A note about the Mrs. Christ papyrus fragment

So another feminist opportunist of the Elaine Pagels ilk, whose purpose in life is to make money while making the lives of real scholars and real believers more difficult, is talking about a fragment of papryus which, she claims, states that Jesus had a wife.

Yes, folks, Jesus had a wife. Let’s call her Mrs. Christ. Rather, Ms. Christ. Or maybe Ms. Christ-Magdalen?

The fragment may have been written before the 5th century, it may be Gnostic, it may be from a sermon, and it may be a forgery. No, wait! Two over-paid scholars from Ivy League schools have said it isn’t a forgery and therefore… well… it’s not!

The MSM will treat this curious ancient tid-bit as if it is an established fact: Jesus was married. Based on the HuffPo endorsed version of this now fact, someone at the Fishwrap will conclude, again, that priests should be married! Ms. Christ, moreover, was a also priest, nay rather an apostle! – a bishop! – and, ergo….

The only fact for which less evidence is required is a “plausible accusation” of sexual abuse of a minor made against a priest.

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63 Comments

  1. Pete says:

    Of course Jesus has a wife, but I’ve never heard of the Church being referred to as Mrs. Christ…

  2. Sissy says:

    Pete: I thought the same exact thing. Are they sure the word used isn’t “Bride”? “Mrs. Christ” does have a nice, modern ring to it, though. Snort.

  3. NoTambourines says:

    Looks like a Sharpie on burlap.

  4. Andy Lucy says:

    Odd. Usually they save these things for the Christmas or Easter seasons.

  5. TMKent says:

    I’m so very tired of this made-for-the-Discovery-Channel-archaeology. I’d have been crucified (please excuse the terminology) as an undergrad for jumping to such unsupported conclusions based on such questionable evidence. What is the provenance of this fragment? How was it dated? Nobody seems to care as long as the agenda is served. Reminds me of the days when the Soviets wouldn’t publish Paleolithic studies from Siberia because lives of small societal bands didn’t prove Socialist theory! Then again – I work at the university that harbors the author of “The Jesus Dynasty” :-(

  6. Gail F says:

    I suspect the people who believe this stuff are the same people who believe that silly story about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hayes, despite actual, complete, not-having-to-be-translated letters, etc., from contemporaries who said his brother was a boor who was all too friendly with the female slaves. They just love a good story that shows that a “good” person was actually no one special. We are talking about something that, if it’s not a forgery, was written hundreds of years after the death of Jesus. Centuries more than the time difference between the Revolutionary War and now. And we are supposed to believe that is some sort of accurate statement?

  7. Sissy says:

    I just heard on one morning show that one expert who has looked at it says it appears similar to other known Gnostic texts, which is just what you would expect.

    Gail F, I suspect you are correct about the type of people who will be excited by this. I can hardly wait for my brother to call and crow about this. He thinks the Bible is “all myth”.

  8. From the “evidence” given, we can not assume (in the liberal fantasy world) the gender of the “wife”. How long will it take until they figure that out?

  9. Sissy says:

    “From the “evidence” given, we can not assume (in the liberal fantasy world) the gender of the “wife”.

    Great point, George! Perhaps they were married in Massachusetts.

  10. VexillaRegis says:

    George@Convert Journal: Interesting thought. But my head is spinning.

  11. Giuseppe says:

    Sissy, on NPR this morning, the reporter also wondered about the use of ‘bride’ and spoke of the long history of referring to the church as the ‘bride of Christ’. So I think you are right on the money. In a very balanced and restrained story, NPR also noted that the evidence is overwhelming based on other documents of the era that Christ was unmarried.

  12. Wife? You mean his “partner,” right?

  13. Burke says:

    Seriously, how much weight can a small fragment of papyrus of unestablished provenance, tentatively dated, that has been ripped from it’s original setting (leaving us with no context) bear? If we weren’t living in the kind of world we are, serious scholars would be laughing her out the door … but in the current climate instead they nod their heads, stroke their beards, and say ‘how wise.’ What this really proves is that at the moment when it comes to anything connected to the Christian faith we are in a non-stop ‘silly season.’

  14. LisaP. says:

    Sharpie, that’s a kick. . . .

  15. MPSchneiderLC says:

    I found a new discovery on a sheet hidden in a library that Christ had no wife! We need to procalim it to the world.

    Wait, I am reading that horrendous book that has more and better manuscripts TON BIBLION (the Bible), that couldn’t be worth anything acordign to them.

  16. Bryan Boyle says:

    Gloria F: add to that it’s the same type of people who believe that the ‘DaVinci Code’ is history, too.

    Never let it be said that there will not be continuous attempts made, especially by so-called ‘intellectuals’ to attempt to rewrite history to suit their own agenda. Remember the hubbub a few years ago over the ossuary which supposedly proved that Jesus had siblings or some such?

    The derivative heretical teachings of the Gnostics has survived this long because people are more willing to believe that there is some ‘secret’ that only they can know about which makes them part of an exclusive ‘club’ than the truth which is shared by many.

  17. pseudomodo says:

    This is old news AGAIN!

    This smells like the old Gospel of Thomas being vomited back into academia.

    “Simon Peter says to them: “Let Mary go out from our midst, for women are not worthy of life!” Jesus says: “See, I will draw her so as to make her male so that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who has become male will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”

    Sound familiar?

    This was apparently presented in Rome. “King presented the document at a six-day conference being held at Rome’s La Sapienza University and at the Augustinianum institute of the Pontifical Lateran University. While the Vatican newspaper and Vatican Radio frequently cover such academic conferences, there was no mention of King’s discovery in any Vatican media on Tuesday. That said, her paper was one of nearly 60 delivered Tuesday at the vast conference, which drew 300 academics from around the globe.”

    Heaven forbid that scholars of ancient and biblical documents should examine papyrus fragment from the third century! :)

  18. teomatteo says:

    It is important to place the “my wife” in context. It actually says: “….for example take my wife.. PLEASE take my wife” dadum dume…. (at the Nazareth Open Mike nite).

  19. amsjj1002 says:

    I too was thinking, “Wait, it’s not Christmas or Easter yet!”
    And that bit about “making her male” sounds very painful and surgically-related!

  20. Stvsmith2009 says:

    One would think that an alleged “expert in the history of Christianity” would be “expert” enough to know about the heresy of Gnosticism, which produced several faux “gospels”. I don’t recall who said this, but it seems appropriate: “Some people have too much education for their intelligence”.

  21. Dr. K says:

    I don’t speak the language and this may not be the word “wife” which they are referencing, but if you look closely at the document you’ll notice that some of the words are much darker. Perhaps a few modifications were made to it? Specifically, look at the “tazime” and “nael” on the fourth and fifth lines.

  22. Charles E Flynn says:

    Stop the presses! Jesus was married! Oh no!, by Carl E. Olson, at The Catholic World Report.

  23. Philangelus says:

    If it’s not an outright forgery, bet me this is from the Revelation Of The Apostle Thomas, and the full text says something like, ‘And Jesus said, “You are my Church and were my Bride, but now at the end of ages you are my Wife, and are worthy of being My disciple.”‘

    Oh, context matters…? And we have none…? Convenient.

  24. Speravi says:

    Thanks be to God for dogma, Tradition, and a divinely instituted hierarchically-organized Church!!! This is just one more fruit of Luther’s revolutionary ideas about authority.

  25. Dennis Martin says:

    For StvSmith2009:

    For mainstream academic scholars of the early Christian era, the Gnostic Gospels have exactly the same authority as the orthodox canonical gospels. They have long since abandoned any notion that the Christian Church’s canon has any credibility. Helmut Koester’s (Hahvahd Div School) from the 1970s made this clear–line up all writings of the first three centuries, give them totally equal authority, then see what picture emerges.

    It’s simply the Walther Bauer thesis taken to it’s logical conclusion. Claims to distinguish an orthodox canon and to reject the Gnostic writings as heresy were just “history being written by the victors”–the Mean Old Patriarchal Church battered the poor delightful innocent Gnostics to the margins, so that Mean Old Church’s canon is actually an instrument of eeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiilllllllll power politics. It’s portrait of Jesus (as being unmarried, for instance) merely reflects the eeeeeeevvvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiilllllll patriarchal Church’s hatred of sex and marriage, which won out and (illegitimately) got to write the story.

    Therefore, knowing full well that this scrap probably comes from Gnostic circles in no way diminishes it’s authority for them. If it says Jesus had a wife, well, then that claim is just as true, indeed more true (preferential option for the Poor Persecute Gnostics), as the bullying Patriarchal Church’s insistence that he was unmarried.

    I found it very interesting that the provenance remains a “mystery.” How convenient. Without provenance, a scrap like this is really next to useless–at least that would be the case if it were not capable of sensationalizing.

    And how convenient that it breaks off after “my wife.”

    For those wondering why the Hahvahd PR machine planted this story now rather than waiting for Christmas and Easter, I imagine it has to do with Professor King’s heading off for an international conference at which she will present her case. Best to get it out there, get it’s “star power” launched before it gets torn to shreds for lack of provenance etc. by other scholars. Best to launch it by hawking it to journolists who haven’t the faintest idea how to evaluate its significance.

  26. claiborneinmemphis says:

    @ Dennis Martin:

    Well put.

  27. Stvsmith2009 says:

    Well, I’d rather take the word of men who were willing to die for what they believed and wrote, over the word of an academic looking for fame and fortune.

  28. PostCatholic says:

    I’m actually quite curious in what it says and what it reveals about the community in which it was written and to which it belonged. A fully-developed picture of the beliefs of the Gnostic communities is a good thing for Christian history, correct?

  29. frjim4321 says:

    Even if the document could be proven to be 4th Century and not a forgery is still proves nothing . It could have been a fiction or it could have been propaganda from an early anti-christian source.

  30. PostCatholic says:

    What it proves is the variety of Christian religious beliefs in that time.

    Even Dr. King isn’t claiming that on the basis of this text that Jesus was married: she is claiming she has a document wherein someone believes or, if you prefer, propose for belief the idea that Jesus was married to someone named Mary. There’s a small body of Egyptian Gnostic literature that’s cognate to this claim. King’s dating places this document 150 years or so beyond the death of Jesus, by which time numerous Christian belief outside of the mainstream tradition had sprung up. It’s hardly like anyone found the Jesus Christ – Mary Magdalen marriage license in the back office of the Nazareth town clerk.

    In any event, don’t you want to know more about early Christian beliefs and scriptures, even when they’re heterodox?

  31. rcg says:

    For ages scholars claimed there was evidence Christ ever existed, now they are finding marriage certificates and caskets. What are the odds that, as we get further and further from His earthly life in time, that we begin stumbling over hoards of His personal effects on Antiques Roadshow?

  32. Johnno says:

    This is an outrage!

    I demand we burn down an embassy or two in retaliation!

  33. dep says:

    For what it’s worth, the provenance of this scrap of something is so suspect that even the Associated Press has had to publish a piece in which experts say it’s a fake:

    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/harvard-claim-jesus-wife-papyrus-scrutinized

  34. Sissy says:

    PostCatholic said: “In any event, don’t you want to know more about early Christian beliefs and scriptures, even when they’re heterodox?”

    Actually, no, just speaking for myself. There is so much truth and authentic history that I have yet to learn from the Catholic faith, I don’t really have time or storage space in my brain for falsehoods. But that’s just me.

  35. iowapapist says:

    Folks:
    Before we go postal on the woman who presented the papyrus in Rome, consider the following quotes which appeared on the BBC website:
    “Ms King said the script was not proof of Jesus’s marital status.” also
    “It is not evidence, for us, historically, that Jesus had a wife,” she said.
    Perhaps Ms. King is just Divinity nerd who is excited by finding a scrap of papyrus from 1700 years ago which contains erroneous information. In reading the article, I came to the conclusion that she was impressed by it’s authenticity (regarding the time period) and the fact that Christians of that time period may have assumed Jesus was married.

  36. The Masked Chicken says:

    “They said their study of the papyrus, the handwriting and how the ink was chemically absorbed shows it is highly probable it’s an ancient text, King said.”

    For anyone interested in looking at the original language and the translation, here is a link to King’s page at Harvard:

    http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife

    The translated text reads:

    Line:
    1)”Not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe]…”
    2)The disciples said to Jesus, “…[
    3)deny. Mary is worthy of it…[King adds in footnote, “or n[ot]worthy of it”]
    4)…Jesus said to them, “My wife…[
    5)…she will be able to be my disciple..[
    6)Let wicked people swell up…
    7)As for me, I dwell with her in order to.[
    8)an image[

    Now, I am not a papyrologist, but I have taken doctoral-level courses in paleography. This seems like slim to none evidence that Jesus had a flesh and blood wife, since the incomplete line 4 could read, “My wife, my bride, my Church…,” for instance or even, “My wife is a harlot, as it says in Scripture…” [see, for instance, Job 31 or Hosea 1, for instances where God compares Isreal to a harlot]. Also, it is clear that the first Mary refers to the Blessed Virgin and not Mary Magdaline, unless it were to be believed that marriage gives life to the husband. The referent of “she” will be my disciple might be the Church after the Resurrection.

    So, I propose the following reading:

    1)”Not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe] in this world…”
    2)The disciples said to Jesus, “…[We, are in sin. We are not worthy of life everlasting. This we cannot…
    3)deny. [but]Mary is worthy of it…[King adds in footnote, “or n[ot]worthy of it”]
    4)…Jesus said to them, “My wife…[Isreal, is a harlot, but when I am raised up…
    5)…she will be able to be my disciple..[
    6)Let wicked people swell up…[against me…]
    7)As for me, I dwell with her [Isreal] in order to.[save her from her sins].
    8)When she is cleansed, she will become an image[of me]

    See, two can play at this game. What a horrible bit of reportage. Even King states she has not idea exactly what the text means, but they who want to see, see what they want to see. What a jumping to conclusions the Marriage camp makes. As for the ink in the papyrus, while I am not an expert in ink, I am arguably one of the top experts in grass wood science in the world and I have no idea what King means when she talks about how the ink was absorbed. Unless there is a lignin-specific ink/chemical reaction of which I am unaware, pretty much all ink is absorbed in the cellulose matrix and dries. This process takes only, at most, a few days, unless oil-based inks are used, in which case drying can take longer, but not years and there could be interaction with the inter-matrix lignin with the oils, but since it is near impossible to do detailed analysis of lignin, especially on a dried sample exposed to the elements, determining any such interaction would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and a neutron reactor.

    All-in-all, I’m not impressed, especially since, as people have been yelling at the top of their lungs, there might have been heavy Gnostic influence to the text.

    Oh, also, why the heck didn’t King do radiocarbon dating? Papyrus was meant for this and we can do dating with milligram samples.

    Not impressed. They got me out of bed for this? It is an interesting find for historical purposes (although it is a very small sample), but I see no clear smoking gun that Jesus was married. Indeed, the gun is in pieces and the bullets are missing.

    The Chicken

    [In grad school I played this game with fragments of Menander! With a man-hating feminist prof! Brought back memories.]

  37. Luke Whittaker says:

    Father Balthasar once wrote: “After all that has been said, it can no longer be doubted that a true encounter between Catholic thought and modern thought is a strict requirement for the former, and that it must exercise its art of reduction and of the clarifying transposition on modern thought no less than on every other kind of thought. But it cannot be denied that special difficulties are opposed on both sides to this encounter, and that these repeatedly depress the sincere will to engage in the encounter and to perform the task satisfactorily.”

    Which seems to leave us with a: “Yeah…sure” in situations like these.

  38. Finarfin says:

    How do we even know that it is THE Jesus? I mean, sometimes people have the same name. Scripture records many different Marys’, for instance. From what The Masked Chicken reports, there is so little recorded on this piece of scrap paper that it could mean almost anything, seems to me. And I am whole-heartedly with those who are surprised that this “discovery” wasn’t saved for Christmas or Easter.

  39. Gaetano says:

    NPR had very balanced coverage on the issue. They should be commended for it.

    Dr. King has herself has said that the text (assuming it’s authentic), doesn’t provide any historical evidence that Jesus was actually married, but only demonstrates that some two centuries after he died, some early Christians believed he had a wife.

    Of course, the MSM has no interest in such subtleties so “Jesus had a wife” is the headline du jour.

  40. Archicantor says:

    Headline notwithstanding (and no one would have read it otherwise), this story was very responsibly reported in the Toronto Globe & Mail, where it was made clear that the fragment has no bearing on the marital status of the historical Jesus (here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/papyrus-fragment-revives-the-question-of-christs-marital-status/article4552577/). I quote:

    She repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said. But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.

    It’s hard to get much more “fair and balanced” than that. But then, I’m just another overpaid professor.

  41. Scott W. says:

    Even if the document could be proven to be 4th Century and not a forgery is still proves nothing . It could have been a fiction or it could have been propaganda from an early anti-christian source.

    I will raise a glass to you frjim. Well said.

  42. Southern Catholic says:

    Chicken,

    That was quite the informative read. Perhaps you should be the one writing the articles covering this.

  43. Philangelus says:

    Masked Chicken, you rock.

    Also, I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything like this in a comment before:
    while I am not an expert in ink, I am arguably one of the top experts in grass wood science in the world
    You win at Teh Interwebz.

  44. Supertradmum says:

    A true scientist or archaeologist or paleontologist, etc. cannot have an agenda.

  45. The Masked Chicken says:

    Even if Mary refers to Mary Magdalene, the papyrus could still say that Mary is worthy [of Heaven] because she chose the better part. There doesn’t have to be any romantic connection between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

    You know how some fans root for things like Scully and Mulder or Castle and Beckett to get together? This is so like ‘shipper romance literature on the part of some scholars :)

    The Chicken

  46. aviva meriam says:

    Masked Chicken and Supertradmum, both of you rock….

    A better question (given the dubious nature of the document) is WHY are these “scholars” incapable of leaving their agenda’s behind and engaging in “shipper romance literature”?

  47. Sissy says:

    “Masked Chicken and Supertradmum, both of you rock….”

    Seconded!

    “A better question (given the dubious nature of the document) is WHY are these “scholars” incapable of leaving their agenda’s behind and engaging in “shipper romance literature”?”

    Some of these people are only “scholars” so far as the media is concerned. I can’t tell you how many History channel programs I’ve seen featuring the scholarly stylings of John Dominic Crossan.

    Some actual scholars want to be famous and write best-selling books (so they can be featured on the History channel. Nothing like a sensational “find” to get your name in the papers.

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  49. dawneden says:

    The only fact for which less evidence is required is a “plausible accusation” of sexual abuse of a minor made against a priest.

    Father, given that you are a pastor of souls, and that you devote so much of your priesthood to helping other pastors of souls, might it not be wise, before making such a comment, of how it might be received by someone who has genuinely been abused (whether by a priest or by someone outside the clergy)? Is it really necessary to make such a comment when victims are going to see it as a cruel cheap shot directed at them?

  50. Suburbanbanshee says:

    For those who’d like to follow the scholar side of the story, Paleojudaica is a very good newsblog with a very good roundup of scholar early reactions. There’s a lot of scholarly skepticism, all respecting King’s honesty but doubtful about the papyrus, text, reading, age, etc.

    I also like the Masked Chicken’s comments!

  51. fvhale says:

    Kudos to Masked Chicken.

    I also have spent time studying (Greek) papyrus manuscript fragments, paleography, etc., and was not impressed at the media circus over this “fragment” which is slightly less conclusive than a tattered cocktail napkin recovered from a landfill.

    The website at Harvard Divinity School cited by Masked Chicken also has a “Q&A” section below the images, transcription and translation. The first Q is: “1. Does the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife prove that Jesus was married?” The A begins: “No, this fragment does not provide evidence that Jesus was married. The comparatively late date of this Coptic papyrus (a fourth century CE copy of a gospel probably written in Greek in the second half of the second century) argues against its value as evidence for the life of the historical Jesus….”

    But all this dusty paleography and textual study is not nearly as exciting as “raising the question” of a married Jesus, and then the question of a married clergy (as if it had never been raised before), and then women’s ordination.

    For example, “Patrick T. Reardon…a member of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council of the Archdiocese of Chicago” wrote in the Opinion section of the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Sep 20, 2012:


    “That’s what’s exciting about the news. If we come to recognize more clearly that it really makes no difference whether Jesus had a wife or not, why should it make a difference for those who follow in his footsteps as priests today in the Catholic Church?

    Most other Christian faiths have acknowledged this, permitting their clergy to marry. Why not Catholic priests as well?

    Although Catholic leaders have been requiring celibacy since around 300 A.D., the Vatican has permitted married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism to serve as pastors and remain married. And, in 1993, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that celibacy “doesn’t belong to the essence of priesthood.”

    So, maybe, the papyrus will spark enough discussion and thought to cause a shift in this church policy. And perhaps in another one as well.

    In addition to the words “my wife,” the tiny papyrus scrap also has the clause, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

    Is this a reference to women as priests? Talk about exciting.”

    And THAT is why there is so much excitement about this obscure fragment. End of celibacy. Married clergy. Ordination of women. It is all supported on that tattered cocktail napkin, you see.

  52. Patruus says:

    Prof. Juan Cole of Umich has just posted an interesting article which sets the issue of Jesus’ wife in a very broad perspective –

    http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/the-gospel-of-jesus-wife-and-sacred-history-from-judaism-to-islam.html

  53. Peter in Canberra says:

    re the papyrus – yes, not much to build an edifice from

    nothing like the archeology of having a pot shard and being able to say what the whole pot looked like, as with one pot one can then map any pot shard to see if it conforms to the whole

    re the comparison to abuse accusations, sadly recent history has too many corroborating examples of correlation between accusations and facts.

  54. JonPatrick says:

    @dawneden, I did not read the statement you quoted as aimed at victims that accuse a priest, but at the press due to the way this issue has been handled by them, where everyone accused is treated as guilty until proven innocent, a fact used by the cottage industry that has grown up of lawyers trolling for potential victims in order to initiate lawsuits aimed at the perceived deep pockets of the Church (pockets that are filled by the donations of hard working parishioners).

  55. aquinas138 says:

    I studied Coptic as part of my graduate studies, and it definitely says “wife,” not “bride” (the relevant passage is in the middle of the 4th line: peje IC nau ta-hime [said Jesus to them: my-wife]. But so what, ultimately? This is interesting in and of itself, but it does not bring forth any information we didn’t already have. Some marginal group of Christians, perhaps of the “Gnostic” variety, believed Jesus had a wife? Didn’t we already know that? And given the tenor of Gnostic or Manichaean writings, “my wife” could mean almost anything, from an actual flesh-and-blood wife to archons floating in the sky to the moon itself.

  56. irishgirl says:

    I heard about this on [guess where] NPR yesterday.
    I get so disgusted with so-called ‘scholars’ [with intellectual cholesterol in their brains] and their hare-brained ‘theories’.
    ‘Some people have too much education for their intelligence’. Right on, Stvsmith2009!
    Have you ever noticed that it’s almost always a woman who comes out with these things?
    Masked Chicken, you do rock! No wonder Father Z gave you a gold star!

  57. dominic1955 says:

    The problem here isn’t really with the scholar looking at the piece of papyrus (although they can be just as bad, i.e. Elaine Pagels), its with journalists and others who try to sensationalize these kinds of things to make a buck. Then, we have the poor dolts who let headline soundbites become the primary molders of their worldview. A little bit of sensationalism and sticking-it-to-the-Man-ism (or in this case, orthodox Christian doctrine) mixed with the prerequisite scientism to make it properly infallible mixed with fallen mankind’s tendency to justify their sinfulness and errors and you have your very own magisterium. An Oracle who’s vague pronouncements demand the kind of unthinking adherence that only the Roman Magisterium of the Black Legend could muster.

    This kind of discovery should garner a limited scholarly interest, at best. Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.

  58. Michael_Thoma says:

    So.. anyone catch the riots in Malta, Europe, South India, Russia, Latin America, Ordinariate Lands, and the Vatican?

    .. me neither.

  59. Torpedo1 says:

    Over at getreligion.org, there is a great article of media treatment of this topic. Most outlets did a good job of balancing this coverage. Go over and check it out. My fears, that it would become this big explosive thing, were put quickly to rest.

  60. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    aquinas138: so the Coptic ‘wife’ word is, on the one hand, very specific (in contrast, say, with Septuagint use of ‘adelphos’ where Sts. Abraham and Lot can be called ‘brothers’), and on the other hand so figurative in its recorded Coptic (Gnostic) use, that one could not predict its actual reference in context from this fragment?

    Dr. King seems ready to assume a second-century Greek source. But does second-c. Greek have a specific ‘wife’ word? Doesn’t it use ‘gyne’ – which can mean ‘woman’ as easily as ‘wife’, depending on the context? And how does second-c. Greek use ‘nymphe’, which in earlier Greek can mean, not only ‘bride’, but also both ‘young married woman’ and ‘marriagable young woman’?

    Revelation 21:2 quotes the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 61:10, using ‘nymphen’, but verse 9 has the construction ‘ten nymphen ten gynaika’, combining the ‘bride (etc.)’ and ‘wife (etc.)’ words. Might the papyrus (or its putative Greek original) not transpose while quoting from verse nine?

    PostCatholic says, ” What it proves is the variety of Christian religious beliefs in that time. ” But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean ‘proving’ in the same way that St. Irenaeus does, so extensively, with such care, in his second-c. books ‘Against Heresies’ – i.e., that there were many and varied heretics (etc.) around variously claiming to be (the only, most faithful, true) Christians? But that they could, and correctly should, be distinguished from those believing – in clear continuity from the apostles – the Faith once received?

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  62. VexillaRegis says:

    And I can’t spell today either – alleged, gossshhh

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