The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Fragments of Gospels/The Fayoum Gospel-Fragment
1. THE FAYOUM GOSPEL-FRAGMENT
This is a piece of papyrus of the third (?) century, in the Archduke Rainer’s collection of papyri at Vienna: first published in 1885. There have been many attempts (as in all these cases) at restoring the missing words and letters. The first line remains quite doubtful. What may be regarded as certain is:
all ye in this
night shall be offended according to
the scripture: I will smite the shepherd and the
sheep shall be scattered. And when Peter
said: Even if all, not I, the Lord
⎰said: The cock shall twice crow and thou
⎱said: Before the cock crow twice to-day
⎰first shalt thrice deny me
⎱thou shalt thrice deny me.
It is not certain that this is a fragment of a Gospel: it may be, and is by many held to be, a somewhat abridged quotation made by a preacher or commentator. It omits, for instance, the clause: After I am risen I will go before you into Galilee. If the preacher or expositor wished to emphasize Peter’s denial, he might easily pass over these words. On the other hand the first editor of it, and others, have thought that the omission was a mark of early date.
The word for crow is literally cry cuckoo.