Agrapha: Sayings of Jesus Not in the Gospels

Agrapha ('unwritten things'): sayings and stories of Jesus that are not in the four Gospels, as M. R. James collected them in 1924. Chapter 1 gives those found added to the Gospel text in early manuscripts: Codex Bezae's sayings on seeking the lower place at a feast (after Matthew 20:28) and on the man working on the sabbath (after Luke 6:4), the great light at Jesus' baptism in two Old Latin manuscripts (Matthew 3:17), the darkness and angels at the resurrection in the Old Latin Codex Bobiensis (Mark 16:3), and the 'Freer logion', the disciples' excuse and Christ's answer after Mark 16:14 in the 5th-century Codex W, with Jerome's form of it. Chapter 2 gives sayings quoted by early writers, from Acts 20:35 ('It is more blessed to give than to receive') through 2 Clement, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen ('He that is near me is near the fire'), the Apostolic Church Order (with its Syriac form of Mary's reply as verse 11), the Clementine Homilies, the Acts of Philip and Linus, to Papias's saying on the vines of the coming kingdom as Irenaeus reports it, and Hippolytus's form of its ending. Each verse is one witness, in James's order; James's notes on where each comes from and the parallels he cites are not reproduced. Some of these sayings also appear in other books on this site. Not part of any church's canon.