New “Sayings of Jesus” gospel identified from Oxyrhynchus fragment.

Just published in volume 87 of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (2023) [1], is a fragment pictured here front and back and is catalogued as P. Oxy. 5575:

This was a newly rediscovered gospel that was waiting to be identified among the mass of fragments in storage from Oxyrhynchus. This new “Sayings of Jesus” gospel has 19 lines of Greek. It is in the same genre as the gospel of Thomas and the hypothetical Q gospel that many scholars think Matthew and Luke used as a source. Yet according to Candida Moss this gospel is not Q:

When I [Candida Moss] asked Jeffrey Fish and Michael Holmes if they had discovered Q, they were clear that they had not. “Q,” said Holmes “is commonly defined as material deriving from Matthew and Luke.” This fragment also includes sections shared with the Gospels of Thomas and departs from Matthew and Luke in small but important ways. It is, however, a sayings source. Fish tentatively raised the possibility that it may represent material used by the author of the Gospel of Thomas and, thus, present another line of early Christian thought and written tradition.

From her article on the Daily Beast [2]

In the Textual criticism Facebook group Candida Moss further elaborated why it’s not Q, “It’s not just the Thomas parallels. There’s a place where Matthew and Luke agree against 5575.” There are lots of exciting possibilities for this gospel including being a source for Thomas. In the same Facebook group, Stephen C. Carlson said, “The papyrological similarities between 5575 and 4009 (Gospel of Peter) are really striking. The editors are judiciously cautious of course but it wouldn’t surprise me in the end if the fragments came from the same book.”

Dan Wallace who worked on the fragment had the following to say:

All of us independently dated the MS to late second or perhaps early third century, making it the oldest manuscript with text from Matt 6 (Sermon on the Mount). Significantly, the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) in Münster, Germany, assigns only a handful of New Testament papyri to the second or second/third centuries. Although this is not technically a NT papyrus (it’s syncretistic, including portions from Matt 6, Luke 12, Thomas 27, and perhaps one or two others), that it includes portions from these books at such an early date is astounding. [3]

In the same volume many other extremely interesting papyri are discussed as well:

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.

Description of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 87 [4]

Peter Gurry in his blog stated

[I] worked on [this] 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. [5]

The colour photos were taken from 2013, a slight bit at the end is missing when compared to the 2023 pictures, possibly due to a fold.

In the following article Martijn Linssen makes a quick translation of this exciting new sayings gospel, “P. Oxy. 5575 – an entirely fresh gospel (recto, Part I of II)” [6]

The following transcription is reported by Ken Olson as done by Fish, Wallace and Holmes as on Peter Kirby’s Early Christian Writings site:

Reconstruction of P.Oxy 5575 in English

And Ken Olson reports how Fish, Wallace and Holmes translate it:

‘. . . he died (?). you: [do not] worry [about your life,] what you will eat, [or] about your
body, what [you will wear.] For I tell you: [unless] you fast [from the world,] you will never $nd [the
Kingdom,] and unless you . . . the world, you [will never . . .] the Father . . . the birds, how . . . and [your
(?)] heavenly Father [feeds them (?).] You [also] therefore . . . [Consider the lilies,] how they grow . . .
Solomon . . . in [his] glory . . . [if ] the Father [clothes] grass which dries up and is thrown into the oven,
[he will clothe (?)] you . . . You [also (?)] therefore . . . for [your] Father [knows] . . . you need. [Instead
(?)] seek [his kingdom (?), and all these things (?)] will be given [to you (?)] as well.’ [7]

From the Bible unboxed podcast we have the following translation and comparison[8]

This comment on the skill of translating the fragment-

Mark Goodacre has a cool chart made out here.

Michael Holmes blog on it.

Nogbri observations and comparisons of other fragments are fascinating here.

Ian Mills puts the fragment in context here.

Another link here.

Here are the comparisons done by my friend Andrew Jordan [9]

Luke 12:22
Thomas 27
Matthew 6:26-33

Luke 12:22
He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.

Thomas 27 (Greek)
Jesus said, “If you do not fast as regards the world, you will not find the kingdom of God. If you do not observe the Sabbath as a Sabbath, you will not see the father.”

Coptic
, “If you (plur.) do not abstain from the world, you will not find the kingdom. If you do not make the sabbath a sabbath you will not behold the father.”

Matthew 6:26-33
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?[l] 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God[m] and his[n] righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

—————————————————————

[1] J. Fish, D.B. Wallace, and M. W. Holmes (eds), Volume LXXXVII of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (2023) pp. 6-14.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/oxyrhynchus-papyri-vol-lxxxvii-9780856982521/

[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/scholars-publish-new-papyrus-with-early-sayings-of-jesus

[3] https://danielbwallace.com/2023/09/04/sayings-of-jesus-papyrus-p-oxy-5575-now-published/

[4] https://www.ees.ac.uk/graeco-roman-memoirs?fbclid=iwar1aiczbf00jns458y_3g1rpby-lib8z4i9qjn4wure6mgkthirpqvqc4ds_aem_atnvgiabwq9iqujy8uxm5g4vhgyltqp5f_lwv2jdpl9sbw4uny-asdb3sitrlsop0lq&mibextid=zxz2cz

[5] http://evangelicaltextualcriticismy.blogspot.com/2023/08/new-2nd-century-sayings-of-jesus.html

[6] httpss://academia.edu/resource/work/106297440

[7] https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11104

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnUiSXNCxRs

[9] https://drajordan.com/