Suggestion of a married Jesus - Ancient papyrus shows that some early Christians believed he wed

Harvard Gazette ^ | 09-18-2012 | Staff writer Alvin Powell contributed to this report.

[Red Badger]

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Harvard Professor Karen King with the previously unknown papyrus fragment that, when translated, contains “Jesus said to them, my wife.” “This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage," said King.

Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York City, believes the fragment to be authentic based on examination of the papyrus and the handwriting. Photo © Karen L. King

[Red Badger]

Ping!..........

[Red Badger]

Video at link..........

[DonkeyBonker]

Blasphemy! Behead the infidels.

Oh wait, wrong religion.

ROFLMAO

[ZX12R]

This thread should be electric, and with sparks flying.

[Houghton M.]

This scrap of paper is not worth wiping your butt with as long as its provenance is unknown.

This is crap in terms of scholarship. Could be a papyrus from Gnostic circles, if it’s not entirely forged.

The stupid professor says its provenance is a mystery. How convenient. How convenient that it comes from a private collector. The great papyri collections all document where the fragments were found. If this is a great collector of papyri, he wasted his money buying something with no known provenance. Or, if he knows the provenance but won’t say, that’s the smoking gun proof that the provenance, if made public would discredit the piece of (s)crap entirely.

And the idiot fools at the NYTimes and the Harvard PR clowns eat it up.

Journalists are crap-eaters.

[The Sons of Liberty]

Personally, I would have more faith in the authenticity of this artifact if it weren’t held by an ultra liberal, left wing, ivy league institution.

[COBOL2Java]

Blasphemy! Behead the infidels.

Oh wait, wrong religion.

ROFLMAO

Oh no! Now you did it! You've got 'em going again!

[Wyatt's Torch]

It was given to the Harvard professor by a private collector...

[DonkeyBonker]

LOOK!, It is Obama’s LFCOB!

[Houghton M.]

It may well be an authentic Gnosic (s)crap of papyrus. (The stupid professor herself links it to other Gnostic writings.)

If so, it’s not surprising—the Gnostics made claims like this. If that’s the provenance it’s not new and the professor is trying to ride the supposed novelty to star-status in Academia.

But because she won’t or can’t say anything about provenance, she has nothing, zero, nada, in terms of scholarly value. She tries to make it scholarly valuable by treating the Gnostic gospels as equal to the canonical Gospels and by claiming that it offers something new.

I sure hope that she gets torn to shreds at the Coptic conference, but chances are good they’ll refuse to tear into her like she deserves to be torn into.

Or, perhaps, to them she’ll reveal the provenance and settle for an infinitesimal discovery-credit (since it probably comes from Gnostic circles) after the journolist impact-concrete has had time to set and the sound-byte lies have embedded themselves in the popular mind.

[RMDupree]

Ten bucks says the end result will be about Jesus referring to the church as his “Bride” - but some doofus is trying to gin up publicity by creating a “controversy”.

[diamond6]

Oh good grief!

This is blasphemy.

I think I’ll burn down the White House.

[Red Badger]

Nah, it’s Christian...............

[Just mythoughts]

Unfortunately, some deliberate and some in willing ignorance do not comprehend the difference in ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’. But hey as the wisest prophet penned there is nothing new under the sun.

[ronnyquest]

It was not until the Councils of Nicea decided upon the “official” version of Christianity that Jesus’ divinity became widely accepted. Many early Christian sects believed that he was a man, a divinely inspired and perhaps divinely conceived man, but a man, with the traditional needs and wants of a man. Why, then, would he not have married and produced children, as instructed by God (be fruitful and multiply)? There is nothing wrong with that, except in the minds of certain individuals who were and are more concerned with power and control than with faith. Heresy, I know. Whatever.

[Gamecock]

Some poeple believe in unicorns. Doesn’t make it so...

[LurkingSince'98]

now if the translation was “bride”, instead of “wife” it would be somewhat believable, since the Church has described itself as the Bride of Christ from the beginning.

Lurking’

[Verginius Rufus]

I think she is a liberal but not stupid--she is one of the leading authorities on Gnosticism. I think she has also written books (or at least one book) on Islam that try to put it in a favorable light. You can get to be a tenured professor at Harvard Law School by pretending to be an Indian, but you don't get to have an endowed chair at Harvard Divinity School if you are stupid.

It does appear to be a genuine fourth-century piece of papyrus.

[mmichaels1970]

“Jesus said to them, my wife.”

I'm sure those words were probably not elegantly stated and were said "off the cuff".

As we know "married" is a "legal term of art".