New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus

"His disciples question him and say, How shall we fast and how shall we (pray?) . . . and what (commandment) shall we keep . . . Jesus saith, . . . do not . . . of truth . . . blessed is he . . ."

Though this Saying is broken beyond hope of recovery, its general drift may be caught. It clearly differed from the other Sayings, both in this papyrus and the first series of Logia sayings/oracles, in having a preliminary paragraph giving the occasion, which seems to be a question put by the disciples. This question consisted of a number of short sentences, each beginning with "how" or "what," and so far as can be judged, they were concerned with the outward forms of religion, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. How far, it was probably asked, are existing Jewish ordinances to be kept? The answer of Jesus appears to have been a series of short commandments insisting on the inner side of religion as the pursuit of virtue and truth, and very likely concluding in l. 40 with the promise "Blessed is he who doeth these things." If this explanation is on the right lines, there is a general parallelism between this Saying and Matt. ix. 16–22 and Luke xviii. 18–22 (the answer to the question "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?"). The reference to fasting in l. 33 suggests a connexion with the 2nd Logion ("Except ye fast to the world"), which may well have been an answer to a similar question by the disciples.

(d) GENERAL REMARKS.

We do not propose to enter upon a detailed examination of the numerous and complicated problems involving the Canonical and Apocryphal Gospels and the "Logia" of 1897, which are reopened by the discovery of the new Sayings. But we may be permitted to indicate the broader issues at stake, and in the light of the wide discussion of the Logia of 1897 to point out some effects of the new elements now introduced into the controversy.

We start therefore with a comparison of the two series of Sayings, which we shall henceforth call 1 (the new Sayings) and 2 (the "Logia" found in 1897). Both were found on the same site and the papyri are of approximately the same date, which is not later than about the middle of the third century, so that both collections must go back at least to the second