Saying of Jesus
The name "Sayings of Jesus" (logia of Jesus) was given by Grenfell and Hunt to a leaf of a papyrus codex that was among their first season's finds at Oxyrhynchus in 1897. Written in the first half of the third century, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1 contains a collection of sayings of Jesus, each headed "Jesus says" (Ancient Greek: λέγει Ἰησοῦς légei Iēsoũs). In 1903 a fragment of a third-century papyrus scroll that had been used for an official register was discovered (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 654, now British Museum Papyrus 1531 verso) with further sayings. Controversy centered on whether the two fragments formed part of the same work, what authority could be attached to them, and the correct restoration of lacunae in the texts (Bell and Skeat 1935).
Oxyrhynchus 654 had a heading which seems to describe the work as a collection of "sayings" addressed to Thomas and some other disciple, and when the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945, it was identified as a Coptic version of the Greek work of which these two were fragments. The Gospel of Thomas contains sayings attributed to Jesus, some of which are included in the canonical gospels, but many are not found elsewhere. The individual sayings are generally cited by logion number, which in most division schemes range from 1 to 114.
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