NEWS ON AN OYXRHYNCHUS FRAGMENT that was sold to a private collector in 2003:

New artifact added to Ink & Blood

By Andy Powell
[Gadsden] Times Staff Writer

Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:03 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:19 p.m.

For archaeologists, at least, one generation’s trash can be a future generation’s great treasure.

What is considered to be the third oldest portion ever found of the Gospel of John has been added to the Hardin Center’s exhibit, “Ink & Blood: Dead Sea Scrolls to Gutenberg,” on exhibit through Dec. 23.

The fragment, which is the size of about half a page, is a portion of the Gospel of St. John 8:14-22.

It has Greek writing on the front and the back and has the number “74” on one side.

Exhibition director Dillon Poss said, “It is the oldest document in the world with a page number that we know of.”

He said the fragment was found in a third-century trash dump that was uncovered in Egypt in the late 1800s.

“That’s really the gold mine for archaeologists,” Poss said. “When they have that, they have everything in the community.”

The fragment originally was owned by Colgate University. It was sold to raise funds.

Poss said the fragment was found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, and is know as the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus or P39. Poss said when it was found, it was the oldest known fragment of the Gospel of John

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Poss said the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus had been part of the exhibit at its last stop. It had been returned to its owner on the West Coast before being brought here for the remainder of the exhibit’s stay.

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I first reported on the sale of the fragments here in 2003 (not sure why the numbering of the John fragment is different there) and noted the surfacing of the John fragment in the Ink and Blood exhibition here in 2005. Others were sold to Macquirie University in Australia (see here). At least the whereabouts of this important fragment of the Gospel of John is still known, and I hope that means that scholars will still be able to study it when they need to.