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Two fragmentary manuscripts, the Oxyrhynchus Gospels with accession numbers 840 and 1224, throw light on early non-canonical Gospel traditions of Christianity for scholars, but are ignored by most Christians, as they are extremely fragmentary. They were each discovered among the rich finds of discarded papyri at Oxyrhyncus in Egypt.
Oxyrhyncus 840 found in 1905, is a single small vellum leaf written on both sides in a tiny neat hand that dates it to the 4th century. In his introduction in The Complete Gospels, Philip Sellew notes that this fragment was likely a talisman text, kept as an amulet. The text itself has been dated to the first half of the second century. Sellew calls it "similar to the New Testament gospels in its style and tone."
Oxyrhynchus 1224 consists of two small papyrus fragments from the late 3rd or early 4th century. J. Dominic Crossan notes the mutilated condition in his introduction to the fragmentary text in The Complete Gospels resulting in highly conjectural reconstructions of the text, which, however, "does not seem to be dependent on the New Testament gospels.... As an independent gospel, it belongs, insofar as its fragmentary state allows us to see, not with discourse gospels involving the risen Jesus (e.g., the Secret Book of James and the Gospel of Mary), but with sayings gospels involving the earthly Jesus (e.g., Q and the Gospel of Thomas). Crossan suggests that the document might have been written as early as the mid-first century.
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