The 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife' Is Real: What Now?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-is-real-what-now/360487/

?n3ty96
An image of the so-called Gospel of Jesus's Wife under blue fluorescent light (Harvard Divinity School)

Over the past two years, roughly a dozen scholars from Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Australia's Macquarie University have been focused on answering one question: Is the Gospel of Jesus's Wife real? In 2012, historian Karen L. King announced her initial findings about a three-inch piece of papyrus, thought to be an eighth-century version of writings from the disciples of Jesus. The most stunning line from the text is this:

"...' Jesus said to them, 'My wife..."
This is how the fragment got its name: not because it's canonical, but because it refers to Jesus having a wife.

This line doesn't prove anything about Jesus's marital status, though. "The question that the broader public immediately grabbed onto is, 'Does Jesus have a wife?'" King told me. Although that's obviously an interesting topic, the more important question is historical: What does this text say about his early followers? "Early Christians were grappling with the question of whether you should get married and have children, or whether it's better to be celibate and virgin," she said. "This fragment seems to be the first case we have where a married Jesus appears to be affirming that women who are mothers and wives can be his disciples."

When King first introduced the text at a conference in 2012, some historians immediately questioned its authenticity, pointing to grammatical errors, similarities to other gospels, and inconsistencies with typical Coptic script. But on Thursday, Harvard Divinity School announced that it would be publishing new findings about the authenticity of the fragment, citing scientific and scholarly analysis of the ink, papyrus, writing style, and calligraphy. They will also publish a dissenting opinion from Brown University professor Leo Depuydt, who maintains that the fragment was forged in modern times. In the rather-scathing foreword to his article, he notes that the phrase "my wife" was written in what look like bold letters.

As a student of Coptic convinced that the fragment is a modern creation, I am unable to escape the impression that there is something almost hilarious about the use of bold letters. How could this not have been designed to some extent to convey a certain comic effect? The effect is something like: “My wife. Get it? MY wife. You heard that right.” The papyrus fragment seems ripe for a Monty Python sketch.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Posts in a certain forum informing us

That it was actually Mrs. Jesus that wrote all her husband's material but was silenced by male privilege.

Which might be true...

[Warren Stupidity]

2. It is an authentic work of fiction, like the 20 or so other texts.

[demwing]

3. "My wife...

met me at the front door last night. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home!

I'm telling you, I don't get no respect...

From the Gospel of Jesus Dangerfield, as witnessed by St. Henny the Youngman.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. LOL

Well done!

[edhopper]

5. It's interesting

in looking at the theology of Christianity in a Sociological sense.

But really, I don't for one instance think any of the quotes in any of the Gospels, official of omitted, can actually be attributed to a man named Yeshua in the 1st century.

[ladjf]

6. If I were a Christian, I would still say , "so what". nt

[Cal33]

7. So be careful about the doctrines and dogmas of any and all religions. My opinion

is that most of them were man-made, and designed so that the churches
will be able to maintain power and control over their followers.

[Whisp]

8. That is correct, it mostly is about power over people.

I find this Mrs. Jesus thing really, really interesting even though I am atheist I think there could very well have been this neat, hippy kinda guy back then who had great messages about how to get along with one another and then some folks just took up the quills and Embellished Like Stink to work it into something else.

Why is the thought of Jesus and Mrs. Jesus getting it on in the bedroom so disturbing to so many? I find that soooo intriguing.

Is the fact that Jesus was thought to be single and celibate connected to why catholic priests take an oath for that? And now, holy cow, Jesus screwed his wife! Or worse yet, Mrs. Jesus screwed her husband! *gasp!!
What do we do! What do we do!

[Cal33]

10. There were married priests in the Early Church. The apostles were all married men except for

St. John. St. Paul used to be a persecutor of the Christians until his sudden and unexpected
conversion. He, too, never married, and had extremely strict ideas about sexuality. He
must have had a lot of sexual hang-ups, and his writings against sex later were taken
seriously by the clergy.

Having gone through parochial school, I remember the general feeling of the Church is/was
that somehow sex, at best, is/was tolerated in marriage only for the sake of procreation.
Even then, as late as 2 centuries ago sex among married people was forbidden 3 days a
week - Friday, Sunday and another day. Of course this prohibition was later removed, since
few Catholics were following it anyway. They didn't come out openly to say that sex was evil,
but the underlying feeling was there.

After some centuries St. Paul's views became more and more accepted by the clergy, until
Pope Gregory Vii (1072-1085) made it absolute that priests cannot be married.

The history of the Church's trying to enforce her sexual teachings was one of her big failures
-- even among the teachers, themselves. The threat of hellfire and damnation didn't work.
I think the lesson here is: You can't boss Mother Nature around.

[struggle4progress]

9. It's pretty skimpy. Various DU experts on Coptic papyrus fragments may have some ideas about it:

"... not to me. My mother gave me life ...
." The disciples said to Jesus, ".
Mary is ? worthy of it
..." Jesus said to them, "My wife
... she is able to be my disciple
. Let the wicked people swell up ...
. As for me, I am with her in order to .
. an image ...
my mother
three
...
forth
???

Harvard has some webpages about it

[Goblinmonger]

11. It's real just like Huck Finn is real.

What are we going to do about the theological implication of that work?

[struggle4progress]

12. Twain was an atheist, but he was a serious thinker, even if he expressed himself

through humor, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn raises some good serious theological issues, as in Chapter 31:

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter -- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell" -- and tore it up.

There he is, poor ignorant delinquent Huck, torn between conscience and his own conscience, saved from his own inbred racism perhaps by the fact that he is fundamentally an outcast, so never quite has enough "proper" views drummed into his dear little ear, and (in result) unable to harden his heart against Jim, finally free to choose to become his own authentic self -- Oh, Huck's prayer is splendid! and the voice thundering back at him is the one Moses heard at Horeb, I will be who I will be, and Huck hears it clearly:

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog

[okasha]

13. Theological implications of "Jesus' s wife"

become important only now that the ms. has been determined not to be a recent forgery. They're interesting, to say the least.

[MellowDem]

14. Christian apologists have dealt with inconsistencies and contradictions for millennia now...

with the same tactic. They've become experts in it. Just heap on more intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance, with a nice side of compartmentalization. That's better.