I've been reading philo recently and when I got to the posterity of Cain and on the worse and the better he meantions concepts such as being spiritually male or female, and the immortal race of seth.
Also in another segment he talks about how god is always "standing" a term used by Simonian gnosticism seen as the standing one or the one who stood stands and will stand.
In a far previous book I even remember him talking about a seven tiered heaven system which aligns to an armillary sphere, also if I remember correctly there's some point where philo meantions Cain as the son of the serpent
Anyway I've read from Wikipedia that the archeological dig the "Oxyrhynchus Papyri" contains four philo texts as well as the text Sophia of Jesus Christ (Oxyrhynchus 1081) https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/coptic-gnostic-library/papyrus-oxyrhynchus-1081greek-fragment-of-the-sophia-of-jesus-christ-po-aPO?s.mode=DEFAULT&s.q=e%28encyclopaedia+of+tajikistan%29
, the gospel of Mary, the secret book of James and the gospel of Thomas
Is there any chance these texts would have been owned by the same person? Could gnostics have been using philo or they taking from the same sources, essene maybe? Does the term spiritually male show up in Greek philosophy is that just the common source?
It seems that the contents are varied and of different times. Why where they all in the same place? Did they originally belong to an ancient library?
I looked into this and I’m amazed. There are tons of discoveries that can be made from the oxyrhynchus papyri. What do you need to be able to work with them? Is there any profession specifically for this?
Brent Nongbri provides another update on Obbink >> Now, the buying and selling of these “Distribution Papyri” is legal. Whether it’s ethical is a separate question (the Egypt Exploration Society has taken a stand against the sale of “Distribution” items). These records, if accurate, show that Professor Obbink was active in the antiquities market, and it is fascinating to see that Professor Obbink was buying and then almost immediately reselling these pieces to the Green Collection. It’s not just this Psalms fragment. It’s several pieces bought from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio: P.Oxy. 1353; P.Oxy. 1459; P.Oxy. 1678; P.Oxy. 1688; P.Oxy. 1728; P.Oxy. 1756; and P.Oxy. 1775, as well as a Tebtunis papyrus.
>>It’s also noteworthy that this was happening quite early in the formation of the Green Collection–in 2010. If these records are accurate, then almost from the beginning of the enterprise, Dirk Obbink was not just an advisor, but also a supplier of manuscripts to the Green Collection. It certainly makes the question of the ownership history of the unprovenanced Christian manuscripts in the Green Collection and Museum of the Bible all the more pressing.
More from Brent Nongbri here
>>Although Professor Dirk Obbink has issued an emphatic denial of accusations that he illegally stole and sold papyri from the Egypt Exploration Society, he has not (to the best of my knowledge) denied that he (legally) bought and sold so-called “distribution” papyri. These are published papyri from Oxyrhynchus and elsewhere that the Egypt Exploration Fund gave to subscribers mainly in the US and the UK between 1900 and 1924. Some of these pieces later ended up on the antiquities market to be traded by collectors and dealers, including (apparently) Prof. Obbink himself, if Museum of the Bible records are to be believed. I have discussed these “distribution papyri” in an earlier post.
>>Why do I bring this up? On the Oxford University website, there is a recording of a talk given by Prof. Obbink in 2015 on the now infamous Sappho fragments that he edited. During the talk, he spends a good deal of time discussing P.Oxy. 10.1231, a different copy of Sappho’s poems that was excavated from the trash heaps of Oxyrhynchus. This piece is now held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
>>It is kept at the Bodleian (rather than the Sackler, where the bulk of the Oxyrhynchus collection is held) because it was one of those early publications that was “distributed” to donor organizations. In his talk, Prof. Obbink acknowledges this fact and then makes some remarks that are quite stunning in light of the fact the he himself seems to have been buying and selling distribution Oxyrhynchus papyri as recently as 2010.
I know information about this has been posted here since it came to light, this article gives a nice overview. Please remove if it has already been posted.
