574 RECENT RESEARCH IN EGYPT. 



and never overlap, thougli the history passes in succession from one to 

 another. Thus the whole age of Judges is but little over a century. 

 And to this agree the priestly genealogies stretching between the 

 tabernacle and temple periods. 



Leaving now all the monumental age, we come lastly to the evidences 

 of the Christian period, j)reserved in the papyri or miscellaneous waste 

 papers left behind in the towns of the Roman times. Last winter my 

 friends, Mr. Grenfell and Mr. Hunt, cleared out the remains of the town 

 Behnesa, about 110 miles south of Cairo. There, amid thousands of 

 stray pajjers, documents, rolls, accounts, and all the waste sweepings 

 out of the city offices, they found two leaves which ^are priceless in 

 Christian literature — the leaf of Logia, or sayings of Jesus, and the 

 leaf of Matthew's Gospel. 



The leaf of the Logia is already so widely known that it is needless 

 for me to describe it. But I would rather call attention to some obvi- 

 ous conclusions to which it awakes us and which render more clear 

 our grasp of the history of the Gospels. Every great teacher sur- 

 rounded by disciples has, in the natural order of things, been com- 

 memorated first by notebooks of his sayings, compiled by his nearest 

 followers. The ^'Memorabilia" of Socrates, the "Teaching" of Epic- 

 tetus, the "Table Talk" of Luther, are the most obvious examples of 

 this. And to suppose that the record of the sayings of Jesus would be 

 less attended to, less affectionately noted down, less treasured and 

 preserved, is against all probability. It is a priori almost certain that 

 collections of sayings must have been made. Where, then, have they 

 gone? A leaf of such a collection has now turned up, showing that 

 such did exist. But we can see, when our eyes are thus opened, that a 

 whole handbook of classified sayings has come down to us in the form 

 of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, the fifth, sixth, and seventh 

 chapters of Matthew's Gospel. That is really the kernel of the whole 

 Gospel. To that has been added a narrative for the sake of those who 

 in later years were not familiar by hearsay with all that went on, and 

 an introduction has been put before it to explain the circumstances. 

 But the Sermon on the Mount has all the character of a contemporary 

 handbook in its structure and nature, and the tone of it is entirely 

 different from all the narratives written years after the events. 



Another point to which this mass of papyri opens our eyes is the 

 importance of the scribe and account keeper. In the East, down to the 

 present time, the village scribe does all the business and is incessantly 

 writing for people from morning to night. It is his profession. So it 

 was in Eoman times, and far the greater part of the writings tliat 

 remain were written by the scribe and tax gatherer. When such a man 

 left his profession his habits of life could not all change; he would 

 naturally continue to write. And amid the group of fishermen and 

 peasants gathered about Jesus it is impossible to doubt that Matthew, 

 the tax gatherer, ready of pen all his life, would continue his old habit 

 and be the natural scribe of the new way. John, the only other personal 



