Abstract
A few methodological caveats (continued)
- (geographical imbalance and the invisibility of Alexandria)
- the approximate nature of palaeographic dating and the tendency to backdate texts ;
- the fragmentary state of papyri, which makes it impossible to know whether we are dealing with an extract or a complete version of a work, and which distorts statistics.
What is a literary papyrus ?
Beyond the traditional opposition between literary and documentary papyri, the realities covered by the notion of literary papyrus are complex. For the purposes of this article, we will confine ourselves to general trends, without going into the details of the functions attributed to each text under consideration.
Overview of literary papyri
While a first graph (in absolute values) might suggest a radical drop in the number of Greek literary papyri from the 3rd century onwards, a second graph, in which the number of literary papyri is related to that of all Greek papyri, shows that this is not the case, as the curve is relatively stable.
Classical and Christian literary papyri
After a few additional caveats on the bipartition between classical and Christian literary papyri, two graphs demonstrate the perfect correlation between the development of Christianity and the development of Christian books. After 450, while the number of pagans became derisory, the number of classical literature books remained at a level that shows that Christians continued to frequent classical culture.
Authors and their works
A final methodological warning concerning the chance of discoveries and editions.
1. Christian literature
A chart showing the main categories of Christian literature (biblical texts, patristic texts, hagiographic texts and liturgical texts) shows the overwhelming supremacy of biblical texts until the 8th century, when they are replaced by liturgical texts.
1.1. The supremacy of the Bible
As the historical foundation of Christianity, the Bible was from the outset the preferred reading of Christians. However, papyri show that not all Bible texts were read with the same interest.
