Notice on the Bruce Gnostic Papyrus

THE GNOSTIC PAPYRUS BRUCE.

had entrusted the care of the precious manuscript, wished to remedy this state of the manuscript and have the leaves of the papyrus pasted onto cardboard. But since the papyrus was written on the front and back, it was necessary to cut the leaves in half through their thickness, and either because the operation was unsuccessful, or because the manuscript itself was in too poor a condition, most of the leaves are notched; few have been preserved intact; many are reduced to half or even a third of their width. Moreover, during the operation, about twenty leaves disappeared, for they are no longer found today in the small box where these precious remains were enclosed, and it is known for a fact that they existed at the end of the last century, since the famous Woïde was able to make a copy of them, and this copy contains a much larger number of pages than the manuscript in its current state. The copy taken by Woïde and kept with all the papers of this scholar at the Clarendon Press in Oxford original: "Ils sont maintenant transportés à la bibliothèque Bodléienne pour l’usage du public sans cesser d’être la propriété de la Clarendon Press." attests that the manuscript was handed over incomplete to the hands of Bruce, and that several pages were already so erased that they could no longer be read. The leaves were no longer arranged in order; they no longer held together, apart from a few happy exceptions, and Woïde himself, as indicated by the pro memoria for the record/note placed at the head of his copy, did not know how to arrange them or at least had not attempted to do so. However, the task is not impossible, just as it is not impossible to fill most of the gaps that existed at the end of the last century. Indeed, there are so many pages that are repetitions of one another, so many series that unfold in the same order, that it is almost easy to rediscover the original order of the manuscript.