Posted on 04/28/2014 12:04:46 PM PDT by mojito
....Two weeks ago, on April 10, in a manner reminiscent of King’s carefully controlled original unveiling of the fragment, the Harvard Divinity School issued a press release declaring that a “wide range of scientific testing indicates that a papyrus fragment containing the words ‘Jesus said to them my wife’ is an ancient document” and that “its contents may have been composed as early as the second to fourth centuries.” Harvard had given an advance viewing of the test results and an interview with King to reporters for just three newspapers—the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Harvard student newspaper, the Crimson—on condition that they embargo their stories until April 10, the date of the press release and also the release, at last, of King’s article, this time in the April issue of the Harvard Theological Review (the Smithsonian documentary will finally air on May 5). The press release and a packet of scientific studies appended to King’s article also stated that tests conducted at Columbia University indicated that the chemical composition of the ink, a carbon-based substance made from lampblack, matched that of the ink on other ancient papyrus writings. The Globe’s online headline duly declared: “No evidence of modern forgery in ancient text mentioning ‘Jesus’ wife.’ ”
Nonetheless, the scientific results have raised more questions than they’ve answered, especially within the cohort of scholars who were already convinced that the fragment was a modern forgery.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
How many millions of people are named Jesus? Which one is the fragment referring to anyway.
How old is the physical papyrus?
How old is the physical ink?
How old are the words written with the ink on the papyrus?
Tests show a date for the papyrus that is later than 600 AD.
The ink is lampblack, which had been used for centuries before and centuries after the Nativity, so it is not useful for precise dating.
Then there are the words and the style of the letters.
There is nothing in either to suggest a date earlier than 200 AD or later than 800 AD.
Because it is a fragment, it could simply be a small blank piece ripped from another unrelated manuscript and used by a forger.
In any event, it is about as convincing as someone finding a piece of paper from 1955 which contains a fragment of an account of the US Constitutional debates.
Do I care if it is written on a kind of paper and with a kind of ink that was available in the 1950s?
No, because it could have been written yesterday using those materials.
And, further, whether it was written in 1955 or 2014, the author had no special personal insight into events that happened over a century before the writer was born.
This Jesus wife fragment nonsense is the lamest hit the revisionists have ever attempted, it is pathetic in so many ways. And they call themselves scholars...lol!
This has become a modern Easter tradition. Some news attempting to debunk the gospel. Used to be heralded from the covers of Time and/or Newsweek. Are they still around?
Anyone remember the “Lost” verses of Mark, found in a monastery library a few decades ago? The anti-Christians latched onto that like it was gold!
Then it was found the ONLY source for it was that it was handwritten on flyleaf of a book published in the 1600s, in a 1700 hand, in 2nd century Greek.
I understand the book has since disappeared and has never been shown to biblical scholars.
The original anti-Bible news stories always get more attention than the debunking ones later. It’s such a shame.
Papyrus Referring to Jesus’ Wife Is More Likely Ancient Than Fake, Scientists Say
NY Slimes | 4/10/2014 | Laurie Goodstein
Posted on 4/10/2014 4:54:14 PM by mojito
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3143078/posts?page=0
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1087742/posts
> Even feminist scholars such as Karen King, a Harvard professor and leading authority on early non-biblical texts about Magdalene, have said there is no evidence Christ was married to Magdalene or to anyone else. [2004]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1629318/posts
> Even feminist scholars such as Karen King, a Harvard professor and leading authority on early non-biblical texts about Magdalene, have said there is no evidence Christ was married to Magdalene or to anyone else. [2006]
There is always one of these around Easter, isn’t there?
As sure as eggs is eggs.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304178104579535540828090438?mod=trending_now_1
the Green Scholars Initiative
http://www.greenscholarsinitiative.org/
thanks ct, here’s a working version of your link:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304178104579535540828090438?mod=trending_now_1
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