Christian Oxyrhynchus - by Lincoln H Blumell & Thomas A Wayment (Paperback)

About the Book

A compelling resource for researchers, teachers, and students, Christian Oxyrhynchus enables broad access to these crucial primary documents beyond specialists in papyrology, Greek, Latin, and Coptic.

Book Synopsis

Blumell and Wayment present a thorough compendium of all published papyri, parchments, and patristic sources that relate to Christianity at Oxyrhynchus before the fifth century CE. Christian Oxyrhynchus provides new and expanded editions of Christian literary and documentary texts that include updated readings, English translations--some of which represent the first English translation of a text--and comprehensive notes.

The volume features New Testament texts carefully collated against other textual witnesses and a succinct introduction for each Oxyrhynchus text that provides information about the date of the papyrus, its unique characteristics, and textual variants. Documentary texts are grouped both by genre and date, giving readers access to the Decian Libelli, references to Christians in third- and fourth-century texts, and letters written by Christians. A compelling resource for researchers, teachers, and students, Christian Oxyrhynchus enables broad access to these crucial primary documents beyond specialists in papyrology, Greek, Latin, and Coptic.

Review Quotes

Blumell and Wayment are to be commended for producing a solid work of scholarship that will prove useful for years to come. They have been thorough in working through the literature and documents connected to Oxyrhynchus and in presenting them in an attractive format. The information collected will be essential for those attempting to understand the character and history of Christianity in Oxyrhynchus, and indeed in Egypt as a whole.

--Roderic L. Mullen "Catholic Biblical Quarterly"

Every scholar of Christian origins should own this publication, which transcends simple reproduction of the sources. The volume's price further supports its use in graduate and undergraduate settings, even as a reading list item for an advanced course of study. The contents draw the reader back to engage key sources and likewise induce the reader to use the corpus for novel research.

--James D. G. Dunn "Journal of Early Christian Studies"

In this helpful and carefully presented volume, Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment bring together some of the most important texts, biblical, literary and documentary, relating to the Christian inhabitants of the city.

--James Carleton Paget "Journal of Ecclesiastical History"

...Blumell and Wayment are to be congratulated for an impressive achievement: a much-needed resource, highly detailed and accurately executed. Anyone who has endured the constant searching and sifting of volume after volume of the Oxyrhynchus library will recognize immediately the value and convenience of this collection. In all, Christian Oxyrhynchus fills a glaring gap with an excellent and eminently useful tool for scholars as well as students who are interested in early Christianity, its people, and its texts.

--Zachary J. Cole "Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society"

A handy and helpful publication, which can be used not only for teaching purposes, but also for introducing Oxyrhynchus and its papyri to readers from various disciplines.

--Robert Mazza "Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists"

Blumell and Wayment are competent and conscientious editors. We thank them for the results of their labours, which should bring these texts to an audience wider than that served by the original publications.

-- "Novum Testamentum"

For the first time specific sources for Christianity from the second to the fourth century are easily available to everyone. Besides, they are presented in an academically concise and responsible manner so that Christian Oxyrhynchus is definitely not just a popular book, it is a piece of research or, in other words, a tool for researchers to both start from and work with. The preciseness and accuracy, the wealth of information and details, the overall astoundingly correct orthography, and the paleographical details are dealt with in a very comprehensible manner even for non-experts.

--Thomas J. Kraus "Early Christianity"

This is an exceptionally useful volume...The material presented here will enrich understanding of the life and concerns of this significant early Christian community.

--Paul Foster "Expository Times"

This volume is sure to stimulate further investigation into the social, economic, and religious lives of Christians in Oxyrhynchus.

--Geoffrey S. Smith "Review of Biblical Literature"

About the Author

Lincoln H. Blumell is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.

Thomas Wayment is Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.