We went to Dublin to visit the Chester Beatty museum in order to examine the "famous" Chester Beatty biblical papyri. Indeed this was the highlight, as Prof. Dwight Swanson and I spent about 3 hours reviewing various manuscripts -- particularly the Old Greek OT papyri. Outside the papyri at the Johns Rylands Library and the Dead Sea Scroll exhibits, this was a new experience of examining the actual parchments and papyri.

Scholars have fixated on the NT documents of the Chester Beatty archive. What, however, struck us most was the Isaiah papyri from the third century. It was a Christian text, with large, clear handwriting. It had been checked and corrected for errors. One could literally see the care and concern in the copying of the text -- not cheaply done. Of all papyri, it seemed to be the prize of the archive in its handwriting, care, and expense. It even had some ornamental markings -- a kappa that moved below the margins to circle around a word separating dot. The papyri allowed us to see the thinness of the line between art and texts.

Two other texts were of interest: two copies, within the same archive, of Genesis -- again showing its relative importance. One copy was in a very profession, literary hand for public reading -- very standard for OT texts, it seems to me. A second copy was in a documentary hand -- for personal use. One of the challenges that came to me while looking at these texts is how to make out the relationships within this archive -- much work remains to be done for me here. There is much to learn about the early Christian reception and interpretation of these codices from this archive -- the curator said that the OT texts have been relatively neglected (not least because of the Dead Sea discoveries that overshadowed them).

Dublin itself was much more ambiguous. Its colonial history and the role of the church within it was very much apparent. The "Church of Ireland," particularly the cathedral of "Christ's Church," showed the strugglings arising from its history. We spoke to a "deacon" after joining in a brief service there -- a prayer for peace. Rather steep charges accompany entry into the buildling; participation in services, however, is free.

The deacon spoke of the 1.4 million euro cost to keep the building up and running -- with a regular congregation of 80 persons for a Sunday morning Eucharistic service. The Church of Ireland has hired outside consultants to run the cathedral -- the current director makes no confession of faith, yet has been placed in charge of the cathedral. The office of the deacon was to keep order in the cathedral; yet rather than decorum for a sanctuary, the business coordinator had shift the rules to one of a type of tourist attraction. Tension result from the conflict between perspectives.

The cathedral was beautiful. It had been a Catholic cathedral that had been turned over to the Church of Ireland, in communion with the Church of England. The basement of the Cathedral had functioned as a crypt -- as many do within the Christian tradition. What became evident to me, however, was the shift in the nineteenth century in the function of the crypt. In it were buried high military officials killed in the violence of colonial conquest and insurgent rebellion. My guess is that the bodies could not be shipped back to England because of the lack of ability to preserve the bodies; yet they could not be buried in public, particularly with any monumental architecture, because of resistance and vandalism. The cathedral crypt, therefore, became a place for the preservation and memory of the military officials who had occupied Ireland from England.

The depth of this tragedy -- and the material complexities of the reformation -- became more evident at another church that had served as a burial grounds. A medieval guild had cared for the church with a small monastic order overseeing it. It still functions as a church, and had a more "live" feel about it -- volunteers met you at the door and gave access free. In the story of the church/chapel, it was told how the church was forced to change hands, the monastic community prohibited from meeting, the guild disbanded, and even families prohibited from coming into the church and into the burial grounds of their own families. The building then became neglected for a while, until it was transferred back in the course of history.

On the other hand, the Catholic churches had been built away from the "old area" of town. As we walked into these areas, we could see some life there. The churches did not have the grandeur of the Church of Ireland; but services were being held -- although we saw some closed and others in disrepair. The whole dynamics raised materially questions about the interaction between the reformation and colonialism, and the long term consequences for the vitality of the witness of the church.

We left Dublin early Sunday morning to go to London -- honestly, ready to move on. More on that experience later.