Oxyrhynchus Gospels

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The Oxyrhynchus Gospels are two fragmentary manuscripts (British Library accession numbers 840 and 1224), which throw light on early non-canonical Gospel traditions of Christianity for scholars, but which are ignored by most Christians due to their being extremely fragmentary. They were each discovered among the rich finds of discarded papyri at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.

1 Oxyrhynchus 840
2 Oxyrhynchus 1224
3 External links
4 Further reading

[edit] Oxyrhynchus 840

Oxyrhynchus 840, found in 1905, is a single small vellum parchment leaf with 45 lines of text written on both sides in a tiny neat hand that dates it to the 4th century. In his introduction in The Complete Gospels, Philip Sellew notes that this fragment was likely a talisman text, kept as an amulet, perhaps worn around the neck. The text itself has been dated to the first half of the second century. Sellew calls it "similar to the New Testament gospels in its style and tone."

The fragment contains sections of a narrative unparalleled in any other known gospel tradition, though Jesus's title as "Savior" (Greek: Σωτήρ) which is found in the New Testament too (e.g.: Luke 1:69, 2:11; John 4:42; Acts 5:31, 13:23 etc.), and the author's vague grasp of details of Temple rituals suggest a Johannine circle, perhaps in Syria [1]. In it Jesus and his disciples appear in the Temple without having performed the ritual bath and are accosted by a high priest of the Pharisees, to whom Jesus responds "But I and [my disciples], whom you say have not wa[shed], we [have wa]shed in waters of li[fe] [eternal co]ming from ..."

[edit] Oxyrhynchus 1224

Oxyrhynchus 1224 consists of two small papyrus fragments from the late 3rd or early 4th century. J. Dominic Crossan notes the mutilated condition in his introduction to the fragmentary text in The Complete Gospels resulting in highly conjectural reconstructions of the text, which, however, "does not seem to be dependent on the New Testament gospels.... As an independent gospel, it belongs, insofar as its fragmentary state allows us to see, not with discourse gospels involving the risen Jesus (e.g., the Secret Book of James and the Gospel of Mary), but with sayings gospels involving the earthly Jesus (e.g., Q document and the Gospel of Thomas). Crossan suggests that the document might have been written as early as the mid-first century.