c. 2007 Religion News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ It wasn’t exactly “The Da Vinci Code,” but a Birmingham Catholic priest recently jetted around the world and helped deliver one of the most important documents in Christian history to the pope.

“It contains the oldest copy of the Lord’s Prayer in the world,” said the Rev. Richard Donohoe, pastor of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Donohoe assisted in the Vatican Library’s acquisition of two rare pieces of papyrus, including the oldest surviving copy of the Gospel of Luke and one of the two oldest copies of the Gospel of John. They were handwritten by a scribe about A.D. 200 and found in Egypt in the 1950s.

The papyri were bought through Christie’s of New York after when the Bodmer Library in Switzerland put them up for sale.

Donohoe got involved in late 2005 when former St. Paul’s member Amy McCready, an employee of Christie’s, told him the artifacts would be coming up for sale and asked if the Vatican would be interested.

Donohoe contacted Gary Krupp of the Pave the Way Foundation, who had previously worked with the Vatican Library. The Vatican expressed interest. In February, Donohoe was asked by the Vatican to raise funds for the purchase. The fundraising and the negotiations during 2006 were kept secret.

With Krupp’s help, Donohoe contacted Catholic businessman Frank Hanna III of Atlanta, whose foundation put up the money to purchase the ancient documents and donate them to the Vatican for safekeeping and research. No sale price was announced, although it was obviously in the millions.

“It will be one of the largest gifts that they ever make,” Donohoe said of Frank and Sally Hanna and their daughter, Elizabeth.

On Jan. 22, Donohoe, Krupp and the Hanna family took part in a ceremony at the Vatican to present the papyri to the pope.

“It was a remarkable, holy experience for all of us,” Donohoe said.

“This is without question one of the most valuable Christian manuscripts now in the possession of the Vatican,” said Krupp, who works closely with the Vatican on interfaith relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Donohoe had flown to Switzerland on Nov. 22 to inspect the documents, joining experts who authenticated them. “It left Switzerland under armed guard, arrived in Vatican City and went downstairs to a bunker,” Donohoe said.

The stunning Vatican acquisition caught the attention of one of the top scholars of ancient biblical documents, James M. Robinson, who this semester is serving as professor of religion at Auburn University.

“It’s probably the most important New Testament biblical manuscript to have survived,” said Robinson, general editor of “The Nag Hammadi Library in English.”

In his studies of Nag Hammadi, another cache of documents found in Egypt in the 1950s, Robinson also traced the history of the Bodmer papyri.

Martin Bodmer was a vice president of the International Red Cross who frequently bought ancient manuscripts in Egypt and took them to a library he created to house them in Switzerland. In the early 1950s, he acquired 22 papyri, including several New Testament books.

Robinson said he was surprised the Bodmer Library sold its Gospel of Luke, known as Bodmer XIV, and its Gospel of John, known as Bodmer XV.

Unlike most ancient documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices that survived in small fragments, the Bodmer papyri of John and Luke are remarkably complete, he said.

They contain most of Luke chapters 3 through 18 and 22 through 24, and most of John chapters 1 through 15.

“It’s a pretty intact book,” said Robinson, professor emeritus at the Claremont Graduate School. “Something of this quality hasn’t been on the market in my lifetime.”

They are written in clear, common Greek.

“It’s written in the archaic Koine, the Greek of the streets; that’s what the gospels were originally written in,” Donohoe said. “It’s very easily read. It’s in beautiful condition.”

They are commonly dated to between A.D. 175 and 225. They were able to survive so long because they were preserved in the dry climate of upper Egypt, like the Nag Hammadi artifacts and the Dead Sea Scrolls found in caves in the region.

Robinson believes the documents are from the first Christian monastery, started near Dishna, Egypt, about A.D. 320 by St. Pachomia. The Greek manuscripts date more than a century earlier than the monastery, he said.

Robinson theorizes that St. Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, went into hiding at a Pachomian monastery during one of his many exiles from persecution and took books with him from the great library of Alexandria, which later burned.

He believes the Nag Hammadi codices, found in caves in upper Egypt, also may have come from the monasteries and probably sold in Cairo, which is where Bodmer, the collector, bought them from antiquities dealers.

Bodmer, who died in 1971, had previously donated Papyrus VIII, the oldest copy of First and Second Peter, to Pope Paul VI during the pope’s visit to Geneva in 1969.

Donohoe said he felt that the Vatican Library would be the best place to preserve the Bodmer papyri of Luke and John as well.

“The scholars who have a legitimate need for research will be able to see it,” he said. “It’s like bringing it home.”

(Greg Garrison writes for The Birmingham News of Birmingham, Ala.)

PH END GARRISON