**AGRAPHON** (Greek: «unwritten thing»; plural agrapha). — An isolated saying (λόγιον) of Jesus (from His earthly life), transmitted to us outside the canonical Gospels.
Not all isolated sayings attributed to the Saviour in apocryphal works are called agrapha, such as, for example, the *Epistola Apostolorum*, in which the risen Jesus speaks at length. A. Resch, in his 2nd edition (1906), adopts a broader conception and, followed by U. Holzmeister and F. Cabrol, calls agrapha every word cited as «divine Scripture» of which there is no trace in the canonical books; hence J. Göttsberger, *Einleitung in das Alte Test.*, Freiburg im Br. 1928, p. 398, deals with the «agrapha of the Old Testament». This meaning of the term is well-founded and correct; however, the narrower sense, which is the more commonly accepted one, is retained here.
Besides the single agraphon in the New Testament books distinct from the Gospels (Acts 10:35), agrapha are found in variant readings of Gospel manuscripts, in patristic literature (from the *Didache* to Ephrem and Chrysostom), in liturgical documents, in fragments of recently discovered papyri, in ancient apocryphal books (especially «Gospels»), in rabbinic and Islamic writings. To ascertain the authenticity of an agraphon, one must weigh the authority (antiquity, historical value) and the number of witnesses who attest II. Doctrinal agreement with evangelical teaching is a negative criterion but sufficient to exclude many agrapha of heretical or fantastic origin. Internal criticism, however, is not enough to establish the authenticity of the more reliable agrapha, also because their text is brief, detached from its original context, and therefore often difficult to understand.
Of the approximately 200 agrapha collected from the six sources mentioned above, the vast majority are worthless, even apart from those of dubious orthodoxy. Either they put into Jesus’ mouth texts from the Old or New Testament, reworked or adapted, often confused or combined (many are Gospel passages freely cited and expanded; some are formulations that developed in liturgical books, others perhaps popular catechetical formulas later included in collections of λόγια, such as that of Oxyrhynchus); or they are strange sayings alien to Jesus’ preaching, without doctrinal bias, whether they rework a Gospel text or (more tardily) are arbitrarily fabricated (e.g., in Augustine, *Contra adversarios legis et prophet.*, II, 4, 14: PL 42, 647). Other agrapha deliberately introduce doctrinal or disciplinary elements not revealed, without favouring any heresy, either by accentuating eschatological conceptions prevalent in Christian circles, or by encouraging ascetic tendencies (virginity, monasticism), or by specifying ecclesiastical organization to canonize existing norms or suppress abuses. Pious zeal «provoked no less pious frauds» (L. Vaganay), since, in defending orthodoxy or proper order, one felt compelled to use the weapons of heretics, who systematically resorted to forgery.
The Babylonian Talmud reports two agrapha (Abodah Zarah 16b, 17a; Sabbath 16). Muslim writings (outside the Qur’an) contain over 100, generally due to vague reminiscences of the Gospels.
Even when internal criticism finds no suspicious tendencies in tone or expression, very few agrapha have their text attested by an ancient tradition and multiple concordant sources. The agrapha that seem to quote *Epistle of Barnabas* 7:11; Justin, *1 Apology* 15:8; Origen, *Commentary on Matthew* 13:2 and *Commentary on Jeremiah* 20:3, are adaptations of biblical texts. The most frequently attested agraphon (about 70 times, especially among Alexandrian writers) is «γίνεσθε δὲ δόκιμοι τραπεζῖται» («become good bankers») and is almost always accompanied by 1 Thess. 5:21. Justin, *Dialogue with Trypho* 47:6, attributes to Jesus the saying: «In the state in which I find you, I will judge you»; but of the twenty other citations of this phrase, none attribute it to Jesus, many to the prophet (cf. Amos 5:18-20; Isa. 22:14; Joel 2:1; 3:4; Zeph. 1:7-18). In Codex D (cf. A. Merk, *Novum Testamentum Graece*, 4th ed., Rome 1942, pp. 69, 212), the saying of Jesus to the Sabbath-breaker (in place of Lk. 6:5) must be a later addition against Judaizers, modelled on Mk. 2:27, and the addition to Mt. 20:28 is a parallel to Lk. 14:8-10.
Twelve agrapha, possibly of Gnostic origin (connected by White with the *Gospel according to the Hebrews*), discovered on two Oxyrhynchus papyri in 1887 and 1903 (editions: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, *ἀπόφθεγματα Ἰησοῦ*, *Sayings of Our Lord*, London 1897; *New Sayings of Jesus and Fragments of a Lost Gospel*, 1904), were added to an agraphon from a Fayum fragment edited by A. Harnack (1889). In 1907, the Codex W (5th cent.) from Akhmim was discovered, containing the ending of Mark known as the «Freer logion» (A. Merk, op. cit., p. 185; cf. C. R. Gregory, *Das Freer-Logion*, Leipzig 1908), which is entirely without value. The Egerton Papyrus (v.) discovered in 1934 (ed. H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat, London 1935) was mistakenly hailed as an «unknown Gospel» or a «fifth Gospel»; the three fragments (ante-150) with the six episodes it contains are part of a compilation freely drawn from the four canonical Gospels, with the insertion of oral traditions similar to those in Codex D, for catechetical purposes in anti-Jewish polemic (M.-J. Lagrange, *Critique textuelle*, II, Paris 1935, pp. 633-49).
A. Resch, in his 1st edition, considered 74 agrapha (out of 177 listed) authentic; in the 2nd edition, he reduced this number to 36. Meanwhile, J. H. Ropes had lowered the number to 14. Beyond 4 or 5 more seriously attested agrapha—though still doubtful—the only certain agraphon is the one cited by Paul in Acts 20:35.
Agrapha are of minimal importance for knowledge of Jesus’ teaching, since they are, on the whole, the quintessential apocryphal material» (L. Vaganay). Nor are they significant for the history of the oral evangelical tradition; not only do they not contribute to solving the Synoptic problem (as A. Resch, R. Harris, and finally K. Lake, *The New Sayings of Jesus and the Synoptic Problem*, in *The Hibbert Journal*, 3 [1904-1905], pp. 332-41, claimed), but they do not demonstrate the existence of an early oral catechesis legitimately placed at the foundation of the canonical Gospels, nor of formalistic schemes in the earliest Christian preaching (as the *Formgeschichtliche Methode* supposes), since the agrapha that have come down to us do not date back to apostolic times. The enthusiasm aroused by A. Resch’s agrapha has now faded. Many agrapha, however, are useful for textual criticism and the history of exegesis, as they are mostly variants of sacred text (sometimes inserted into biblical manuscripts) or interpretative glosses; generally, moreover, they reveal tendencies or doctrines of the milieux in which they originated.
II) Treatments: J. C. Körner, *De sermonibus Christi ἀρχαιοῦ*, Leipzig 1776 (introduced the term «agraphen» in the sense now current); J. H. Ropes, *Die Sprüche Jesu, die in den kanonischen Evangelien nicht überliefert sind* (*Texte u. Untersuchungen*, XIV, 11), Leipzig 1896; id., in *Dict. of the Bible*, extra vol. (1904), cols. 343-52; F. Cabrai, s. V. in *DACL*, I (1907), cols. 970-84; B. Pick, *Paralipomenae: Remains of Gospels and Sayings of Christ*, Chicago 1908; A. Uecker, *Worte Jesu, die nicht in der Bibel stehen* (*Bibl. Zeit- und Streitfragen*, VII, 11), Berlin 1911; E. Hennecke, in *Realen. für prot. Theol. u. Kirche*, XXIII (1913), pp. 16-25; id., *Versprengte Herrenworte*, in *Neustet. Apokryphen*, 2nd ed., Tübingen 1924, pp. 32-39; C. Bardenhewer, *Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur*, I, 2nd ed., Freiburg in Br. 1913, pp. 539-43; U. Holzmeister, *Unbeachtete patristische Agrapha*, in *Zeitschr. für kathol. Theol.*, 38 (1914), pp. 113-43; 39 (1915), pp. 98-118, 80-83; E. Jacquier, *Les sentences du Seigneur extracanoniques* (*Les Agrapha*), in *Revue Bibl.*, 27 (1918), pp. 93-135 (the author admits 13 authentic a., 26 probable; 2nd ed., in *La Parole du Dieu*, Paris 1920, pp. 62-82); E. G. E. White, *The Sayings of Jesus from Oxyrhynchos*, Cambridge 1920; id., *The Oxyrhynchus sayings of Jesus*, in *Journ. of Bib. Lit.*, 65 (1946), pp. 175-83; L. G. de Fonseca, *Agrapha*, in *Verbum Domini*, 2 (1922), pp. 300-309; E. Besson, *Les Logia agrapha*, Bihorel-lez-Rouen 1923 (admits 68 authentic a.); E. Buonaiuti, *Detti extracanonici di Gesù*, Rome 1925; L. Vaganay, *Agrapha*, in *DBs*, I (1928), cols. 159-98; id., *L'évangile de Pierre*, Paris 1930, pp. 148, 150, 181, 184 sq.; D. Merezhkovsky, *Gesù sconosciuto*, Italian trans., Florence 1933, pp. 84-95 (assigns excessive importance to the a.); J. J. Gomez, *Logia o dichos del Señor extracanonico*, Murcia 1933; P. Chiminelli, *Vita di Gesù*, Florence 1939, pp. 565-81; P. Parker, *The «Second» Saying from Oxyrhynchos*, in *Angl. Theol. Review*, 22 (1940), pp. 195-98.