The plot thickens. This just in:
Harvard University says it hasn’t committed to publishing research that purportedly shows some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife even though its divinity school touted the research during a publicity blitz this week.
The research centers on a fourth-century papyrus fragment containing Coptic text in which Jesus uses the words “my wife.” On Tuesday, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King announced at an international conference that the fragment was the only existing ancient text in which Jesus explicitly talks of having a wife.
Harvard also said King’s research was scheduled to be published in the Harvard Theological Review in January and noted the journal was peer-reviewed, which implied the research had been fully vetted.
But on Friday, the review’s co-editor Kevin Madigan said he and his co-editor had only “provisionally” committed to a January publication, pending the results of the ongoing studies. In an email, Madigan said the added studies include “scientific dating and further reports from Coptic papyrologists and grammarians.”
After Tuesday’s announcement, The Associated Press raised questions about the fragment’s authenticity and provenance, quoting scholars at the international congress on Coptic studies in Rome, where King delivered the paper. The scholars said the fragment’s grammar, form and content raised several red flags. Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg, flatly called it a “forgery.”
Boston University archaeologist Ricardo Elia said Friday that the Harvard Theological Review should delay publication until the fragment’s owner and origins are more clearly documented.
Harvard has kept the owner anonymous, and Elia said that raises questions about professional ethics, because Harvard appears to be protecting the owner, a collector, from other claims to the fragment. The school has said the papyrus most likely came from Egypt, which means it could be Egypt’s cultural property, Elia said.
“If it’s real, it was looted and smuggled, most likely,” he said. “If it’s not real, then it shouldn’t even be out there in the discussion.”
Elia said “lurking behind all of this is the suspicion that the collector is doing this for the purpose of having the scholar authenticate a piece, and get a lot of attention to it, and then turn around and sell it.”
King’s announcement about the fragment, which she called the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, came after the school released details in advance to The New York Times and The Boston Globe, which gave the story prominent play. The Smithsonian Channel is planning to debut a program about it at end of the month.
Read the rest of the story here.
September 22nd, 2012 | 9:42 pm
I agree with waiting until the piece is authenticated, but since when is the motive of authentication being to make money mean we shouldn’t acknowledge the truth? I mean, all the expeditions looking for ancient artifacts like King Tut’s tomb have been done mainly for financial and egotistical reasons. Why should this be any different?
September 22nd, 2012 | 11:26 pm
Brings to mind, The wedding at Cana.
According to customs of the time, a first-century Jewish wedding would not have been a private family celebration, but a public event recognizing the union of the bride and groom as well as the joining of the two families. The celebration typically took place in the groom’s own home, which was made open to guests for several days and thus open to public scrutiny.
It was the responsibility of the groom’s family to ensure there was enough food and drink for all the guests. To fulfill this public social role, most families needed to draw not only on their own family resources, but also on the help of colleagues from their social group. How well the feast went communicated to guests the family’s social status and honor. To run out of wine at a wedding feast, therefore, would have inflicted grave humiliation on the groom’s family, signaling that they were unable to fulfill their role adequately and that they lacked the social connections to preserve their honor.
This social context sheds much light on the crisis facing the bride and groom at the wedding feast of Cana. But it also gives us insight into Mary’s role in this scene. Mary is the first to notice the impending disaster. She alone is aware of what is about to unfold, and she brings this crisis to the one person who can solve the problem: Jesus.
September 22nd, 2012 | 11:30 pm
Wedding At Cana
According to customs of the time, a first-century Jewish wedding would not have been a private family celebration, but a public event recognizing the union of the bride and groom as well as the joining of the two families. The celebration typically took place in the groom’s own home, which was made open to guests for several days and thus open to public scrutiny.
It was the responsibility of the groom’s family to ensure there was enough food and drink for all the guests. To fulfill this public social role, most families needed to draw not only on their own family resources, but also on the help of colleagues from their social group. How well the feast went communicated to guests the family’s social status and honor. To run out of wine at a wedding feast, therefore, would have inflicted grave humiliation on the groom’s family, signaling that they were unable to fulfill their role adequately and that they lacked the social connections to preserve their honor.
This social context sheds much light on the crisis facing the bride and groom at the wedding feast of Cana. But it also gives us insight into Mary’s role in this scene. Mary is the first to notice the impending disaster. She alone is aware of what is about to unfold, and she brings this crisis to the one person who can solve the problem: Jesus.
September 23rd, 2012 | 2:09 am
Good question. Bad motives don’t necessarily mean bad results or deceit, but on the other hand are good grounds for suspicion. I can be a miscreant and tell the truth to my purposes.
We also have to keep in mind the nature of this particular case. The thing is, you know pretty much when you’ve found King Tut’s tomb.
September 23rd, 2012 | 4:29 am
I couldn’t agree more. The other thing I don’t, no, not don’t but can’t understand is why there is such vehemence around this. For me it doesn’t make Jesus a lesser person for marrying, if anything it brings him closer to us.
September 23rd, 2012 | 7:45 pm
Some people find American Civil War alternate history, where the Confederates win, a quite entertaining form of fiction. If in several thousand years the common (and correct) belief is that the North won the American Civil War of the 19th century, and a future scholar finds a fragment of one of the alternate histories on the subject that indicates that the South won, would it be reasonable for sensible people of the future to throw out the traditional thinking on the matter based on that fragment? No, it wouldn’t be reasonable, especially if they know that alternate histories of the war were in circulation in the 20th and 21st centuries. Nor is it reasonable to assume the traditional beliefs about the marital status of Jesus are incorrect based on a fragment of a questionable ancient work, especially when we know there were fictional works about the life of Jesus in circulation at the time.
It is hard to comprehend how any sensible person can jump to the conclusion that Jesus was married based on this fragment. To do so requires one to ignore the fact every other account of the life of Jesus does not have Him marrying anyone, and to come up with some silly conspiracy theory that explains why all the contrary evidence the forgery, and this single fragment is the truly reliable information. Yeah. Right. And Alexander the Great was really a woman.
September 23rd, 2012 | 8:21 pm
Evil always wants to drag good down to its level. Jesus entered freely into evil to set his bride the Church free from evil and ready for the wedding feast of Heaven.
The very shame and humiliation of God becoming man in all its nature, limits, sufferings, passions, temptations is a heavy cross. To consider the very rejection of his own creation sentencing him to death. And the separation from his mother and subjecting her to witness his shame and humiliation, his death and dismissal.
Why must his human wife also suffer such a cross? Where are the fragments of her fiat? Where are the fragments of her dolors? Of her assumption? Of her immaculate conception to protect Jesus’ flesh (1 Cor 6:16)? The wife thing doesn’t add up.
September 23rd, 2012 | 8:42 pm
Simon, it does matter theologically, but it depends on one’s confessional tradition and thus one’s Christology/soteriology. For Catholics, and I suspect Orthodox, the strong emphasis on the Church as the bride of Christ would leave little room for a human wife. For Protestants, well, it might not matter as much.
September 23rd, 2012 | 9:46 pm
Leroy, I suppose it might not matter much in the abstract to (some) Protestants — but then, of course, we do tend to care quite a bit about what the Scriptures have to say about such things. And they’re quite clear that there was no Mrs. Jesus. Aside from the Church, of course.
September 23rd, 2012 | 9:56 pm
Right — I think for Catholic and Orthodox churches it matters absolutely. For Protestants, well, it would depend again. I’d agree that there’s no suggestion in the Scriptures Jesus was married. None. I also think that Matthew 19:10-12 would be bizarre coming from a married Jesus.
I think the question is, does Scriptural talk of the Church as the bride of Christ make it unfitting for the Savior to have been wed? I think so — it would be unfitting.
I know some Protestants have a high ecclesiology — Calvin quotes Cyprian on the necessity of having the Church as mother to have God as Father, iirc — but thinking especially of some directions 19th-20th century protestant thought took, in which ecclesiology effectively disappears, it seems to me a wide swath of the Protestant world would have an easier time with a married Jesus. He could still be God incarnate and still die on the cross. And be raised.
But then we have to ask the question — why wasn’t Jesus married, assuming the biblical witness and a Christian theological paradigm? I like the answer I gave in my piece on Thursday: all his energies of love go into the Bride, the Church.
September 23rd, 2012 | 10:21 pm
Well, the fragment says “Jesus said my wife” no? That’s not much to develop a whole theory of his being married on, even if the thing were not a forgery. What came before and after “my wife”? No punctuation at the time, correct? So it could be an account by someone who is married:” ‘…’ Jesus said. My wife…” or it could say, “my wife is anyone who follows me” (ie when he said that people who followed him were his mother and brothers and sisters) or it could be totally wacky and gnostic and say, “Jesus said, ‘My wife is a spirit from the Pleroma’” Or it could be a letter: “Jesus said my wife is fat!” It could say ANYTHING.
September 23rd, 2012 | 11:29 pm
[...] [...]
September 24th, 2012 | 12:03 am
[...] Boston University archaeologist Ricardo Elia said Friday that the Harvard Theological Review should delay publication until the fragment’s owner and origins are more clearly documented. Read More [...]
September 24th, 2012 | 12:41 am
Had to comment:
Gail, your comment made me laugh so loud the dogs jumped up. “Jesus said my my wife is fat!”
Hilarious.
As a side note: I believe your opinion is correct. This single, post-it-like fragment provides no additional context to change thousands of years of history. Regardless of your religious (or nonreligious) views – mine trend toward agnostic – we need a lot more information before declaring this soundly proof that Christ had a wife.
For what it’s worth, it actually wouldn’t surprise me, nor do I think sane Christians should have their basic beliefs rocked in that instance.
September 24th, 2012 | 8:46 am
“The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”? Well, it does have the right length and the right content: three or four incoherent sentence fragments. The words “Jesus” and “wife” are readable, if not in the same line. Of course, what else could it be?
I wonder if some of our esteemed Ph.D’s ever took a course in logic. Maybe reading the definition of the word “pareidolia” might help.
September 24th, 2012 | 9:37 am
The fragment, if authentic, does no more than document the belief of some kind of Christian two centuries later. As to the New Testament, it barely mentions Peter and other apostles being married. Despite all the verbiage from Paul, we have no idea what his marital status was, even though there would be no theological repercussions either way. There is plenty of reason to believe from New Testament references that Mary had other children after Jesus, including James who became a prominent Church leader, but Catholics object to that on theological grounds, rejecting what is straightforward evidence as clear as anything in the Gospels. We don’t have anything about the wife of Jamrs, brother of the Lord, but the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We cannot conclude anything about Jesus’ marital status from the lack of mention of it.
September 24th, 2012 | 10:27 am
“The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”? Well, it does have the right length and the right content: three or four incoherent sentence fragments. The words “Jesus” and “wife” are readable, if not in the same line. Of course, what else could it be?
Mike Melendez,
Larry Hurtado says on his blog:
It’s a fair point. However, to be fair to Karen King, she say very emphatically in her paper, “It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century.”
So I am not sure what the fuss is about, although I think part of it has to do with some people being extraordinarily uncomfortable with the idea of the sexuality of Jesus. Nobody is suggesting this fragment provides the least bit of evidence that Jesus was married. But some people nevertheless find the mere thought of that possibility offensive. Why? I suppose it’s the idea that really pure people (the Virgin Mary, Jesus) don’t have sex.
September 24th, 2012 | 11:15 am
When that novel interpretation of the Scriptures was first proposed by Helvidius (ca. A.D. 380) it caused an uproar because it contradicted what was for the most part the common and universal belief of Christians.
St. Jerome, already known to be a great Scripture scholar, was asked to respond to the outrageous notion that Mary had other children besides Jesus. Jerome refused to do so at first, fearing his response would only give Helvidius’ ideas a dignity they didn’t deserve.
Eventually Jerome responded to Helvidius in spite of this. In Jerome’s The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary he shreds the thought of Helvidius, providing numerous examples where “brothers” are used in the Scriptures when it is clear that one’s brothers are not one’s biological siblings from the same womb. For example, in Genesis 14:14 Abraham’s nephew Lot is referred to as his brother. With numerous scriptural arguments defending the orthodox and traditional belief regarding the perpetual virginity of Mary, delivered in caustic terms (it is evident Jerome was as offended by Helvidius as everyone else was), Jerome annihilated the thought of Helvidius, revealing it to be as silly as it was heterodox.
This settled the issue for well over a thousand years. It only resurfaced with the rise of churches disconnected from the ancient tradition of the Church, churches that feel free to interpret the Scriptures without regard to the unanimous belief of the Church Fathers.
This unanimity among the Fathers was the promised work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Jesus had promised that the Holy Spirit would be with the Church forever and guide it to the complete truth. He kept His promise, so there is a consistent belief in the Church over the centuries, expressed in the unanimity of the Fathers on the Scriptures, that cannot be disregarded if one wants to avoid heterodox beliefs.
September 24th, 2012 | 1:23 pm
David writes: So I am not sure what the fuss is about, although I think part of it has to do with some people being extraordinarily uncomfortable with the idea of the sexuality of Jesus.
You’re reading people’s minds now. Larry Hurtado says it well. This fragment is so small it literally is currently meaningless. Perhaps, if the fragment is authenticated and the rest released for review, there will be something to ponder about.
As to sexuality, the problem is the media not “individuals uncomfortable with the sexuality of Jesus”. Put simply, sex sells. Just ask Dan Brown. Professor King seems to know that as well. So we fight a rear guard action in hopes of preventing this from being a common meme.
September 24th, 2012 | 2:20 pm
feel free to interpret the Scriptures without regard to the unanimous belief of the Church Fathers.
Tertullian believed that those referred to as brothers and sisters of Jesus were his actual siblings. So it wasn’t unanimous.
It seems to me that the most that can be said on the issue is that Catholics who believe in the Perpetual Virginity of Mary have made a vigorous (if not airtight) case that the references to Jesus’s brothers and sisters do not necessarily contradict that doctrine. But were it not for that doctrine (as Catholic Tradition with a capital T), the most natural way to read the New Testament is would be to take the brothers and sisters of Jesus to be the children of Mary.
Speaking just on the matter of what the Bible says, there is a case that the “brothers and sisters of Jesus” might not be his siblings. However, I don’t think there is a case that they aren’t. Aside from the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, there is no reason to suspect, based on the New Testament, that Jesus didn’t have siblings.
Of course, for believing Catholics who accept the theory of the Catholic Church as guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from error, and who accept Tradition as having the same authority as scripture, then it is only natural for them to believe Jesus did not have siblings.
September 24th, 2012 | 3:34 pm
You’re reading people’s minds now.
Mike Melendez,
You seem not to distinguish between a flat assertion, say, “You’re reading people’s minds now,” and a tentatively offered opinion such as, “So I am not sure what the fuss is about, although I think [that] part of it has to do with some people being extraordinarily uncomfortable with the idea of the sexuality of Jesus.” Are you really willing to assert that everybody is comfortable with the idea of the sexuality of Jesus?
As I noted, Karen King says emphatically that the fragment “does not provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married.” Basically all that is happening is that the discovery—which proves nothing at all and can prove nothing about the historical Jesus—has raised the question again in the popular mind, and this seems to bother some people in my humble opinion.
Put simply, sex sells. Just ask Dan Brown. Professor King seems to know that as well. So we fight a rear guard action in hopes of preventing this from being a common meme.
If saying that someone was married is “sex,” then I suppose a wedding is equivalent to an orgy. The idea that Jesus might have married and had descendants struck a chord in the popular imagination, but I don’t think there was anything at all prurient about it. As I recall The Da Vinci Code, there were no flashbacks to steamy love scenes in the first century.
September 24th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
By the way, the movie of The Da Vinci Code was rated PG-13.
September 24th, 2012 | 4:23 pm
At the time Tertullian wrote On Monogamy, to which I assume you are referring, he was no longer an orthodox Christian but a Montanist. Jerome’s answer to Helvidius’ citation of Tertullian in this regard is still sufficient:
I would only add that the unanimous consent of the Fathers never did mean 100% agreement, and certainly not agreement that included the opinions of heretics and schismatics. As Vincent of Lerins puts it in his Commonitory:
In Jerome’s time, the interpretations of Scripture held by “Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men” were “those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers,” and were the “definitions and determinations of all, or at least of almost all priests and doctors” of antiquity. And there was also the sensus fidelium that caused the Christians of Jerome’s time to insist that he answer the novel and heretical notions of Helvidius. Against this “fountain of truth,” the fulfillment of the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit would be with the Church forever leading it to the Truth, you propose Tertullian’s “tiny stream of opinion” after he had fallen away from orthodoxy.
September 24th, 2012 | 6:06 pm
From a Mormon or LDS Church perspective, the find is of perhaps more than of passing interest. In response to Leroy’s comments above that orthodox Catholics who have a “strong emphasis on the Church as the bride of Christ would leave little room for a human wife”, adherents of the LDS Church might see a connection with that belief and the sacred temple ceremony called an “endowment”. See for example the promise given to the disciples in Luke 24:49 (e.g. “endued with power from on high”). Such a promise could be related to the Savior’s parable of the marriage feast in Matthew 22.
September 24th, 2012 | 6:26 pm
harry,
You are stating the Catholic position, and I respect that, but those who are not Catholic (or even Christian) can read the New Testament for themselves. Certainly the opinions of the Fathers of the Church are very important, but we have the actual texts they were interpreting, and in some ways, we know more about those texts than the Fathers of the Church did. I think (although this would be difficult to document) that the majority of Catholic Biblical scholars today would say that, judging by the New Testament alone, the weight of evidence would be that Jesus had brothers and sisters. But of course, when Tradition is also considered, they would say that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life. I have every reason to expect you can provide an endless stream of documents asserting the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, but they will be Catholic theological arguments, not historical evidence.
September 24th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
“I couldn’t agree more. The other thing I don’t, no, not don’t but can’t understand is why there is such vehemence around this. For me it doesn’t make Jesus a lesser person for marrying, if anything it brings him closer to us.”
Just to start with, not everyone is married. Some are to poor or to socially awkward or to whatever to marry. Does the fact that Jesus minsters to the poor necessarily make him farther away from the rich who are willing to humble themselves and accept him? Why should He not sacrifice so He can minister to those unlucky in love?
September 24th, 2012 | 10:00 pm
Modern evangelicalism en masse may have in some sense lost sight of the concept of the church as bride, but it’s explicitly biblical, not just a development of tradition. So even if we’ve gone slack on it (though as Leroy admits, many of us haven’t) Protestants/Evangelicals absolutely *ought* to find a theological reason to have a problem with this, even of many of us are too poorly taught to know it. So I think it’s shortchanging Protestantism to suggest that while Catholics and Orthodox have a reason to have a theological problem with the idea of a married Jesus, Protestants might not. They might not, but only if they’re individually ignorant of the scriptural teaching on the church as Jesus’ bride, not because there’s any strain of Protestantism that doesn’t have every reason to confess the church as bride.
September 25th, 2012 | 2:22 am
Hello, David Nickol,
Exactly. And they do. And there can be nearly as many interpretations of the New Testament as there are people who read it, rendering it useless in terms of deriving correct doctrine from it in the absence of an authority acknowledged by Church members. God realized that would be the case, so He founded a Church, promising it that “He who hears you, hears me.” (Luke 10:16) When we submit to the authority of the Holy Spirit present in the official teaching of the Church according to the promise of Christ, we are given boundaries within which we can remain in order to interpret the Scriptures in an orthodox manner. It is not without reason that Paul points out to Timothy that the Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth.” (1 Tim 3:15)
And in some ways we know much less, just as those who study the American Civil War in a couple of thousand years will never understand it the way we do. Many American families have orally passed on to each succeeding generation since then stories of their ancestors who fought in the war. Some still have in their possession letters written by them. Just as those families have insights due to their closeness in time to the war that will be lost in a couple of thousand years, so did the Apostolic Fathers have insights due to their closeness to those who actually knew Jesus and were taught by Him. Modern scholars simply do not and cannot have such insights.
It is interesting that Jerome points out to Helvidius that he could “array against” him “the whole series of ancient writers … Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men.” He obviously had documents written by those men that have been lost to us, as I don’t think anyone today could, for example, cite Ignatius in terms of his discussing the perpetual virginity of Mary. Jerome’s remark suggests that he had access to texts in which Ignatius must have mentioned Mary’s perpetual virginity. Whatever advantages modern Scripture scholars have, there are advantages to being closer in time to events that they do not have.
Judging by the New Testament alone, with the interpreter acknowledging no authority outside his own imagined authority, interpreters can and do determine that the weight of evidence demonstrates nearly any conclusion they want to arrive at. Most often these are conclusions that contradict what others have determined the “weight of evidence” demonstrates. Again, that is why Christ founded a Church, gave it real spiritual authority, and promised it the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That this was the provision of God and that the Early Church was aware of that provision was demonstrated at the Council of Jerusalem, which made determinations that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” (Acts 15:28)
September 25th, 2012 | 10:31 am
That this was the provision of God and that the Early Church was aware of that provision was demonstrated at the Council of Jerusalem, which made determinations that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” (Acts 15:28)
harry,
It is strange you cite the Council of Jerusalem, since some of the things that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” have simply since been ignored.
When was the last time you had a nice, juicy steak?
September 25th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
You are confusing Church discipline with Church doctrine in terms of the dietary rules mentioned. These were disciplinary declarations rather than dogmatic declarations. Church discipline may change to meet the changing requirements of the times. At that time it was an issue whether Christians were required to observe the Old Law.
What is to be learned from the Council of Jerusalem is that the Apostles assumed that they had the approval and guidance of the Holy Spirit, which indicates that they believed in the promise of Christ that the Church would have divine protection and guidance. It also indicates their understanding of the words of Christ regarding this (which should be our understanding of the Church’s divine protection as well). Had they not understood and believed in the words of Christ in this way they would never have presumed to say “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …”
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact