OXYRHYNCHUS SAYINGS OF JESUS ŏk’ sĭrĭng’ kəs. A collection of sayings or apothegms purporting to be quoted from Jesus and surviving on four small fragments of papyrus written in Koine Gr. These were discovered in the systematic search for papyrus carried on at the site of the Hel. town of Oxyrhynchus, ̓Οζυρυνχυς, the modern Behnesa, 121 m. below Cairo and ten m. to the W of the Nile River. The mass of papyri fragments, scrolls and folios excavated from Oxyrhynchus were published by the British scholars B. P. Grenfell (1869-1926) and A. S. Hunt (1871-1934) and their successors in eighteen volumes and accompanied by several monographs during the 19th cent. The sayings attributed to Jesus are written on four separate and apparently unrelated fragments. The first was discovered soon after the first trench into the mound of the ancient Roman-age town was dug, after 11 January 1897. It was titled by its finders, Papyrus I, and contains a portion of the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas, a Gnostic work of the post-apostolic period. There are seven decipherable sayings each introduced by the phrase “Jesus says,” and apparently disconnected from each other except for the introductory phrase.
Preservation of such fragments leaves more questions unanswered than answers provided. The “sayings of Papyrus 1” are paraphrased as follows:
1. “Jesus says, Unless you fast from the world, you will in no way discover the kingdom of God.”
“If you do not keep the sabbath the whole week through, you will not see the father.”
2. “Jesus says, I stood in the center of the world and I was seen by them in the flesh, and I found all men drunk, but I found none thirsty among them.”
3. “Jesus says, My soul grieves concerning the sons of men because their hearts are blind so they do not see their plight and their poverty.”
4. “Jesus says, Wherever there are two together they are not apart from God, and where one is alone, I tell you I am with him.”
“Lift up the stone and then you shall find me, split the beam and I am there.”
5. “Jesus says, A physician does not treat those who know him.”
6. “Jesus says, You hear with one ear, but the other is closed.”
7. “Jesus says, There is nothing hidden (buried) which shall not be (raised) known.”
Note: the numbering and reconstruction of the sayings is highly tentative and that shown here is by no means final or authoritative. These statements were written on a leaf of an ancient codex and are marked on the reverse with the figure “11” possibly indicating that it was once part of a much larger collection. The second fragment, Papyrus 654, was excavated in 1903 and contains a short introductory prologue and the remains of five sayings. Only the left half of the fragment is extant and on the reverse appear listings of real estate surveys. It may have been a school text but contains some material unknown from other sources. The prologue declares the contents to be the “lifegiving” sayings of Jesus who is stated to be alive and to have been seen by Thomas and the ten. This reference has been assumed to relate the work to the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. However, a restoration of one of the sayings is similar to a quotation from the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews cited by Clement of Alexandria; “May he that seeks not stop seeking until he finds, and when he finds he will wonder, and after he has wondered he will rule, and after he has ruled he will rest.” The remaining sayings appear to be slightly variant VSS of similar statements which appear in the gospels (Matt 7:7; 10:26; et al. and Luke 17:20ff.). The third fragment, Papyrus 655, is another fragment from a scroll as is 654 but the two are unrelated. Two columns are preserved but the second one is so badly damaged as to be barely decipherable. The better preserved portion is a free variant of Matthew 6:25-28 concerning the lilies of the field and the providence of God. A citation in the works of Clement of Alexandria which he traces to the apocryphal Gospel of the Egyptians seems to be paralleled by a saying quoted at the end of this fragment. “His disciples say to him, When will you be revealed to us and when will we see you? He replies, When you have cast off your garment and are no longer feeling shameful.” No other quotation of this type is known from other sources. The fourth fragment was uncovered in 1905 written in a very tiny hand on both sides of a leaf from a codex. The extant text totals about forty-five lines plus some fragmentary words. The contents have been the subject of considerable controversy. It takes the form of a dialogue between Jesus and a Pharisee, a high priest named Levi. Just what the text was meant to convey, whether another apocryphal, or pseudepigraphic gospel, a set of magic statements, or a school text has not been decided. It is distinctly different in style and content from the other three fragments. The text is known as Papyrus 840. No known parallels exist. Unfortunately many speculations have been based on no better foundational assumptions than the Marcion hypothesis, the negative higher critical schools or simply some notion of which fragment precedes the others. The results have had little application to overall NT exegesis. The situation, however, has changed somewhat with the discovery of the DSS and the insight they provide into the mystical exegesis of the OT common at that time. The recovery of a number of Coptic Gnostic papyri from Egypt discovered beginning in 1948 at the site of a Rom. era town near modern Chenoboskion has added the only other series of papyri of similar content. It is clear from the fuller text of the apocryphal gospel attributed to Thomas that the short disconnected “logia” quotations were typical of the Gnostic writings. The earliest date so far assigned the Oxyrhynchus Papyri is the middle of the 3rd Christian cent. By that period the syncretism of Christianity and the Hel. religions was well advanced and apologetics were striving to define the heretical dogmas abroad. A common contrivance of the various heterodox movements was to ascribe their notions to some leader of the church, and these collections of Jesus’ words no doubt sprang from such motives. The double phrase form and the cleverly associated development of ideas is similar to the main body of oriental wisdom lit., which may be traced back to the third millennium b.c. The fragments also indicate that their writers had a broad knowledge of the canonical evangelists. Some debate has centered around the fact that there are no clear references to texts or statements from John’s gospel. This is most prob. just a coincidence of discovery; the fourth gospel was parodied and modified for the purposes of the sectaries as much as the other three.
The question as to whether these or other collections of non-canonical sayings may in fact be based on some unrecorded true remembrance of the words of Jesus is related to the view of canon which is adopted. Since the apostles were in the prime position to judge the veracity of such texts and since their disciples took such pains to set down only their teachings, it is highly unlikely that a large body of such lit. would have survived. The evidence for an extensive body of oral tradition in the immediate postapostolic age is denied by the writings of the Pre-Nicene fathers, who appear to have shown the diligence and care necessary to differentiate between the true canonical books and the many spurious ones then in circulation. The difficulty of the location of the true origin of the sayings is impossible to solve and speculations are useless. In each of the sayings the theme of the “hiddenness” of the true message of Jesus and the need for nonrational means of obtaining the true knowledge are typically oriental and neo-Platonic, two chief features mentioned by the Gr. fathers as common in the heresies of their time.
One aspect of the sayings which demonstrates the essential character of the 3rd cent.-church is their simple reliance for authority on the words of Jesus. The authors of these spurious texts could seek no better authority for their notions than to insert them into the teachings of Jesus. The common notion that Christ did not construct an authoritative body of teaching, but that it was His followers who made up the true character of Christological authority, is thus destroyed. Another feature of the sayings is that they lack the inherent Sem. style and semantics of the actual quotations from Christ’s teaching as recorded in the gospels. They are prob. not based on Heb. or Aram. originals but were set down in either Coptic of Upper Egypt or Koine Gr. Final assessment of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri must await the results of newer archeological discoveries of Rom. era texts.
Bibliography Ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt and others, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, 32 vols. (1898-1966); H. G. E. White, The Sayings of Jesus from Oxyrhynchus (1920); M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (1924); N. Lewis, L’Industrie du papyrus dans l’ Égypte graeco-romaine (1934); J. Jeremias, Unbekannte Jesusworte (1948); J. Cerny, Paper and Books in Ancient Egypt (1952); H. I. Bell, Cults and Creeds in Graeco-Roman Egypt (1953); M. S. Enslin, “Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus,” IDB Vol. III (1962), 614-616; C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (1967); E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri (1968).