Egerton Gospel
The Egerton Gospel (British Library Egerton Papyrus 2) refers to a collection of three 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 CE. Together they comprise one of the oldest surviving witnesses to any gospel, or any codex. The British Museum lost no time in publishing the text: 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]
Provenance[]
Three fragments of the manuscript form part of the Egerton Collection in the British Library. A fourth fragment of the same manuscript has since been identified in the papyrus collection of the University of Cologne.
The provenance of the four fragments is a matter of some dispute. Throughout the 20th century the provenance of the Egerton fragments was kept anonymous, with the initial editors suggesting without proof that they came from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. In 2019 it was established that they were purchased in 1934 from Maurice Nahman, an antiquities dealer in Cairo. Nahman purchased the manuscript sometime between the 1920s and 1934, without recording its origin. Nahman bragged that he had many origins for his manuscripts. The Oxyrynchus identification is thus in question. The Cologne fragment was deposited without any provenance whatsoever. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this was purchased from Nahman's estate at the time of his death in 1954.[2]
Colin Henderson Roberts reported seeing an account of the Passion of Jesus in Nahman's collection. Other Biblical scholars urgently pursued this missing fragment, but Nahman's collection was sold off indiscriminately to many different European universities and private collectors. The names of buyers were not recorded and the final whereabouts of this fragment, if it exists, are unknown.[3]
Contents[]
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 manuscript is established through paleography alone. When the Egerton fragments were first published its date was estimated at around 150 CE;[4] implying that, of early Christian papyri it would be rivalled in age only by