Perhaps it is not exactly “the” oldest, but it is certainly one of the oldest books of Christianity (and one of the oldest books in the world) that will go up for auction at Christie’s on June 11th (with an estimated price of between 2, 6 and 3.8 million dollars). This is the Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193. Written in Coptic on papyrus in a monastery in Upper Egypt, according to the auction house around 250-350 AD (but the dating, as we will see, is controversial), it is a liturgical book compiled in a monastery and contains a collection of different texts with a liturgical function: the treatise of Melito of Sardis on Easter, chapters 5.27-7.41 of the second book of the Maccabees, the complete texts of the First Letter of Peter and of the book of Jonah, a liturgical exhortation.
According to Eugenio Donadoni, specialist in the books and manuscripts department at Christie’s, “the text is of monumental importance as a testimony to the first spread of Christianity in the Mediterranean”. The Crosby-Schøyen Codex is part of the Bodmer Papyri, a collection of several texts discovered in the 1950s in the tomb of a 7th century Coptic monk, and so called because of the first buyer, the Swiss collector Martin Bodmer. These are Christian writings, extracts from the Bible and pagan literature -Schøyen consists of 104 pages, or 52 folios, but the most reliable analyzes suggest that the book, when complete, had 68 folios, and most of the missing folios are lost, but there are fragmentary remains in other collections ( such as the Chester Beatty collection in Dublin and the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny).
There is also debate about the date: the period 250-350 AD, inferred paleographically, is considered a reasonable interval, but presents some difficulties. The second term is ensured by radiocarbon analysis. But if it was actually written in Upper Egypt, and specifically in a Pachomian monastery, this would severely narrow the time window, because these monasteries were only formed in the second quarter of the 4th century. This would mean that the codex date would actually be closer to 325-350. In summary, radiocarbon analysis provides us with a term before that (last possible date of production), and the theory on monastic production gives us a deadline post quem (first possible production date). In this sense, regarding the letter of Peter it could be preceded in antiquity by Papyrus 72 (Bodmer 7 and 8, because divided between the Vatican Library and Fondation Bodmer), which contains the integral versions of both Petrine Epistles.
However, it is certain that it is an early and well-preserved example of the codex format, i.e. a book as we know it, while in ancient times the volumes (hence the name) were scrolls. When the codex arrived at the University of Mississippi in the mid-1950s (which resold it in 1981) it was still in a relatively intact state, a single-issue codex, with the papyrus sheets folded and taped across the center fold : in the photos it could be leafed through and handled like a modern book. In this sense, the Corsby-Schøyen codex is a very interesting artefact from the point of view of book history, because it offers precious information on the construction of ancient books and on codicology. The codex was later taken apart and the individual leaves were sandwiched between glass plates, which is how it now appears for sale at Christie’s.
