Agrapha:
ag'-ra-fa (agrapha).
1. The Term and Its History:
The word agraphos of which agrapha is the neuter plural is met with in classical Greek and in Greek papyri in its primary sense of "unwritten," "unrecorded." In early Christian literature, especially in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, it was used of oral tradition; and in this sense it was revived by Koerner in a Leipzig Program issued in 1776 under the title De sermonibus Christi agraphois. For some time it was restricted to sayings of Christ not recorded in the Gospels and believed to have reached the sources in which they are found by means of oral tradition. As however graphe, the noun with which agrapha is connected, can have not only the general meaning "writing," but the special meaning "Scripture," the, adjective could signify not only "oral" but also uncanonical or "non-canonical"; and it was employed by Resch in the latter sense in the 1st edition of his great work on the subject which appeared in German in 1889 under the title, Agrapha: Extra-canonical Gospel Fragments. The term was now also extended so as to include narratives as well as sayings. In the second edition (also in German) it is further widened so as to embrace all extra-canonical sayings or passages connected with the Bible. The new title runs: Agrapha Extra-canonical Fragments of Scripture; and the volume contains a first collection of Old Testament agrapha. The term is still however used most frequently of non-canonical sayings ascribed to Jesus, and to the consideration of these this article will mainly be devoted.
2. Extent of Material:
Of the 361 agrapha and apocrypha given by Resch about 160 are directly ascribed to Christ. About 30 others can be added from Christian and Jewish sources and about 80 sayings found in Muhammadan literature (Expository Times, V, 59, 107, 177 f, 503 f, 561, etc.). The last-mentioned group, although not entirely without interest, may largely be disregarded as it is highly improbable that it represents early tradition. The others come from a variety of sources: the New Testament outside of the Gospels, Gospel manuscripts and VSS, Apocryphal Gospels and an early collection of sayings of Jesus, liturgical texts, patristic and medieval literature and the Talmud.
3. Sayings to Be Excluded:
Many of these sayings have no claim to be regarded as independent agrapha. At least five classes come under this category.
(1) Some are mere parallels or variants, for instance: "Pray and be not weary," which is evidently connected with Lu 18:1; and the saying in the Talmud: "I, the Gospel, did not come to take away from the law of Moses but to add to the law of Moses have I come" (Shab 116b) which is clearly a variant of Mt 5:17.
(2) Some sayings are made up of two or more canonical texts. "I chose you before the world was," for example, is a combination of Joh 15:19 and Eph 1:4; and "Abide in my love and I will give you eternal life" of Joh 8:31 and Joh 10:28.
(3) Misquotation or loose quotation accounts for a number of alleged agrapha. "Sodom is justified more than thou" seems to be really from Eze 16:53 and its context. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" is of apostolic not evangelic origin (Eph 4:26). "Anger destroys even the prudent" comes from Septuagint of Pr 15:1.
(4) Some sayings must be rejected because they cannot be traced to an early source, for instance, the fine saying: "Be brave in war, and fight with the old serpent, and ye shall receive eternal life," which is first met with in a text of the 12th century
(5) Several sayings are suspicious by reason of their source or their character. The reference to "my mother the Holy Spirit," in one of them, has no warrant in the acknowledged teaching of Christ and comes from a source of uncertain value, the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Pantheistic sayings such as "I am thou and thou art I, and wherever thou art I am"; "You are I and I am you"; and perhaps the famous saying: "Raise the stone and thou wilt find me; cleave the wood and there am I," as well as the sayings reported by Epiphanius from the Gospel of the Ebionites seem to breathe an atmosphere different from that of the canonical Gospels.
4. Sayings in New Testament:
When all the sayings belonging to these five classes, and a few others of liturgical origin, have been deducted there remain about thirty-five which are worthy of mention and in some cases of careful consideration. Some are dealt with in the article LOGIA (which see). The others, which are given here, are numbered consecutively to facilitate reference. The best authenticated are of course those found in the New Testament outside of the Gospels. These are
(1) the great saying cited by Paul at Miletus: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Ac 20:35);
(2) the words used in the institution of the Eucharist preserved only in 1Co 11:24 f;
(3) the promise of the baptism of the Spirit (Ac 1:5, 11:16); and
(4) the answer to the question: "Dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Ac 1:7 f). Less certain are
(5) the description of the Second Advent, said to be "by the word of the Lord" (1Th 4:15 ff); and
(6) the promise of the crown of life to them that love God (Jas 1:12).
5. Sayings in Manuscripts and Versions:
Of considerable interest are some additions, in manuscripts of the Gospels and versions. One of the most remarkable
(7) is the comment of Jesus on a man's working on the Sabbath day inserted after Lu 6:4 in Codex Bezae (D) and the Freer manuscript recently discovered in Egypt: "If thou knowest what thou doest, O man, blessed art thou, but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the law." Another
(8) also found in D and in several other authorities is appended to Mt 20:28: "But ye seek ye from little to increase and from greater to be less." In the Curetonian Syriac the latter clause runs: "and not from greater to be less." The new saying is noteworthy but obscure. A third passage
(9) of less value but still of interest is an insertion in the longer ending of Mark, between 16:14 and 16:15, which was referred to by Jerome as present in codices in his day but has now been met with in Greek for the first time in the above-mentioned Freer MS. (For facsimile see American Journal of Archaeology, 1908.) In reply to a complaint of the disciples about the opposition of Satan and their request: "Therefore reveal thy righteousness even now," Jesus is reported to have said: "The limit of the years of the authority of Satan is fulfilled, but other dreadful things are approaching, and in behalf of those who had sinned was I delivered unto death in order that they might return to the truth and might sin no longer, that they might inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness in heaven." This alleged utterance of the risen Lord is most probably of secondary character (compare Gregory, Das Freer Logion; Swete, Two New Gospel Fragments).
6. Sayings from the Fathers, etc.:
Apocryphal and patristic literature supplies some notable sayings. The first place must be given
(10) to the great saying which in its shortest form consists of only three words: "Be ("become," "show yourselves to be") approved money-changers." Resch (Agrapha2, number 87) gives 69 references, at least 19 of which date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, although they represent only a few authorities, all Egyptian. The saying seems to have circulated widely in the early church and may be genuine. Other early sayings of interest or value, from these sources, must be given without comment.
(11) "The heavenly Father willeth the repentance of the sinner rather than his punishment" (Justin Martyr).
(12) "That which is weak shall be saved by that which is strong" (circa 300 AD).
(13) "Come out from bonds ye who will" (Clement of Alexandria).
(14) "Be thou saved and thy soul" (Theodotus in id).
(15) "Blessed are they who mourn for the perdition of unbelievers" (Didaskalia).
(16) "He who is near me is near the fire; he who is far from me is far from the kingdom" (Origen).
(17) "He who has not been tempted has not been approved" (Didaskalia, etc.).
(18) He who makes sad a brother's spirit is one of the greatest of criminals" (Ev Heb).
(19) "Never be glad except when ye have seen your brother in love" (same place).
(20) "Let not him who seeks cease.... until he find, and when he finds he shall be astonished; astonished he shall reach the kingdom, and when he has reached the kingdom he shall rest" (Clement of Alexandria and Logia of Oxyrhynchus).
(21) In a fragment of a Gospel found by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus (O Papyri number 655) is the following non-canonical passage in a canonical context: "He Himself will give you clothing. His disciples say unto Him: When wilt thou be manifest to us and when shall we see thee? He saith: When ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed." The saying or apocryphon exhibits considerable likeness to a saying cited by Clement of Alexandria from the Gospel according to the Egyptians, but the difference is great enough to make original identity doubtful. Another fragment found by the same explorers on the same site (O Papyri number 840) preserves two agrapha or apocrypha which though clearly secondary are very curious.
The first (22) is the concluding portion of a saying about the punishment of evil-doers: "Before a man does wrong he makes all manner of subtle excuses. But give heed lest you also suffer the same things as they for the evil-doers among men receive not their due among the living (Greek zois) only but also await punishment and much torment." Professor Swete (Two New Gospel Fragments), accents zoois as the plural of zoon and thus finds a contrast between the fate of animals and that of human beings.
The second saying (23) is a rather lengthy reply to the complaint of a Pharisaic stickler for outward purity. The most interesting part of it as edited by Swete runs as follows: "Woe to you blind who see not.... But I and my disciples who thou sayest have not been dipped have dipped in the waters of eternal life which come down from God out of heaven." All these texts from Oxyrhynchus probably date from the 2nd century. Other Egypt sources, the so-called Coptic Apocryphal Gospels (Texts and Studies Camb. IV, 2, 1896), contain several sayings which are of interest as coming from the same religious environment. The following three are the most remarkable.
(24) "Repent, for it is better that a man find a cup of water in the age that is coming than all the riches of this world" (130).
(25) "Better is a single footstep in My Father's house than all the wealth of this world" (130 f).
(26) "Now therefore have faith in the love of My Father; for faith is the end of all things" (176). As in the case of the Logia these sayings are found in association with canonical sayings and parallels. Since the Logan may well have numbered scores, if not hundreds, it is at least possible that these Coptic sayings may have been taken from the missing portions of this collection, or a recension of it, and therefore they are not unworthy of notice as conceivably early agrapha. To these sayings of Christian derivation may be added
(27) one Muhammadan saying, that inscribed in Arabic on the chief gateway of the city Futteypore Sikri built by Akbar: "The world is but a bridge, over which you must pass, but must not linger to build your dwelling" (In the Himalayas by Miss Gordon Cumming, cited by Griffenhoofe, The Unwritten Sayings of Christ, 128).
7. Result:
Although the number of agrapha purporting to be sayings of Jesus which have been collected by scholars seems at first sight imposing, those which have anything like a strong claim to acceptance on the ground of early and reliable source and internal character are disappointingly few. Of those given above numbers 1-4, 7, 8, 10 which have mostly early attestation clearly take precedence of the rest. Numbers 11-20 are early enough and good enough to merit respectful consideration. Still the proportion of genuine, or possibly genuine, material is very small. Ropes is probably not far from the truth when he remarks that "the writers of the Synoptic Gospels did their work so well that only stray bits here and there, and these but of small value, were left for the gleaners." On the other hand it is not necessary to follow Wellhausen in rejecting the agrapha in toto. Recent discoveries have shown that they are the remains of a considerable body of extra-canonical sayings which circulated more or less in Christian circles, especially in Egypt, in the early centuries, and the possible presence in what we possess of a sentence or two actually spoken by Jesus fully justifies research.
8. Other Agrapha:
The second edition of the work of Resch includes 17 agrapha from manuscripts of Ac and 1 Joh most of which are from Codex Bezae (D), 31 apostolic apocrypha, and 66 agrapha and apocrypha connected with the Old Testament. 19 of the latter are largely taken from pseudepigrapha, a pseudo-Ezekiel for instance These agrapha some of which are really textual variants are of inferior interest and value.
LITERATURE.
The chief authorities are the German book of the American scholar J. H. Ropes, Die Spruche Jesu, die in den kanonischen Evangelien nicht uberliefert sind, and his article "Agrapha in HDB (extra vol); and the often-mentioned work of Resch. The former has great critical value, and the latter, especially in the 2nd edition, is a veritable thesaurus of material. For a full survey of the literature up to 1905 see that work, pp. 14-17. There is much criticism in Bauer's Das Leben Jesu im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, chapter vii. Among smaller works special mention may be made of Prebendary Blomfield's Twenty-Five Agrapha (1900); and the book of Griffenhoofe, the title of which is given above. There are recent articles on the subject in HDB (1909), "Unwritten Sayings," and DCG, "Sayings (Unwritten)"; Am. Journal of Archaeology, XII (1908), 49-55; H. A. Sanders, New manuscripts from Egypt; also ib, XIII (1909), 130.
Written by William Taylor Smith
Logia, The:
log'-i-a, (Logia):
1. The Word "Logia" and Its History:
The word logion, which is a diminutive of logos, was regularly used of Divine utterances. There are examples in the classics, the Septuagint, the writings of Josephus and Philo and in four passages in the New Testament (Ac 7:38; Ro 3:2; Heb 5:12; 1Pe 4:11) where it is uniformly rendered both in the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) "oracles." It is not, therefore, surprising that early Christian writers, who thought of Christ as Divine, applied this term to His sayings also. We find this use, according to the usual interpretation, in the title of the lost work of Papias as preserved by Eusebius, Logion kuriakon exegesis, "Exposition of the Lord's Logia" (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 39), in that writer's obscure reference to a Hebrew or Aramaic writing by the apostle Matthew (same place), and in Polycarp's Epistle (section symbol 7), "the logia of the Lord." The modern use of the word is twofold:
(a) as the name of the document referred to by Papins which may or may not be the Q of recent inquirers;
(b) as the name of recently discovered sayings ascribed to Jesus. For the former compare GOSPELS.
The latter is theme of this article.
2. The Discovery of the Logia:
About 9 1/2 miles from the railway station of Beni Mazar, 121 miles from Cairo, a place now called Behnesa marks the site of an ancient city named by the Greeks Oxyrhynchus, from the name of a sacred fish, the modern binni, which had long been known as a great Christian center in early times and was therefore selected by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt for exploration in behalf of the Egyptian Exploration Fund. They began work on the ruins of the town, January 11, 1897, and on the following day discovered a papyrus leaf inscribed with a number of sayings introduced by the formula legei Iesous, "saith Jesus," some of which were at once seen to be quite new. When excavation was resumed in February, 1903, a second fragment was discovered, which must have belonged to the same or a similar collection, as the formula "saith Jesus" is employed in exactly the same way, and the sayings exhibit the same mixed character. The first of these two fragments was named by the discoverers logia, but the short preface to the second fragment suggests that the word used in the original title may have been logoi, which is found in Ac 20:35 as the title perhaps of a collection of sayings of Jesus used by the apostle Paul. It is convenient, however, to retain logia, at any rate for the present. Other remains of early Christian texts have been found on the same site (compare AGRAPHA) but none of precisely the same character.
3. Description of the Texts:
The first fragment, found and published in 1897, afterward referred to as A, is a leaf from a papyrus book measuring in its present state 5 3/4 X 3 3/4 inches and having 42 lines on the two pages. As it is broken at the bottom it is impossible, in the absence of another leaf, to ascertain or even conjecture how much has been lost. At the top right-hand corner of one page are the letters iota, alpha, used as numerals, that is 11, and it has been suggested that this, with other characteristics, marks the page as the first of the two. The uncial writing is assigned to the 3rd century, perhaps to the early part of it. The text is fairly complete except at the end of the third logion, for the five following lines, and at the bottom. The second fragment, henceforth referred to as B, found in 1903 and published in 1904, has also 42 lines, or rather parts of lines, but on only one page or column, the Christian text being written on the back of a roll the recto of which contained a survey list. The characters of this, too, are uncial, and the date, like that of A, seems to be also the 3rd century, but perhaps a little later. B is unfortunately very defective, the bit of papyrus being broken vertically throughout, so that several letters are lost at the end of each line, and also horizontally for parts of several lines at the bottom.
4. Logia with Canonical Parallels:
Seven of these sayings, or logia, inclusive of the preface of B, have or contain canonical parallels, namely:
(1) A1, which coincides with the usual text of Lu 6:42;
(2) A5a (according to the editio princeps, 6a), which comes very close to Lu 4:24;
(3) A6 (or 7), a variant of Mt 5:14;
(4) the saying contained in the preface of B which resembles Joh 8:52;
(5) B2, ll. 7 f, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," which reminds us of Lu 17:21;
(6) B3, ll. 4 f, "Many that are first shall be last; and the last first," which corresponds to Mr 10:31; compare Mt 19:30; Lu 13:30;
(7) B4, ll. 2-5, "That which is hidden from thee shall be revealed to thee: for there is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest," which is like Mr 4:22 (compare Mt 10:26; Lu 12:2).
These parallels or partial parallels-for some of them exhibit interesting variations-are, with one exception, of synoptic character.
5. New Sayings:
The other seven or eight logia, although not without possible echoes of the canonical Gospels in thought and diction, are all non-canonical and with one exception new.
Three of them, namely B2 and 3 (apart from the canonical sayings given above) and 5, may be set aside as too uncertain to be of any value. What is preserved of the first ("Who are they that draw you (MS, us) to the kingdom?" etc.) is indeed very tempting, but the restoration of the lost matter is too precarious for any suggestion to be more than an ingenious conjecture. This is seen by comparing the restoration of this logion by the discoverers, Dr. Swete and Dr. C. Taylor, with that proposed by Delssmann (Licht vom Osten1, 329). While the English scholars take helko in the sense of "draw," the German takes it in the sense which it has in the New Testament, "drag," with the result of utter divergence as to the meaning and even the subject of the logion. The logia which remain are undeniably of great interest, although the significance of at least one is exceedingly obscure. The number of the sayings is not certain. Dr. Taylor has shown that in A2 f "and" may couple two distinct utterances brought together by the compiler. If this suggestion is adopted, and if the words after A3 in the editio princeps are regarded as belonging to it and not as the remains of a separate logion, we get the following eight sayings:
(1) "Except ye fast to the world (or "from the world"), ye shall in no wise find the kingdom of God" (A2a);
(2) "Except ye keep the sabbath (Taylor "sabbatize the sabbath"), ye shall not see the Father" (A2b);
(3) "I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh was I seen of them, and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst among them" (A3a);
(4) "My soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart and see not their wretchedness and their poverty" (the last clause restored by conjecture) (A3b);
(5) "Wherever there are two they are not without God, and where there is one alone I say I am with him (after Blass). Raise the stone and (there) thou shalt find me: cleave the wood (Taylor, "the tree") and there am I" (A4);
(6) "A physician does not work cures on them that know him" (A5b);
(7) "Thou hearest with one ear but the other thou hast closed" (largely conjectural but almost certain) (A6);
(8) "(There is nothing) buried which shall not be raised" (or "known") (B4, 1,5).
6. Origin and Character of the Logia:
Attempts have been made to trace the collection represented by these fragments (assuming that they belong to the same work) to some lost gospel-the Gospel according to the Egyptians (Harnack, Van Manen), the Gospel of the Ebionites or the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles (Zahn), or the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Batiffol), but without decisive result. That there is a connection of some kind with the last-mentioned apocryphal work is evident from the fact that B1 ("Jesus saith, Let not him who seeks.... cease until he find Him; and having found Him, let him be amazed; and being amazed he shall reign, and reigning shall rest") is ascribed by Clement of Alexandria to this writing, but that cannot have been the only source. It was probably one of a number drawn on by the compiler. The latter, so far as B is concerned, represents the sayings as spoken by Jesus to ".... and Thomas." In whatever way the gap is supplied-whether by "Philip," or "Judas" or "the other disciples"-one of the Twelve known as Thomas is clearly referred to as the medium or one of the media of transmission. It is possible that the short preface in which this statement is made belongs not to the whole collection but to a part of it. The whole work may, as Swete suggests (Expository Times, XV, 494), have been entitled "Words of Jesus to the Twelve," and this may have been the portion addressed to Thomas. The other fragment, A, might belong to a section associated with the name of another apostle. In any case the Logia must have formed part of a collection of considerable extent, as we know of material for 24 pages or columns of about 21 or 22 lines each. So far as can be judged the writing was not a gospel in the ordinary sense of that term, but a collection of sayings perhaps bearing considerable resemblance as to the form to the Logia of Matthew mentioned by Papias.
The remains of B5, however, show that a saying might be prefaced with introductory matter. Perhaps a short narrative was sometimes appended. The relation to the canonical Gospels cannot be determined with present evidence. The sayings preserved generally exhibit the synoptic type, perhaps more specifically the Lukan type, but Johannine echoes, that is, possible traces of the thought and diction represented in the Fourth Gospel, are not absent (compare A, logia 2 f, and preface to B). It seems not improbable that the compiler had our four Gospels before him, but nothing can be proved. There is no distinct sign of heretical influence. The much-debated saying about the wood and the stone (A4b) undoubtedly lends itself to pantheistic teaching, but can be otherwise understood.
Under these circumstances the date of the compilation cannot at present be fixed except in a very general way. If our papyri which represent two copies were written, as the discoverers think, in the 3rd century, that fact and the indubitably archaic character of the sayings make it all but certain that the text as arranged is not later than the 2nd century. To what part of the century it is to be assigned is at present undiscoverable. Sanday inclines to about 120 AD, the finders suggest about 140 AD as the terminus ad quem, Zahn dates 160-70 AD, and Dr. Taylor 150-200 AD. Further research may solve these problems, but, with the resources now available, all that can be said is that we have in the Logia of Oxyrhynchus a few glimpses of an early collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus which circulated in Egypt in the 3rd century of great interest and possibly of considerable value, but of completely unknown origin.
LITERATURE.
Of the extensive literature which has gathered round the Logia-as many as fifty publications relating to A only in the first few months-only a few can be mentioned here. A was first published in 1897 as a pamphlet and afterward as Number 1 of Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Valuable articles by Cross and Harnack peared in The Expositor, series V, volume VI, 257 ff, 321 ff, 401 ff, an important lecture by Swete in The Expository Times, VIII, 544 ff, 568, and a very useful pamphlet by Sanday and Lock in the same year. B appeared in 1904 in pamphlet form and as Number 654 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, with a fuller commentary. Dr. C. Taylor's pamphlets on A and B issued respectively in 1899 and 1905, and Swete's lecture on B, The Expositor T, XV, 488 ff, are of exceptional significance for the study of the subject. Compare also Griffinhoofe, The Unwritten Sayings of Christ (A only), 55-67; Klostermann, Kleine Texte, Numbers 8, pp. 11 f and 11, pp. 17 ff; Resch, Agrapha2, 68-73, 353 f; HDB, article "Agrapha," extra vol; also articles on "Unwritten Sayings" in HDB, 1909, and DCG.
Written by William Taylor Smith
He is a cross pendant.
He is engraved with a unique Number.
He will mail it out from Jerusalem.
He will be sent to your Side.
Emmanuel
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