154 REV. p. p. FLOURNOY, D.D.^ ON BEARING OE ARCH^OLOGICAL 



Gospel accordino; to Mark taking its place. The author refers 

 to the order of Serapioii, Bishop of Antioch, forbidding its use 

 at Khossus, because of its Docetic character. Facts, however, 

 are more reliable than theories with no facts to sustain them. 

 This fragment is found, even by the (by no means conservative) 

 writer of the introduction to it in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, 

 vol. ix, to be dependent on all four of our Gospels ; and 

 Dr. Sanday, of Oxford University, says of it (Bampton Lectures, 

 p. 301, note), " The Apocryphal Gospel of Peter is based on our 

 Gospels." Of the author of it, he says, when he leaves our 

 Gospels, " It is very plain when he begins to walk by himself." 



Eeferring to some quite eccentric features of the production, 

 he remarks — 



" In all these ways, the contrast between the apocryphal Gospel 

 and the canonical Gospels is marked. The latter are really 'a 

 garden enclosed.' " 



I think that few who examine this " Gospel " will think 

 differently. Thus this early apocryphal Gospel is seen to be a 

 witness for the canonical Gospels, though the author seems to 

 have written it with the design of leading his followers away 

 from them by giving a different view of the Person of our 

 Lord from that which these Gospels had presented. 



V. Other Documents from Egypt. 



Other documents have been discovered in Egypt. The 

 two young Oxford scholars, Grenfell and Hunt, in 1897, in 

 excavating in the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, created a 

 sensation in the learned world by the finding of a papyrus leaf, 

 apparently from a book, containing Logia (or sayings) of 

 Jesus. 



In it, and in others subsequently found, there are echoes of 

 the sayings of Christ recorded in the Gospels, though much 

 distorted ; yet one, on the first leaf discovered, is identical with 

 a saying in the Gospel of Luke. This papyrus has been 

 declared by some experts to have been written " not later than 

 the year 200 A.D." Other " sayings " suggest Matthew's and 

 John's Gospels. 



These obscure and faint echoes of the teaching of our blessed 

 Lord impress us with the value of the " Sayings " in the Gospels, 

 recorded, and not left to the chance of distortion by oral 

 transmission. 



But along with these Logia there were discovered verses 

 from the Epistle to the Eomans, and two pages of the Gospel 



