Thomas. However, even though the Sayings of Jesus text comes from an archaeological excavation, it was discovered in secondary context in an ancient dump, meaning it could not be dated through traditional archaeological methods. Instead, the scholars dated the papyrus based on its paleography, comparing its writing and script to other dated fragments.

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The date is important as it would make the Sayings of Jesus text older than the Gospel of Thomas, and a potential source text for that work. However, the scholars suggest the opposite could also have been true and that the writer could have used an early version of the Gospel of Thomas to compose the Sayings of Jesus text.

“For me, the most interesting possibility is that this text may reflect a work that served as a source for the Gospel of Thomas, effectively showing us the context from which the quotations were extracted,” said Fish. “The Gospel of Thomas, in contrast to the Canonical Gospels, generally has short sayings, often with no apparent connections with the proximate ones.”

Nevertheless, the text certainly contains some of the oldest extant sayings of Jesus. Although only a small portion of the text survives, the original may have been a yet unknown gospel or a complete collection of sayings related to a particular topic. Similar collections of sayings can also be found in other early Christian writings, such as the works of second-century theologians Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr.

Read more in Bible History Daily:

The Gospel of Thomas’s 114 Sayings of Jesus

The Origin of Christianity

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The Gospel of Thomas: Jesus Said What?

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The Gospel of Thomas

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The post An Early “Sayings of Jesus” Text? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

How the pyramids were built: Painting of the pyramids from 1839. Courtesy Photo Companion to the Bible.

Could a better understanding of the Nile River help explain how the pyramids were built? The pyramids of Giza are some of the most recognizable monuments of all time, yet the finer details of their construction are still debated. Now, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes to have solved one of the biggest remaining questions: How did the ancient builders manage to transport the enormous mass of material to the construction site? Although long since dried up, a large branch of the Nile River apparently passed by the foot of the Giza Plateau during the Old Kingdom period (c. 2663–2181 B.C.E.). This allowed the Egyptians to transport construction materials and equipment up to the future site of the pyramids, claims the new study.

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Constructing a Pyramid with Egypt’s Disappearing River

One of the biggest mysteries about how the pyramids were built, is how the Egyptians were able to move the millions of the two-ton limestone blocks that they needed for the construction. While one of the leading theories is that the Egyptians harnessed the Nile to their aid, the modern Nile sits miles away from Giza. But that was not always the case, and during the Old Kingdom, a long-lost branch of the Nile allowed easy access to the Giza Plateau.

Model of Giza pyramid complex, showing a possible branch of the Nile. Courtesy Photo Companion to the Bible.

Using sediment cores, in conjunction with recent archaeological finds and ancient texts, an international team was able to identify and model the water level over the past 8,000 years for a bygone branch of the Nile River. The flow of the branch – dubbed the Khufu branch after the pharaoh who built the first of the great pyramids – steadily declined throughout the Old Kingdom and disappeared by the time of Alexander the Great (r. 332–323 B.C.E.).

However, during the first half of the Old Kingdom, when the pyramids were built, the flow of the Khufu branch was high enough to operate as a highway across the desert, connecting the Giza Plateau to sources of limestone and other resources needed for the construction of the pyramids. “It was impossible to build the pyramids here without this branch of the Nile,” Hader Sheisha, an author of the study, told New York Times.

The modern Nile sits miles away from Giza. Courtesy Photo Companion to the Bible.

This is not merely a theory based on later archaeological analysis, though. The theory is backed up by a recently discovered collection of papyri, dating back to the time of Pharaoh Khufu (r. 2589–2566 B.C.E.). The papyri – discovered in 2013 at an ancient Egyptian port on the Red Sea – mention a harbor near Khufu’s pyramid known as the “Entrance to the Lake of Khufu.” Other papyri mention the use of boats to take limestone from the site of Toura, 10 miles from Giza, to the harbor complex. Matching these ancient texts to the recent archaeological reconstructions of the water system during the Old Kingdom appears to have unlocked the mystery of how the pyramids were built. According to the team, the results of their study might also aid in understanding the possible water systems surrounding the earlier pyramid complexes at Saqqara and Dahshur, south of Giza.

Aerial photograph of the Giza pyramids. Courtesy Photo Companion to the Bible.

Although the Khufu branch of the Nile River was large enough to enable the construction of the great pyramids of Giza, its gradual decline over the next 2000 years – along with shifting burial practices – would likely be a contributing factor to the end of the age of pyramids.

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This article first appeared in BHD on September 30, 2022.

The post The Changing Nile and How the Pyramids were Built appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Ishmael Papyrus, written in Paleo-Hebrew script. Courtesy Shai Helevi, IAA.

According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), an incredibly rare papyrus with Paleo-Hebrew text dating to the time of the First Temple has been recovered by its Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit. The IAA claims the papyrus, which contains just four lines of text, is one of only three papyrus documents to date to this period and, therefore, offers a unique glimpse into the world of Jerusalem during the time of the biblical kings. However, the papyrus is an unprovenanced object that may have originated on the antiquities market, which has caused some scholars to be more cautious when judging its date and authenticity.

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 IAA Announces a Rare Treasure

According to the IAA, the papyrus fragment, though damaged, includes several Hebrew words that reveal it is part of a letter with instructions to a recipient: “To Ishmael, send…” The letter was likely a request to Ishmael to send commodities to the writer of the text. The IAA’s paleographic examination of the paleo-Hebrew text determined that it dates from the late seventh to sixth centuries B.C.E. Radiocarbon analysis of the papyrus returned a similar date.

Conservation of the Paleo-Hebrew papyrus. Courtesy Shai Halevi, IAA.

However, some scholars have cautioned that radiocarbon dating is not sufficient to prove the authenticity of a papyrus that lacks a secure archaeological provenance. As stated by Christopher Rollston, Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures at George Washington University, “Modern forgers can, have, and still do, use such ancient media to produce forgeries in the modern period.” According to Rollston, while the papyrus might turn out to be authentic, it is important that scholars “tap the brakes … rather than jumping to conclusions” as further scientific examination of the document is undertaken.

If authentic, the Ishmael Papyrus, as it is being called, would be one of only three such documents in the IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls collection that are thought to date to the First Temple period. According to Joe Uziel, Director of the IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls Unit, it is possible that Ishmael was an administrative official in the Kingdom of Judah. Several royal stamp seals bearing the name Ishmael have been discovered, including one reading “To Ishmael, son of the king.” But given that Ishmael was such a common name during the period, it is difficult to identify the Ishmael in the papyrus with a specific individual.

It is important to note that despite the lack of papyri documents from this time, it can be deduced, based on the growing number of bullae (used to seal papyrus documents) which have been found on excavations, that papyrus was the predominant medium for writing during the First Temple period. For a very nice biblical example of this practice, see Jeremiah 32:9-16. Unfortunately, this organic material is rarely preserved outside of regions with exceptionally dry climates, such as the Judean Desert. Thus, while evidence indicates that large quantities of paleo-Hebrew records were kept in Jerusalem and other Judean cities, they have been lost to time.

A Papyrus with a Story

The story of how the Ishmael Papyrus came to be known to the IAA is no less intriguing than the artifact itself. According to the IAA, an American tourist visiting Jerusalem in 1965 came into possession of the small papyrus fragment, which she acquired from Joseph Saad, Curator of the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now the Rockefeller Museum), and Halil Iskander Kandu, a well-known antiquities dealer from Bethlehem who sold thousands of such fragments. Upon returning home to Montana, the woman hung the prized fragment on a wall in her house.

Some 50 years later, Shmuel Ahituv, a professor of biblical and Near Eastern studies at Ben Gurion University, came across an early photograph of the fragment in the files of the late Israeli epigrapher Ada Yardeni. Realizing what he had uncovered, Ahituv contacted the IAA. Together, Ahituv and Eitan Klein, Deputy Director of the IAA’s Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit, began the hunt for the fragment based on the limited notes left behind by Yardeni.

Eventually, Ahituv and Klein traced the fragment to the home of the Montana woman’s son, who they invited to Israel to tour the IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls lab. After the visit, the son was convinced that the lab had the best conditions to conserve and research the rare document, and he generously donated it to the IAA.

Joe Uziel and Eitan Klein with the papyrus. Courtesy Yoli Schwartz, IAA.

According to IAA Director-General Eli Eskosido, “Repatriating this rare document is part of an extensive process led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, aiming on the one hand, to prevent the illegal sale of the ancient scrolls that were plundered from the Judean Desert in the past, and on the other hand, to prevent further plundering of the cultural heritage finds extant in the desert today. In this context, the Israel Antiquities Authority initiated the Judean Desert Survey, which reestablished Israeli control of the area, spread a blanket of legal enforcement, and propagated research activity on the items of cultural heritage found in the Judean Desert caves.”

Ed. Note: Christopher Rollston is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Read more in Bible History Daily:

Decayed Papyrus Hints that More Dead Sea Scrolls Remain

The “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” Papyrus Revisited

What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The post Israel Claims Rare Paleo-Hebrew Papyrus Recovered appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

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