Jonah and the Whale (1621) by Pieter Lastman. Image credit: Pieter Lastman\u00a0\u00a0(1583\u20131633) – Public Domain – IAFT8IfCTfplRQ at Google Cultural Institute<\/em><\/p>\nIf you have a spare \u00a32 million or \u00a33 million, don\u2019t miss this opportunity to own a key example of the birth of Christian culture and literature.<\/p>\n
Most news coverage of this 1700-year-old book focuses on claims that it includes the oldest complete text of two biblical books: Jonah and I Peter. But the ancient manuscript is all the more fascinating if you look at the other documents it includes, the social and political context that produced it and the theology it reveals.<\/p>\n
The codex, currently owned by Norwegian collector Martin Sch\u00f8yen, contains 104 pages and was found in Egypt in 1952 among some other manuscripts buried in a jar in the sand. The book is made of papyrus and written in Coptic, an Egyptian language in which many important early Christian texts are preserved.<\/p>\n
It was likely produced in one of the Pachomian monasteries in the vicinity of Faw Qibli, near Dishna in eastern Egypt. These monasteries were operational in the 4th century AD. This matches the radiocarbon analysis carried out on the manuscript, as reported by Christian literature academic Hugo Lundhaug. Author and academic Brent Nongbri suggests a date range of 330 to 350 AD for the text. This makes it the oldest book privately owned and not held by a museum.<\/p>\n
What makes the codex so remarkable, apart from its age and completeness, are its contents. Together, the works preserved in the the Crosby-Sch\u00f8yen Codex shed light into a fascinating, dynamic period of early Christianity that indelibly marked the religion\u2019s theology and culture.<\/p>\n
A unique window into early Christianity<\/h2>\n
The book contains five different texts originally composed by five completely different authors. The oldest is the biblical Book of Jonah, found among the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n
Jonah was an important figure for early Christians because he was famously swallowed by a huge fish (mistranslated as whale in the authorised version) while reluctantly heeding God\u2019s call to deliver his prophetic warning to the Ninevites.<\/p>\n
Ninevah is depicted as a very wicked city, but Jonah\u2019s message of repentance is successful. This is taken as an example of divine mercy, referenced again in New Testament texts such as Matt 12:41 and Luke 11:30-32. The three days Jonah spent in the belly of the fish was read allegorically by early Christians to foreshadow the time between Christ\u2019s death and resurrection.<\/p>\n
![\"Crosby-Sch\u00f8yen](\"https:\/\/www.ancientpages.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/jonasjune5.jpg\")
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