Submitted by Jon Cannon on Wed, 12/09/2009 - 11:28
Review Rating:
8
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It is impossible to imagine European art without the procession of Crucifixions and Madonnas, Baptisms of Christ and Christs in Majesty that have been produced over the centuries; nor to imagine a European city without at least one building that testifies to the overawing power and wealth of the medieval church: a Durham or Cologne cathedral, a Hagia Sophia. Western art and Christianity go hand in hand.
So it comes as a shock to discover that there is another Christian art; one that took almost two centuries to get going (no securely dated Christian art predates 200CE); one which did not create architecture – it had no churches, as we would understand them – and in which the imagery is altogether unfamiliar. A world in which Christianity is delicate, humane, created by relatively marginal communities practising a new faith. A world in which Jonah and the Whale and the Good Shepherd are central images; a world, indeed, from which barely a single definite example of a Madonna or a Crucifixion has survived.
In Early Christian Books in Egypt, New York University papyrologist Roger Bagnall argues that a significant proportion of what has been written over the last 100 years relating to the early editions of Christian texts discovered in Roman Egypt has been inaccurate.
His book is made up of four chapters, each representing a lecture given by the author at Paris' École Pratique des Hautes Études. It is presented in a relaxed writing style which is very easy to read. However the book is still of an academic nature, and the reader would benefit from being familiar with Coptic Egypt, as well as some of the documents discussed.
The first chapter gives an overview of the problem with the dating of early Christian writing, concluding that while most Christian papyri are published, there are very few, if any, examples which can be dated securely to the second century AD. Some have attributed this to the lottery of archaeological recovery, although the author Roger Bagnall argues that this silence is more likely a reflection of the small-scale spread of Christianity among Egyptians, with the number able to write or own books even more marginal.
