Logia Papyrus: Second or third century AD

‘Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world and in the flesh was I seen of them, and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst among them, and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart, and see not ...’ — Logion III, lines 11-21

The status and origin of these ‘Sayings of Jesus’ was hotly disputed at the time: Grenfell and Hunt took them to be a collection of sayings, independent of the Four Gospels, and dating from perhaps as early as the first century CE.

Oxyrhynchus’ ‘Jesus connection’ doesn’t end there, according to an early mediaeval Arabic epic, the Kitab Futuh al-Bahnasa al Gharra (‘the conquest of Bahnasa, the blessed’).

‘Jesus saith, A prophet is not acceptable in his own country, neither does a physician work cures upon them that know him.’ — Logion VI, lines 9-14

Intro