Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654
Encyclopedia
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 (P. Oxy. 654) is a papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....

 fragment of the logia
Logia
In New Testament scholarship, the term logia is a term applied to collections of sayings credited to Jesus. Such a collection of sayings of Jesus are believed to be referred to by Papias of Hierapolis...

 of Jesus written in Greek. It is one of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt . The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and...

 discovered by Grenfell and Hunt between 1897 and 1904 in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus
Oxyrhynchus
Oxyrhynchus is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered...

. The fragment is dated to the middle or late of the 3rd century. It is one of only three Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...

.

Description

The manuscript was written on papyrus in scroll form. The measurements of the original leaf were 142 mm by 155 mm. The text is written in cursive letters, in a competent hand. It uses diaeresis
Hiatus (linguistics)
In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....

 over initial upsilon
Upsilon
Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet.  In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...

; two corrections were made. The nomina sacra
Nomina sacra
Nomina sacra means "sacred names" in Latin, and can be used to refer to traditions of abbreviated writing of several frequently occurring divine names or titles in early Greek language Holy Scripture...

 are written in an abbreviated way ( for Jesus).

According to Grenfell and Hunt, who identified this fragment as Logia Iesu ("Sayings of Jesus"), the original manuscript contained a collection of Jesus's sayings. They suggested that original manuscript could be a part of the Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...

, or Gospel of Philip
Gospel of Philip
The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dating back to around the third century but lost to modern researchers until an Egyptian peasant rediscovered it by accident, buried in a cave near Nag Hammadi, in 1945...

. The only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945 when a Coptic version was discovered at Nag Hammadi
Nag Hammâdi
Nag Hammadi , is a city in Upper Egypt. Nag Hammadi was known as Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, meaning "geese grazing grounds". It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor....

 with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...

.

The fragment contains logia (sayings) 1–7 of the Gospel of Thomas on the verso side of the leaf (opistograph).
Grenfell and Hunt also discovered another two fragments of this apocryphal Gospel: P. Oxy. 1
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1 is a papyrus fragment of the logia of Jesus written in Greek. It was the first of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri discovered by Grenfell and Hunt in 1897 in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus. The fragment is dated to the early half of the 3rd century...

 and P. Oxy. 655
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655 is a papyrus fragment of the logia of Jesus written in Greek. It is one of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri discovered by Grenfell and Hunt between 1897 and 1904 in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus. The fragment is dated to the early 3rd century...

.

In 1904, P. Oxy. 654 was given to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

 by the Egypt Exploration Fund. The fragment is housed at the Department of manuscripts of the British Library (Inv. 1531) in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Further reading

  • Nicholas Perrin
    Nicholas Perrin
    Nicholas Perrin is a scholar of New Testament and early Christianity. He is currently Associate Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, Illinois...

    , HC II,2 and the Oxyrhynchus Fragments (P. Oxy 1, 654, 655): Overlooked Evidence for a Syriac "Gospel of Thomas", Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 58, No. 2 (May, 2004), pp. 138–151

External links

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