Fragment of an early collection of Jesus sayings?

(NEW) NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH? Over at the ETC Blog, Peter Gurry notes a newly published fragment of a manuscript from Oxyrhynchus which contains Jesus sayings known from Matthew, the Gospel of Thomas, and maybe Luke. The editors date it to the second century CE, which is quite early for any kind of gospel manuscript.

New 2nd-Century ‘Sayings of Jesus’ Oxyrhynchus Papyrus

Synopsis of P.Oxy. 5575, Matt, Luke, and Thomas

Brent Nongbri has an evaluation of the paleographic case for a second-century date over at Variant Readings: The Date of the New Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus P.Oxy. 87.5575.

I tend to agree with the editors about the similarity of the scripts of 5575 and 4009, but in my first look at the proposals for dated parallels (for both the pieces), I cannot say that I find any of them especially compelling. This is not to criticize the work of the editors. It is very difficult to find good, securely dated comparanda for scripts like these. A more detailed evaluation will have to wait for another occasion.

A lot of questions remain about this new text. Is it a sayings gospel based on oral traditions? Is it a compilation of sayings extracted from earlier gospels? Is it some other kind of work that just happens to cite some Jesus sayings in what survives? And how secure is that second century date?

I imagine all of these questions will be debated for a long time to come. In any case, P.Oxy. 5575 is an important discovery.

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