|
Copyright
© By Dr. Adel Elsaie, Book Title: "Please Revise
the Bible, Again" |
4.2.1
Papyrus manuscripts
Manuscripts of the Bible
are written on pages on both sides, as opposed to printed, copies of the
ancient copies of the whole or part of the Bible. In the
Roman
Empire during the first three centuries CE,
papyrus was the common writing material. Made out of strips of pith taken from
the stem of the Egyptian water-plant of the same name, papyrus was very
fragile, became brittle in air, crumbled with use, could not resist the
disintegrating force of moisture and was quite impracticable for book-form. All
papyrus manuscripts of every sort are lost to us except such as were buried in
exceedingly dry soil, like that of Upper and Middle Egypt. It is assumed that
the writers of the New Testament used ink and rolls of fragile papyrus. The original
manuscripts were perished towards the end of the first or the beginning of the
second century due to the fragility of the papyrus and the persecution of the
Christians and the burning of their religious texts. There is no trace of them
in either the Apostolic or the apologetic Fathers. , unless we accept Tertullian’s words, "the
authentic letters of the Apostles themselves", which are now generally
set aside as rhetorical. A significant proof of the early loss of the original
manuscripts of the New Testament is the fact that Irenaeus
never appeals to the original writings but only to the ancient copies and to
those that saw John face to face.