The subject matter of the first six columns of the extant text of the papyrus is relatively homogeneous and clearly distinct from the rest. In these columns the author focuses primarily on the interpretation of certain rituals with the help of certain eschatological concepts. This part of the text may prove to be of the utmost importance for the general understanding of the papyrus; it is likely to provide a clue about the overall communicational situation, the Sitz im Leben of the text, and about the professional identity of the author. These columns, however, made up the outer layers of the roll and were accordingly more exposed to the destructive effects of fire and time. For this reason, this part of the text is in a deplorable state of conservation, broken up into dozens of tiny scraps. This is why these columns were almost entirely missing from the first transcripts. Hence they were largely unknown to scholars until Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou published in 1997 a preliminary, but apparently more or less complete, transcript of the first seven columns. Tsantsanoglou also presented a detailed and circumspect philological and historical commentary with his transcript. This publication marks a true advance in the study of the papyrus.

Yet, due to the physical state of the papyrus, it is extremely difficult to reconstruct the author's main line of argument in these columns even armed with Tsantsanoglou's transcript and commentary.