Brethren, Peace and Good to you. This was published on the Boston Herald:
Harvard Divinity School is holding faith in a theologian’s claim that a scrap of 4th century papyrus mentions the wife of Jesus Christ, insisting in the face of some academic doubting Thomases that if it isn’t exactly Gospel, it appears to be real.
“Whenever a new discovery of this importance surfaces, there are always naysayers,” school spokesman Jonathan Beasley said. “This discovery, which may be seen by some as raising questions about the foundational beliefs of Christianity, it’s sure to be controversial.”
Asked directly whether the school stands by professor Karen L. King’s work, he said: “Of course.”
Scholars yesterday pounced on King’s heavily hyped revelation in Rome of what she and the school have dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” — a tiny, tattered snippet of papyrus with Coptic script provided to her by an anonymous owner who wants to sell his collection to the school.
The text, which King believes was translated from Greek into the Coptic language of Egyptian Christians, quotes Jesus as saying to his disciples: “My wife.” King said it proves early Christians debated whether Christ was married.
But some scholars said the find is suspicious; the owner, a private collector, reached out to King in December 2011 and asked her to study it. Through other items in his collection, including an unsigned note, she traced it back to a German professor who died in 2006, and she knows nothing else of where it’s been through the ages.
“I would say it’s a forgery,” said Alin Suciu of the University of Hamburg, who attended the conference where King unveiled her find. “The script doesn’t look authentic.” Stephen Emmel of the University of Muenster called the fragment and the writer’s grammar “not completely convincing.”
King said expert colleagues have told her the paper and handwriting are real, but the ink will be subject to further testing.Commentary. No, my brethren, there's nothing new to see here. This is allegedly a fragment of yet another Gnostic 4th century papyrus that from time to time keep surfacing in Egypt.
“We still have some work to do, testing the ink and so on and so forth, but what is exciting about this fragment is that it’s the first case we have of Christians claiming that Jesus had a wife,” she said.
I say "allegedly" because the fragment hasn't been authenticated and its origins, context, and chain of custody have not been established. I say "Gnostic" because it was only within Gnostic circles where Jesus' "wife" is a subject for discursive narrative - not discussion. The fact that it is from the 4th century and that it shares literary similarities with other Gnostic documents from that era also ensure that the fragment neither contains new information, nor confirms existing information regarding the matter of Jesus' alleged wife, for which the canonical Gospels which are much older and were distributed more widely offer no evidence.
But, the media will spin it its own way, just like they did with the so-called Gospel of Judas years ago, and that other Dan Brown opus minúscula, The DaVinci Code.
Uniformed literatti and arm-chair intellectuals, as well as devotees of conspiracy-theories will weigh in and wag their fingers crying "Proof! Proof"! The rest of us can dismiss these claims and get on with living our Catholic Christian lives.