Barcelona Papyrus

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The Barcelona Papyrus is a 4th-century papyrus codex, coming from Egypt and cataloged as P.Monts.Roca inv.128-178. It is the oldest liturgical manuscript containing a complete anaphora. [1] :469

Papyrus Writing and painting implement

Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.

Codex book with handwritten content

A codex, plural codices, is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or similar materials. The term is now usually only used of manuscript books, with hand-written contents, but describes the format that is now near-universal for printed books in the Western world. The book is usually bound by stacking the pages and fixing one edge to a bookbinding, which may just be thicker paper, or with stiff boards, called a hardback, or in elaborate historical examples a treasure binding.

Egypt Country spanning North Africa and Southwest Asia

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, across the Red Sea lies Saudi Arabia, and across the Mediterranean lie Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, although none share a land border with Egypt.

Contents

This codex is for the main part conserved in the Abbey of Montserrat and it includes seven pages (154b-157b) of prayers in Greek with a complete anaphora, a related prayer to be said after receiving the Eucharist, two prayers for the sick and an acrostic hymn perhaps of baptismal type. The Codex also includes a few Latin texts and a long list of Greek words. [1] :467–8

Koine Greek, also known as Alexandrian dialect, common Attic, Hellenistic or Biblical Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire, and the early Byzantine Empire, or late antiquity. It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East during the following centuries. It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties.

Eucharist Christian rite

The Eucharist is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instituted by Jesus Christ during the Last Supper; giving his disciples bread and wine during the Passover meal, Jesus commanded his followers to "do this in memory of me" while referring to the bread as "my body" and the cup of wine as "the new covenant in my blood". Through the Eucharistic celebration Christians remember both Christ's sacrifice of himself on the cross and his commission of the apostles at the Last Supper.

Acrostic poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message

An acrostic is a poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The word comes from the French acrostiche from post-classical Latin acrostichis, from Koine Greek ἀκροστιχίς, from Ancient Greek ἄκρος "highest, topmost" and στίχος "verse". As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval.

Anaphora

The anaphora included in the Barcelona Papyrus was first published by Ramón Roca-Puig in 1994, [2] and the critical edition was issued by M. Zheltov in 2008. [1] This anaphora, which could be related to some Pachomian monastery, was a form well known in Egypt before about the 7th century: in fact other two fragments of it have been recovered: the so-called Louvain Coptic Papyrus, a Coptic version dating from the 6th century, [3] and the Greek fragment PVindob. G 41043. [4]

Anaphora (liturgy)

The Anaphora is the most solemn part of the Divine Liturgy, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, during which the offerings of bread and wine are consecrated as the body and blood of Christ. This is the usual name for this part of the Liturgy in Greek-speaking Eastern Christianity. In western Christian traditions which have a comparable rite, the Anaphora is more often called the Roman Canon in the Latin liturgy, or the Eucharistic Prayer for the three additional modern anaphoras. When the Roman Rite had a single Eucharistic Prayer, it was called the Canon of the Mass.

Coptic language Latest stage of the Egyptian language

Coptic, or Coptic Egyptian, is the latest stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century as an official language. Egyptian began to be written in the Coptic alphabet, an adaptation of the Greek alphabet with the addition of six or seven signs from Demotic to represent Egyptian sounds the Greek language did not have, in the 1st century AD.

The anaphora of Barcelona includes all the typical elements of a developed anaphora, with the particularity that its epiclesis is placed before the Words of Institution, as in the Roman Canon and in the Anaphora of Deir Balyzeh. [5] The content of this anaphora, which includes no Intercessions, is the following: [1] :493

Epiclesis

The epiclesis is the part of the Anaphora by which the priest invokes the Holy Spirit upon the Eucharistic bread and wine in some Christian churches.

Words of Institution

The Words of Institution are words echoing those of Jesus himself at his Last Supper that, when consecrating bread and wine, Christian Eucharistic liturgies include in a narrative of that event. Eucharistic scholars sometimes refer to them simply as the verba.

The text and rubrics of the Roman Canon have undergone revisions over the centuries, while the Canon itself has retained its essential form as arranged no later than the 7th century. The text consists of a succession of short prayers with no clear sequence of thought. The rubrics, as is customary in similar liturgical books, indicate the manner in which to carry out the celebration.

In liturgical use the term preface is applied to that portion of the Eucharistic Prayer that immediately precedes the Canon or central portion of the Eucharist. The preface, which begins at the words, "It is very mete and just, right and salutary" is ushered in, in all liturgies, with the Sursum Corda, "Lift up your hearts", and ends with the Sanctus, "Holy, Holy, Holy, etc."

God the Father

God the Father is a title given to God in various religions, most prominently in Christianity. In mainstream trinitarian Christianity, God the Father is regarded as the first person of the Trinity, followed by the second person God the Son and the third person God the Holy Spirit. Since the second century, Christian creeds included affirmation of belief in "God the Father (Almighty)", primarily as his capacity as "Father and creator of the universe". However, in Christianity the concept of God as the father of Jesus Christ goes metaphysically further than the concept of God as the Creator and father of all people, as indicated in the Apostle's Creed where the expression of belief in the "Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth" is immediately, but separately followed by in "Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord", thus expressing both senses of fatherhood.

Sanctus

The Sanctus is a hymn in Christian liturgy. It may also be called the epinikios hymnos when referring to the Greek rendition.

The liturgical scholar Paul F. Bradshaw suggests that this anaphora reached its final form in the 4th century, adding the Sanctus, as well as the Epiclesis and the Institution narrative, to a more ancient material, which could more likely derive from West Syria rather than from Egypt. [6]

Paul Frederick Bradshaw, FRHistS is a British Anglican priest, theologian, historian of liturgy, and academic. In addition to parish ministry, he taught at Chichester Theological College and Ripon College Cuddesdon. From 1985 to 2013, he was Professor of Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame in the United States.

Thanksgiving prayer

The thanksgiving prayer, also included in the Barcelona Papyrus, is a prayer to be said after having received the Eucharist and it is shaped on the basis of the last part of the anaphora. This simple pairing of the anaphora with the thanksgiving prayer reminds the same early structure found in chapters 9/10 of the Didache and in the chapters 25/26 of the 7th books of the Apostolic Constitutions. [1] :497

Prayers for the sick

Among the prayers found in the Barcelona Papyrus, there are two texts that probably refer to the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick: a prayer associated to the laying on of hands in order that the "spirit of illness" leave the faithful, and on another prayer for the consecration of the oil for the sick, which alternatively could refer to the consecration of the oil of catechumens. [7]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Zheltov, Michael (2008). "The Anaphora and the thanksgiving Prayer from the Barcelona Papyrus: An Underestimated Testimony to the Anaphoral History in the Fourth Century" (PDF). Vigiliae Christianae. 62 (5): 467–504. doi:10.1163/157007208x306551. ISSN   0042-6032.
  2. ↑ Roca-Puig, Ramón (1994). Anàfora de Barcellona i alters pregàries. Barcelona. pp. 10–14.
  3. ↑ Jasper, R.C.D.; Cuming, G.J. (1990). Prayers of the Eucharist: early and reformed. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press. p. 81. ISBN   0814660851.
  4. ↑ Luppe, W. (1993). "Christliche Weihung von Öl: Zum Papyrus Barc. 156a/b". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 95: 90.
  5. ↑ The Egyptian Sunnarti fragments (J. Hammerstaedt, Griechische Anaphorenfragmente aus Ägypten und Nubien Opladen, 1999, pag:156–160) have the same peculiarity
  6. 1 2 Bradshaw, Paul F. (2010). "The Barcelona Papyrus and the Development of Early Eucharistic Prayers". In Johnson, Maxwell E. Issues in Eucharistic praying in East and West : essays in liturgical and theological analysis. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press. pp. 137–8. ISBN   9780814662274.
  7. ↑ Parenti, Stefano (2000). "Anointing of the sick during the first four centuries". In Chupungco, Anscar J. Sacraments and sacramentals. 4. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press. pp. 157–158. ISBN   9780814661642.
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