The Egerton Gospel (British Library Egerton Papyrus 2) refers to a group of 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. British Library Ossulston St entrance, with distinctive red logo. ... First page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for block of wood, book; plural codices) is a handwritten book, in general, one produced from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages. ... For other uses, see Gospel (disambiguation). ... British Library Ossulston St entrance, with distinctive red logo. ...

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 Cologne 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.^[1] This adjustment shows to the general reader that dating a Greek manuscript to within a generation on the basis of handwriting alone is on very shaky ground.^{[citation needed]} Palaeography, literally old writing, (from the Greek words paleos = old and grapho = write) is the study of script. ... The John Rylands Library (inaugurated October 1899) is a collection of historic books and manuscripts in Manchester, England. ... John Rylands Library Papyrus P52, recto The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St Johns fragment, is a papyrus conserved at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, UK. The front (recto) contains lines from the Gospel of John 18:31-33, in Greek, and the back (verso) contains... The Bodmer Papyri are a group of twenty-two papyri found in 1952 at Pabau near Dishna, Egypt, the ancient headquarters of the Pachomian order of monks; the discovery site is not far from Nag Hammadi. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Epigraphy (Greek, επιγραφή - written upon) is the study of inscriptions engraved into stone or other permanent materials, or cast in metal, the science of classifying them as to cultural context and date, elucidating them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them. ...

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, as Helmut Koester and J. D. Crossan have argued. According to some, the work cannot be dismissed as "apocrypha" or "heretical" without compromising the orthodoxy of the Gospel of John. A biblical canon is a list published by a religious authority of those books of the Bible that are considered inspired by God. ... John Dominic Crossan (born Nenagh, Co. ... Look up Heresy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Gospel of John is the fourth gospel in the canon of the New Testament, traditionally ascribed to John the Evangelist. ...

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 souce 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." The Q document or Q (from the German Quelle, source) is a postulated lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. ...

See also

• New Testament apocrypha

In the process of determining the Biblical canon, a large number of works were excluded from the New Testament. ...

Notes

2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 102nd day of the year (103rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Reference

• 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.