The rumor is that Harvard Theological Review is now declining to publish Karen King’s paper (available here as a draft pdf) on the Coptic fragment she calls the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” It’s a rumor that appears to be true, as New Testament scholar Craig Evans writes:
Is the Coptic papyrus, in which Jesus speaks of his “wife,” a fake? Probably. We are far from a “consensus,” but one scholar after another and one Coptologist after another has weighed in pointing out serious problems with the paleography, the syntax, and the very troubling fact that almost all of the text has been extracted from the Gospel of Thomas (principally from logia 30, 101, and 114). I suspect the papyrus itself is probably quite old, perhaps fourth or fifth century, but the oddly written (or painted) letters on the recto side are probably modern and probably reflect recent interest in Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The decision of the editors of Harvard Theological Review not to publish Karen King’s paper is very wise. Perhaps we will eventually learn more about who actually produced this text.
The ultimate source is apparently the great Harvard scholar Helmut Koester.
The academic world is quickly becoming skeptical about the ancient provenance of this fragment. Perhaps more interesting and of more enduring significance than the fragment itself is the role the internet has played in the debate. We have had a draft of King’s paper, photos of the fragment itself, and serious and measured responses from leading scholars all made available to the public, along with the typical professional hysteria in the media and amateur hysteria in the blogosphere.
Is there a downside? Perhaps. In theory, this is the sort of debate that should be carried out in journals over months and years, so scholarship can get it right. (Note the parallels with journalism: the pressure to get it first and the pressure to get it right work against each other.) In this case, I think Watson and others contesting the fragment’s authenticity are getting it right — I’m no papyrologist, but it seems to me most likely that the fragment is a modern forgery — and I think that their work has been careful and solid. Yet time and peer review are lacking. What if we will have been too hasty in dismissing the fragment?
We happen to live in a media and internet age, however, and as sensationalism abounds I think it’s well and good that sober scholars like Francis Watson and Mark Goodacre (to whom credit goes for the h/t on this story) have the ability to react in real time. Of course, they were also trained as scholars in a prior age, meaning more than ten years ago; one wonders if a younger generation of scholars raised in internet culture will be as painstaking and measured as they.
Thought experiment: How different would things have been if the Dead Sea Scrolls had been discovered in the internet age?
[Cross-posted at LeroyHuizenga.com]
September 26th, 2012 | 2:46 am
[...] First Things: The rumor is that Harvard Theological Review is now declining to publish Karen King’s paper [...]
September 26th, 2012 | 2:50 am
It’s worth noting that Koester is one of the few remaining academic defenders of the authenticity of “Secret Mark,” which most scholars hold to be a forgey by his good friend, Morton Smith.
September 26th, 2012 | 4:39 am
What has been interesting to me – and not commented on in the British press – is how credulous but also inconsistent some people are. Every few years a story circulates about Jesus having a wife, even a family and this is presented as a new truth. As with the latest “Jesus wife” story, many are prepared to accept as “gospel” truth a tendentious reading of a dubious ancient fragment whilst denying or ignoring the far more substantiated gospel truth itself. The aim seems to be to “disprove” Christianity.
I have a question for those who claim the Coptic fragment is true and that Jesus was married: Why do you not believe the far better attested eveidence that after his crucifixion Jesus rose from the dead and was seen by many ?
September 26th, 2012 | 8:13 am
[...] the rumors are true that Harvard Theological Review has declined to publish Karen King’s article [...]
September 26th, 2012 | 10:00 am
I have a question for those who claim the Coptic fragment is true and that Jesus was married: Why do you not believe the far better attested eveidence that after his crucifixion Jesus rose from the dead and was seen by many ?
Ian,
If the fragment is fully authenticated, that would not be evidence that Jesus was married. If an entire Gospel of Jesus’ Wife dating from this period were found which depicted Jesus as married, that would not be evidence that the historical Jesus was married. Check out the QA on the Harvard web site:
Anyone who believes, on the basis of this papyrus—even if it is fully authenticated—that Jesus was married is completely misunderstanding what the scholars discussing it are saying.
But to partially answer your question, suppose I say I am married. How much evidence would it take to convince you that was true? Now, suppose I say I died but have risen. Wouldn’t you expect a lot more evidence before you could be convinced that was true—if you could even be convinced?
September 26th, 2012 | 10:15 am
[...] for instance the blog post by Alin Suciu and Hugo Lundhaug.Craig Evans is among those saying that the Harvard Theological Review has decided not to publish Karen King’s article on the subject. Charles Halton also comments on that topic.Brian LePort and Leroy Huizenga, [...]
September 26th, 2012 | 11:52 am
Since this is supposedly an ancient Coptic manuscript, has anyone bothered to ask Coptic theologians if they believe Jesus was married?
September 26th, 2012 | 11:53 am
David Nickol asks an interesting question:
“Now, suppose I say I died but have risen. Wouldn’t you expect a lot more evidence before you could be convinced that was true—if you could even be convinced?”
Somehow some billion people have answered the claim by Jesus in the affirmative. I suspect David’s claim would not receive such a response. That aside, one has to answer why did so many adopt the belief so quickly after the death of Jesus. Why did they believe the apostles? Particularly, given that the belief not infrequently put their lives at risk from the Roman government. It is a great puzzle and much has been said on the question. In the end, we each have to answer it for ourselves.
As to the small supposed excerpt, I agree with David that it, in itself, says nothing. Professor King, for all her carefulness, did provoke the media, at least with her name for the fragment, and sex sells.
September 26th, 2012 | 11:54 am
Hello, David Nickol,
The excerpt from the “QA on the Harvard web site” you provided seemed to me to contain rather strained “logic.”
Nor is there any reliable historical evidence to support the claim the Jesus was not an alien from another planet even though Christian tradition has long held that position. The oldest and most reliable evidence is entirely silent about His status as a member of the species Homo sapiens.
Talk is cheap. It was cheap in the centuries following the life of Christ on Earth, too. Making claims about Jesus being married or his being an alien from another planet is cheap. The oldest and most reliable evidence is entirely silent about Jesus being married. It is reasonable to conclude that is because He wasn’t, just as it is reasonable to conclude that it is silent about His being a space alien because He wasn’t. If we find some claim in a fragment of an ancient text about His being a space alien it will still be reasonable to conclude He wasn’t.
And we still don’t have any claims that He was not a space alien, although it seems somebody would have mentioned that He was a space alien by now if He was. It also seems that someone would have mentioned that He was married by the late second century if He was, yet it seems nobody had done that. That is because He wasn’t.
They must have a record of every comment every Christian ever made until over a century after the death of Jesus. How else could they know that nobody used the marital status of Jesus to support their position on celibacy until then?
Christian tradition also preserved only those voices that assumed that Jesus was a member of the species Homo sapiens and not an alien from another planet. If a fragment of an ancient text that just might be interpreted as a claim that Jesus was a space alien is discovered, that would show that some Christians thought He was just that, right? And that would show that Christian tradition had (sneakily) preserved only those voices that assumed Jesus wasn’t a space alien, right? No, it would only show that talk is cheap and that silly claims about Jesus were just as cheap back then as they are now.
September 26th, 2012 | 11:56 am
Rumor debunked:
http://www.religionnews.com/faith/beliefs/harvard-theological-review-gospel-of-jesus-wife-not-rejected
September 26th, 2012 | 12:01 pm
[...] Harvard Theological Review Rejects “Jesus’ Wife” – Leroy Huizenga, First Things/First Thoughts [...]
September 26th, 2012 | 1:37 pm
I think some of us (myself included) want the fragment to be authentic, and others don’t want it to be authentic, and that makes it difficult to make objective, reasoned judgments as to whether it is authentic. (Of course, something similar is the case with just about every issue we discuss here, but in this matter it seems to be more pronounced than usual.)
September 26th, 2012 | 2:51 pm
[...] my prior post reporting the rumor, I mentioned the tension in journalism between getting it first and getting it [...]
September 26th, 2012 | 3:51 pm
[...] denied; it is being reliably “rumored” that Harvard’s Theological Review has rejected the conjectures of Professor Karen L. King:The rumor is that Harvard Theological Review is now declining to publish Karen King’s paper [...]
September 26th, 2012 | 4:32 pm
Rebuttal of the presentation of a Gospel of Jesus’ wife
My objections to the claim of an ancient manuscript fragment and my reasons for regarding it a modern forgery are manifold:
1. Claiming to possess an ancient fragment without knowing its provenance is unfortunate enough, but without giving the current owner is highly suspicious.
2. Even the square format of the papyrus piece with its neat edges suggests that this, at best, is scrap-material, not a preserved manuscript fragment.
3. The papyrus itself may actually be ancient (though this cannot be determined by simply “carefully examining” it, as was maintained), since at least the vertical side gives a rather genuine impression, but the handwriting on the horizontal side is very different, especially with regard to the space between letters and between the lines.
4. On paleographical grounds, the handwriting cannot come from the 4th century; especially judging from the way the T is written, for instance; there is no resemblance to the other known 4th century texts.
5. Miraculously, there are always full phrases preserved, something that hardly happens on a small single fragment.
6. And amazingly, on this small piece there are, according to the editors, allusions not only to one but even to two of the more well-known non-biblical gospels, the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas.
7. In terms of the language, only the simplest vocabulary is used and only simple constructions are employed, as if the writer were afraid to make a grammatical mistake.
8. Therefore, the rather rare phrase peje i±±±s+ (though frequently used in the Gospel of Thomas since we have to do there with a collection of Jesus’ sayings) is used even in both instances of speaking, instead of the form pejaF (+ pronominal/nominal object) + NCi + subject that is more common in dialogues or other literary texts. Here in the first instance one would expect something like pejau NIs+ NCi Nmaqhths, and in the second instance pejaF nau NCi i±±s+, or since Jesus answers the disciples, even aFouwvb= NCi Is+ pejaF nau je. It seems a cautious and perhaps unsure modern Coptologist was at work here.
9. In addition, even though in Coptic dictionaries sHime is used for “woman” and Hime for “wife,” Hime is almost never used in comparable literary texts, not for the wife of Adam, Jacob, or any other male figures.
10. In the 2nd century, a time for which the Greek original is presupposed, an author would never have let Jesus simply say, “my wife,” existent or not. Women were relegated to the household as soon as Christian communities ventured out into the public sphere. In case of a disciple married to Jesus, the author would perhaps have explained in a dependent sentence the married status, like “Mary Magdalene, my wife, . . .”. The plain phrase “my wife” betrays modern thinking.
Finally let me express how deeply saddened and troubled I am by the latest trend in manuscript research. There seems to be a new integrity problem, starting with Marv Meyer’s “no comment” (regarding the Gospel of Judas) to Jim Robinson who had worked tirelessly for openness in textual research, up to the newest and most blatant example in Rome. Again secrecy was used as a means to maximize the sensational effect. For this reason, everything was intentionally orchestrated in a way that assured this outcome. It appears that the opening up of the Harvard website and the arrival of the press at the same moment the introduction in Rome was given were coordinated to that end. I am concerned that henceforth new manuscript discoveries will be widely assessed by experts in the field as something that individual scholars can exploit for their own profit.
Scholarship always benefitted from letting colleagues know about current works, from having open discussions of individual research projects at conventions, or from peer reviews prior to publications – something that would have been very beneficial especially in this current instance. Instead it was chosen to hide information from peers and introduce something with so much fanfare and speculation that it surely has to be backtracked one day, just like the evaluation of the Gospel of Judas had to be reversed by the first editors.
September 26th, 2012 | 5:45 pm
Larry,
This is the most recent update I posted on my blog after hearing from Craig Evans. See update #3:
http://nearemmaus.com/2012/09/26/the-harvard-theological-journal-the-gospel-of-jesus-wife-and-karen-l-kings-rejected-or-not-rejected-paper/
September 26th, 2012 | 5:46 pm
Sorry, Leroy, not sure why I wrote Larry!
September 26th, 2012 | 6:55 pm
Not sure what all the fuss is about. A bit of text, apparently lifted in part from Gnostic wrtings, is found. So what?
We already know that Jesus does have a wife. It is the Church.
It is spelled out clearly in the Bible.
This is a nice summary on the Church as the Bride of Christ:
http://www.veritasbible.com/resources/sacred_scripture_shortcuts/categories/Church/Church+as+Bride+of+Christ
September 26th, 2012 | 8:04 pm
David Nickol, nice equivalence.
However, the others are operating from a position of reason. If it can be said they are overzealous or protective, their concerns have been focused exclusively on the failure to properly investigate the document (or the catechizing of the doctrinally-confused who claim it wouldn’t change a thing.)
Meanwhile those who want it to be authentic are already active in using it to sow confusion with a substantial media launch. That many of these are libertines are turning to fragments from celibate gnostics to attack their consciences reeks of desperation.
September 26th, 2012 | 8:09 pm
[...] my do-it-your-self guide to forgery)September 26, 2012 By gwesley Leave a CommentSo it looks like the fragment is not going to be published, at least not now and not in Harvard Theological Review. Why [...]
September 27th, 2012 | 4:21 pm
I have to agree with Liz Smith above, who cares? Authentic or hoax, this piece of papyrus is inconsequential. I don’t understand all the internet furor about it.
October 5th, 2012 | 4:40 am
Why would Dead Sea Scrolls have been different? What did Huizenga mean by that?
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