Logia, The

log ́i-a, (Λόγια, Lógia):

The word lógion, which is a diminutive of lógos, was regularly used of Divine utterances. There are examples in the classics, the Septuagint, the writings of Josephus and Philo and in four passages in the New Testament (Acts 7:38; Romans 3:2; Hebrews 5:12; 1 Peter 4:11) where it is uniformly rendered both in the King James Version and the Revised Version “oracles.” It is not, therefore, surprising that early Christian writers, who thought of Christ as Divine, applied this term to His sayings also. We find this use, according to the usual interpretation, in the title of the lost work of Papias as preserved by Eusebius, Logíōn kuriakṓn exḗgēsis, “Exposition of the Lord’s Logia” (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 39), in that writer’s obscure reference to a Hebrew or Aramaic writing by the apostle Matthew (same place), and in Polycarp’s Epistle (section symbol 7), “the logia of the Lord.” The modern use of the word is twofold: (a) as the name of the document referred to by Papins which may or may not be the Q of recent inquirers; (b) as the name of recently discovered sayings ascribed to Jesus. For the former compare GOSPELS. The latter is theme of this article.

About 9 1/2 miles from the railway station of Beni Mazar, 121 miles from Cairo, a place now called Behnesa marks the site of an ancient city named by the Greeks Oxyrhynchus, from the name of a sacred fish, the modern binni, which had long been known as a great Christian center in early times and was therefore selected by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt for exploration in behalf of the Egyptian Exploration Fund. They began work on the ruins of the town, January 11, 1897, and on the following day discovered a papyrus leaf inscribed with a number of sayings introduced by the formula légei Iēsoús, “saith Jesus,” some of which were at once seen to be quite new. When excavation was resumed in February, 1903, a second fragment was discovered, which must have belonged to the same or a similar collection, as the formula “saith Jesus” is employed in exactly the same way, and the sayings exhibit the same mixed character. The first of these two fragments was named by the discoverers logia, but the short preface to the second fragment suggests that the word used in the original title may have been logoi, which is found in Acts 20:35 as the title perhaps of a collection of sayings of Jesus used by the apostle Paul. It is convenient, however, to retain logia, at any rate for the present. Other remains of early Christian texts have been found on the same site (compare AGRAPHA) but none of precisely the same character.

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Author: International Std. Bible Encyclopedia

Keywords: Logia The, Logos, Divine utterance

Source: James Orr (editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 5 volume set.

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