Ancient Egyptian provincial capital 125 mi. south of Cairo & 10 miles W of the Nile (modern Behnesa). Site where (from 1897-1920) one of the largest collections of ancient mss. (classical, Christian & secular) was discovered dating from the 1st - 9th c. CE. Among these were many works that had been considered lost, including fragments of three copies of a collection of Jesus sayings that was identified as the original Greek version of the gospel of Thomas, when a complete Coptic translation of that work was discovered at Nag Hammadi (Egypt) in 1945. Other Oxyrhynchus papyri (pOxy 840 & pOxy 1224) contained sayings & stories of Jesus from gospels that have yet to be identified.

[For further details see The Complete Gospels revised edition (R.J. Miller, ed. Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1994) pp. 323-329 & 418-424].

Other On-line Resources

• Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel - Peter Kirby presents excerpts from scholars' assessments of the papyrus fragment of the unknown gospel found at Oxyrhynchus.

• POxy: Oxyrhynchus On-Line - Oxford U site designed to put the complete contents of the Egyptian papyri on the internet. Numbered Table of contents give access to 80+ volumes containing thousands of documents. NT texts include Matt 13:30-39, 55ff (vol 64 p#4403 and 4406; 3rd c. CE).

• Λογια Ιησου: Sayings of Our Lord - complete text of B. P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt's 1897 report of the discovery of pOxy1 which 50 years later was identified as a portion of the Gospel of Thomas in Greek (Internet Archive).

• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1 - description and account of the early 2nd c. Greek fragment found in the Oxyrhynchus dumps containing sayings 26-33 from the Gospel of Thomas (Wikipedia).

• Oxyrhynchus Papyri - article on classical texts discovered by Grenfell & Hunt's excavations with complete list of "theological" fragments - i.e., Christian scripture both canonical and extra-canonical (Wikipedia).