Greetings in the Lord. Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (review)

The earliest Christian literary fragments found at Oxyrhynchus date from the second century (although not necessarily written there, and perhaps brought to the city later [p. 18–19]); yet documentary papyri which certainly attest Christians and their activities appear only from the mid-third century, and remain remarkably sparse until well into the fourth. This exquisitely arranged book interrogates these earliest traces of the Christian community at Oxyrhynchus down to 324 (when Constantine gained control over Egypt and the East), squeezing every significant drop from the exiguous evidence. Each text is presented in full, with translation and critical notes, followed by thorough discussion of both context and detail, building a coherent sequence of interpretations and arguments which progressively lead the reader through the issues raised by the conjunction of these texts with the broader historiography of early Christianity in Egypt.

After a brief, up-to-date introduction to Oxyrhynchus and its excavations (which were initially prompted by the hope of unearthing Christian material from the city's rubbish-dumps), Luijendijk first addresses the problem of how we can identify Christians in the documents (Chapter Two). It was not only fear of persecution that led Christian identity often to be concealed in our documentary sources, which are largely concerned with mundane matters like taxation; for most bureaucratic purposes a person's religious affiliations were simply irrelevant (very occasionally, "Christian" was used as a means of identification—but never for oneself [p. 39]). In the religious "supermarket" of late Roman Oxyrhynchus, where Christians, Jews, and Manichaens mingled with adherents of Egyptian, Greek, or Roman cults, and the Serapeum was the main center of business activity, most aspects of life (and the documentation they produced) were similar whatever one's religious preference. While personal nomenclature, the use of the word "beloved" (agapētos) in address, and even reference to (the) God in the singular are uncertain indicators that we are dealing with Christians, the inclusion of nomina sacra in private letters was a self-conscious marker of distinctive group identity among educated Christians, both "orthodox" and "heretical," familiar with these abbreviations in manuscripts (Chapter Three).

Part Two (Chapters Four and Five), discusses a group of letters to, from, or referring to Sotas, who Luijendijk convincingly argues was the earliest known bishop of Oxyrhynchus, in the later third century (reinterpreting P.Oxy. 36.2785, previously read to mean that Sotas was a Herakleopolite priest). Three (or four) letters are letters of recommendation with almost identical wording, whose purpose and context are fully explicated. Sotas's letters are in different hands, so we cannot be sure which if any is his own (84 and 125ff, the plates at the end facilitate comparison). Luijendijk ingeniously takes the exceptional use of parchment off-cuts for two letters to support the case that Oxyrhynchus was an early center for Christian scholarship (p. 144–51). If the Sotas of SB 12.10772 is the same man (and the early dating for Bishop Sotas essentially rests on this identification), he travelled to Antioch, perhaps even to the synods of the 260s which excommunicated Paul of Samosata (p. 136–44).

Part Three moves on to evidence for the government's dealings with Christians. The "certificates of pagan sacrifice" from 250 applied not only to (apostatizing) Christians; it is clear that Decius required the whole population to sacrifice (Chapter Six). A summons for a Christian villager may reflect Valerian's persecution (p. 174–84), while Diocletian's "Great Persecution" certainly prompted the report that a former village church possessed no property other than bronze and copper materials (Chapter Seven). Luijendijk follows Wipszycka's explanation of the church lector's claimed inability to sign this report as dissidence rather than illiteracy (p. 202). Further texts introduce a possible martyr (Paul from the Oxyrhynchite nome), a Christian bureaucrat, and a landowner deftly side-stepping the obligation to sacrifice when pursuing a lawsuit at Alexandria. Finally, Chapter Eight sums up what we have...