Читать книгу The Literature and History of New Testament Times - J. Gresham Machen - Страница 20

The people that are introduced to us so intimately in the papyri are probably very fair representatives of the people among whom the gospel was first proclaimed. In that cosmopolitan age the society of Egyptian towns was probably not so very different from that of Corinth. The people of the papyri are not the great men of the time; they are just plain folk. But the early Christians were also usually not of exalted social position, though there were exceptions. "Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" were called. I Cor. 1:26. Many of the early Christians were slaves, many were humble tradesmen. The same classes appear in the papyri. In the papyri we are introduced into the private lives of the men to whom the gospel was proclaimed. Seeing, but unseen, hidden as by a magic cap, we watch them in their most intimate affairs. And we come away with a new feeling of the reality of early Christian history. These men were not so very different from ourselves. They were real men and women, living in a real world. And they needed a real gospel.

In the Library.—Hastings, "Dictionary of the Bible," extra volume: Ramsay, article on "Religion of Greece," pp. 109–156, especially pp. 135–156. Milligan, "Selections from the Greek Papyri," (with translations). Deissmann, "The Philology of the Greek Bible," pp. 1–63, 144–147. Ramsay, "The Cities of St. Paul," pp. 1–47. Browning, "Cleon," (vol. iv, pp. 115–122 of the Riverside Edition.)