Book Description:
Oxyrhynchus is the Greek name of an ancient Egyptian town on the western edge of the desert ten miles west of the Nile. The fame of the site lies in its rubbish mounds, from which the greatest body of papyri ever recovered from one place was discovered. These papyri were of all sizes, some written by skilled scribes, others from semi literate to utterly incomprehensible scrawls. They date from the first century B.C.E. to the tenth century C.E. Most were written in Greek on a variety of subjects from the classics to theology, but the bulk of material consists of legal and personal documents that provide a unique picture of life in an Egyptian provincial city of the Roman Empire. One of the most important literary finds is known as the 'Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus,' in seven sayings, each introduced with the phrase 'Jesus says.' These Sayings have been the topic of controversy since their discovery in 1897. To add to the difficulty, the fragments are poorly preserved and each contains only a few lines. Since most of the text cannot be made out with certainty, scholars have offered an array of conjectures regarding from which document they were taken. Most authorities today, however, agree that at least three are from the Gospel of Thomas. When they were discovered, however, that apocryphal work had not yet been discovered. In two lectures, Walter Lock and William Sanday, both Oxford professors offer their conclusions. At that time of publication, over fifty essays and pamphlets had been written on the Sayings. These are listed in the opening pages of their treatment of the papyri, after which is a Greek analysis of the text, followed by Lock's interpretation of the text. The last twenty pages contain Sanday's history and origin of the Sayings themselves. This work is written for scholars, although a student in the field will find much here of great value. Lock and Sanday's acute observations on the Sayings, prior to the discovery of the Thomasian gospel at Nag Hammadi, is fascinating and enlightening.
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