In September 2012, a feminist professor at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) claimed that she had found archaeological evidence that Jesus had a wife.
As reported by Laura Goodstein of the New York Times, on Sept. 18, 2012 at an international conference on Coptic Studies in Rome, HDS historian of early Christianity Karen L. King claimed she had identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’ ”
King specializes in Coptic literature and has published several books on Gnosticism, women in antiquity, and alleged new Gospel discoveries — the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala.
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous.
King first learned about what she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” when she received an e-mail in 2010 from a private collector who asked her to translate it. King said the owner, who has a collection of Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri, is not willing to be identified by name, nationality or location, because “He doesn’t want to be hounded by people who want to buy this.”
When, where or how the fragment was discovered is unknown. The collector acquired it in a batch of papyri in 1997 from the previous owner, a German. It came with a handwritten note in German that names a professor of Egyptology in Berlin, now deceased, and cited him calling the fragment “the sole example” of a text in which Jesus claims a wife. In December 2011, the owner took the fragment to Harvard Divinity School and left it with King.
Flash forward one year three months to December 2013. There is still no news from Professor King or Harvard Divinity School on the authenticity of the purported Jesus wife papyrus.
Larry Hurtado is a New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity and Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (Professor 1996-2011). He writes in his blog of December 5, 2013:
A few weeks ago I asked here what further news there was about the so-called “Jesus’ wife” fragment announced to the world in late summer 2012. Since then, despite direct inquiry to Prof. King (the email address listed for her no longer valid) and asking several scholars who were in various ways directly involved in the analysis of the item last year, it has proven impossible to get anything further than the last notice about it given in early 2013, that it was undergoing further “tests”. (How long does it take to conduct such tests, after all?)
We do know that the article by Prof. King on the fragment announced as forthcoming in Harvard Theological Review was put on hold, and, so far as one can tell, seems now likely permanently so (i.e., it isn’t going to appear). It also seems that the TV programme in preparation last year has been cancelled (so far as one can tell, again, without any formal notice given).
I can say that I have some direct sense of the sort of reviewer judgments about the fragment solicited by HTR that likely prompted the editorial decision not to proceed with the article. There were thereafter full-length analyses published by various scholars that were also largely critical of the authenticity of the item, the study by Prof. Francis Watson having had a particular impact and available online here. Indeed, I am informed that a number of leading experts in ancient Coptic dialects also judged the fragment suspicious or even a fake.
Now, to my knowledge, no one has accused Prof. King of having any involvement in the production of the item, so let that be emphasized. If it is a fake, she was taken in, not guilty of anything else. These things can happen, and have happened before. Just think of the notorious case of the “Hitler Diaries” and poor Hugh Trevor-Roper!
But that comparison illustrates my puzzlement over the Jesus’ wife fragment. In the case of the “Hitler Diaries,” Der Spiegel and Trevor-Roper acknowledged that they’d been taken in, and got it initially wrong. They didn’t simply go quiet and hope that it would all die away. They set the public record straight. So, if in fact, after initially reported to have accepted King’s article for publication, HTR has now decided otherwise, why not say so publicly? And if the weight of scholarly opinion is largely that the item is not a genuine text from some ancient Christian person/circle but instead a modern fake, shouldn’t that be registered properly? Having publicized the item to the roof, shouldn’t Harvard Divinity School now update things a bit and indicate whether the institution still affirms Prof. King’s initial proposal or recognizes the widespread scholarly judgment that it is an unsafe item?
I am told of a recent conversation with a leading scholar of ancient Christianity who is sympathetic to the initial claims about the fragment, and who as of a few weeks ago professed to be unaware that major scholarly critiques had been lodged against it. That’s curious, isn’t it? Debate about an item central to this scholar’s area of interest, and the scholar is unaware of it? So, do we have some sort of “tribalization” of scholarship, in which one simply doesn’t pay attention to those scholars who take a line different from what you prefer, or what?
One scholar central in the critique of the fragment to whom I expressed my puzzlement over the silence about the matter simply shrugged, opining that pretty much everyone in the know recognizes that the fragment has been discredited and now those who initially proffered it just hope that people will forget the earlier claims. If they stay silent long enough, he suggested, we’ll all move on. Well, that’s one way to handle the matter, I guess. Call me naive, but I still think that the standards of good scholarship require us to keep the record up to date, to admit valid criticisms of our ideas and claims, to admit when we get something wrong, or, in this case, may have been duped, or whatever. Trevor-Roper did so, and I respect him the more for it.
Here are some interesting points about the issue…On Professor Karen L. King HDS faculty page, you will find on the right side, beside her picture, a PDF named “Jesus’s Marital Status” and it is dated October, 2013. There is no mention of the Jesus’s Wife fragment in this article, but to be fair, the article is about the Gospel of Philip. And maybe it is proper procedure not to reference an unpublished finding. http://www.hds.harvard.edu/people/faculty/karen-l-king
It seems a little odd that if Harvard is trying to let the whole thing just go away, why do they still list the Jesus’s Wife fragment under their research projects? It’s the last one on the list. http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects
Also, it’s curious that the draft of Professor King’s article is still available, if they want to make it all go away. http://www.hds.harvard.edu/sites/hds.harvard.edu/files/attachments/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife/29865/King_JesusSaidToThem_draft_0920.pdf
And finally, after looking over Professor King’s published books, she has been writing about women and other gender and marital issues for a long time. Did the owner of the fragment choose her because of her background?
In other words and to conclude, there is *no* archaeological evidence that Jesus ever had a wife or that said wife was one of His apostles.
~Eowyn
