Why Papyrus Fragments Matter for Missiology
During a recent visit to the University of Michigan’s Papyrology Collection, I had the opportunity to examine three remarkable witnesses to early Christianity: 𝔓37, a fragment of Matthew’s Gospel; portions of 𝔓46, the earliest surviving substantial collection of Paul’s letters; and a Coptic fragment preserving part of the correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa.
At first glance, these artifacts appear to be remnants of ancient correspondence and Christian literature. 𝔓37 transmits Matthew’s account of the Last Supper, Gethsemane, and the arrest of Jesus. 𝔓46 preserves letters written to emerging communities of Jesus followers. The Coptic papyrus presents itself as a letter sent by Jesus to a king seeking healing. Yet these fragments document more than words exchanged, stories remembered, or texts copied. They preserve material evidence of what Christians believed. That evidence appears not only in what the scribes wrote but also in how they wrote it.
Across these fragments, certain names and titles are abbreviated and marked by a line written above the letters. These are the nomina sacra, the “sacred names,” of early Christian manuscript culture. They are small marks, sometimes easily overlooked. Yet they represent one of the earliest visual expressions of Christian belief. Before Christians adorned basilicas with mosaics or carved Christograms into stone, scribes were already inscribing their devotion into the written form of the names Jesus, Christ, Lord, Spirit, and God. The ink itself acts like a doctrinal confession.
In The Earliest Christian Artifacts, Larry Hurtado argued that the four most consistently treated terms in early manuscripts—Jesus, Christ, Lord, and God—were not simply convenient abbreviations. They were better understood as nomina divina: names and titles referring to the two central figures of early Christian devotion. Their distinctive treatment gives visual expression to what Hurtado described as the “binitarian shape” of early Christian worship. Jesus was reverenced in ways patterned upon, and uniquely related to, the reverence offered to God. By the middle of the second century, the practice of abbreviated sacred names extended to include the Spirit and Father, as we will see in 𝔓46, giving us a clear second century Trinitarian expression.
This does not mean that every scribe employed every abbreviation with perfect consistency or that scholars agree on every aspect of their origin. Yet the cumulative pattern is difficult to dismiss. Christians repeatedly placed the name of Jesus as well as the Spirit alongside the principal designations for God and marked them with the same reverential scribal convention.
𝔓37: Remembering Jesus at the Table and in the Garden
𝔓37, identified in the Michigan collection as P. Mich. inv. 1570, is a single, heavily damaged papyrus leaf containing Matthew 26:19–52. The recto preserves the account of the Last Supper; the verso continues through Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, his betrayal, and the beginning of his arrest. Scholars date the fragment prior to the Christianization of the Roman Empire so sometime in the middle of the third century AD.
The handwriting is competent but not elegant. The scribe appears to have been accustomed to copying. At some later point, another person added marks that may have assisted the public reading of the passage and there are places where the document was corrected. The fragment may therefore preserve not simply a copied text but a one used within the life of a worshiping community or perhaps a wealthy benefactor. The appearance of fold marks both vertically and horizontally across the papyrus might draw into suspicion an apotropaic function as well.
Its subject matter is itself significant. The fragment remembers Jesus breaking bread with his disciples, identifying the betrayer, praying to the Father, and willingly facing arrest. It carries the memory of Jesus through the practices and suffering that stood at the center of Christian identity.
Within this narrative, sacred names are treated distinctively. Forms referring to Jesus, the Lord, and the Spirit appear as nomina sacra (ΙΗΣ, ΙΗΣΥ, ΚΕ, ΠΝΑ). The scribe did not write these words in precisely the same way as the surrounding vocabulary. Their abbreviated forms, accompanied by supralinear strokes, visually distinguished them from the rest of the text.
That distinction is theological and declarative. It suggests that the scribe participated in a widely shared Christian practice of treating these names with special reverence. The fragment therefore documents two forms of memory simultaneously. Its sentences preserve the narrative memory of Jesus, while its sacred abbreviations preserve the devotional posture through which Christians received that memory.
𝔓37 does not merely tell us what happened at the table and in the garden. Its scribal form shows us something about who Jesus had become for those who copied and heard the account.
𝔓46: Correspondence That Formed a Movement
𝔓46, or P. Mich. inv. 6238, is even more striking. Commonly dated to around AD 150, though the range proposed by scholars remains broader, it is the earliest surviving substantial copy of Paul’s letters. The complete codex probably contained 104 leaves. Eighty-six survive: thirty at the University of Michigan and fifty-six in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
The surviving text includes most of eight Pauline letters as well as Hebrews. Its very existence demonstrates that Paul’s correspondence had moved beyond the communities to which the letters were first addressed, in this case, all the way to Egypt. Individual communications had been collected, copied, arranged, and circulated as an authoritative body of writings by the second century AD.
This is an important missiological development. Paul wrote letters into particular circumstances: divisions in Corinth, questions about Israel and the nations in Rome, competing allegiances in Galatia, and the formation of Christlike communities in Philippi and Ephesus. Yet these situational letters became resources for forming Christian identity across regions and generations.
𝔓46 therefore documents more than correspondence. It witnesses to a movement learning how to preserve and transmit its apostolic memory. The codex gathered communities separated by geography into a shared theological conversation. Through Paul’s letters, believers who had never met the apostle could still be instructed by his gospel, drawn into his relational ecosystem, and formed by his vision of life in Christ.
The numerous nomina sacra in the codex reinforce this formative purpose. The Michigan leaves contain the characteristic contracted forms for sacred terms, including ΚΣ (κυριος / Lord) ΧΣ or ΧΡΣ (χριστος / anointed) ΙΗΣ (Ιησους / Jesus) ΘΣ (θεος / God) ΠΝΑ (πνευμα / Spirit) ΥΙΣ (υιος / Son) ΣΤΡΟΣ (σταυρος / cross) written with the familiar line above them.
𝔓46 therefore preserves theology not only in Paul’s arguments but also in the physical presentation of the divine names. The scribe’s hand participates in the confession carried by the text.
The Jesus–Abgar Correspondence: When Memory Crosses Languages
The third artifact, P. Mich. inv. 6213, takes us beyond the New Testament canon. It is a Coptic papyrus preserving part of the alleged apocryphal reply of Jesus to King Abgar of Edessa. According to the larger tradition, Abgar wrote to Jesus after hearing reports of his healings. He confessed belief in Jesus and asked him to come to Edessa. Jesus replied by blessing the king for believing without seeing and promising that a disciple would later be sent to him.
The historical authenticity of this correspondence is not the central issue here. The papyrus does not give us direct access to an exchange between Jesus and Abgar. It gives us something different, yet still historically important: material evidence of what a later Christian community remembered, valued, copied, and used.
Sullivan and Wilfong argue that the Michigan fragment preserves Jesus’ reply and may have functioned as an amulet. The clear fold marks provide the telltale sign the the papyrus was placed within a protective covering and carried in a pocket, worn as a bracelet or perhaps as a necklace. Its power, for the person who possessed it, lay not merely in the information contained in the letter but in the authoritative presence associated with the words of Jesus. The artifact reflects a Christian imagination in which Jesus was remembered as healer, protector, sender, and Lord over geographic and political boundaries.
Here again, the name of Jesus appears in a specially marked abbreviated form. The use of a nomen sacrum in a Coptic text is particularly instructive. The convention originated in Greek Christian manuscript culture but crossed linguistic boundaries. Coptic scribes adopted and adapted it within their own writing system. Whoever the fourth century AD copyist was, there is a clear recognition that the Jesus in the correspondence is the same as the Jesus of 𝔓46. The language changed, but the confession remained recognizable.
This is a profoundly missiological phenomenon. The Christian movement did not spread by preserving the gospel in a single language or cultural form. It moved through translation. Greek words entered Coptic usage; stories associated with Syriac-speaking Edessa circulated in Egypt; a tradition about a king’s appeal for healing was copied onto papyrus and perhaps carried on someone’s body.
Translation did not mean the absence of continuity. The nomen sacrum functioned as a small but visible thread connecting Christians across languages and regions. It communicated that the one named in the text was not simply another character in an ancient story. His name bore sacred significance.
What the Papyri Contribute to Missiology
These fragments suggest several ways papyrological study can deepen missiology. First, they remind us that Christian mission is inseparable from material practices. The gospel does not move through abstract ideas alone. It travels through texts, objects, languages, bodies, households, relationships, and repeated practices. The Christian movement became visible in part because believers developed recognizable ways of writing, reading, gathering, remembering, and confessing.
Second, the papyri show that transmission is intrinsic to Christian mission. Matthew’s Gospel moved through Greek-speaking communities. Paul’s letters circulated far beyond their initial recipients. Traditions associated with Edessa crossed into Coptic Egypt. The gospel continually entered new cultural worlds without ceasing to center allegiance upon Jesus.
Third, the artifacts demonstrate that belief is often encoded in form as well as stated in content. The theology of a manuscript cannot be reduced to its sentences. Page arrangement, corrections, reading marks, codex format, sacred abbreviations, and evidence of use all contribute to its meaning. Form does not merely carry belief; form can embody belief.
Finally, these papyri invite missiologists to recover a more attentive way of seeing. A fragment may seem insignificant because only a few lines survive. Yet those lines can reveal an entire ecosystem of transmission: a scribe copying, a community reading, a teacher instructing, a believer carrying, and a movement remembering.
The Witness of Fragile Things
Papyrus is fragile. It tears, darkens, frays, and disappears. The fragments preserved at the University of Michigan survived through an extraordinary combination of climate, circumstance, discovery, acquisition, and conservation. What remains represents only a tiny portion of the manuscripts once produced and used by early Christians.
Yet these fragile objects bear a remarkably durable witness. 𝔓37 preserves Christians remembering Jesus at the table, in prayer, and under arrest. 𝔓46 preserves apostolic correspondence becoming a collection capable of forming communities across the Roman world. The Coptic Jesus-Abgar fragment preserves the memory of Jesus as healer and protector moving across languages and cultural boundaries.
Within each artifact, the sacred name interrupts the ordinary flow of the writing. The abbreviated letters and the line above them declare that Jesus is not merely being mentioned. He is being honored.
For missiology, this matters because the Christian movement has always communicated through more than propositions. It has communicated through shared practices, relational networks, translated texts, visual symbols, and material objects. The earliest Christian manuscripts do not simply tell us what believers read. They allow us to see how faith took material form.
Sometimes the history of mission is written in journeys, sermons, and the founding of churches. Sometimes it survives in a few faded letters on a torn piece of papyrus. And sometimes a small line drawn above the name of Jesus is enough to tell us what a community believed.