TheEgerton Gospel (British Library Egerton Papyrus 2) refers to a collection of threepapyrus fragments of acodex of a previously unknowngospel, found in Egypt and sold to theBritish 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 calledthe Unknown Gospel, as no ancient source makes reference to it, in addition to being entirely unknown before its publication.[1]
Three fragments of the manuscript form part of theEgerton Collection in theBritish Library. A fourth fragment of the same manuscript was identified in the papyrus collection of theUniversity of Cologne, and published in 1987.[2][3][4]
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 theOxyrhynchus Papyri. In 2019 it was established that they were purchased in 1934 from Maurice Nahman, an antiquities dealer in Cairo.[5]: 26-29 Nahman purchased the manuscript sometime between the 1920s and 1934, without recording its origin. Nahman bragged that he had many origins for his manuscripts.[5]: 27 The Oxyrhynchus identification is thus in question. The Cologne fragment was deposited without any provenance whatsoever.[5]: 26 Circumstantial evidence suggests that this was purchased from Nahman's estate at the time of his death in 1954.[5]
Colin Henderson Roberts reported seeing an account of thePassion 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.[5]: 30–33
The surviving fragments include four stories:
The latter story has no equivalent in the canonical Gospels:[1][3]
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]
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The date of the manuscript is established throughpalaeography (the comparison of writing styles) alone. When the Egerton fragments were first published, its date was estimated at around 150 CE;[6] implying that, of early Christian papyri it would be rivalled in age only by𝔓52, theJohn Rylands Libraryfragment of the Gospel of John.[2] Later, when an additional papyrus fragment of the Egerton Gospel text was identified in theUniversity of Cologne collection (Papyrus Köln 255) and published in 1987, it was found to fit on the bottom of one of the British Library papyrus pages.[2] In this additional fragment a single use of a hooked apostrophe in between two consonants was observed, a practice that became standard in Greek punctuation at the beginning of the 3rd century; this sufficed to revise the date of the Egerton manuscript. This study placed the manuscript to around the time ofBodmer Papyri𝔓66,c. 200;[7] noting thatEric Turner had palaeographically dated𝔓66 as around 200 CE, citing use of the hooked apostrophe in that papyrus in support of this date.
The revised dating for the Egerton Papyrus continues to carry wide support. However, Stanley Porter has reviewed the dating of the Egerton Papyrus alongside that of𝔓52; noting that the scholarly consensus dating the former to the turn of the third century and the latter to the first half of the second century was contra-indicated by close palaeographic similarities of the two manuscripts.[8]: 83 The 1987 redating of the Egerton Papyrus had rested on a comment made by Eric Turner in 1971:
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[I]n the first decade of III AD, this practice (of using an apostrophe between two consonants, such as double mutes or double liquids) suddenly becomes extremely common, and then persists.[9]
Porter notes that Turner had then nevertheless advanced several earlier dated examples of the practice from the later second century, and one (BGU III 715.5) is dated to 101 CE. Porter proposes that, notwithstanding the discovery of the hooked apostrophe in P. Köln 255, the original editors' proposal of a mid second century date for the Egerton Papyrus accords better with the palaeographic evidence of dated comparator documentary and literary hands for both𝔓52 and this papyrus "the middle of the second century, perhaps tending towards the early part of it".[8]: 84
Most scholars place P. Egerton 2 to the second or third centuries, after the gospel of John was written.[10] It’s relationship with the canonical gospels is a matter of debate; many scholars argue that it is dependent on the canonical gospels or at least the gospel of John, though others have argued it is independent or served as a source for John. Harold Attridge notes that Egerton’s claim that Jesus’s opponents do not know where he is from strongly suggests that the papyrus is dependent on the gospel of John.[11]
According to Jon B. Daniels inThe Complete Gospels, given the similarities and differences with the canonical gospels, the author of Egerton most likely wrote independently of the other gospel writers from a shared source of traditional sayings and stories.[12] ScholarFrançois Bovon observes that the Egerton fragments "sound veryJohannine" but also includes a number of terms characteristic of theGospel of Luke,[a] and is especially similar toLuke 5:12–14 andLuke 17:14[13] a conclusion also shared by scholar Tobias Nicklas.[3]
Such traditional sayings are posited for the hypotheticalQ 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.[14]
Helmut Koester andJ. D. Crossan have argued that 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 fourcanonical gospels. The Egerton Gospel has been largely ignored outside a small circle of scholars. The work cannot be dismissed as "apocrypha" or "heretical" without compromising the orthodoxy of theGospel of John. Nor can it be classed as "gnostic" and dismissed as marginal. It seems to be almost independent of the synoptic gospels and to represent a tradition similar to the canonical John, but independent of it. Additionally, it tells of an otherwise unknown miracle in the Johannine manner.[3]: 24-25
Evangelical scholarCraig Evans supports a date for the Egerton Gospel later than the canonical gospels in a variety of ways. He finds many parallels between the Egerton Gospel and the canonical gospels that include editorial language particular to Matthew and Luke. While Koester argues that these show a tradition before the other gospels, Evans sees these as drawing from the other gospels just asJustin Martyr did. He also finds words such as the plural "priests" that show lack of knowledge of Jewish customs.[15]
Nachzutragen ist, daß sich in dem Kölner Fragment nun auch Apostroph zwischen Konsonanten (aneneg'kon) wie in P.Bodmer II findet, was nach E.G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts 13, 3 eher ins dritte Jahrhundert weist. Doch auch bei einer eventuellen Datierung um 200 würde P.Egerton 2 immer noch zu den frühesten christlichen Papyri zählen.
