Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
For all of Christianity’s influence today, the archeological evidence for the first two centuries of the religion’s existence is notoriously thin. This is why the publication of a previously unknown second-century fragment of early Christian writing this week is so significant.
Written before the formation of a New Testament or even the widespread recognition of a collection of Christian sacred scripture, this fragmentary page from a small ancient book offers a rare glimpse into the minds of early Christians. The contents show that, much like us, early Christians were plagued by life’s worries.
The fragment is part of the Oxyrhynchus collection, a cache of over a half million fragments of papyri that were excavated over a century ago in ancient trash heaps in Egypt. They were uncovered by renowned classical scholars Grenfell and Hunt and a large team of local Egyptian laborers.