Welcome to the Classic Speaches Podcasts presented by BYU Speaches, bringing you treasured talks from 70 years of BYU Devotionals.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU Speaches wherever you get your podcasts,

or by visitingspeeches.bY.edu slash podcasts.

This devotional address entitled,

earliest Christians, according to newly discovered papyri,

was given on March 1st of 1964 by Hugh Niebuley,

then a professor of religion at BYU.

Now this speech will be as short as that.

I won't quarrel with Brother Burnside, though, because it's so refreshing not to be debating with somebody up here.

Be the only one, it's a relief.

If anybody wants to hit, you're welcome to do so because I've got the advantage of the machine here.

Well, this is an unfamiliar subject.

They said we're going to talk about the early Christian church in the light of some newly discovered papyri from Egypt.

They've all been discovered in Egypt quite recently and quite a large number.

I had a bulky briefcase full of photographs of them.

I was going to bring along, but I thought if I ever get involved in those, we'd be here forever and ever, so we'll let them home.

This is an unfamiliar subject. It's an unfamiliar area of study entirely. It's an area to which few people today have any foundation at all.

I suppose I don't have much myself, so I have to spend some time laying it yet is

specifically recommended in the revelations of the Lord to us that we should

seek old records and old things and you know the prophet Joseph Smith supplied

us with a great wealth of ancient records why was he so concerned with those

documents well they hold

...