An examination of the text of the New Testament shows plainly that it contains many words which are entirely unknown in what is commonly called Classical Greek. For many centuries, the translations offered for such terms were mainly conjectural, owing to the fact that scholars had not been able to discover manuscripts composed in the more colloquial Greek used by the New Testament writers — manuscripts which could provide illuminating parallels to the unfamiliar words and idioms which perplexed the translators of the Bible. Even as late as 1863, this constituted a very real proble, for in that year Bishop Lightfoot, one of the most noted Biblical scholars of his day, wrote: "If we could only recover letters that ordinary people wrote to each other without any thought of being literary, we should have the greatest possible help for the understanding of the language of the New Testament generally." Since these words were penned, the hope which they express has been fulfilled.
Within the last half century innumerable papyrus fragments have been brought to light, mainly in Egypt, and it is evident that as a rule their preservation has been due to accident, rather than to design, for many of them were unearthed in the rubbish heaps of ruined cities. They lay no claim to be "literature" in the usual sense of that word, for most of them are brief personal and business notes or letters; nevertheless they are of vital interest to the student of the Bible. Not only do they present a vivid picture of the lives and problems of men, many of whom were contemporaries of Jesus and his apostles, but they provide the translator with a means of discovering the usage and idiom of words and phrases which hitherto had been known only from the New Testament—just as Dr. Lightfoot had foreseen.
The practical use of these papyriin clarifying Biblical passages can best be suggested by the examination of a few concrete examples.
