A New Gospel Revealed
Photograph © 2012 Karen L. KingThe front of a papyrus fragment from an early Christian codex on which is written a previously unknown gospel, the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.
At 7 p.m. this evening in Rome (1 p.m. EST), Hollis professor
of divinity Karen L. King revealed to a conference of Coptic scholars the
existence of a newly discovered Christian gospel. In the fragmentary text, Jesus
refers unmistakably to “my wife.”
Written on a piece of papyrus now reduced to just four centimeters high and eight wide, the fragment addresses issues of family and discipleship. “This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” King writes in her scholarly paper on the “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which she presented at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies. The session took place across the street from the Vatican at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, a research center within the faculty of theology at the Pontifical Lateran University (known as the Pope’s University).
The paper will appear in the January 2013 issue of the Harvard Theological Review. In an interview, King emphasized that this new discovery does not prove that the historical Jesus was married. This gospel, like others dated to the second century which make opposing claims—that Jesus was celibate, for example—are too late, historically speaking, to provide any evidence as to whether the historical Jesus was married or not, she says. But the fragment does suggest that 150 years or so after Jesus’s birth, Christians were already taking positions on such questions. Significantly, this new text pushes the date at which some Christians were asserting that Jesus was married back to a time contemporaneous with the earliest assertions that he was celibate.
Papyrus is extremely durable under dry desert conditions. This particular fragment dates to the fourth century, but is almost certainly a copy of an earlier text that probably originated around A.D. 150, King says. Written in a form of Coptic known as Sahidic, a language of Upper Egypt, the fragment is owned by a collector of Greek, Arabic, and Coptic papyri who first wrote to King after reading her book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
“I was contacted in 2010 by the owner, who didn’t read Coptic,” King recalls. After she agreed to translate the text, the collector sent a photograph and indicated that the fragment “might have something to do with Jesus being married.” King remembers being immediately suspicious. Blank pieces of ancient papyrus are not difficult to come by on the antiquities market, she explains, and in the low resolution photographs she was seeing, the writing could easily have been the work of a forger. “I was very busy with other things and said I am not going to be able to work on this,” she says.
The owner e-mailed again in 2011 and asked her a second time if she would examine the fragment. Looking again at the text, King found “what looked like a connection to the [noncanonical] Gospel of Thomas. And [the fragment] looked as if it might have comparative value to the Gospel of Mary.” She told the owner she needed the actual document so it could be authenticated by experts.
In December 2011, he hand-carried the papyrus, sandwiched between two pieces of glass, to the Divinity School, where King was able to examine it in person for the first time. Although King teaches Coptic and is an historian of early Christianity, she noted in an interview that she is not a papyrologist nor a Coptic linguist. She therefore sought expert opinions about the fragment before proceeding with her own analysis. This March, still thinking that the fragment was likely a forgery, she carried it in her purse to New York City where she and AnneMarie Luijendijk Th.D. ’05, a papyrologist and scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity at Princeton who contributed to the paper, met with Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University, and one of the world’s two or three leading papyrologists. She and Luijendijk left Bagnall’s office believing the fragment was real. Rather than taking the subway as she had planned, they hailed a taxi. (“The fragment deserves a cab,” she recalls thinking.)
Close examination had shown that the papyrus was originally created as though it would be used in a scroll. The “joint” or kollêsis between two sheets of papyrus is clearly visible. But the writing on both the front and back of the fragment indicated that it was part of a codex, an early form of book. In the fourth century, scrolls were being made in the traditional way and then cut into sheets like modern pages so that they could be stitched together in book form. Furthermore, a hole in the papyrus where an insect had gnawed it after the ink had been laid strengthened the case for the fragment’s authenticity, as did the presence of ink on damaged, dangling strands of papyrus fibers at the edge of the fragment. “This is almost impossible for a forger to recreate,” says King.
King also sought the expert opinion of Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an expert in Coptic linguistics at Hebrew University, who wrote that he believes on the basis of language and grammar that the text is authentic: “That is to say, all of its noteworthy grammatical features either separately or conjointly do not warrant condemning it as a forgery.”
The letter forms, however, are inconsistent. This is not “the hand of a well-trained literary scribe,” King acknowledges. “Our best explanation for this is that the scribe has a nubby pen from which the ink doesn’t flow consistently.” Because the process of dating the ink itself would destroy it, King is arranging to have its chemical compostion tested to see whether it is consistent with inks used in antiquity. Asked why she would reveal the existence of the text before the ink could be tested, King said that so many people had come to know about the fragment, she grew concerned about misleading news leaks—specifically, headlines claiming the text proved Jesus had a wife, when instead it is evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife.
She also wants to make the fragment available to qualified colleagues so that it can be rigorously examined. “From an academic point of view this is absolutely critical,” she says. “This is why we are going ahead with this: copies of the letters, high-quality photographs, access for scholars.” “Academia,” she notes, “is always a process.” But “at this point,” she adds, “I am inclined to believe that [the fragment] is genuine. We had such a strong argument for its being a forgery, that once we could address all the questions, it increased my confidence in its authenticity.”
King is not the first scholar to set eyes on the fragment. Its previous owner, a collector in Berlin named H. U. Laukamp, had brought it to the attention of Egyptologist Peter Munro (1930-2008) at the Free University of Berlin, who had in turn shown it to Professor Gerhard Fecht (now deceased), who believed it to be “the sole example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech with reference to having a wife. Fecht is of the opinion that this could be evidence for a possible marriage,” read a note dated 1982, written in English, that accompanied the fragment, the prior provenance of which is unknown.
King’s own analysis is concerned with
interpretation, which is extremely difficult due to the fragmentary nature of
the text. The first line reads, “My
mother gave to me,” and what follows is probably the word “life.” Line two reads “the disciples said to Jesus.”
The third line reads “deny. Mary is worthy of it.” It is the fourth line, “Jesus said to them, ‘My
wife,’” that is most clear. “Those words can mean nothing else,” says King.
Line five reads “She will be able to be my disciple,” but it is unclear whether
Jesus is referring to Mary, to his wife, or to someone else.
King believes that the author of this early
Christian text believed that Mary of Magdala, one of Jesus’s disciples, was his
wife. Although she disagrees with that assertion—based on the fact that women
were almost always referred to by their relationship to men (as in “Mary, wife
of Joseph”), and no such early reference to Mary of Magdala as Jesus’s wife exists—that by
itself neither proves nor disproves whether Jesus was married. “All of the
earliest and most reliable information about the historical Jesus is silent” on this question.
Whether the discovery will have any impact within the Catholic Church, whose tradition of celibacy among the priesthood is based in part on the belief that Jesus himself was celibate, remains to be seen. But the fragment has changed King’s own readings of other early Christian texts, particularly the noncanonical Gospels of Mary and of Philip. Those texts make reference to relations between the sexes that she had previously read in an allegorical or spiritual sense. The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has made her start to rethink those earlier interpretations. And she suspects that the discovery will have a greater impact than the 2006 publication of the Gospel of Judas (which said that Jesus had ordered Judas’s betrayal), because the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has more relevance to contemporary discussions taking place within churches today.
King has posted a draft of the paper, an extensive question-and-answer on the fragment and its meaning, and images of it, on a page on the Divinity School website. See also the official press release.
Written on a piece of papyrus now reduced to just four centimeters high and eight wide, the fragment addresses issues of family and discipleship. “This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” King writes in her scholarly paper on the “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which she presented at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies. The session took place across the street from the Vatican at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, a research center within the faculty of theology at the Pontifical Lateran University (known as the Pope’s University).
The paper will appear in the January 2013 issue of the Harvard Theological Review. In an interview, King emphasized that this new discovery does not prove that the historical Jesus was married. This gospel, like others dated to the second century which make opposing claims—that Jesus was celibate, for example—are too late, historically speaking, to provide any evidence as to whether the historical Jesus was married or not, she says. But the fragment does suggest that 150 years or so after Jesus’s birth, Christians were already taking positions on such questions. Significantly, this new text pushes the date at which some Christians were asserting that Jesus was married back to a time contemporaneous with the earliest assertions that he was celibate.
Papyrus is extremely durable under dry desert conditions. This particular fragment dates to the fourth century, but is almost certainly a copy of an earlier text that probably originated around A.D. 150, King says. Written in a form of Coptic known as Sahidic, a language of Upper Egypt, the fragment is owned by a collector of Greek, Arabic, and Coptic papyri who first wrote to King after reading her book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
“I was contacted in 2010 by the owner, who didn’t read Coptic,” King recalls. After she agreed to translate the text, the collector sent a photograph and indicated that the fragment “might have something to do with Jesus being married.” King remembers being immediately suspicious. Blank pieces of ancient papyrus are not difficult to come by on the antiquities market, she explains, and in the low resolution photographs she was seeing, the writing could easily have been the work of a forger. “I was very busy with other things and said I am not going to be able to work on this,” she says.
The owner e-mailed again in 2011 and asked her a second time if she would examine the fragment. Looking again at the text, King found “what looked like a connection to the [noncanonical] Gospel of Thomas. And [the fragment] looked as if it might have comparative value to the Gospel of Mary.” She told the owner she needed the actual document so it could be authenticated by experts.
In December 2011, he hand-carried the papyrus, sandwiched between two pieces of glass, to the Divinity School, where King was able to examine it in person for the first time. Although King teaches Coptic and is an historian of early Christianity, she noted in an interview that she is not a papyrologist nor a Coptic linguist. She therefore sought expert opinions about the fragment before proceeding with her own analysis. This March, still thinking that the fragment was likely a forgery, she carried it in her purse to New York City where she and AnneMarie Luijendijk Th.D. ’05, a papyrologist and scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity at Princeton who contributed to the paper, met with Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University, and one of the world’s two or three leading papyrologists. She and Luijendijk left Bagnall’s office believing the fragment was real. Rather than taking the subway as she had planned, they hailed a taxi. (“The fragment deserves a cab,” she recalls thinking.)
Close examination had shown that the papyrus was originally created as though it would be used in a scroll. The “joint” or kollêsis between two sheets of papyrus is clearly visible. But the writing on both the front and back of the fragment indicated that it was part of a codex, an early form of book. In the fourth century, scrolls were being made in the traditional way and then cut into sheets like modern pages so that they could be stitched together in book form. Furthermore, a hole in the papyrus where an insect had gnawed it after the ink had been laid strengthened the case for the fragment’s authenticity, as did the presence of ink on damaged, dangling strands of papyrus fibers at the edge of the fragment. “This is almost impossible for a forger to recreate,” says King.
King also sought the expert opinion of Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an expert in Coptic linguistics at Hebrew University, who wrote that he believes on the basis of language and grammar that the text is authentic: “That is to say, all of its noteworthy grammatical features either separately or conjointly do not warrant condemning it as a forgery.”
The letter forms, however, are inconsistent. This is not “the hand of a well-trained literary scribe,” King acknowledges. “Our best explanation for this is that the scribe has a nubby pen from which the ink doesn’t flow consistently.” Because the process of dating the ink itself would destroy it, King is arranging to have its chemical compostion tested to see whether it is consistent with inks used in antiquity. Asked why she would reveal the existence of the text before the ink could be tested, King said that so many people had come to know about the fragment, she grew concerned about misleading news leaks—specifically, headlines claiming the text proved Jesus had a wife, when instead it is evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife.
She also wants to make the fragment available to qualified colleagues so that it can be rigorously examined. “From an academic point of view this is absolutely critical,” she says. “This is why we are going ahead with this: copies of the letters, high-quality photographs, access for scholars.” “Academia,” she notes, “is always a process.” But “at this point,” she adds, “I am inclined to believe that [the fragment] is genuine. We had such a strong argument for its being a forgery, that once we could address all the questions, it increased my confidence in its authenticity.”
King is not the first scholar to set eyes on the fragment. Its previous owner, a collector in Berlin named H. U. Laukamp, had brought it to the attention of Egyptologist Peter Munro (1930-2008) at the Free University of Berlin, who had in turn shown it to Professor Gerhard Fecht (now deceased), who believed it to be “the sole example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech with reference to having a wife. Fecht is of the opinion that this could be evidence for a possible marriage,” read a note dated 1982, written in English, that accompanied the fragment, the prior provenance of which is unknown.
Photograph © Karen L. King, 2012
This papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Jesus’s
Wife dates to the fourth century. Written in Sahidic, a language of
Upper Egypt, it was probably translated from an earlier Greek text
dating to the middle of the second century, says Hollis professor of
divinity Karen L. King. Because there is writing on both the front and
back of the papyrus fragment, it was not part of a scroll, but rather a
codex, an early form of a book. Eight legible lines on the front have
been translated into English.
Photograph © Karen L. King, 2012
Although the back appears blank, infrared photography revealed several words including “my moth[er]” and “three.”
Whether the discovery will have any impact within the Catholic Church, whose tradition of celibacy among the priesthood is based in part on the belief that Jesus himself was celibate, remains to be seen. But the fragment has changed King’s own readings of other early Christian texts, particularly the noncanonical Gospels of Mary and of Philip. Those texts make reference to relations between the sexes that she had previously read in an allegorical or spiritual sense. The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has made her start to rethink those earlier interpretations. And she suspects that the discovery will have a greater impact than the 2006 publication of the Gospel of Judas (which said that Jesus had ordered Judas’s betrayal), because the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has more relevance to contemporary discussions taking place within churches today.
King has posted a draft of the paper, an extensive question-and-answer on the fragment and its meaning, and images of it, on a page on the Divinity School website. See also the official press release.
Photograph © 2012 Karen L. KingThe
front of a papyrus fragment from an early Christian codex on which is
written a previously unknown gospel, the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.
At 7 p.m. this evening in Rome (1 p.m. EST), Hollis professor
of divinity Karen L. King revealed to a conference of Coptic scholars the
existence of a newly discovered Christian gospel. In the fragmentary text, Jesus
refers unmistakably to “my wife.”
Written on a piece of papyrus now reduced to just four centimeters high and eight wide, the fragment addresses issues of family and discipleship. “This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” King writes in her scholarly paper on the “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which she presented at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies. The session took place across the street from the Vatican at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, a research center within the faculty of theology at the Pontifical Lateran University (known as the Pope’s University).
The paper will appear in the January 2013 issue of the Harvard Theological Review. In an interview, King emphasized that this new discovery does not prove that the historical Jesus was married. This gospel, like others dated to the second century which make opposing claims—that Jesus was celibate, for example—are too late, historically speaking, to provide any evidence as to whether the historical Jesus was married or not, she says. But the fragment does suggest that 150 years or so after Jesus’s birth, Christians were already taking positions on such questions. Significantly, this new text pushes the date at which some Christians were asserting that Jesus was married back to a time contemporaneous with the earliest assertions that he was celibate.
Papyrus is extremely durable under dry desert conditions. This particular fragment dates to the fourth century, but is almost certainly a copy of an earlier text that probably originated around A.D. 150, King says. Written in a form of Coptic known as Sahidic, a language of Upper Egypt, the fragment is owned by a collector of Greek, Arabic, and Coptic papyri who first wrote to King after reading her book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
“I was contacted in 2010 by the owner, who didn’t read Coptic,” King recalls. After she agreed to translate the text, the collector sent a photograph and indicated that the fragment “might have something to do with Jesus being married.” King remembers being immediately suspicious. Blank pieces of ancient papyrus are not difficult to come by on the antiquities market, she explains, and in the low resolution photographs she was seeing, the writing could easily have been the work of a forger. “I was very busy with other things and said I am not going to be able to work on this,” she says.
The owner e-mailed again in 2011 and asked her a second time if she would examine the fragment. Looking again at the text, King found “what looked like a connection to the [noncanonical] Gospel of Thomas. And [the fragment] looked as if it might have comparative value to the Gospel of Mary.” She told the owner she needed the actual document so it could be authenticated by experts.
In December 2011, he hand-carried the papyrus, sandwiched between two pieces of glass, to the Divinity School, where King was able to examine it in person for the first time. Although King teaches Coptic and is an historian of early Christianity, she noted in an interview that she is not a papyrologist nor a Coptic linguist. She therefore sought expert opinions about the fragment before proceeding with her own analysis. This March, still thinking that the fragment was likely a forgery, she carried it in her purse to New York City where she and AnneMarie Luijendijk Th.D. ’05, a papyrologist and scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity at Princeton who contributed to the paper, met with Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University, and one of the world’s two or three leading papyrologists. She and Luijendijk left Bagnall’s office believing the fragment was real. Rather than taking the subway as she had planned, they hailed a taxi. (“The fragment deserves a cab,” she recalls thinking.)
Close examination had shown that the papyrus was originally created as though it would be used in a scroll. The “joint” or kollêsis between two sheets of papyrus is clearly visible. But the writing on both the front and back of the fragment indicated that it was part of a codex, an early form of book. In the fourth century, scrolls were being made in the traditional way and then cut into sheets like modern pages so that they could be stitched together in book form. Furthermore, a hole in the papyrus where an insect had gnawed it after the ink had been laid strengthened the case for the fragment’s authenticity, as did the presence of ink on damaged, dangling strands of papyrus fibers at the edge of the fragment. “This is almost impossible for a forger to recreate,” says King.
King also sought the expert opinion of Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an expert in Coptic linguistics at Hebrew University, who wrote that he believes on the basis of language and grammar that the text is authentic: “That is to say, all of its noteworthy grammatical features either separately or conjointly do not warrant condemning it as a forgery.”
The letter forms, however, are inconsistent. This is not “the hand of a well-trained literary scribe,” King acknowledges. “Our best explanation for this is that the scribe has a nubby pen from which the ink doesn’t flow consistently.” Because the process of dating the ink itself would destroy it, King is arranging to have its chemical compostion tested to see whether it is consistent with inks used in antiquity. Asked why she would reveal the existence of the text before the ink could be tested, King said that so many people had come to know about the fragment, she grew concerned about misleading news leaks—specifically, headlines claiming the text proved Jesus had a wife, when instead it is evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife.
She also wants to make the fragment available to qualified colleagues so that it can be rigorously examined. “From an academic point of view this is absolutely critical,” she says. “This is why we are going ahead with this: copies of the letters, high-quality photographs, access for scholars.” “Academia,” she notes, “is always a process.” But “at this point,” she adds, “I am inclined to believe that [the fragment] is genuine. We had such a strong argument for its being a forgery, that once we could address all the questions, it increased my confidence in its authenticity.”
King is not the first scholar to set eyes on the fragment. Its previous owner, a collector in Berlin named H. U. Laukamp, had brought it to the attention of Egyptologist Peter Munro (1930-2008) at the Free University of Berlin, who had in turn shown it to Professor Gerhard Fecht (now deceased), who believed it to be “the sole example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech with reference to having a wife. Fecht is of the opinion that this could be evidence for a possible marriage,” read a note dated 1982, written in English, that accompanied the fragment, the prior provenance of which is unknown.
King’s own analysis is concerned with
interpretation, which is extremely difficult due to the fragmentary nature of
the text. The first line reads, “My
mother gave to me,” and what follows is probably the word “life.” Line two reads “the disciples said to Jesus.”
The third line reads “deny. Mary is worthy of it.” It is the fourth line, “Jesus said to them, ‘My
wife,’” that is most clear. “Those words can mean nothing else,” says King.
Line five reads “She will be able to be my disciple,” but it is unclear whether
Jesus is referring to Mary, to his wife, or to someone else.
King believes that the author of this early
Christian text believed that Mary of Magdala, one of Jesus’s disciples, was his
wife. Although she disagrees with that assertion—based on the fact that women
were almost always referred to by their relationship to men (as in “Mary, wife
of Joseph”), and no such early reference to Mary of Magdala as Jesus’s wife exists—that by
itself neither proves nor disproves whether Jesus was married. “All of the
earliest and most reliable information about the historical Jesus is silent” on this question.
Whether the discovery will have any impact within the Catholic Church, whose tradition of celibacy among the priesthood is based in part on the belief that Jesus himself was celibate, remains to be seen. But the fragment has changed King’s own readings of other early Christian texts, particularly the noncanonical Gospels of Mary and of Philip. Those texts make reference to relations between the sexes that she had previously read in an allegorical or spiritual sense. The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has made her start to rethink those earlier interpretations. And she suspects that the discovery will have a greater impact than the 2006 publication of the Gospel of Judas (which said that Jesus had ordered Judas’s betrayal), because the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has more relevance to contemporary discussions taking place within churches today.
King has posted a draft of the paper, an extensive question-and-answer on the fragment and its meaning, and images of it, on a page on the Divinity School website. See also the official press release.
Written on a piece of papyrus now reduced to just four centimeters high and eight wide, the fragment addresses issues of family and discipleship. “This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” King writes in her scholarly paper on the “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which she presented at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies. The session took place across the street from the Vatican at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, a research center within the faculty of theology at the Pontifical Lateran University (known as the Pope’s University).
The paper will appear in the January 2013 issue of the Harvard Theological Review. In an interview, King emphasized that this new discovery does not prove that the historical Jesus was married. This gospel, like others dated to the second century which make opposing claims—that Jesus was celibate, for example—are too late, historically speaking, to provide any evidence as to whether the historical Jesus was married or not, she says. But the fragment does suggest that 150 years or so after Jesus’s birth, Christians were already taking positions on such questions. Significantly, this new text pushes the date at which some Christians were asserting that Jesus was married back to a time contemporaneous with the earliest assertions that he was celibate.
Papyrus is extremely durable under dry desert conditions. This particular fragment dates to the fourth century, but is almost certainly a copy of an earlier text that probably originated around A.D. 150, King says. Written in a form of Coptic known as Sahidic, a language of Upper Egypt, the fragment is owned by a collector of Greek, Arabic, and Coptic papyri who first wrote to King after reading her book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
“I was contacted in 2010 by the owner, who didn’t read Coptic,” King recalls. After she agreed to translate the text, the collector sent a photograph and indicated that the fragment “might have something to do with Jesus being married.” King remembers being immediately suspicious. Blank pieces of ancient papyrus are not difficult to come by on the antiquities market, she explains, and in the low resolution photographs she was seeing, the writing could easily have been the work of a forger. “I was very busy with other things and said I am not going to be able to work on this,” she says.
The owner e-mailed again in 2011 and asked her a second time if she would examine the fragment. Looking again at the text, King found “what looked like a connection to the [noncanonical] Gospel of Thomas. And [the fragment] looked as if it might have comparative value to the Gospel of Mary.” She told the owner she needed the actual document so it could be authenticated by experts.
In December 2011, he hand-carried the papyrus, sandwiched between two pieces of glass, to the Divinity School, where King was able to examine it in person for the first time. Although King teaches Coptic and is an historian of early Christianity, she noted in an interview that she is not a papyrologist nor a Coptic linguist. She therefore sought expert opinions about the fragment before proceeding with her own analysis. This March, still thinking that the fragment was likely a forgery, she carried it in her purse to New York City where she and AnneMarie Luijendijk Th.D. ’05, a papyrologist and scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity at Princeton who contributed to the paper, met with Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University, and one of the world’s two or three leading papyrologists. She and Luijendijk left Bagnall’s office believing the fragment was real. Rather than taking the subway as she had planned, they hailed a taxi. (“The fragment deserves a cab,” she recalls thinking.)
Close examination had shown that the papyrus was originally created as though it would be used in a scroll. The “joint” or kollêsis between two sheets of papyrus is clearly visible. But the writing on both the front and back of the fragment indicated that it was part of a codex, an early form of book. In the fourth century, scrolls were being made in the traditional way and then cut into sheets like modern pages so that they could be stitched together in book form. Furthermore, a hole in the papyrus where an insect had gnawed it after the ink had been laid strengthened the case for the fragment’s authenticity, as did the presence of ink on damaged, dangling strands of papyrus fibers at the edge of the fragment. “This is almost impossible for a forger to recreate,” says King.
King also sought the expert opinion of Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an expert in Coptic linguistics at Hebrew University, who wrote that he believes on the basis of language and grammar that the text is authentic: “That is to say, all of its noteworthy grammatical features either separately or conjointly do not warrant condemning it as a forgery.”
The letter forms, however, are inconsistent. This is not “the hand of a well-trained literary scribe,” King acknowledges. “Our best explanation for this is that the scribe has a nubby pen from which the ink doesn’t flow consistently.” Because the process of dating the ink itself would destroy it, King is arranging to have its chemical compostion tested to see whether it is consistent with inks used in antiquity. Asked why she would reveal the existence of the text before the ink could be tested, King said that so many people had come to know about the fragment, she grew concerned about misleading news leaks—specifically, headlines claiming the text proved Jesus had a wife, when instead it is evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife.
She also wants to make the fragment available to qualified colleagues so that it can be rigorously examined. “From an academic point of view this is absolutely critical,” she says. “This is why we are going ahead with this: copies of the letters, high-quality photographs, access for scholars.” “Academia,” she notes, “is always a process.” But “at this point,” she adds, “I am inclined to believe that [the fragment] is genuine. We had such a strong argument for its being a forgery, that once we could address all the questions, it increased my confidence in its authenticity.”
King is not the first scholar to set eyes on the fragment. Its previous owner, a collector in Berlin named H. U. Laukamp, had brought it to the attention of Egyptologist Peter Munro (1930-2008) at the Free University of Berlin, who had in turn shown it to Professor Gerhard Fecht (now deceased), who believed it to be “the sole example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech with reference to having a wife. Fecht is of the opinion that this could be evidence for a possible marriage,” read a note dated 1982, written in English, that accompanied the fragment, the prior provenance of which is unknown.
Photograph © Karen L. King, 2012
This papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Jesus’s
Wife dates to the fourth century. Written in Sahidic, a language of
Upper Egypt, it was probably translated from an earlier Greek text
dating to the middle of the second century, says Hollis professor of
divinity Karen L. King. Because there is writing on both the front and
back of the papyrus fragment, it was not part of a scroll, but rather a
codex, an early form of a book. Eight legible lines on the front have
been translated into English.
Photograph © Karen L. King, 2012
Although the back appears blank, infrared photography revealed several words including “my moth[er]” and “three.”
Whether the discovery will have any impact within the Catholic Church, whose tradition of celibacy among the priesthood is based in part on the belief that Jesus himself was celibate, remains to be seen. But the fragment has changed King’s own readings of other early Christian texts, particularly the noncanonical Gospels of Mary and of Philip. Those texts make reference to relations between the sexes that she had previously read in an allegorical or spiritual sense. The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has made her start to rethink those earlier interpretations. And she suspects that the discovery will have a greater impact than the 2006 publication of the Gospel of Judas (which said that Jesus had ordered Judas’s betrayal), because the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife has more relevance to contemporary discussions taking place within churches today.
King has posted a draft of the paper, an extensive question-and-answer on the fragment and its meaning, and images of it, on a page on the Divinity School website. See also the official press release.
The collector (who told King he
wishes to remain anonymous to avoid being hounded by people who want to
buy the fragment) has recently offered to give it to Harvard as part of a
purchase of a substantial portion of his collection. He has told King
that the discovery made him realize that these types of things needed to
be in the hands of libraries and universities where they could be
properly studied and not disappear into private collections. Harvard is
now formally deciding if it wishes to acquire the collection.
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Christina 2 days ago
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Susan C. Groom Mortensen 11 hours ago Why couldn't Jesus be married? Why WOULDN'T he have been married? He was Orthodox -- there is NO wrong to be married -- in order to be a perfected Jew, one married a Jewish woman. "Go forth to multiply and replenish the earth". It is a direct commandment from God to marry and have children. If Jesus was PERFECT he would follow all of Heavenly Father's directives!!!!!!
Milena G. S. 7 hours ago parent It makes sense, just as we have Jesus as the perfect example in all things including baptism, that he be the perfect example in being married and entering in that holy union. There is nothing here that contradicts the Jesus Christ we worship and wish to emulate. On the contrary, it strengthens the idea of marriage and family being so important and the foundation for accomplishing God's purposes on the earth. Wouldn't it be wonderful if more was found on the subject from all these "private collections" that people have but are afraid for different reasons, to share with the public. If you are reading this, share them with Harvard ! Help us learn more about our Savior and his life and ministry-
Peggy Morse 10 hours ago parent I totally agree and have always felt that Jesus was married to Mary of Magdela. I am thrilled when any scrap of history points to this.
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Blondie 8 hours ago Of course he was married. Marriage is a saving ordinance, just like baptism. Christ was baptized to obey the law, or to fulfill a Divine ordinance -- he didn't need it for the remission of sins. Why would he obey that law and not the greater one, which is to be married -- there is no exaltation without this ordinance. He was referred to as "rabbi", which would imply one who is married. -
Miranda Jenson 7 hours ag If anyone has studied Jewish law, you would know that to able to teach in a synagogue, a male HAD to be married. To obtain the the title of Rabbi, one had to be married. I have a theory (and this is just my opinion and not by any means gospel) that He was married, but He kept her our of the public eye to protect her. Think of what would happen to her if people knew who she was!! We also have to remember that between the ages of 12 and 30-31 we have no idea what happened in Jesus' life. There is nothing in the scriptures about those years. Somewhere in His twenties would have been the age He would have married. 1 Corinthians 11:11 says Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.
We also know that he went to the temple to give sacrifices to God. To be able to take the sacrifice to the temple, He had to be married. Non-married men were NOT allowed in the temple. Sacrifices were taken by married men or heads of households. If He wasn't married, he would have had to have sacrifices taken by either His rabbi, or a married family member, usually a brother.
I really do believe that He was married. He would have had to be to fulfill His purpose. Not just because God said to (which would have been the only reason He would have done it anyway), but because by Jewish law, He would have had to be. -
Phil Keith 2 days ago Reminds me of the old cartoon: A young acolyte comes across a monk banging his head against the chapel wall. "What's wrong padre?" the young man asks. The monk, who is holding an ancient scroll, wails,"The copyist got it wrong! The word translates as CELEBRATE not "celebate!"
H '68 -
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Thomas Milton Tinney, Sr. 10 hours ago President
David O. McKay:
"I know of on other place where happiness
abides more securely than in the home. It is possible to make home a
bit of heaven. Indeed, I picture heaven as a continuation of the ideal
home."
Inspirational Quotations
(Ensign Magazine, May 1964,
page 5)
"The Family: A Proclamation to the
World": . . . . ."marriage between
a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central
to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. . . . . . . . .
that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish
the earth remains in force. . . . . Marriage between man and woman
is essential to His eternal plan"; also
D&C 131: "Celestial marriage is essential to exaltation in the highest heaven". The
Messiah, obeying the will of the Father and fulfilling all righteousness, entered into this
order of the priesthood - - [meaning the new and everlasting covenant
of marriage]; knowing thereby that He was sealed up unto
eternal life, by revelation and the spirit of prophecy, through the power of the Holy
Priesthood; Christ sitting upon the throne at the right hand of the
Father.
Marriage:
John 20: 17-18 Jesus Christ asked Mary Magdalene to refrain
herself from attempting to touch or hold (chibuk) Him, at that time.
Jesus had not yet ascended unto the Father.
Negiah, meaning "contact" or "connection" or "touch" in
Hebrew, is a notion in Jewish law (Halakha)
that restricts (or forbids) physical contact with, or touching of, a member
of the opposite sex, except for one's spouse, and immediate family.
Also, when Mary Magdalene was asked by Jesus to speak to the brethren:
"I ascend unto my Father . . .",
women needed a husband's authorized permission, to leave home, or to legally testify in family related matters.
http://academic-genealogy.com/... -
Donavan 2 days ago and the disciples said to Jesus, "take Mary to be your wife, she loves you but her love you deny. Mary is worthy of it to be your wife. Jesus said to them, "My wife, she cant be but she will be able to be my disciples..... Aaron Jeffries 5 hours ago parent The disciples said to Jesus, "Your marriage we cannot deny. Mary is worthy of it. But she cannot walk with us." Jesus said to them, "My wife will stay by my side and she will be able to be my disciple like unto yourselves."
If celibacy was the rule, the disciples of Jesus would not have begged him to marry her. Instead, I think they questioned why she always had to be with them.-
Ian Gray 15 hours ago parent Exactly! This fragmentary text is an inkblot into which anything can be read. In the Gospels, Jesus more often than not uses figurative language e.g. Math 12:48-50 where Jesus points to his twelve disciples and says that they are his mother and brothers. He clearly doesn't mean that one of them is literally his mother! In the NT, Jesus generally takes a statement or comment someone has made and then uses it to advance his message. ( The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas (GT) says: "114 Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven." - it's possible that this fragment means something more along those lines. Also (1) in the fragment is similar to (101) in the GT, and (4) in the fragment is similar to (70) in GT . Since GT appears in Coptic manuscripts, I think it is a reasonable connection to make, in which case it is irrelevant to Christians since they don't accept GT as a gospel anyway. -
Arne 2 days ago I appreciate Prof. King's scholarly conservatism in not jumping to an unfounded conclusion. The examinations undertaken seem to have been focused on whether the papyrus is contemporary with the canonical Gospels. The evidence suggests it might be, which is an amazing discovery. Whether the gospel contemporary scribe believed that the reported conversation actually occurred, or whether Jesus actually had a wife is a far more difficult, if not impossible to determine by the papyrus. It does give one food for thought.
Donavan 13 hours ago parent Yes, and it was possibly in this line "My wife, she cant be..."
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anonymous 2 days ago The Church is most popular in being referred to as Jesus' Bride and Jesus being the Bridegroom. Also the individuals of the church is known to be referred to as his disciples. So Jesus wife in this text could possibly be referred to as His Church. Those who are of the Church will be his disciples. Wouldn't that be a better implication of this "text" than trying to tie this to Jesus being married to a woman? (not that I'm saying this text have any authenticity or authority in relation to all the other texts that we know are congruent to new testament writings) -
Victoria Fleming 2 days ago Amazing discovery if the translation is correct. I recently read a book called 'Lost Tomb of the Knights Templar' about a man who deciphered clues in an ancient French church to find a tomb with chests of treasure and a female body inside that is believed to be the remains Mary Magdalene.
- Fascinating and Scholarly report which will have great impact on theology as well as Vatican dogma. By all means, Harvard should acquire the offered collection.
Ah so.
And this is supposed to be a prelude by Chopin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
And this is supposed to be a prelude by Chopin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
"My
wife" is probably metaphorical, in theology the terminology is
different to our everyday vocabulary and consider that this is a
theological test.every woman is a wife to jesus, i suppose it needs to
be analysed with the philosophical/ theological aspect of
love/philia/eros(always philosophical/theosophical).
dirtydickieb a day ago I always find stuff like this funny. Jesus didnt write that, he never wrote anything. He didnt know what paper was or how to use a pencil. Some people think its because he was poor. I think ITS BECAUSE HE NEVER EXISTED.-
AristarchusSeleucus 9 hours ago In any event, all of this is folklore, not history.
. . . still, I'm waiting for a fragment that says, "Take my wife -- PLEASE." -
Jefferson Marx 2 days ago In the end I can't see how any intelligent person buys into any of this Jesus crap. Do your homework. Jesus is a myth. There is no historical Jesus. Who cares if they find another gospel written by some guy somewhere sometime in the 2nd or 4th century or whatever perporting to know what Jesus said. The fact is there is absolutely no mention of Jesus ANYWHERE in the historical record from the time he supposedly lived. Not one single word. Pretty odd for a character who supposedly caused such a stir ... don't you think? And the earliest gospels don't even mention an "earthly Jesus". The whole flesh-and-blood Jesus myth didn't get rolling until sometime around 115 to 120ad when it became politically necessary. I would find all this Jesus speculation comical if it wasn't so pathetic.-
Ian Gray 12 hours ago parent I'm guessing you can't read Latin, Aramaic or Koine Greek and that you aren't personally familiar with the writers (Christian or non-Christian) of that era. In such circumstances an intelligent person's best option is to find out the views of those who have studied such things. As an introduction, have a look at the Wikipedia article, "The Historicity of Jesus" to get a feel for what historians believe to be the case regarding Jesus. And then consider whether you may perhaps need to revise the views you have expressed here. The mark of a truly intelligent person is the willingness to give thoughtful consideration to evidence which conflicts with the opinion they currently hold.
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