FRAGMENTS OF GOSPELS, ETC.
PRESERVED IN MANUSCRIPTS DISCOVERED IN RECENT YEARS
A. GREEK FRAGMENTS
1. THE FAYOUM GOSPEL-FRAGMENT
This is a piece of papyrus of the third (?) century, in the Archduke Rainer’s collection of papyri at Vienna: first published in 1885. There have been many attempts (as in all these cases) at restoring the missing words and letters. The first line remains quite doubtful. What may be regarded as certain is:
all ye in this
night shall be offended according to
the scripture: I will smite the shepherd and the
sheep shall be scattered. And when Peter
said: Even if all, not I, the Lord
⎰said: The cock shall twice crow and thou
⎱said: Before the cock crow twice to-day
⎰first shalt thrice deny me
⎱thou shalt thrice deny me.
It is not certain that this is a fragment of a Gospel: it may be, and is by many held to be, a somewhat abridged quotation made by a preacher or commentator. It omits, for instance, the clause: After I am risen I will go before you into Galilee. If the preacher or expositor wished to emphasize Peter’s denial, he might easily pass over these words. On the other hand the first editor of it, and others, have thought that the omission was a mark of early date.
The word for crow is literally cry cuckoo.
2. THE OXYRHYNCHUS SAYINGS OF JESUS
These are on two papyri found at Oxyrhynchus by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in excavations carried out for the Graeco-Roman branch of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
The first was found in 1897: it is a leaf of a papyrus book, of the third century. It is numbered, apparently, ‘11’. The second was found in 1903: it is a piece of a papyrus roll, also of the third century, but a little later in date than the other. It has a title or prologue.
Both are mutilated. The latest editor, Professor H. G. Evelyn White (The Sayings of Jesus from Oxyrhynchus, Cambridge, 1920), has shown good cause for believing both fragments to belong to the same collection of Sayings. He makes the second precede the first (as I said, it has a title), and believes that the Sayings are extracts from the Gospel according to the Hebrews. I shall follow his order in
