Posted on 09/18/2012 11:20:37 AM PDT by Red Badger
Four words on a previously unknown papyrus fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, Harvard Professor Karen King told the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies today.
King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the existence of the ancient text at the congress’ meeting, held every four years and hosted this year by the Vatican’s Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome. The four words that appear on the fragment translate to “Jesus said to them, my wife.” The words, written in Coptic, a language of Egyptian Christians, are on a papyrus fragment of about one and a half inches by three inches.
“Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim,” King said. “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. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’ death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions.”
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. Ariel Shisha-Halevy, a Coptic expert at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, considers it likely to be authentic on the basis of language and grammar, King said. Final judgment on the fragment, King said, depends on further examination by colleagues and further testing, especially of the chemical composition of the ink.
One side of the fragment contains eight incomplete lines of handwriting, while the other side is badly damaged and the ink so faded that only three words and a few individual letters are still visible, even with infrared photography and computer photo enhancement. Despite its tiny size and poor condition, King said, the fragment provides tantalizing glimpses into issues about family, discipleship, and marriage that concerned ancient Christians.
King and colleague AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University, believe that the fragment is part of a newly discovered gospel. Their analysis of the fragment is scheduled for publication in the January issue of Harvard Theological Review, a peer-reviewed journal.
King has posted a preliminary draft of the paper, an extensive question-and-answer segment on the fragment and its meaning, and images of it, on a page on the Divinity School website.
The brownish-yellow, tattered fragment belongs to an anonymous private collector who contacted King to help translate and analyze it. The collector provided King with a letter from the early 1980s indicating that Professor Gerhard Fecht from the faculty of Egyptology at the Free University in Berlin believed it to be evidence for a possible marriage of Jesus.
King said that when the owner first contacted her about the papyrus, in 2010, “I didn’t believe it was authentic, and told him I wasn’t interested.” But the owner was persistent, so in December 2011, King invited him to bring it to her at Harvard. After examining it, in March King carried the fragment to New York and, together with Luijendijk, took it to Bagnall to be authenticated. When Bagnall’s examination of the handwriting, ways that the ink had penetrated and interacted with the papyrus, and other factors confirmed its likely authenticity, work on the analysis and interpretation of the fragment began in earnest, King said.
Little is known about the discovery of the fragment, but it is believed to have come from Egypt because it is written in Coptic, the form of the Egyptian language used by Christians there during the Roman imperial period. Luijendijk suggested that “a fragment this damaged probably came from an ancient garbage heap like all of the earliest scraps of the New Testament.” Because there is writing on both sides of the fragment, it clearly belongs to an ancient book, or codex, and not a scroll, she said.
The gospel of which the fragment is but a small part, which King and Luijendijk have named the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife for reference purposes, was probably originally written in Greek, the two professors said, and only later translated into Coptic for use among congregations of Coptic-speaking Christians. King dated the time it was written to the second half of the second century because it shows close connections to other newly discovered gospels written at that time, especially the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip.
Like those gospels, it was probably ascribed to one or more of Jesus’ closest followers, but the actual author would have remained unknown even if more of it had survived. As it stands, the remaining piece is too small to tell us anything more about who may have composed, read, or circulated the new gospel, King said.
The main topic of the dialogue between Jesus and his disciples is one that deeply concerned early Christians, who were asked to put loyalty to Jesus before their natal families, as the New Testament gospels show. Christians were talking about themselves as a family, with God the father, his son Jesus, and members as brothers and sisters. Twice in the tiny fragment, Jesus speaks of his mother and once of his wife — one of whom is identified as “Mary.” The disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy, and Jesus states that “she can be my disciple.” Although less clear, it may be that by portraying Jesus as married, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife conveys a positive theological message about marriage and sexuality, perhaps similar to the Gospel of Philip’s view that pure marriage can be an image of divine unity and creativity.
From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether they should marry or be celibate. But, King notes, it was not until around 200 that there is the earliest extant claim that Jesus did not marry, recorded by Clement of Alexandria. He wrote of Christians who claimed that marriage is fornication instituted by the devil, and said that people should emulate Jesus in not marrying, King said. A decade or two later, she said, Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa declared that Jesus was “entirely unmarried,” and Christians should aim for a similar condition. Yet Tertullian did not condemn sexual relations altogether, allowing for one marriage, although he denounced not only divorce, but even remarriage for widows and widowers as overindulgence. Nearly a century earlier, the New Testament letter of 1 Timothy had warned that people who forbid marriage are following the “doctrines of demons,” although it didn’t claim Jesus was married to support that point.
In the end, the view that dominated would claim celibacy as the highest form of Christian sexual virtue, while conceding marriage for the sake of reproduction alone. The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, if it was originally written in the late second century, suggests that the whole question of Jesus’ marital status only came up over a century after Jesus died as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage, King said. King noted that contemporary debates over celibate clergy, the roles of women, sexuality, and marriage demonstrate that the issues were far from resolved.
“The discovery of this new gospel,” King said, “offers an occasion to rethink what we thought we knew by asking what role claims about Jesus’ marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife now shows that some Christians thought otherwise.”
Sorry, Charlie. The earliest doubts were NOT about his divinity. They were about his humanity. The Gnostics fullly believed in his divinity. They just couldn’t see how the divine could really be human. The Docetists, ditto. Ditto for the Sabellians and Modalists. That covers the first 200 years.
Challenges to his divinity only emerged in the 200s (Adoptionism). Belief in his divinity was there from the start, among those who believed in his Resurrection. Of course most people didn’t believe in that—they thought he was just another Jewish prophet and they WEREN’T called Christians.
Anyone who was a Christian did believe in his divinity.
The view you describe was common among 19thc Liberals. They conveniently overlooked the fact that the earliest controversies AMONG CHRISTIANS had to do with challenges to his humanity.
Inconvenient truths.
Jesus said that the foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but He didn’t have a place to lay His head. Would Jesus have had a homeless wife and children? No. That would be irresponsible and that would be a sin.
This changes nothing! i have more respect for Jesus if he could do what he did and be married! If he was married to Mary Magdaline, a widow, with a dubious past, he saved her from a life of sin. That’s something I can believe he would do. After his resurrection it was she at the empty tomb. But, there is nothing that would change a thing in his teachings, and maybe something that might explain some of the things he said. He needed to experience all of what it is to be human—that could include marriage.
You understand that I was using the word “stupid” off the cuff?
It is stoooooppppppidd for a scholar of her rank to announce this discovery while being unable or unwilling to give the provenance.
Unless she did it because she knew journolists would be too stoooooooppppppiiiiiidddddd to realize that without provenance, the piece of papyrus is useless for making any sort of claim about “what happened back then.”
Without provenance, there’s no way to know whether it comes from Gnostic circles or orthodox circles. If from Gnostic circles, then it’s ho-hum, nothing new.
Of course, she simply assumes that it is Gnostic (but didn’t bother to mention the implication of that to the journolists). Since she and her ilk have for 40 years now simply lumped Gnostic and orthodox texts together in a giant heap as equally authoritative historical sources, to her the (s)crap is momentous.
But only because she’s made that prior move (which has no historical basis, rather arises from the now discredited Bauer thesis).
So a “fourth century” scrap of papyrus that refers to Christ as married, refutes entire gospels that date to the 1st & 2nd century that do not?
My gardener's name is Jesus and he's married.
If it turns out He was married and even had kids, how would it be a negative on His ministry or Divinity? It would not shake my faith in the slightest.
Actually, early heretics were completely willing to accept Christ as completely divine, but they had a lot of trouble with the concept that He could be fully man as well. The divine was thought to be so above mankind that God would never condescend to be a man.
Variations of this gnostic heresy were the predominant alternative to orthodoxy until just before the first Council of Nicea. Then the Arian heresy with its claim that "there was a time when the Son was not" tilted away from the full divinity of Christ. That error was condemned in the Council, although it took quite some time for orthodoxy to completely triumph over Arianism.
“you don’t get to have an endowed chair at Harvard Divinity School if you are stupid.”
Actually, you do. Liberal professors are often incredibly stupid in very simple matters of how we know things, historical evidence etc. They read only the NYTimes. They have a more narrow worldview and more narrow exposure to diverse opinions and ideas than does your average auto mechanic.
I know. I’ve spent 40 years in Academia. I’ve seen more stupid than you’ll ever want to imagine.
It really makes no difference whether Jesus was married or not.
He’s still the Firstborn Son of God, and died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins................
Define your terms, and be honest, if possible!
When Dr. Soundingbrass says that he believes that this fragment is “authentic” he can only TRUTHFULLY mean that he thinks the papyrus is very old, and comes from the period in question. And Professor Tinklingcymbal’s SAYING that this proves anything in regard to Christ’s being married merely illustrates HER perverted mindset.
IMHO, this is just one more titillating (to some) relic, either from the many apochryphal writings, “epistles”, etc., or from some individual from that era who had either looney tunes or perhaps sinister reasons for writing this kind of stuff.
And although the Coptics have a right to imbibe whatever flavor religeous elixer they can stir together; real thinking believers in Jesus Christ, God The Son, Third Person of The Holy Trinity and Savior of the world, are under no obligation to drink any of it!
It just means that he suffered a little more than we thought..........
Jesus said, “There is no marriage in Heaven.”
That’s why they call it ‘Heaven’................
Mea culpa! Second Person of The Holy Trinity. Please forgive my outrageous mistake.
Mea culpa! Second Person of The Holy Trinity. Please forgive my outrageous mistake.
Okay we’re going to have one papyrus fragment be the thing we have to believe over the thousands of other copies and larger fragments of other books?
Please. These artices are done by people who don’t believe anything in the bible at all and only want to shake the faith of others as their goal.
The earliest known copies of The Gospels are not from the 1st and 2nd centuries. They also come from the same time frame............
Try Matt 19 and “eunuchs for the kingdom”
Marriage is not essential to full humanity. There’s even a Jewish tradition of voluntary celibacy for prophets (”schools of the prophets” in the OT). That Jesus was not married is not of no significance. He was married to the Ecclesia, his Bride. Ephesians 5.
Without some people living voluntary celibacy marriage is not fully understood. Without some people being married, voluntary celibacy is not fully understood. The two are interrelated.
If the universal Christian claim that Jesus was unmarried were simply overturned, you’d have 2000 years of Christian belief proved to have been false. If the Church got all that wrong all these years, based on a scrap of papyrus whose owner won’t even reveal where he acquired it, then what else did the Church get wrong all these years?
Your casual willingness to abandon 2000 years of belief is breathtaking.
No problem, that’s not my belief anyway.............
It really makes no real difference whether he was or wasn’t married............
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