In my previous post I mentioned the peculiar story of Jesus and a leper found in the non-canonical (very!) fragmentary text known as Papyrus Egerton 2.  I’ve decided to give you a fuller scoop on this intriguing and mysterious little Gospel fragment — and a full translation of its four (brief) stories.  I have taken this directly from my book The Other Gospels, co-authored and edited with my colleague Zlatko Plese.  Both the Intro and the Translation in this instance were done by me.

******************************

P.Egerton 2 (and PKöln 255)

One of the most significant publications of early Christian texts in the first part of the twentieth century was H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat, Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Christian Papyri.  The “Unknown Gospel” is preserved in Papyrus Egerton 2, which consists of four fragmentary papyrus leafs, two of which are too fragmentary to be reconstructed (one of them has simply one letter on one side).  The other two (9.2 x 11.5 cm and 9.7 x 11.8 cm) contain four narratives that have, in places, striking similarities with the Gospels of the New Testament.  But there are few verbatim agreements with their New Testament parallels, and some significant differences in content–including one narrative otherwise unknown.

Half a century after Bell and Skeat’s initial publication of the papyrus, M. Gronewald discovered a fragment among the Cologne papyri that he perceptively recognized as belonging to the same manuscript (P.Köln 255).  This new fragment (6.5 x 3.0 cm) adds portions of six lines to both recto and verso of Fragment One.

The stories contained in P.Egerton 2 are as follows:  (a) Jesus’ exhortation to his Jewish opponents to “search the Scriptures” (cf. John 5:39‑47 and 10:31‑39); (b) a foiled attempt to stone and then arrest Jesus, followed by his healing of a leper (cf., e.g., John 10:31ff; Matt 8:1‑4; Mark 1:40‑45; Luke 5:12‑16; and Luke 17:11‑14); (c) the question of whether it is right to pay tribute to the ruling authorities (cf. Matt 22:15‑22; Mark 12:13‑17; and Luke 20:20‑26); and (d) the highly fragmentary account of a miracle Jesus performed by the Jordan River, possibly to illustrate his parable about the miraculous growth of seeds.  This final story has no parallel in the canonical Gospels.

Bell and Skeat were inclined to date the manuscript to 150 CE.  This was a sensational claim, as it made P.Egerton 2 the oldest surviving Christian manuscript of any kind–older than the earliest surviving copies of the books that later became the New Testament.  But soon after its publication

C.H. Roberts edited a papyrus that is now known as P⁵², which contains portions of John 18:31-38 and is generally dated to the year 125 CE (+/- 25 years).  This is now generally considered the oldest surviving copy of any Christian writing.  Moreover, on the basis of his fresh examination of P.Egerton 2, Gronewald has argued that Bell and Skeat were overly generous in their dating, that the text more likely was produced around 200 CE.  Even so, P.Egerton 2 remains one of our earliest manuscripts of any piece of Christian literature.

After its first publication there was a flurry of scholarly interest in the text, with some fifty scholarly articles devoted to it within three years.  One of the leading questions was, and continues to be, the relationship of this “Unknown Gospel” to the Gospels of the New Testament.  Did its author construct his account based on the stories found in the canonical four Gospels?  If so, why are there only scattered verbatim agreements?  Was he attempting to create a Gospel Harmony?  This would explain the material agreements not only with the Synoptics, but also with John; on the other hand, the author must have doing more than creating a harmony, since the fourth story of the text has no parallel in the New Testament (or anywhere else).  Had the author read the Gospels that later became canonical and used them to construct his account from memory, without looking at them carefully?  Had the stories of the New Testament Gospels been circulating orally, and he based his narratives on these oral traditions?  Or was he writing in complete independence of the canonical Gospels?  Is it possible that his account actually antedates the canonical accounts, that it was one of the sources for, say, the Fourth Gospel?

Without page numbering on the surviving fragments of P.Egerton 2, it is impossible to know for certain which pages preceded the others, and which side, recto or verso, is to be read first.  What follows is a plausible reconstruction of the original order.  For the most part, we have followed the text as reconstructed in Lührmann, used with permission, but we have taken the sequence of the fragments from Bell-Skeat.  (NOTE: when I use an elipsis (…) it means letters/words/lines are missing at that point from the manuscript fragment; that’s always very frustrating — and in this case especially with the fourth story)

Bibliography

Bell, H. I. and Skeat, T. C., Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri.  London: Oxford University Press, 1935.

Bell, H. I. and Skeat, T. C..  The New Gospel Fragments.  London: Oxford University Press, 1935.

Bernhard, Andrew E.  Other Early Christian Gospels: A Critical Edition of the Surviving Greek Manuscripts.  London: T&T Clark, 2006; p. 84-87.

Elliott, J. K.  The Apocryphal New Testament.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1993; pp. 37-42.

Gronewald, M. “255. Unbekanntes Evangelium oder Evangelharmonie (Fragment aus dem ‘Evangelium Egerton’),” in Kölner Papyri (P. Köln), eds. M. Gronewald et al.  Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987. Vol 6; pp. 136-45.

Klauck, Hans-Josef.  Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction.  London: T&T Clark, 2003; pp. 23-26.

Lührmann, Dieter.  Fragmente apokryph gewordener Evangelien in griechischer und lateinischer Sprache.  Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2000; pp. 142-53.

Schneemelcher, Wilhelm. “Fragments of Unknown Gospels,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher; tr. R. McL. Wilson.  Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991.  Vol. 1, pp. 96-99.

 

 

TRANSLATION

 

1st story (fragmentary)

             And Jesus said to the lawyers:

“Punish every wrong-doer and transgressor,

but not me. . . .

how he does what he does.”

Then he turned to the rulers of the people

and spoke this word: “Search

the Scriptures; you think that in them

you have life.  They are the ones

that testify concerning me.[1]  Do not think

that I came to accuse

you to my Father.   The one who

accuses you is Moses, in whom

you have hoped.”[2]  They replied,

“We know full well that God spoke to Moses.

But we do not know

where you have come from.”[3]  Jesus answered

them, “Now what stands accused

is your failure to believe his testimonies. For if

you had believed Moses, you would have believed

1. For that one wrote

to your fathers.[4] . . .”

. . . to the crowd. . .

stones together so that they might stone

him.  And the rulers were trying to lay

their hands on him,

that they might arrest him and deliver him over

to the crowd.  They were unable

to arrest him because the hour

for him to be delivered over had not yet come.[5]

But the Lord himself went out through their midst

and left them.[6]

 

2nd story (fragmentary)

And behold, a leper approached him

and said, “Teacher Jesus, while I was traveling with some lepers

and eating with them

at the inn, I myself contracted leprosy.

If, then, you are willing,

I will be made clean.”  Then the Lord said to him,

“I am willing: be clean.”  Immediately

the leprosy left him.  Jesus said

to him, “Go, show yourself to the priests

and make an offering for your cleansing

as Moses commanded; and

sin no more….”[7]

 

 

3rd story (fragmentary)

… [they came] to him and began rigorously

testing him, saying,

“Teacher Jesus, we know that you have come from God.

For the things you do give a testimony

that is beyond all the prophets.  And so, tell

us: is it right to pay the kings the things

that relate to their rule?  Shall we pay them

or not?”[8]  But when Jesus understood their

thought, he became incensed

and said to them, “Why do you call me

teacher with your mouth, when you do not listen

to what I say?  Well did Isaiah prophecy about

you, ‘This people

honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far removed

from me. In vain do they worship me,

commandments….’”[9]

 

4th story (fragmentary)

… enclosed in a secret place . . .

placed underneath inwardly . . .

its weight beyond measure….

And when they were puzzled, as it were,

over his strange question,

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] Cf. John 5:39.

[2] Cf. John 5:45.

[3] Cf. John 9:29.

[4] Cf. John 5:46.

[5] Cf. John 7:30, 44.

[6] Cf. John 10:39; 4:30.

[7] Cf. Matt. 8:2-4; Mark 1:40-44; Luke 5:12-16.

[8] Cf. Matt. 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26.

[9] Isa 29:13; cf. Mark 7:6-7.