New 2nd-Century ‘Sayings of Jesus’ Oxyrhynchus Papyrus

Volume 87 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri is apparently out today and it lists some pretty exciting papyri. From the website:

This volume includes editions of fifty-eight papyri and one text on parchment. Among the theological texts, three are of exceptional interest. 5575 is an early copy of sayings of Jesus corresponding in part to the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke and in part to the apocryphal gospel of Thomas. Jesus is also the speaker in 5576 and apparently in 5577, where Mary is addressed. Both pieces may be loosely called “Gnostic”; the latter appears to be Valentinian.

Candida Moss has more detail at the Daily Beast here. From her article:

The significance of the fragment lies in its date and contents. In conjunction with distinguished papyrologist and paleographer Ben Henry, the editors—Jeffrey Fish, Daniel Wallace, and Michael Holmes—date the fragment to the second century CE. This is important because, as Dr. Fish told me, “Only a few gospel papyri can be securely dated to the second or beginning of the third century.” This is the earliest period from which we have Christian manuscripts. “What is so significant about this papyrus,” continued Fish, “is that it contains sayings of Jesus which correspond partly to canonical gospels (Matthew and Luke) and partly to sayings we know only from the Gospel of Thomas. It is as early or earlier than any of our papyri of the Gospel of Thomas [our earliest non-canonical Gospel],” including other fragments of the Gospel of Thomas found at Oxyrhynchus.

I will update this post as I learn more. But needless to say, this looks like a big deal.

Update (9/1/23)

Now that I’ve seen pictures and emailed the editors I can confirm this is the fragment I worked on as a student in the Green Scholars Initiative back around 2012. It was a treat to work on it and I’m very glad to see it finally published. I did get to spend an afternoon with the fragment. I’ll try to publish some more of the work I did on it back then later on the blog. I haven’t seen the official publication yet and, naturally, the editors went well beyond my meager student efforts. You’ll notice that comparing the photos from 2013 to the b/w images from the Oxy volume that another piece of the fragment was identified. So the color photos do not show the entire known fragment.

2012 Photos (by Ardon Bar-Hama)

2023 Photos from the Oxy volume (via Facebook)

Update (9/12/23)

See the Greek synopsis I put together here.

Demotic Gospel of Thomas

On page 178 of his Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (GJW) rebuttal, Leo Depuydt informed the reader of a parallel incident from 1990, which never made headlines in North America. In this case, someone forged and disseminated the following proceedings chapter, which Leo Depuydt has kindly shared:

R. S. Walker, “Fragmentary inscriptions in an unknown script from a private collection” Proceedings of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences 1874–1875 (1875): 31–34.

The article and accompanying informal translation “preserve” a Demotic text with snippets from the gospel of Thomas. Depuydt has demonstrated that the Demotic text is a forgery by analyzing the Demotic grammar, showing that the Demotic text contains a prepositional phrase which is explained in the most compelling way by the faux pas of a modern translator relying on the known Coptic text. Whereas one would expect the Coptic text to use the form ⲙⲙⲟϥ with the Greek-Coptic loanword τηρέω, the indigenous Egyptian word (in Coptic and Demotic) requires ⲉⲣⲟϥ, not the equivalent of ⲙⲙⲟϥ (font).

Coptic	Demotic
ϩⲁⲣⲉϩ ⲉⲣⲟϥ	ḥrḥ r.r.f
ⲧⲏⲣⲉⲓ ⲙⲙⲟϥ	ḥrḥ n.jm.f

In her response article, Karen King fails to see how this is relevant to the parallel discussion. Depuydt’s argument, however, is fairly simple. He is demonstrating that the literary parallels in GJW (just as in the Demotic GThomas) are best explained by a modern forger, due to grammatical irregularities which only a modern forger would have produced. Whereas this was clear with the Demotic GThomas through the instance cited here, the case is even clearer with GJW, with its repeated errors and the shared error with Michael Grondin’s PDF.

18 May 1991 Financial Times "New Light on the Saying of Jesus"
25 May 1991 Financial Times "Batson comes out of the belfry: The history books may not have to be rewritten..."

Gospel of Jesus' Wife – Final Death Throes?

The authenticity of the Coptic “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” fragment, announced by Karen L. King during the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome, and submitted for publication in Harvard Theological Review, has been severely doubted from the beginning  by a number of scholars, including co-authors of this blog for a number of reasons relating to palaeography and textual content.

Francis Watson and others have demonstrated that the new “Gospel” is in effect a collage of words and phrases from The Gospel of Thomas. Now, some very telling signs are turning up successively that the papyrus text has been copied from Mike Grondin’s on-line interlinear translation of the same. The possibility was pointed out first by Andrew Bernhard because of the awkward translation of line 6. From what I hear, Bernhard will present more compelling evidence on his website devoted to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife very soon. Stay tuned!

Update:  Voila (Andrew Bernhard)!

The straw that breaks the camel’s back: “Line 1 of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment copies a typo from a website interlinear of Coptic Thomas“ (see Mark Goodacre’s post)


 Our previous posts in chronological order:

Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (Askeland’s “live report” from the Coptic Congress in Rome where the fragment was announced by Karen King)

Yet Another Question about the So-Called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

A New Twist in the So-Called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Saga

Top-notch Coptologists Judges GJW to Be a Fake 

Was Mrs Jesus Pimped? 

More questions on Jesus’ Wife Fragment