Posted on 09/18/2012 5:05:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at an international meeting of Coptic scholars by Karen L. King, a historian who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here we go again!
Is there a reason they don't give a translation for the whole scrap? Because they can't? Ancient manuscripts are difficult because they don't have punctuation or even spaces between words (or not reliable ones anyway).
This might even be a case of inadvertent (I'm being charitable) Dowdification -- e.g., "Jesus said, 'My wife, if I had one, would be my disciple.'" Or even: "'. . .,' Jesus said. My wife believed and he said, 'She would be my disciple.'"
There's really not enough here for anything . . .
—— There’s really not enough here for anything . . .——
This is so worthless that it doesn’t merit 10 seconds of consideration. But a society so religiously ignorant that it puts Dan Brown on the best-seller list is easily manipulated.
John the Baptist wasn't married, yet clearly had plenty of authority. In any event, Jesus violated many "traditions of men" like that.
On the main subject, it wouldn't be out of character for a gnostic commentator to insist Jesus was married to a physical woman rather than to the Church.
This is ignorant.
Jesus was born in the neighborhood of 1 AD. He died roughly 33 AD. Various early apostles wrote or were responsible for the entire New Testament prior to about 95AD at the latest. They were all Hebrews living in Israel and then emigrating to other regions of the Roman empire, mostly following Paul's missionary endeavors.
This phony claim in the media, phony because of the way it takes advantage of the lack of knowledge of the public, must itself acknowledge that this scrap of writing was about 300-400 years AFTER Jesus' time, and that it was written in Coptic.
And to make the claim "who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery" is out-and-out misrepresentation. Who cares that a scrap of writing 300-400 years AFTER Jesus is actually written by someone 300-400 years AFTER Jesus. It would be similar to finding a comment on the US Constitution, in the year 2250. What would it actually mean that we verified it actually was written in the year 2250? Absolutely nothing in terms of a revision of the US Constitution. It would only have value in terms of what some writer thought about the US Constitution in the year 2250.
So far as "Jesus Wife" and "The Wife being a disciple".
Are they really kidding me? This is probably no more than some 4th century believer alluding to "The Bride of Christ" and "Disciples".
Earth shaking? Hardly. The Bride of Christ is "The Church" and the Church comprises all disciples.
The obfuscation and duplicity of the media and liberal, so-called biblical scholarship is stunningly twisted.
The writer also seems to consider Dan Brown as a participant in a serious "debate" on the subject! ;-)
If you remove family from the formula then the continuity dies.
Some people will insist that we add to the scriptures in order to please them and others will insist that we leave things out, we should do neither one and neither should we try to explain those things we do not understand.
—— The writer also seems to consider Dan Brown as a participant in a serious “debate” on the subject! ;-) ——
LOL!
Probably, this papyrus was written by a Gnostic group. “Biblical scholars” love to wrinkle their eyebrows over whether the Gnostics were the “true” Christians who got edged out by what is orthodox today.
I’m sure the papyrus is genuine enough, in the sense that it really was written by someone in the 4th-5th century, as opposed to someone in the 21st trying to make it look like it was written back then. That still doesn’t mean this papyrus has any true relevance to studying the early history of Christianity, other than to show what a gnostic in Egypt in the 4th century believed.
X, you can’t argue with ignorance.
Nice reply by the way.
(However, there is a particular group who will jump in and say “we told you”, water to wine was at his wedding.)
What are you talking about?
writing women out
women as property
What nonBible have you been reading?
The “church” has often been referred to as the bride of Christ and in this respect, the “church” would be the perfect apostle for Christ through the ages.
You make a great point about the fact that it is written in Coptic, if the early Church had believed that our Lord had an actual wife there would certainly be some earlier writing in Greek. Along with Scripture, there are a multitude of epistles by Fathers of the Church that predate this scrap and NONE of them allude to Christ having been married.
I think that in all likelihood if we had the full document and not a miniscule fragment we would see that the writer was talking about the Church as the bride of Christ. However, we also need to keep in mind that this was written during the time when a great many heresies were emerging and this possibility cannot be discounted (though we would have probably heard of a heresy suggesting that our Lord was married).
Finally, we need to recognize that, IF our Lord had taken a wife, they would have likely had children. This would create the theological question of whether His Divinity would pass to the children AND it would have resulted in a "divine" bloodline that would have certainly figured prominently in history. The reality that these ideas have never been expressed other than in recent works of fantasy ("The DaVinci Code", etc.), indicate that it wasn't an issue because He never married.
This "news" is nothing more than the left's latest attempt to marginalize Christianity.
that’s islam
You might want to review the validity of an argument from silence.
There is absolutely no indication in any of the canonical books of the New Testament that Jesus was married. If He had been, the disciples would have accepted it as normal, so there would be no reason for them to suppress the information. He wasn't married.
if there is no context, you can't rely on it from a scientific standpoint. The forgers in the Middle East have been counterfeiting stuff for 4000 years.
What passes for “scholarship” in liberal theological circles is laughable. It is the “turtle upon turtle” concept.
A liberal idea based on a liberal idea based on a liberal idea back to the first liberal who denied the authenticity of the scriptures.
They are experts in their own ideas and the origin of them.
What do you base that on?
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