LITERATURE.—Bouriant, Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéol. frangwise aw Caire, ix. 1 (1892) ; Stiileken in Die Apocryphen des NT; Harnack, Verte u. Unters. ix. 2; Zahn, Das Petrusevangeliwm; Volter, Petrusevangelium oder Aigypterevangelium 2; also editions by von Gebhardt, Kunze, Lods, A. Sabatier, yon Schubert. English editions by Rutherford in extra vol. of Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Robinson and James, Swete, Rendel Harris, and the author of Supernatural Religion ; also Macpherson’s translation of von Schubert's work —a useful edition with synoptical tables and critical apparatus. There are important articles by Baljon in Theol. Studien, 1894, 1ff.; Funk in Theol. Quartalschr. 1893, 278 ff.; Hilgenfeld in Zeitschr, f. wiss. Theol. 1893, 220ff.; von Soden in Zeitschr. Ss Theol. uw. Kirche, 1893, 52ff.; Stanton in Journal of Theol. Studies, Oct. 1900; Murray in Expositor, 4th series, vol. vii. ; Macpherson in Crit. Rev. y. 296.
A. 3 FAYUM GOSPEL FRAGMENT.—
i. Discovery.
ii. Contents. iii. Theories of origin. Literature. i. DIscoveRY.—Faytim is a province of Egypt about 50 miles south of Cairo. It has become famous within the last 25 years owing to the discovery at Medinet, its capital, and elsewhere, of a large quantity of papyri in Latin, Greek, Coptic, and other languages. In 1882 the Austrian Archduke Rainer bought a mass of documents which are now in the Imperial Museum at Vienna. In this valuable collection a small and inutilated fragment of a Gospel was found, The honour of deciphering and restoring the true text belongs to Dr. Bickell, Roman Catholic Professor
Date.
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS
429
of Christian Archeology in the University of Inns- bruck. In the Zeitschrift fiir katholische Theologie (1885, iii. 498 ff.), Bickell published the Fragment, and his judgment in regard to its antiquity and value. Since then his conclusions have been sub- jected to keen criticism by many scholars. The principal contributions to the discussion have been made by Harnack and Zahn; the result of their critical investigations is given below. An instruc- tive account of the Fayfim papyri in general, and of this Fragment in particular, was published by Professor Stokes of Dublin in the Expositor (3rd series, i. 334, ii. 132, vii. 449).
ii. CoNTENTS.—The Greek text of the Fragment, as finally restored by Bickell, is as follows: Mera dé 7d ghayeiv ws é& ous, mdvres ev TavTD TH vuKtl cxavdadicOhoecbe Kara Td ypadév’ mardiw Tov momeva kat ra mpdBara diacxopmicOycovrat. Himdvyros rob Ilér- pou’ kal el mdvres ovx yd. py arg’ 6 ddexrpuav dls Koxkvéer Kal od} mparov Tpls amTapyycy Me.
Certainty in regard to some details of the re- construction cannot be attained. At first Bickell read ws é&fyov, the letters being here obscure. Zahn (Geschichte des NT Canons, ii. 785) prints what he regards as the most probable text in a way which shows at a glance the mutilations at the end of the lines—
. tuvyncdvrwyv dé adrav
pera. 7d hlayeiv ws ef EOous, wd[Aw etme’
ravry] TH vucTt cxavdad.o| OjoecGe
xara] 7d ypapév? “ mardéw roy [roméva, kar
Ta] mpbBatra duackopmicOjolerar.” elmdv-
ros dé To]b Iler. ‘‘xal ef rdvres, odK eyw,”
pn’ © mpl] 6 ddexrpudy dis kox[KvEEe o7-
epov, od Tpls we d]rapy[joy” .. « According to Zahn’s reconstructed text, the con- tents of the Fragment are: ‘Now when they had sung a hymn, after eating according to custom, he said again: This night ye shall be offended according to the Scripture, ‘I will smite the shep- herd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” When Peter said: Even though all, yet not I, he said: Before the cock shall crow twice this day, thou shalt deny me thrice.’
iii, THEORIES OF ORIGIN.—The passages in the canonical Gospels which correspond to the contents of the Fayfm Fragment are Mt 26%, Mk 1426-80, the resemblances to Mark being more close. The words used for ‘cock’ and ‘crow’ (lit. ‘cry cuckoo’) are not found in the NT. In Bickell’s
judgment these few verses are a genuine relic of
early Evangelic tradition, and the Fragment is part of such a document as Luke mentions in the pre- face to his Gospel. Harnack inclines to Bickell’s view, though he admits that the words may be a free quotation from Mark rather than a part of the original material used by the Synoptic writers (‘Das Evangelienfragment von Fajjum’ in Texte und Untersuchungen, v. 4). The use of different words for ‘ cock’ and ‘crow’ does not disprove the latter theory, but tends rather to confirm it. The Fragment has ddextpudy for ddéxrwp, and Koxkifew for gwvetv. ddexrpudy is the more usual word in Classic prose ; Koxxdfew is more expressive than the colourless gwveiv. ‘It is most probable that the words used in the canonical Gospels are more original, and that a preacher substituted in one case a more elegant, and in the other case a more significant expression’ (Zahn, op. cit. ii, 787). Hort favoured the view that the passage 1s an extract from the Synoptic Gospels, and uttered a timely warning against hast eductions from one scanty fragment (Times, 25th June 1885). Other conjectural explanations of its origin are that it is a quotation from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Gospel according to the Egyptians (Harnack), and that it is a Gnostic recension of the canonical Gospels (Stokes).
The style of writing and the methods of con- traction employed in this Fragment furnish, in the judgment of eminent palzeographists, a strong argument for fixing the date of its composition in the 38rd century.