Fayyum Gospel Fragment

              (CE:1100b)
FAYYUM GOSPEL FRAGMENT, a small fragment of papyrus containing six incomplete lines written in a block hand on the recto of a roll, the verso being blank. It is misnamed in that it was discovered not in the Fayyum but slightly to the south, on the site of the ancient Herakleopolis, in the course of excavations carried out in 1882. It is preserved in the Rainer Collection at Vienna. It is unusual in being part of a roll rather than, like the great majority of early Christian papyri, part of a codex. It can be securely dated to the third century.

In it is described, as in Matthew 26:30-34 and Mark 14:26-30, the departure of Jesus and his disciples to the Mount of Olives immediately before the Passion, with Jesus' prophecy from Zechariah 13:7 and his prediction of Peter's denial. The account is closer to Mark's than it is to Matthew's, but is much more summary even than Mark's. The author certainly drew on Mark's narrative, but his vocabulary suggests that he also used some other source; for example, he uses the word "to crow," not found anywhere in the New Testament. This also renders it unlikely that what we have is part of a treatise in which the writer abbreviated the narrative of Mark rather than a separate gospel.
C. H. ROBERTS