Egerton Gospel - Date of Composition

Date of Composition

Jon B. Daniels writes the following in his introduction in The Complete Gospels:

On the one hand, some scholars have maintained that Egerton's unknown author composed by borrowing from the canonical gospels. This solution has not proved satisfactory for several reasons: The Egerton Gospel's parallels to the synoptic gospels lack editorial language peculiar to the synoptic authors, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They also lack features that are common to the synoptic gospels, a difficult fact to explain if those gospels were Egerton's source.

On the other hand, suggestions that the Egerton Gospel served as a source for the authors of Mark and/or John also lack conclusive evidence. The most likely explanation for the Egerton Gospel's similarities and differences from the canonical gospels is that Egerton's author made independent use of traditional sayings and stories of Jesus that also were used by the other gospel writers.

Such traditional sayings are posited for the hypothetical Q Document. Ronald Cameron states: "Since Papyrus Egerton 2 displays no dependence upon the gospels of the New Testament, its earliest possible date of composition would be sometime in the middle of the first century, when the sayings and stories which underlie the New Testament first began to be produced in written form. The latest possible date would be early in the second century, shortly before the copy of the extant papyrus fragment was made. Because this papyrus presents traditions in a less developed form than John does, it was probably composed in the second half of the first century, in Syria, shortly before the Gospel of John was written."

Helmut Koester and J. D. Crossan have argued that despite its apparent historical importance, the text is not well known. It is a mere fragment, and does not bear a clear relationship to any of the four canonical gospels. The Egerton Gospel has been largely ignored outside a small circle of scholars. The work cannot be dismissed as "apocrypha" or "heretical" without compromising the orthodoxy of the Gospel of John. Nor can it be classed as "gnostic" and dismissed as marginal. It seems to be almost independent of the synoptic gospels and to represent a tradition similar to the canonical John, but independent of it. Additionally it tells us an otherwise unknown miracle, in the Johannine manner.

Conservative scholar Craig Evans supports a date for Egerton Gospel later than the canonical Gospels in a variety of ways. He finds many parallels between the Egerton Gospel and the canonical Gospels that include editorial language particular to Matthew and Luke. While Koester argues that these show a tradition before the other gospels, Craig Evans sees these as drawing from the other Gospels just as Justin Martyr did. He also finds words such as the plural "priests" that show lack of knowledge of Jewish customs.