'The Gospel of Jesus' Wife'

[AdamSmith]

May MsGuy absolve me...but intriguing, to say the least.

'The Gospel Of Jesus' Wife,' New Early Christian Text, Indicates Jesus May Have Been Married

A discovery by a Harvard researcher may shed light on a controversial aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King says she has found an ancient papyrus fragment from the fourth century that, when translated, appears to indicate that Jesus was married.

The text is being dubbed "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife." The part of it that's drawing attention says, "Jesus said to them, 'my wife'" in the Coptic language. The text, which is printed on papyrus the size of a business card, has not been scientifically tested to verify its dating, but King and other scholars have said they are confident it is a genuine artifact.

"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," King said at a conference in Rome on Tuesday. "This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’s death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions."

King, who focuses on Coptic literature, Gnosticism and women in the Bible, has published on the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala. She presented her research Tuesday evening in Rome, where scholars are gathered for the International Congress of Coptic Studies.

The idea that Jesus was unmarried and chaste is largely accepted by Christian denominations and a reason for the practice of celibacy among Roman Catholic priests.

"Beyond internal Catholic Church politics, a married Jesus invites a reconsideration of orthodox teachings about gender and sex," said journalist and author Michael D'Antonio, who writes about the Catholic Church, in a blog on The Huffington Post. "If Jesus had a wife, then there is nothing extra Christian about male privilege, nothing spiritually dangerous about the sexuality of women, and no reason for anyone to deny himself or herself a sexual identity."

The quote about Jesus' wife is part of a description of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples. In the conversation, Jesus talks about his mother twice and speaks once about his wife. One of them is identified as "Mary." His disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy of being part of their community, to which Jesus replies, “she will able to be my disciple.”

The fragment has eight incomplete lines of writing on one side and is badly damaged on the other side, with only three faded words and a few letters of ink that are visible, even with the use of infrared photography and computer-aided enhancement.

The private owner of the papyrus first approached King in 2010. King said she didn't believe the document was authentic, but the owner persisted. She then asked the owner to bring the papyrus to Harvard, where she became convinced it was a genuine early Christian text fragment. Along with Princeton University professor Anne Marie Luijendijk and Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, King claims to have confirmed the document is real. The document's owner has not been named and King said he does not want to be identified.

It's unclear when the text was initially discovered. The owner who showed it to King found it in 1997 in a collection of papyri that he acquired from the previous owner, who was German. The papyri included a handwritten German description that had the name of a now-deceased professor of Egyptology in Berlin who called the fragment a "sole example" of a document that claims Jesus was married.

The scholars believe the text is from Egyptian Christians before the year 400, as it is written in the language used at that time. Since writing appears on both sides of the fragment, scholars believe it came from a codex, a kind of book, and not a scroll. The scholars also believe the document is a translation of an earlier one that was likely written in Greek.

King notes in her research that the idea of Jesus' celibacy hasn't always existed, and that early Christians debated whether they should marry or practice celibacy. It was not until around the year 200 that Christian followers began to say Jesus was unmarried, according to a record King cites from Clement of Alexandria. In his writing, Clement -- an early theologian -- said that marriage was a fornication put in place by the devil, and that people should emulate Jesus by not marrying.

One or two decades later, Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa declared that Jesus was "entirely unmarried" and told Christians to remain single. But Tertullian did not come out against sex altogether and allowed couples to get married one time, denouncing divorce and remarriage as overindulgent. A century earlier, the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy said in the New Testament that people who forbid marriage are going by the "doctrines of demons," but did not include anything about Jesus being married in order to make the point.

The point of view that ultimately became dominant was that celibacy is preferred as a high sexual virtue among Christians, but that marriage is needed for the sake of reproduction.

"The discovery of this new gospel," King said, "offers an occasion to rethink what we thought we knew by asking what role claims about Jesus' marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The Gospel of Jesus's Wife now shows that some Christians thought otherwise."

The life of historical Jesus is often a matter of controversy, and this is not the first time it's been proposed that Jesus was married. Most recently, Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" depicted Jesus as being married to Mary Magdalene. The book was published as fiction, but nonetheless attracted loud criticism from Vatican officials.

Front of fragment with translation

Back of fragment with translation

UPDATE: 4:28 p.m. -- Speaking on a conference call Tuesday from Rome, King said that some people who have read about the discovery have asked if the papyrus fragment was describing Jesus as being married to the Christian faith, not to a woman.

"One cannot overrule that it might be him saying 'my wife as a church,' but in the context where he's talking about 'my mother' and 'my wife' and talking about 'my disciple,' the one thing you would not say is that the church would be 'my disciple.'"

Even before King's discovery, there has been speculation that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. "I do not think Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene," King clarified Tuesday, adding, "whether he was or was not married ... I really think the tradition is silent and we don't know."

King also said that a professor who saw her report asked her if the text on the papyrus could have been a homily and not a gospel, an idea she said she had not considered.

King added that she hopes the discovery will diminish the view outside of academic circles that the debate over marriage and sexuality in the early church is "fixed and over." In current church debates over issues such as same-sex marriage and marriage among Catholic priests, "having more voices from the early church and a better, more accurate version of early Christianity is more helpful," she said.

UPDATE FROM AP: 8:33 a.m.

Wolf-Peter Funk, a noted Coptic linguist and co-director of the francophone project editing the Nag Hammadi Coptic library at Laval University in Quebec, said there were "thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things," and that many questions remain unanswered about the Harvard fragment.

http://www.huffingto...ref=mostpopular

[Guest hitoallusa]

I got excommunicated for going against limiting women's role in my previous church... They excommunicated me just like that although they tried to convince and persuade me... I lost all my friends and they would not hang out with me any more... I thought it was wrong and over interpretation of some texts in the Bible and after many years it turns out that there is a possibility that some texts regading women's role were added intentionally or mistakenly by scribes according to Bart Erhman...

I personally don't care whether Jesus was married or not.. I have seen many people regardless of their martial status doing good works in Jesus so it doesn't matter. What matter is whether we can keep doing good work Jesus started and spread love among us...

Some interpretations of the Bible are wrong and some texts were added or deleted intentionally by later scribes. It's unfortunate that some people don't know that and become fundamentalists.. Maybe that's why Jesus died on the cross instead of evoking a big storm and sweep those who were against him...To show love and tolerance of the son of the almighty God... I think that's a very powerful message and Romney and Obama should pay attention to..

Most of all I'm glad that we can talk about this, study, research and verify things..that should be part of a healthy religion.

Anyhow, you can see a lot of journalists and the media making false claims with these fragmented words... One has to caution that Jesus mentioned his followers as his bride figuratively... so it could be just that.. But as usual the media jumps onto the conclusion that Jesus had a wife..

[Guest hitoallusa]

Come to think of it the letters seem to be written with a Sharpie...

[Guest hitoallusa]

Oops error

[Lucky]

Jesus' wife was a very holy woman who wore a veil to cover her hair and never raised her voice. She was a model of happiness as well as cleanliness, and why not? Cleanliness was next to godliness,and she sure was!

[Guest hitoallusa]

I know a friend who is a devoted christian. He has a nice wife too. They together help a lot of poor people in the community and those who need help. They open their house for other people and always take good care of the sick.. They know I'm gay but they keep it to themselves so I appreciate that. If Jesus had a wife I think she might be like my friend's wife.

I got angry at a person but a christian friend was able to embrace the person and give all he could to help that person... Eventually, everything was well and everybody benefited from his perseverance and good deeds. If a person can do such a nice thing to someone else because of faith and love, I do think there is something special in it. The gay issue will be gradually resolved in Church as it has been for women, although it is in progress for woman too.. There are many good christians who do good things and reasonable.. And their value of love and compassion is something we need to bring into our community..

[AdamSmith]

The plot thickens...

Gospel of Jesus's Wife is fake, claims expert

Scholar says papyrus fragment believed to provide evidence that Jesus was married is a modern forgery

• 
  

• Andrew Brown
  
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 September 2012 12.54 EDT
  

Karen King from Harvard university holds the papyrus fragment that has four words written in Coptic, which are believed to prove Jesus was married. Photograph: Rose Lincoln/EPA

A New Testament scholar claims to have found evidence suggesting that the Gospel of Jesus's Wife is a modern forgery.

Professor Francis Watson, of Durham University, says the papyrus fragment, which caused a worldwide sensation when it appeared earlier this week because it appeared to refer to Jesus's wife, is a patchwork of texts from the genuine Coptic-language Gospel of Thomas, which have been copied and reassembled out of order to make a suggestive new whole.

In a paper published online, Watson argues that all of the sentence fragments found on the papyrus fragment have been copied, sometimes with small alterations, from printed editions of the Gospel of Thomas.

The discovery has already sparked fierce debate among academics, but Watson believes his new research may prove conclusive.

"I think it is more or less indisputable that I have shown how the thing was composed," he said. "I would be very surprised if it were not a modern forgery, although it is possible that it was composed in this way in the fourth century."

His paper claims the work was assembled by someone who was not a native speaker of Coptic, which is a polite way of saying that it is modern.

He does not directly criticise Professor Karen King, of Harvard, who presented the fragment at a conference in Rome this week. He says she has done a very good job of presenting the evidence and images of the disputed fragment. He believes the papyrus itself may well date from the fourth century, but the words, he says, clearly show the influence of modern printed books.

In particular, there is a line break in the middle of one word that appears to have been lifted directly from modern editions of the Gospel of Thomas, a genuine Gnostic or early Christian text.

It is common for words to be broken in the middle in ancient scripts, like Coptic, which were written without hyphens, he says. But it is most uncommon for the same break to appear in the same work in two different manuscripts.

There has been no response as yet from King, who is believed to be still travelling after the Rome conference.

Martin believes this is a forgery comparable with a papyrus fragment that caused a scandal in the 1970s by being presented as a variant of the Gospel According to Mark, in which Jesus spent the night with naked youths.

"It's the same sort of technique – patchwork technique. This is particularly striking in the Jesus's Wife text, because it has little bits that are legible and they don't connect very well," says Martin.

There has long been speculation that Jesus might have married – most notably in recent years when it became a key part of the plot in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

http://www.guardian....us-wife-forgery

[Guest hitoallusa]

Well I think they used a sharpie... Anyways, I want the names of all the reporters who jumped on to the concluison that Jesus was married... The way we report news will surely change in the future...