The material treated in the present book can be said to be important for the study of early Christianity for at least two reasons. In the first case, papyri such as those edited here are often the earliest material evidence for Christianity in places like Egypt. Second, the apocryphal literature is significant for discussions of the development of the canon: this applies not only to our appreciation of the plurality of texts extant from early Christianity but also in the evidence provided by the apocryphal fragments here for the some of the earliest reception of the New Testament gospels. The present book is the second, following Christopher Tuckett's excellent volume on the Gospel of Mary, in a new series of critical editions of non-canonical gospels. The collection of fragments presented here consists initially of a long section (pp. 8–120) on the ‘Unknown Gospel’ or ‘Egerton Papyrus’ first published by Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat in 1935. This contains two accounts of conflicts (the ‘search the scriptures’ debate paralleled in John 5 and Jesus’ escape from arrest because his hour had not yet come, cf. John 7:30) and two miracle stories. The healing of the leper (cf. Mark 1:40–5 and parallels) supplies a back-story in which the person contracted leprosy while (historically, rather implausibly) travelling and socialising with lepers in an inn. In the second miracle, amid the lacunae Jesus is perhaps sowing seed and reaping fruit from the River Jordan. Finally, there is a version of the ‘render unto Caesar’ pericope, albeit with a number of differences from the canonical version.

The second item discussed in the volume is Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840, a tiny but densely inscribed fragment with a debate between Jesus and a Pharisee-priest called Levi over the nature of purity. The third section of the volume covers a series of miscellaneous fragments: a prediction of Peter's denial (P. Vindob. G 2325); a dialogue between Jesus and the Nathanael of John's Gospel (P. Berol. 11710); a fragment of an infancy narrative with both Matthean and Lukan elements (P. Cair. 10735) and two further fragments which contain Synoptic-like material (P. Mert. 51 and P. Oxy. 1224). The editors have excluded P. Oxy. 210, P. Ryl. 464 and PSI 1200 as too exiguous for consideration.

The introductory material in each case is extremely reliable and useful. Nicklas, for example, discusses the early history of the codex and of the ‘nomina sacra’ in a wider context (pp. 14–19). Kruger's introduction to Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 is also very good, though much of it is taken verbatim in large chunks from his earlier monograph on the text (The Gospel of the Savior, Brill, 2005). Kraus’ introductions to and commentaries on the smaller fragments are especially helpful, since the most recent volume covering a lot of the same textual material (Andrew Bernhard, Other Early Christian Gospels, T & T Clark, 2006) merely gives a single, brief introduction to all these texts. The explanatory material is excellent throughout the volume, discussing extensively the relevance of the material objects, questions of interpretation and the probabilities of influence from the New Testament. The volume also benefits from a series of clear, though small, photographs: those, for example, in the editio princeps by Bell and Skeat of the Egerton Papyrus – though without the Cologne fragment – are larger and slightly more easily legible; on the other hand, the photographs of P. Oxy. 840 in the present volume are better than those in Kruger's Gospel of the Savior.

One must also consider, however, the presentation of the texts themselves. In general, the edition of the Egerton Papyrus is well executed, though the Greek text and the English translation are not quite aligned with one another, and there are two errors.Footnote ¹ The presentation of P. Oxy. 840 is slightly inconsistent with the other editions in the volume, in that it does not hyphenate Greek words spanning two lines; there is one mistake here as well.Footnote ² However, it is in the final part of volume, which treats the ‘Other Gospel Fragments’, where the density of mistakes is particularly worrying. The first, the Fayum fragment, appears to be in order. The second, P. Berol. 11710, has a misprint and a translational oddity.Footnote ³ The text of P. Cair. 10735 has a word in the wrong case, and two other misprints.Footnote ⁴P. Mert. 51 has two misprints in the presentation of the text, an inconsistency and a further oddity.Footnote ⁵ On P. Oxy. 1224, there is also one misprint.Footnote ⁶ One cannot assign blame in a particular direction in all this: it is difficult to know whether the fault lies with the editors or with the press. But in a critical edition, accuracy is all, and so it is with regret that one can only commend here the excellent introductory material and commentary.