Note 1 — Chapter XII · FAILURE OF THE LOGIA THEORY

When the “selection” theory is applied to the logia actually recovered at Oxyrhynchus it conspicuously fails to square these with the traditionalist assumption. On Dr. Petrie’s principle they were left out of the Nucleus and Gospels alike because they met no need of the Christian organization. That is to say, oracles of the Son of God were simply ignored by the apostles and the organizers because they did not serve any useful purpose. Independent criticism finds in them plain marks of Judaism, of Gnosticism, of Christian heresy, and of a Christism irreconcilable with the Gospel record.1 Logion iv, iii, a, runs: “I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh I was seen of them; and I found all drunken, and none found I athirst among them” [sc. for the word]—the saying of a retrospective Christ, no longer in the flesh, such as we find in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia and the Odes Of Solomon.2 On the traditionalist view this at least must be tolerably late; what then does the “selection” argument gain from the recovered papyri?