La poésie biblique grecque en Égypte au IVe siècle. Enjeux littéraires et théologiques

The paper deals with the early phase of Biblical poetry in the Greek East. The new Christian poems preserved in a papyrus codex from the s0-called Bodmer Library (a group of papyri coming from the area of the city of Panopolis, Upper Egypt), has dramatically shown that in Egypt verse paraphrases of Biblical books were composed already in the middle of the fourth century. Their author had already attempted to give their answer to the challenge represented by a Christian poetry in classical language and metres. Before the few Biblical poems by Gregory of Nazianzus and the brief season of the fifth century Biblical epic (Nonnos, Eudocia, the Ps-Apollinaris), The Bodmer poet(s) show to be aware of the literary and theological issues involved by the paraphrastic genre. It is questionable whether this is a creative innovation or the author(s) have been inspired by previous examples. The study of the environment where these poems have been composed (where Latin texts are known) could suggest that the author(s) were aware of the Latin experiments. On the other hand, an analysis of Christian metric inscriptions from the first half of the 4th century points out that some aspects of 'biblical poetry' (namely the juxtaposition of Classical and Biblical expressions) were more common than admitted.