The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery's Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin. By JAMES M. ROBINSON.

Abstract

As his ‘theological autobiography’ makes clear, James Robinson (1924–) has been at the forefront not only of ‘Q’ and Historical Jesus research but also of Nag Hammadi publication and controversy (NH). As recently as 2006 he has written on NH, especially the Gospel of Judas. To this huge advance in our knowledge of Christian-Coptic ‘Gnosticism’ he has now added the story of his involvement with the puzzles posed by the Greek and Coptic Bodmer Papyri (BP) and their contribution to other parts of early Christian literature and history, including the New Testament, and, linguistically, the differentiation of Coptic dialects. No one is better qualified to unravel them. Robinson has written a very readable and detailed account, in parts a highly technical one, telling the story of the discovery in Upper Egypt, as it happens near to the NH finds and the monastery of Pachomius, from the first days in the 1950s until the mid-1980s. At that point he finished his manuscript but did not publish it. It has now been edited and published by K. C. Hanson, editor-in-chief at Cascade Books. Five chapters clarify (1) the very confusing enumeration of BP’s constituent papyri and their ‘provenience’; (2–3) those BP which are now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and in collections in Mississippi, Cologne, and Barcelona; (4–5) the connection of BP with ‘the Dishnā papers’ and the Pachomian Library. Two appendices follow. The first is an extract, first published in Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990–1), pp. 26–40, tackling ‘the Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the Bibliothèque Bodmer’. This with chapter 5 means that a third of the book is devoted to Pachomius; it involves some repetition. The second appendix is a valuable ‘List of Papyrus Bodmer Publications’. Hanson has contributed a list of ‘Collectors, Dealers, Scholars and Institutes’, a ‘Glossary of Technical Terms’, a good bibliography and ‘Index of Names’.