What is POxy 5575?

Yesterday I relayed a summary of some bible-scholar postage on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5575. Although I have no access to this eighty-seventh volume, I believe I do have enough data from those who've also commented on it, especially Candida Moss. Hey, that's what biblical-scholars generally have to do, for the likes of Papias . . .

Candida Moss keeps hitting up Matthew: 6:25, then vv. 26-33. These, for their parallels with Luke 12:22 / Greek Thomas 36 + Luke 12:24-9; but Nongbri notes that the parallels with Matthew are stronger, such that a fragment in 2018 was assumed part of Matthew. Moss notes further Thomas 27 in the Luke 12:22 context (which maybe she shouldn't); and Coptic Thomas 63 has wandered in. More likely, wandered from this papyrus, to the Coptic...

The context although very much a wild version of Matthew 6:25-33 [/ Luke 12:22-9] does not look Matthean [nor Lukan]. This is no sermon from a Super-Samaritan Sinai (I never suspected it would be). Matthew's and Luke's versions do however own some internal textual-integrity; and agree there was a fixed moment the subSermon was uttered. This looks like a quick exhortation to the Disciples and/or their pupils, as they go out to the villages. Mark may or may not have known it; but it doesn't use the apocalyptic argument which Mark would have preferred, so instead of inserting such there, Mark might have simply omitted it.

Either way it deserves the "Q" tag as much as any scrap does. I mean, I don't even think Luke had "Q"; but the Matthean Gospel got all that lore from somewhere, with only its assemblage being his. Or maybe... it's not all his; and he'd inherited (say) the Sermon on the Mount, from something like POxy#5575.

Burton Mack back in the 1990s asked if "Q" was a Cynic sage. As pertinent to this scrap, Matthew mentions your heavenly Father, and contrasts the clothing of the wildflowers to that of Solomon. Only a Jew would do any of that. (A Samaritan sure wouldn't.) I'm unsure if POxy 5575 itself contains the overt Biblical allusions... but it could well lead in that direction. [THE TEXT 9/12: yes, Solomon's here.] The scrap alludes to the "Oven" as the flowers' destination, should the farmer deem those flowers as weeds; contrast "Fire" in Matthew and Luke.

Although assuredly apocalyptic Judaeo-Christian, as were Mark and the Matthean gospel: I must still ask if POxy 5575 ascribed this speech to Jesus himself. The Epistle of James collects traditions of the early Assembly without ascribing them directly to Christ as a living man; we also get Paul asserting the most-important commandments as "Apostolic" authority without quite ascribing them to the Apostles' master Christ, in a vision or by tradition. We'll be seeing Mark take that particular explicit step, later.