Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655 (P. Oxy. 655) is a

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

fragment of the

logia The term ''logia'' ( el, λόγια), plural of ''logion'' ( el, λόγιον), is used variously in ancient writings and modern scholarship in reference to communications of divine origin. In pagan contexts, the principal meaning was "oracles", ...

of Jesus written in Greek. It is one of the

Oxyrhynchus Papyri The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (, mo ...

discovered by Grenfell and

Hunt Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/ hide, bone/tusks, horn/antler, e ...

between 1897 and 1904 in the Egyptian town of

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus (; grc-gre, Ὀξύρρυγχος, Oxýrrhynchos, sharp-nosed; ancient Egyptian ''Pr-Medjed''; cop, or , ''Pemdje''; ar, البهنسا, ''Al-Bahnasa'') is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo ...

. The fragment is dated to the early 3rd century. It is one of only three Greek manuscripts of the

Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Thomas (also known as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas) is an extra-canonical Logia, sayings gospel. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars specu ...

Description

The manuscript was written on papyrus in

scroll A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyrus ...

form. The measurements of the original leaf were 82 mm by 83 mm. The text is written in uncial letters. It is well written

Larry Hurtado Larry Weir Hurtado, (December 29, 1943 – November 25, 2019), was an American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, and Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at the University of Edinburgh ( ...

, ''The Earliest Christian Artifacts'' (Wm. Eerdmans 2006), p. 228. in an informal book hand. There is no punctuation, no

rough breathing In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, d ...

s, no accents, no division between sayings, nor instances of using of the

nomina sacra In Christian scribal practice, nomina sacra (singular: ''nomen sacrum'' from Latin ''sacred name'') is the abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts of the Bible. A nomen sacrum consists ...

, ''The Earliest Christian Artifacts'' (Wm. Eerdmans 2006), p. 241. One correction was made in a

cursive Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...

hand. The fragment contains ''

'' (sayings) 36–39 of the Gospel of Thomas on the recto side of the leaf. Grenfell and Hunt also discovered another two fragments of this apocryphal Gospel: P. Oxy. 1 and P. Oxy. 654. According to Grenfell and Hunt, who identified this fragment as being from an uncanonical Gospel, it is very close to the

Synoptic Gospels The gospels of Gospel of Matthew, Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Mark, and Gospel of Luke, Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical ...

. They observed some similarities to the

Gospel of Luke The Gospel of Luke), or simply Luke (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volu ...

. According to them it could have belonged to the Gospel according to the Egyptians (as postulated by

Adolf Harnack Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack (born Harnack; 7 May 1851 – 10 June 1930) was a Baltic German Lutheran theology, Lutheran theologian and prominent Church historian. He produced many religious publications from 1873 to 1912 (in which he is s ...

), or a collections of Jesus's Sayings used in the

Second Epistle of Clement The Second Epistle of Clement ( grc, Κλήμεντος πρὸς Κορινθίους, Klēmentos pros Korinthious, from Clement to Corinthians), often referred to as 2 Clement (pronounced "Second Clement"), is an early Christian writing. It was ...

. Grenfell and Hunt observed some similarities to the P. Oxy. 654. The only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945 when a Coptic version was discovered at

Nag Hammadi Nag Hammadi ( ; ar, نجع حمادى ) is a city in Upper Egypt. It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about north-west of Luxor. It had a population of close to 43,000 . History The town of Nag Hammadi is name ...

with a collection of early Christian

Gnostic texts Gnosticism used a number of religious texts that are preserved, in part or whole, in ancient manuscripts, or lost but mentioned critically in Patristic writings. Gnostic texts Gnostic texts preserved before 1945 Prior to the discovery at Nag H ...

. In 1904, P. Oxy. 655 was given to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

by the

Egypt Exploration Fund The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a British non-profit organization. The society was founded in 1882 by Amelia Edwards and Reginald Stuart Poole in order to examine and excavate in the areas of Egypt and Sudan. The intent was to study and an ...

. The fragment is housed at the

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Art ...

(SM Inv. 4367) in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

.Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655

References

External links

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655

The Gospel of Thomas: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655

P. Oxy. 655

LDAB The Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB) is a resource for all ancient written literary manuscripts, from 500 BC to AD 800. It currently lists more than 16.000 Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac and Demotic literary texts. It is said that it "attempts ...

{{Authority control

655 __NOTOC__ Year 655 ( DCLV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 655 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...

Gnostic Gospels 3rd-century manuscripts

Description

See also

References

Further reading

External links