Papyrus Bodmer II has come quietly into a world stunned a little with ever fresh discoveries of ancient monuments. New Testament students know, indeed, that they are enriched with a very precious accession to their store of manuscripts. We have never possessed before so large a portion of any Gospel, so well preserved, from so early a date, as we now have, thanks to Victor Martin's distinguished editing, in these fourteen chapters of the Gospel according to St. John, copied about the year 200.

The theology of Tatian is difficult to classify. Should one regard its author as a philosopher, as Professor Wolfson does? or as a student of “the homilies of Philo”? or as a writer who made use, even indirectly, of the Parmenides of Plato? In order to answer this question we must inquire first what he knows of Greek philosophy and second what else he knows in regard to Graeco-Roman literary culture.

Since the Enlightenment ennui and despair have been among the most dominant themes in western literature. In the twentieth century there scarcely exists a single major work of fiction which views man's nature and destiny under the aspect of hope or fulfillment. Why this should be so is the subject of interminable discussion which, generally speaking, locates the deeper cause in the breakdown of virtually all genuine religiousness with an attendant rise of meaninglessness and emptiness. This development in turn is linked to the various revolutions, particularly the Industrial, that have combined to undermine traditional occidental modes of thought and living. While some critics hold that it is merely a question of modern society becoming gradually accustomed to the blessings so precipitously conferred upon it by technology, thus comparing its present growing pains to those of an adolescent, few seem to disagree on the prevailing exhaustion and anxiety. In addition to the note of doom struck by the best intellectuals of our day — and its fashionableness is no argument against its truth — it would appear that the unreflecting masses independently of being exposed to this literature do not know how to redeem their leisure time, have lost a great deal of capacity for spontaneous participation, and seek despairingly if not eagerly for something vital to which they can relate themselves and through which find renewed structure in their lives.

Of the changes that have taken place in theology since the Renaissance, none is more striking than the re-interpretation of the Mosaic account of the creation and fall of man, which has passed from the realm of history to that of ‘myth.’ Equally impressive, however, are the changes that have taken place in eschatology. This disagreement with our ancestors is not revolutionary on every point, since at least one fundamental idea, affirmed by George Hakewill in the earlier seventeenth century, still holds true. “That the world shall haue an end,” wrote Hakewill, “is as cleere to Christianity, as that there is a Sun in the firmament: And therefore, whereas there can hardly be named any other article of our faith, which some Heretiques haue not presumed to impugne or call into question; yet to my remembrance I never met with any who questioned this; & though at this day many & eager be the differences among Christians in other points of Religion, yet in this they all agree & ever did, that the world shall haue an end.” If on this, however, all Christians are agreed, the exact time of the Day of the Lord has been the subject of speculation ever since the advent of Christianity, not to mention Jewish apocalyptic thought.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus fragment 402 (Greg. P9) is located in the Semitic Museum of Harvard University. Its text is transcribed by Grenfell and Hunt in Oxyrhynchus Papyri III, pp. 2–3.