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Egerton Gospel
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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. 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.
Contents
[hide]
1 Contents
2 Dating the manuscript
3 Date of composition
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
Contents[edit]
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[edit]
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 Kln 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 P
66
, c. 200.
[2]

Date of composition[edit]
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.
[citation
needed]

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]

See also[edit]
New Testament apocrypha
Notes[edit]
1. ^
a

b

c

d
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 Kln 255: Unbekanntes Evangelium oder
Evangelienharmonie (Fragment aus dem "Evangelium Egerton")". Klner Papyri (in
German) 7 (6): 136145. ISBN 3-531-09931-0. Retrieved 2007-04-12. "Nachzutragen ist,
da sich in dem Klner 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
wrde P.Egerton 2 immer noch zu den frhesten christlichen Papyri zhlen."
3. ^ Evans, Craig A. Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: Ivp
Books, 2008.
References[edit]
Ronald Cameron, editor. The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts, 1982
External links[edit]
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.
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Categories:
Agrapha of Jesus and apocryphal fragments
Lost apocrypha
Egerton collection
Papyrus