OXYRHYNCHUS, Papyrus of. - Ancient Egyptian city, today el-Bahnasà, where one of the most substantial collections of Greek papyri was found, assembled through the work of the Egypt exploration fund (now Society), under the direction of professors P. Bernard Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, both of Queen's College, Oxford, and later continued by their collaborators and successors down to Roberts, Lobel and Wegener.

Its publication began in 1898 with a first volume edited by Grenfell and Hunt with the edition of 6 Christian papyri, of which the first contained the Sayings of Jesus, the second a passage of Matthew, the third a passage of Mark, the fourth a theological fragment, the fifth an unidentified Christian fragment and the sixth a passage from the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The first appeared especially important, from the 2nd-3rd century, containing a first fragment of the so-called Loghia Iesu, that is, of brief sayings attributed to him, and gathered gradually by various writers, who also drew on apocrypha and who transmitted their texts in an inorganic manner; in vol. IV of the same collection (1904) another fragment of the same work appeared under no. 654.

OXYRHYNCHUS, PAPYRI of - Papyrus coming from O. (1st half of the 4th century). Prologue of the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (I, 1-7).(from Egypt exploration fund, the Oxyrhynchus papyri, edited by D. Gruffli and A. S. Hunt, II, London 1899, tau, 2, after p. 8)

On the whole the entire collection of the p. of O. up to the last volume published so far (XVIII, 1941) contains about a hundred papyri that concern Christianity, that is, about a twentieth of the entire published part; others still remain to be read in the part awaiting the attention of the editors. Noteworthy in the collection are three parchments: two (XIII, 1594 and VIII, 1076) that concern the text of Tobit (v.), and one (VII, 1010) that of Esdras (v.), an important papyrus with a fragment of the Fourth Gospel from the 3rd century (II, 208; XV, 1781), a very notable text of the Acts (XIII, 1579), one no less important of 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 Didaché (XV, 1782).

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: The Oxyrhynchus papyri (Egypt exploration fund), 18 vols., London 1898-1941; G. Pfeilschifter, Oxyrhynchus, seine Kirchen und Klöster auf Grund der Papyrusfunde, in Festgabe Knöpfer, Freiburg im Br. 1917, pp. 248-64; L. Modena, Il cristianesimo ad O. secondo i papiri, in Bull. Soc. arch. Alex., 31 (1917), pp. 254-69; 33 (1919), pp. 293-320; A. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 4th ed., Tübingen 1923; H. Delchaye, Le calendrier d'Oxyrhynque pour l'année 535-36, in Anal. Bolland., 42 (1924), pp. 83-99.

Aristide Calderini

@incollection{ec9_ossirinco_papiri_di, author = {Calderini, Aristide}, title = {Ossirinco, papiri di}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {428--429}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/ossirinco-papiri-di} }

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Oxyrhynchus, Papyrus of

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