Didymus Papyrus

Didymus Papyrus

Didymus the Blind (AD 313 – 398) was an important Christian exegete from Alexandria. He was esteemed by Jerome and by Bishop Athanasius, who appointed Didymus head of the school at Alexandria. Blind already in his youth , Didymus was heavily influenced by Origen (ca. 184 – 254) and composed numerous volumes of biblical commentary. When the writings of Origen were condemned as heretical by Justinian at the second council of Constantinople (553), Didymus’s writings also fell into disrepute. During the Middle Ages, no copies of Didymus’s writings seem to have circulated.

“P.BYU Did.” identifies part of a late-5th/early-6th century papyrus codex that was scattered after its discovery during the Second World War and is now partially recovered in various locations. In 1941 British military engineers discovered a hoard of at least eight papyrus codices in a subterranean cavern at Tura, about 10 miles outside Cairo, almost certainly in the very spot they had occupied since Late Antiquity. The Tura find restored otherwise unattested treatises by Didymus the Blind, by Origen, and by another unknown author. Five of the Tura codices contain Didymus’s commentaries on principal books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Ecclesiastes, Job, Zachariah, and Psalms...

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