The Egerton Gospel

is not really a gospel at all, but three papyrus fragments from a codex of a previously unknown gospel, found in Egypt and purchased by the British Museum in 1934. The three fragments are believed to be from the 2nd century CE, and are credited with being the oldest surviving texts of any gospel. 

It was initially named "The Unknown Gospel", on the grounds that no known source had made reference to it, and it was unheard of even as a lost document before its discovery. Because it was housed in the Egerton Collection at the British Museum Library, it came to be known as "The Egerton Gospel", and eventually the name stuck. A fourth fragment of the same manuscript has since been identified in the papyrus collection of the University of Cologne.

The surviving fragments include four stories: a controversy similar to the one described in John 5:39-47 and 10:31-39; the curing of a leper, similar to the tale told in Matthew 8:1-4, Mark 1:40-45, Luke 5:12-16 and Luke 17:11-14; a controversy about paying tribute to Caesar that is analogous to Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17 and Luke 20:20-26; and an incomplete account of a miracle on the banks of the river Jordan, carried out to illustrate a parable about seeds that grow miraculously. This last has no equivalent in the Canonical Gospels.

Click here, here, and here for such of the fragments as I have been able to find online.


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