Egerton Gospel

From Textus Receptus

The Egerton Gospel (British Library Egerton Papyrus 2) refers to a group of papyrus fragments of a codex of a previously unknown gospel, found in Egypt and sold to the British Museum in 1934; the physical fragments are now dated to the very end of the 2nd century AD, although the date of composition is less clear – perhaps 50-100 AD. It is one of the oldest known fragments of any gospel, or any codex. The British Museum lost no time in publishing it: acquired in the summer of 1934, it was in print in 1935. It is also called the Unknown Gospel, as no ancient source makes reference to it, in addition to being entirely unknown before its publication.^[1] This manuscript forms part of the Egerton Collection in the British Library.

The surviving fragments include four stories: 1) a controversy similar to John 5:39-47 and 10:31-39; 2) curing a leper similar to Matt 8:1-4, Mark 1:40-45, Luke 5:12-16 and Luke 17:11-14; 3) a controversy about paying tribute to Caesar analogous to Matt 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, Luke 20:20-26; and 4) an incomplete account of a miracle on the Jordan River bank, perhaps carried out to illustrate the parable about seeds growing miraculously.^[1] The latter story has no equivalent in canonical Gospels:^[1]

Jesus walked and stood on the bank of the Jordan river; he reached out his right hand, and filled it.... And he sowed it on the... And then...water...and...before their eyes; and it brought forth fruit...many...for joy...^[1]

Dating the manuscript

The date of the fragment is established on paleography alone. When the Egerton fragment was first analyzed, the estimated date was rivaled in age only by the John Rylands Library fragment of the Gospel of John. Later, when an additional piece of the same manuscript was identified in the University of Cologne collection (Papyrus Köln 255) and published in 1987— it fit on the bottom of one of the Egerton pages— a single use of an apostrophe, which was not normally added to Greek punctuation until the 3rd century, sufficed to revise the date of the manuscript. This study placed the manuscript to around the time of Bodmer Papyri P⁶⁶, c. 200.^[2]

Date of composition

Jon B. Daniels writes the following in his introduction in The Complete Gospels:

On the one hand, some scholars have maintained that Egerton's unknown author composed by borrowing from the canonical gospels. This solution has not proved satisfactory for several reasons: The Egerton Gospel's parallels to the synoptic gospels lack editorial language peculiar to the synoptic authors, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They also lack features that are common to the synoptic gospels, a difficult fact to explain if those gospels were Egerton's source.

On the other hand, suggestions that the Egerton Gospel served as a source for the authors of Mark and/or John also lack conclusive evidence. The most likely explanation for the Egerton Gospel's similarities and differences from the canonical gospels is that Egerton's author made independent use of traditional sayings and stories of Jesus that also were used by the other gospel writers.

Such traditional sayings are posited for the hypothetical Q Document. Ronald Cameron states: "Since Papyrus Egerton 2 displays no dependence upon the gospels of the New Testament, its earliest possible date of composition would be sometime in the middle of the first century, when the sayings and stories which underlie the New Testament first began to be produced in written form. The latest possible date would be early in the second century, shortly before the copy of the extant papyrus fragment was made. Because this papyrus presents traditions in a less developed form than John does, it was probably composed in the second half of the first century, in Syria, shortly before the Gospel of John was written."

Helmut Koester and J. D. Crossan have argued that despite its apparent historical importance, the text is not well known. It is a mere fragment, and does not bear a clear relationship to any of the four canonical gospels. The Egerton Gospel has been largely ignored outside a small circle of scholars. The work cannot be dismissed as "apocrypha" or "heretical" without compromising the orthodoxy of the Gospel of John. Nor can it be classed as "gnostic" and dismissed as marginal. It seems to be almost independent of the synoptic gospels and to represent a tradition similar to the canonical John, but independent of it. Additionally it tells us an otherwise unknown miracle, in the Johannine manner.

Conservative scholar Craig Evans supports a date for Egerton Gospel later than the canonical Gospels in a variety of ways. He finds many parallels between the Egerton Gospel and the canonical Gospels that include editorial language particular to Matthew and Luke. While Koester argues that these show a tradition before the other gospels, Craig Evans sees these as drawing from the other Gospels just as Justin Martyr did. He also finds words such as the plural "priests" that show lack of knowledge of Jewish customs.^[3]

Notes

1. Ehrman, Bart (2003). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-514182-2.
2. Michael Gronewald (1987). "Papyrus Köln 255: Unbekanntes Evangelium oder Evangelienharmonie (Fragment aus dem "Evangelium Egerton")" (in German). Kölner Papyri 7 (6): 136–145. ISBN 3-531-09931-0. Retrieved 2007-04-12. "Nachzutragen ist, daß sich in dem Kölner Fragment nun auch Apostroph zwischen Konsonanten (aneneg'kon) wie in P.Bodmer II findet, was nach E.G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts 13, 3 eher ins dritte Jahrhundert weist. Doch auch bei einer eventuellen Datierung um 200 würde P.Egerton 2 immer noch zu den frühesten christlichen Papyri zählen."
3. Evans, Craig A. Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: Ivp Books, 2008.

References

Ronald Cameron, editor. The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts, 1982

External links

The PAPYRUS EGERTON 2 Homepage Detailed description of the manuscript, with many images. Greek and English text and reconstruction.
Early Christian Writings website: text, commentary, links.

The King James Version 2023 Edition New Testament is now complete and in print format here.

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