OXYRHYNCHUS, PAPYRI OF. – Ancient Egyptian city, today el-Bahnasā, where one of the most extensive collections of Greek papyri was discovered, assembled through the efforts of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society), edited by Professors B. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, both of Queens' College, Oxford, and later continued by their collaborators and successors up to Roberts, Lobel, and Wegener.
Publication began in 1898 with a first volume edited by Grenfell and Hunt, containing the edition of 6 Christian papyri, the first of which included the Sayings of Jesus, the second a passage from Matthew, the third a passage from
(from Egypt Exploration Fund, The Oxyrynchus Papyri, edited by B. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, II, London 1899, pl. 2, after p. 8)
OXYRHYNCHUS, PAPYRI OF – Papyrus from O. (first half of the 4th century).
Prologue of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (I, 1-7).
Mark, the fourth a theological fragment, the fifth an unidentified Christian fragment, and the sixth a passage from the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Of particular importance was the first, dating to the 2nd-3rd century, containing an early fragment of the so-called Logia Iesu, i.e., brief sayings attributed to Him, collected piecemeal by various writers who drew from both apocryphal and other sources, transmitting their texts in an unorganized manner; in vol. IV of the same collection (1904), another fragment of the same work appeared under no. 654.
Altogether, the entire collection of O. papyri up to the latest published volume (XVIII, 1941) contains about a hundred papyri of Christian interest, i.e., about one-twentieth of the published portion; others remain to be read in the part awaiting editorial attention. Notable in the collection are three parchments: two (XIII, 1594 and VIII, 1076) relating to the text of Tobit (v.), and one (VII, 1010) to that of Ezra (v.), an important papyrus with a fragment of the 4th Gospel from the 3rd century (II, 208; XV, 1781), a highly significant text of the Acts (XIII, 1579), one no less important from Hebrews (IV, 657), a fragment of an apocryphal Gospel (X, 1224; cf. 655), of the Acts of John (VI, 850), a Christian hymn with musical notation (XV, 1786), the Liturgical Calendar of 535-36 (XI, 1357), and a parchment with fragments of the Didache (XV, 1782).