Christian Oxyrhynchus is a marvelous resource for scholars and students alike. The volume collects not only the fragments of texts that eventually became part of the 'New Testament' but also a wealth of extracanonical Christian texts, hymns, prayers, tractates, and amulets that constituted the library of knowledge that Oxyrhynchite Christians had in the second to the fourth centuries C.E. Taken together, these form a rich dossier, illustrating the complexion and contours of Christianity at this important Egyptian city.
~John S. Kloppenborg, F.R.S.C., Professor and Chair, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
A treasure trove! This book will serve as a rich resource both for teaching and for original research on a formative period in the history of early Christianity with firsthand documents from a known provenance. I am sure it will stimulate and generate new research on this important site and its Christian population. I recommend it warmly.
~AnneMarie Luijendijk, Chair and Professor, Department of Religion, Princeton University
This important new collection forms an indispensable aid to research on early Christian Egypt, and will serve as the basis for the next generation of work on Christianity in Oxyrhynchus.
~Malcolm Choat, Associate Professor, Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University
For the first time ever, Lincoln Blumell and Thomas Wayment provide a collection of literary and documentary witnesses to early Christianity from a late ancient town in Upper Egypt. Students and scholars alike will profit from the meticulous and scrutinizing work of collecting this mass of papyri from the second to the fourth century.
~Thomas J. Kraus, University of Zurich
This is an exceptionally useful volume…The material presented here will enrich understanding of the life and concerns of this significant early Christian community.
~Paul Foster, Expository Times
Blumell and Wayment are competent and conscientious editors. We thank them for the results of their labours, which should bring these texts to an audience wider than that served by the original publications.
~Novum Testamentum
This volume is sure to stimulate further investigation into the social, economic, and religious lives of Christians in Oxyrhynchus.
~Geoffrey S. Smith, Review of Biblical Literature
…Blumell and Wayment are to be congratulated for an impressive achievement: a much-needed resource, highly detailed and accurately executed. Anyone who has endured the constant searching and sifting of volume after volume of the Oxyrhynchus library will recognize immediately the value and convenience of this collection. In all, Christian Oxyrhynchus fills a glaring gap with an excellent and eminently useful tool for scholars as well as students who are interested in early Christianity, its people, and its texts.
~Zachary J. Cole, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
A handy and helpful publication, which can be used not only for teaching purposes, but also for introducing Oxyrhynchus and its papyri to readers from various disciplines.
~Robert Mazza, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
For the first time specific sources for Christianity from the second to the fourth century are easily available to everyone. Besides, they are presented in an academically concise and responsible manner so that Christian Oxyrhynchus is definitely not just a popular book, it is a piece of research or, in other words, a tool for researchers to both start from and work with. The preciseness and accuracy, the wealth of information and details, the overall astoundingly correct orthography, and the paleographical details are dealt with in a very comprehensible manner even for non-experts.
~Thomas J. Kraus, Early Christianity
Blumell and Wayment are to be commended for producing a solid work of scholarship that will prove useful for years to come. They have been thorough in working through the literature and documents connected to Oxyrhynchus and in presenting them in an attractive format. The information collected will be essential for those attempting to understand the character and history of Christianity in Oxyrhynchus, and indeed in Egypt as a whole.
~Roderic L. Mullen, Catholic Biblical Quarterly
Every scholar of Christian origins should own this publication, which transcends simple reproduction of the sources. The volume’s price further supports its use in graduate and undergraduate settings, even as a reading list item for an advanced course of study. The contents draw the reader back to engage key sources and likewise induce the reader to use the corpus for novel research.
~James D. G. Dunn, Journal of Early Christian Studies
In this helpful and carefully presented volume, Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment bring together some of the most important texts, biblical, literary and documentary, relating to the Christian inhabitants of the city.
~James Carleton Paget, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
