ABSTRACT
In his “Preliminary Observations on Legal Matters in P. Petra 10”, published in the Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Papyrology, Ludwig Koenen discusses a specific invocation in which the Holy Trinity is called homoousios 1 . It appears in Greek papyri from Egypt, being used in oaths (earliest attestation 6.viii.537 A.D. 2 , under Justinian I) and dating formulas (since Phocas, A.D. 602) 3 . In the oath formula of Koenen’s document, which for prosopographical reasons is to be dated before 537 4 , the Holy Trinity is only “divine”, not “consubstantial”. The homoousios component is also absent from the trinitarian formula in other Petra texts (A.D. 537 and 539/40) as well as in the Nessana papyri (21 and 22, from 562 and 566 respectively) 5 . However, in the Petra documents it is not completely lacking: it is found once in the oath formula, once outside it 6 .
