The Oxyrhynchus Gospel Fragments

Abstract

It is with five of the Christian fragments unearthed at Oxyrhynchus by Grenfell and Hunt, under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Fund, that I propose to deal here. It will be convenient to quote these fragments as OP (Oxyrhynchus Papyri), and the discoverers of them as GH (Grenfell and Hunt), using the enumeration adopted in their large volumes (not that of the popular reprint of April 1904). The fragments to be considered are Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1, 654, 655, 840, and 1224; the first two of these (No. 1 and No. 654) are the so-called ‘Sayings of Jesus’ and ‘New Sayings of Jesus’; No. 655 is the ‘Fragment of a Lost Gospel,’ containing a page of sayings; No. 840 the ‘Fragment of an Uncanonical Gospel,’ published in 1908; No. 1224 the fragments entitled ‘Uncanonical Gospel,’ published in 1914.