Thursday 31 August 2023

Belated Publication of an Oxyrhyncus Fragment: not 'Q', but from a "Sayings of Jesus"



A "previously unknown second-century fragment of early Christian writing" has been published this week (Candida Moss, 'Scholars Publish New Papyrus With Early Sayings of Jesus' Daily Beast Aug. 31, 2023)

The fragment is part of the Oxyrhynchus collection, a cache of over a half million fragments of papyri that were excavated over a century ago in ancient trash heaps in Egypt. They were uncovered by renowned classical scholars Grenfell and Hunt and a large team of local Egyptian laborers.
Since the cache’s discovery in the late nineteenth century, the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) and generations of papyrologists have been engaged in the painstaking work of identifying, editing, and publishing the fragments. The papyri shed light on every aspect of ancient life—commerce, friendship, lawsuits, romantic relationships, and shopping habits—and also transmit works by ancient authors that had previously been lost in the sands of time. Among them were a number of early Christian texts, some of them previously known and others — like this new example — that were previously undiscovered.
For an artifact that was only published this week, the fragment (or, better, fragments as it was pieced together from two separate parts by papyrologist Ben Henry) has an unusual history.
It was somehow sold in 2010 to Hobby Lobby, Inc. who put it in their Museum of the Bible (MOTB). But the fragment was returned to the EES in 2019 after an investigation that involved 32 pieces recently acquired by the MOTB from the same source but in fact belonged to the EES and appear to have been derived somehow from the Oxyrhynchus collection. Where are the other 81 ancient fragments that went missing from the EES library at Oxford at the same time? The investigation has been going on since 2020, apparently involving Thames Valley Police.

Although the authors' names are given (Jeffrey Fish, Daniel Wallace, and Michael Holmes, working with Ben Henry), the DB article fails to give any publication details of this heralded new publication... also, where did the second fragment come from?

If it has taken thirteen years to study and publish two fragments (from time of purchase to now) how long will it take before we know what is in the whole Oxyrhynchus archive? Also it is not "previously unkn own", it is "until now, unpublished"





 

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