The Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel
Home > Apocrypha > The Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel The Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel At a Glance Treatise Genre: (2/5) ** Reliability of Dating: (2/5) ** Length of Text: Greek Original Language: Ancient Translations: Modern Translations: English Estimated Range of Dating: 110-160 A.D. Chronological List of Early Christian Writings Discuss this text on the Early Writings forum. Text Original Greek, Translation, and Notes in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri English Translation by Andrew Bernhard Resources The 1908 Introduction in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Geoff Trowbridge's Introduction The Gospel of Matthias Books Robert J. Miller, ed., The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press 1992), pp.
412-415. Recommended Books for the Study of Early Christian Writings Information on the Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel S. Kent Brown comments on the text of Oxyrhynchus 840 (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 5, p. 1000): Found in December 1905, this partial text consists of a small vellum leaf (8.8 x 7.4 cm) written on both sides in a tiny, rather regular hand. The writing is dated by its discoverers to the 4th century, and the copyist exhibits an inclination for using red ink in specific instances such as the first letters of sentences, dots of punctuation and - twice - accent marks. In his introduction in The Complete Gospels, Philip Sellew notes that this fragment was likely a talisman text: "The book itself likely served as an amulet for some ancient Egyptian Christian before this single page became detached.
A few other books of similar size have been found from late antiquity that are thought to have been intended for some such magical use." Brown summarises the contents (op. cit., p. 1000): The opening seven lines of the text introduce the reader to the end of an address by Jesus - consistently referred to as "the Savior" - in which he warns his hearers against the sort of overconfidence which leads to punishment both in this life and in the next. He then leads his disciples into the temple, apparently going within the "court of Israel," where they meet a Pharisaic high priest, possibly named Levi. The priest reproaches them for entering without properly purifying themselves and for not changing into white clothing, hence desecrating the sacred precinct.
In response, Jesus inquires about the state of cleanness of the priest, who in turn affirms that he has performed the necessary purificatory rites. Against this Jesus delivers a sharp criticism, which recalls Jesus' harsh condemnation of the "tradition of the elders" in Matt 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23, contrasting the shallow character of external purity with the deeper inward cleansing in which he and his disiples had been immersed from above at 'the waters of life' (line 43). F. F. Bruce writes (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 160): Readers of the canonical Gospels are familiar with Jesus's repeated insistence that in the religious sphere it is inward purification, not external washing, that is important (cf.
Mark 7.1-23); and that is the point of this extract. It may be regarded, more particularly, as an expansion of Matthew 23.25 f. into the form of a narrative. The circumstantiality of the references to the temple and its installation might convey an impression of verisimilitude to readers who knew little or nothing about them, but they betray the imagination of a period later than the destruction of the temple and have little in common with what we know of the temple and its ordinances as they actually were. The 'place of purification' cannot be identified, and laymen like Jesus and his disciples had no opportunity of looking at the 'holy vessels' (by which the furniture in the sanctuary itself is probably meant).