New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus (1904) - Page 19

...Jesus which he spake in his teaching . . . for thus he said," and Acts 20:35, "and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus how he himself said." Dr. Rendel Harris had already (Contemporary Review 1897, pp. 346–8) suggested that those formulas were derived from the introduction of a primitive collection of Sayings known to St. Paul, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp, and this theory gains some support from the parallel afforded by the introduction in the new Sayings.

FIRST SAYING. ll. 5–9.

[Jesus saith]
5 Let not him who seeks original: "ζη[τῶν" cease until he finds, and when he finds he shall be astonished; astonished he shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest.

"Jesus saith, Let not him who seeks cease until he finds, and when he finds he shall be astonished; astonished he shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest."

The conclusion of this Saying is quoted from the Gospel according to the Hebrews a lost Jewish-Christian gospel by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 2.9.45): "as it is also written in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, 'He that wonders shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest.'" In Stromata 5.14.96, Clement quotes the Saying in a fuller and obviously more accurate form which agrees almost exactly with the papyrus, but without stating his source: "He who seeks shall not cease until he finds, and when he finds he shall be astonished, and being astonished he shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest." The word after "seeking" in line 6, to which there is nothing corresponding in the Clement quotation, is very likely the object of "seek," perhaps "the life," i.e., eternal life. The purpose to which Clement turns the passage from the Gospel according to the Hebrews is to support the Platonic view that the beginning of knowledge is wonder at external objects, but this interpretation is clearly far removed from the real meaning of the Saying.