ITB - A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife -- The New York Times

[bsteadman]

A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife

New York Times
Laurie Goodstein
9/18/2012

Excerpt:

"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 the International Congress of Coptic Studies 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."
..........................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us...esus-wife.html

[bsteadman]

Jesus did have a Wife

Lame Cherry
9/18/2012

Excerpt:

"To save you my children some uneasiness in that idiot story emblazened that "Jesus had a wife" from Coptic writings around 400 AD, let me just inform you that Jesus did have a wife, does have a wife, and YOU ARE THE WIFE, as the Old and New Testament is Old an New Covenant, and Covenant means a marriage contract, and it was why Jesus had to die for every person's sins, as it is only death do us part in marriage contracts, so he could redeem His wife.

Here is the first snore fest in this historian, and is why I hate historians as much as child molesters for the raping they do of juvenile minds across uninformed societies.

Here is thee only quotes worth having on here as they are Biblical proving exactly what was stated above in Jesus, the Father, the Holy Ghost, Angels and knowing Christians all refer to the Church as Jesus Wife.

Revelation 19:7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.

Revelation 21:9 And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.

......................................

View the complete post at:

http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2012/...have-wife.html

[bsteadman]

'Jesus wife' papyrus blasted as 'forgery'

Experts weigh in on fragment saying Christ was married

WND
Joe Kovacs
9/19/2012

Excerpt:

"It’s not only Barack Obama’s birth certificate that is thought by many to be a forgery.

A papyrus fragment suggesting Jesus Christ of Nazareth was actually married is now being labeled by some experts as fraudulent as well.

“I would say it’s a forgery,” Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg, told the Associated Press while attending an international congress on Coptic studies in Rome.

“The script doesn’t look authentic” when compared to other samples of Coptic papyrus script dated to the 4th century, he said.

Another expert questioning the fragment’s authenticity is Stephen Emmel, a professor of Coptology at the University of Muenster who reviewed the 2006 discovery of the Gospel of Judas.

“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.

The papyrus made headlines across the world on Tuesday, including coverage by the New York Times that was linked by WND and the Drudge Report.

The papyrus reportedly contains the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’”

The finding is being trumpeted by Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School.

“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” King told the Times. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”

The faded papyrus fragment is only 1.5 inches by 3 inches, likened to the size of a business card or small cellphone.

It has eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass.

Right under mention of Jesus having a wife, another clause reportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

King admitted Wednesday that answers still need to be found concerning the fragment, and she’s welcoming help from professional colleagues. She’s now looking to subject the document to ink tests to find out if its 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 told AP.

The Bible itself never even hints Jesus was married, and King says the papyrus fragment, even if it’s determined to be authentic, does not provide evidence Jesus was married, but merely that hundreds of years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, some Christians believed He had a wife.

Wolf-Peter Funk, a Coptic linguist, also doubts the authenticity, calling its form “suspicious.”

He told AP there’s no way to evaluate the significance of the fragment because it has no context.

“There are thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things,” said Funk, co-director of a project editing the Nag Hammadi Coptic library at Laval University in Quebec. “It can be anything.”

Part of the mystery of the fragment is that no one seems to be sure of its origin and provenance, a history of where it has been. Plus, its owner has asked to remain anonymous.

Harvard Divinity School says the fragment most likely came from Egypt, and its earliest documentation is from the early 1980s indicating that a now-deceased professor in Germany thought it evidence that Jesus could have been married.

Hany Sadak, director general of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, said Egypt’s antiquities authorities had no idea of the existence of the fragment until it hit news reports this week.

“I personally think, as a researcher, that the paper is not authentic because it was, if it had been in Egypt before, we would have known of it and we would have heard of it before it left Egypt,” he told AP."
............................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/jesus-wif...ed-as-forgery/