Comments on: The “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” a Forgery?

By: The Jesus Conspiracy

The Jesus Conspiracy — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:32:40 +0000

[...] the document may ultimately prove to be an outright forgery or fraud, as some scholars are already suggesting. But from the point of view of Christian faith and the quest for the Jesus of history, it actually [...]

By: Leroy Huizenga

Leroy Huizenga — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:59:18 +0000

King didn’t run such a test but could have and should have; in the original New York Times piece, she says they didn’t want to scrape any ink off for carbon, and would maybe do spectrometry later. Why not before? I initially thought she & Harvard were conducting themselves in an exemplary manner, but now I’m not so sure.

Many scholars secretly want to be famous and make a splash, and this wouldn’t be the first time a discovery was put forth without sufficient verification. The idea that we’re cautious, careful thinkers given wholly to the purity of the advance of knowledge is a myth, I think. So yes, you are assuming too much in this instance.

By: pentamom

pentamom — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:02:31 +0000

Well, forgeries have happened before, but I would think that responsible scholars would have run this kind of test before announcing such a “discovery” to the press. Wouldn’t they have learned to do that a long time ago, without needing some blogger to suggest it?

Maybe I’m just assuming too much, but it would seem strange to me that scholars of antiquities would be in the habit of promulgating “discoveries” without first verifying the dating by sufficient methods.

By: harry

harry — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:19:27 +0000

Readers may find this entertaining and enlightening: The Gnostic Noise Machine and the "Wife" of Jesus

By: Leroy Huizenga

Leroy Huizenga — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:57:47 +0000

Hurtado is a good, sober guy.

Check out also Mark Goodacre: http://ntweblog.blogspot.com/

There’s a market in forgeries because there’s a black market (as well as a legal market) in antiquities. Scraps like this are worth a lot to people with means. Kind of like art collecting.

By: David Nickol

David Nickol — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:19:32 +0000

I always like to check out Larry Hurtado's blog when there are issues like this. Of the various bloggers I have found, he is the most prominent of the scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity. If anyone knows of other sites in this category, I hope they will share them. I am not quite sure why anyone would attempt to forge a document such as this, but good scholarship certainly requires that it be greeted with a healthy dose of skepticism. I do always think of Woody Allen's The Scrolls, in which it is noted pretty much in passing that some skeptics question the authenticity of the newly uncovered ancient documents because the word Oldsmobile is found in them.