Doubts arise over Harvard claim of ‘Jesus’ Wife’ papyrus

Associated Press

ROME

Is a scrap of papyrus suggesting that Jesus had a wife authentic?

Scholars on Wednesday questioned the publicized discovery by a Harvard scholar that a fourth-century fragment of papyrus provided the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus was married.

And experts in the illicit antiquities trade also wondered about the motive of the fragment’s anonymous owner, noting that the document’s value has likely increased amid the publicity of the still-unproven find.

Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the finding Tuesday at an international congress on Coptic studies in Rome. The text, written in Coptic and probably translated from a second-century Greek text, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to “my wife,” whom he identifies as Mary.

King’s paper, and the attention it got in some U.S. newspapers that got advance word about it, was a hot topic of conversation Wednesday.

Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried, although there is no reliable historical evidence to support that, King said. Any evidence pointing to whether Jesus was married or had a female disciple could have ripple effects in debates over the role of women in the church.

Stephen Emmel, a professor of Coptology at the University of Muenster who was on the international advisory panel that reviewed the 2006 discovery of the Gospel of Judas, said the text accurately quotes Jesus as saying “my wife.” But he questioned whether the document was authentic.

“There’s something about this fragment in its appearance and also in the grammar of the Coptic that strikes me as being not completely convincing somehow,” he said.

Another participant, Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg, was more blunt.

“I would say it’s a forgery. The script doesn’t look authentic” when compared with other samples of Coptic papyrus script dated to the fourth century, he said.

King acknowledged Wednesday that questions remain about the fragment, and she welcomed the feedback from her colleagues. She said she planned to subject the document to ink tests to determine if the chemical components match those used in antiquity.

“We still have some work to do, testing the ink and so on and so forth, but what is exciting about this fragment is that it’s the first case we have of Christians claiming that Jesus had a wife,” she said.

She stressed that the text, assuming it’s authentic, doesn’t provide any historical evidence that Jesus was actually married, only that some two centuries after he died, some early Christians believed he had a wife.

Wolf-Peter Funk, a noted Coptic linguist, said there was no way to evaluate the significance of the fragment because it has no context. It’s a partial text and tiny, measuring 1.5 inches by 3 inches, about the size of a small cellphone.

He, too, doubted the authenticity, saying the form of the fragment was “suspicious.”

Ancient papyrus fragments have been frequently cut up by unscrupulous antiquities dealers seeking to make more money.

An anonymous collector brought King the fragment in December 2011, seeking her help in translating and understanding it. In March, she brought it to two papyrologists, who determined it was very likely authentic.

On Tuesday, Harvard Divinity School announced the finding to fanfare and said King’s paper would be published in January’s Harvard Theological Review. Harvard said the fragment most likely came from Egypt, and that its earliest documentation is from the early 1980s indicating that a now-deceased professor in Germany thought it evidence of a possible marriage of Jesus.

Some archaeologists questioned Harvard’s ethics, noting that the fragment has no known provenance, or history of where it’s been.