Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus

OXYRHYNCHUS SAYINGS OF JESUS ŏk’ sĭrĭng’ kəs. A collection of sayings or apothegms purporting to be quoted from Jesus and surviving on four small fragments of papyrus written in Koine Gr. These were discovered in the systematic search for papyrus carried on at the site of the Hel. town of Oxyrhynchus, ̓Οζυρυνχυς, the modern Behnesa, 121 m. below Cairo and ten m. to the W of the Nile River. The mass of papyri fragments, scrolls and folios excavated from Oxyrhynchus were published by the British scholars B. P. Grenfell (1869-1926) and A. S. Hunt (1871-1934) and their successors in eighteen volumes and accompanied by several monographs during the 19th cent. The sayings attributed to Jesus are written on four separate and apparently unrelated fragments. The first was discovered soon after the first trench into the mound of the ancient Roman-age town was dug, after 11 January 1897. It was titled by its finders, Papyrus I, and contains a portion of the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas, a