P.Oxy. IV 655: A Third Greek Witness to the Gospel of Thomas

Six fragments from a Greek papyrus roll excavated at Oxyrhynchus and dated to the second or third century AD, preserving Thomas sayings 24 and 36-39. Provenance and catalog identity govern this record; related objects or broader site traditions are not substituted for the documented witness. The research trail begins with the stated shelfmark, excavation area, or institutional catalog entry and then works outward to editions and historical synthesis. That order matters because a familiar title can conceal several physical witnesses, phases, or proposed identifications. This dossier therefore keeps the documented find or manuscript separate from related examples and records what is known about custody, recovery, and publication. Where the original excavation or discovery was imperfectly recorded, that loss of context is treated as evidence limiting the claim rather than as a gap to fill imaginatively.

The fragments include sayings about hidden light, anxiety over clothing, watchfulness, and scribes and Pharisees. Together with P.Oxy. 1 and 654, they demonstrate multiple Greek copies rather than one accidental manuscript. The surviving material, text, or assemblage is treated as the primary evidence, with aliases and catalog identifiers retained to prevent confusion with neighboring records. Description here focuses on observable or published features: material, writing, architecture, assemblage, surviving contents, and catalog identity. It does not reconstruct missing lines, rooms, owners, or rituals unless the cited edition explicitly argues for them. Names and sigla are retained because they let a reader locate the same witness across catalogs that use different conventions. The object is significant as a particular artifact, not as a visual stand-in for an entire people, century, or theological position.

Six fragments from a Greek papyrus roll excavated at Oxyrhynchus and dated to the second or third century AD, preserving Thomas sayings 24 and 36-39. The date follows the excavation, paleography, typology, and institutional catalog evidence in the linked sources and should be read with the precision those methods permit. Dates are evaluated through the methods available for this witness—stratigraphy and associated finds for excavated contexts, and paleography, codicology, linguistic comparison, or documented collection history for manuscripts and inscriptions. Those methods normally produce ranges rather than exact years. Historical synchronisms are used only where the source itself or a secure archaeological horizon warrants them. The record therefore distinguishes the date of the surviving copy or object from the possible date of a text, tradition, occupation, or event that it preserves.