{"id":452,"date":"2015-08-29T08:36:36","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T07:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/?p=452"},"modified":"2015-09-05T06:56:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T05:56:14","slug":"was-jesus-married","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"Was Jesus married?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week a small news item caught my attention that stated “Jesus was married<\/a>“. As often with these type of articles, the main purpose of the headline was to attract the attention of the reader. The item\u00a0referred to a small piece of papyrus that had been announced by professor Karen L. King<\/a> in 2012 and\u00a0used in a publication by her\u00a0in 2014. The publication\u00a0sparkled controversy and heated arguments until this day regarding whether the piece of papyrus, dubbed ‘GJW’ (Gospel of Jesus’ Wife) is\u00a0a forgery. Intensive scientific testing followed\u00a0and concluded that the piece was indeed ancient<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless the claims of forgery remained persistent and in an issue of the New Testament Studies<\/a> (vol. 61, no. 3, July 2015) an\u00a0union\u00a0of researchers explain why GJW can not be accepted as a genuine early Christian text. For what it is worth, King and her researchers date the text to the sixth to ninth century CE, so it is not to be considered that<\/em> early anyway, taking in account the text dates from 600 to 900 years after the actual events (the life of Jesus).<\/p>\n

The text of GJW\u00a0is in Coptic and contains a\u00a0phrase where he says ‘my wife’ and speaks about a female disciple. A Wikipedia article contains the whole text of the fragment<\/a>\u00a0as well as further\u00a0information about the piece of papyrus.<\/p>\n

Aside from whether the piece of text is or is not a forgery, there were claims made by King that would lead to the disaster that has happened (the dismise of papyrology, the reputation of a Harvard professor). Naming the fragment ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ was a nice way to catch\u00a0attention of a larger audience, but the\u00a0claim of the piece of papyrus representing a larger body of work comparable to other known gospels is uncalled for. If\u00a0the snippet\u00a0is authentic it is way too small to put a claim of a gospel to it. Prof. King should have known better: any text related to early christianity, be it the ‘official’ canon of the New Testament, let alone the apocryphal\u00a0texts, like the Gospel of Thomas, are the products of countless revisions, translations and interpretations.<\/p>\n

Only through carefully comparing sources like the four canonical Gospels (that share a similar sequence of events) from\u00a0the New Testament one can\u00a0make assumptions (not draw conclusions)\u00a0about a historical Jesus and the embryonic stage of what eventually would become the religion of\u00a0Christianity. Everything beyond that is pure speculation and has nothing to do with praticing science. Text fragments, like the one discovered at best are\u00a0interesting from a perspective to learn\u00a0about the evolution of Christianity and its teachings and how the moral idiom \u00a0evolved over the centuries. Claims to give new insight to the life of Jesus are simply uncalled for. Maybe prof. King was out there\u00a0to pt new life into\u00a0her interest for ‘gender studies’ \u00a0 as her biography on the Harvard website<\/a> presents.<\/p>\n

Den Haag,<\/p>\n

29 August 2015
\nrevised: 5 september 2015<\/p>\n

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