Jesus' Wife

CowRocket

CowRocket

Well-Known Member
I heard about this "new finding" last night and found this article today in the NY Times.


My personal belief is that Jesus' "wife" is the Church and we as the Church are his disciples.

Go forth and discuss....
 
I ran this article in my Pray 15 email this morning. Amazing - a scrap of paper the size of a business card - written almost 200 years after Jesus died - and it is called a "newly discovered gospel."

Back to the scriptures...wait...the scriptures make no mention of Jesus having a wife. No where is Mary Magdalene referred to as a wife nor in relationship with Jesus. Not in the Bible. The Harvard professor is making an erroneous assumption.
 
From what I've read it was dated around 400AD and it has already been called into question by scholars. I don't have time to find the articles. Basically it's someone looking for either their 15 minutes of fame, or free grant money.
 
It's not "newly discovered." This fragment sounds a lot like a scrap from one of the gnostic gospels -- old documents by the eternal enemies of the church, the Gnostics. I forget which one, but I'm pretty sure we talked about this years ago in college.

In reality, however, IF it were found to be 100% accurate, it wouldn't rock my world. All it would imply is that Jesus allowed women to be his disciples. And maybe had sex within the covering of marriage. Oh no.

The Bible doesn't say anything about Jesus having a wife. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen, it just means that if it did, it wasn't deemed relevant enough to publish.

That said, the idea that Jesus was married (say, to Mary Magdalene) is a very old, persistent and extremely loaded concept. The Gnostics used the idea to try to force their cultist ideas on the church. It happens every couple of years that some post-gnostic or other comes up with an attempt to pass the idea under the radar so as to try to re-infect the church with various anti-Christian "ramifications" of the union.

IMHO: Coptics are suddenly big news in the U.S.A. due to the riots in the middle east. "Hey, there's a new (2000 year old) heterogenous branch of the church that nobody (except Christians who study the branches of the church) knows about. It's new and cool!" Suddenly wannabe gnostics are trying to pass their dross off as "real bona fide Coptic doctrine."

News Flash: Coptics are just as Christian as the rest of us. They don't believe Jesus was married.
 
Oh and by the way: Along with the idea that Jesus was married, and that the idea that "it was written out because the disciples didn't share Jesus's egalitarian views and therefore wrote women disciples out of the Bible" comes this retort:

What about the other women in the Bible? Aquilla, Dorcas, Mary, Mary, Martha, Phoebe? Women show up all over the NT. Sometimes they are even portrayed as pillars of the church. True, they have a lot less screen time than, say, Paul or Philip, but then again, so did James, Andrew, Judas Notiscariot, and most of the other male characters. This is largely because we have 1) the Gospels and 2) Dr. Luke's own travelling memoirs to go on.
 
Abba San said:
I ran this article in my Pray 15 email this morning. Amazing - a scrap of paper the size of a business card - written almost 200 years after Jesus died - and it is called a "newly discovered gospel."

Back to the scriptures...wait...the scriptures make no mention of Jesus having a wife. No where is Mary Magdalene referred to as a wife nor in relationship with Jesus. Not in the Bible. The Harvard professor is making an erroneous assumption.
Click to expand...

I haven't read the "news" about it yet, but my first reaction is; "What is the provenance of this 'new discovery' which contradicts 2000 years of Scripture and tradition?" The best evidence comes from Scripture in the fact that in discussing marriage, family and house hold rules, none of the Apostles mention Jesus as an example. They mention other Apostles, but not Jesus? Not likely. These stories didn't start until a couple hundred years after the Crucifixion. One "business card sized piece of papyrus" does not measure up to the vast quantity of manuscripts of the Scriptures.
 
Neirai the Forgiven said:
Oh and by the way: Along with the idea that Jesus was married, and that the idea that "it was written out because the disciples didn't share Jesus's egalitarian views and therefore wrote women disciples out of the Bible" comes this retort:

What about the other women in the Bible? Aquilla, Dorcas, Mary, Mary, Martha, Phoebe? Women show up all over the NT. Sometimes they are even portrayed as pillars of the church. True, they have a lot less screen time than, say, Paul or Philip, but then again, so did James, Andrew, Judas Notiscariot, and most of the other male characters. This is largely because we have 1) the Gospels and 2) Dr. Luke's own travelling memoirs to go on.
Click to expand...

The fact that the women are mentioned in Scripture at all would seem to disprove that. The women are described as having discovered the empty tomb. If the Apostles and church fathers were such misogynists you would think they would have "fixed" that too.
 
I consider Jesus being married as unlikely. As stated here already, someone needs to write a paper for their degree or needs funding. False doctrine was thriving well before this little parchment was written.

You would think we would have something in the scriptures about him having a wife, if he did. Especially at the cross. He had John look after his mom, no mention of anyone else.

I took a New Testament class under Dr Tabor. He is trying to promote a tomb he has been looking into for some time now that he 'thinks' or hopes is where Jesus and his family was buried. Dr Tabor is all excited about the parchment. LOL

There is nothing "new" here.
 
Ah but it's old. That's the kicker. Older is better when it comes to parchment. It has to be true because it's so old (but not the way it's being interpreted).
 
For perspective, 400 years is what it took for King Arthur to go from being some guy mentioned as a good battlefield commander to being the magically endowed Once and Future King of England.

400 years means there's a lot of room for legendary embellishing to happen.

Just sayin'
 
By all that logic then the manuscrpts we have fail too.



Century - Papyri - Uncials
2nd - 2
2nd/3rd - 5 - 1
3rd - 28 - 2
3rd/4th - 8 - 2
 
Well, it turns out that piece of papyrus might not even be that old. It may, in fact, be a modern forgery.

Analysis by Francis Watson, a Greek and Coptic scholar at the University of Durham.

For those who don't have time to read it, or don't want to wade through the Greek and Coptic, he basically argues that this document is a modern patchwork of the (false) Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Matthew, assembled by someone who does not understand the Coptic language. Mr. Watson also argues that the out-of-context phrases are not even intended to be part of a larger document.

On a side note, I have been wanting to learn Coptic. Off to check prices on Coptic grammars on Amazon...
 
Good find. It may not be what God says about the fragment, but it clearly shows that it is NOT what God says about Jesus.

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Actually, Jon Stewart from The Daily Show (stay with me, here) did a pretty good synopsis of this little piece of papyrus. Apparently its only a fragment and Stewart helps us think of ways the statement may have ended. "My wife [end of papyrus], what wife?"

It was pretty good.
 
lol - that's so true. I don't always agree with Jon Stewart - but I almost always enjoy him.
 
Mordos said:
By all that logic then the manuscrpts we have fail too.



Century - Papyri - Uncials
2nd - 2
2nd/3rd - 5 - 1
3rd - 28 - 2
3rd/4th - 8 - 2
Click to expand...

The difference is that the manuscript fragments we have are also supported by additional, older manuscript fragments which all support one another with a great deal of overlap.
 
Well, it looks like the papyrus has officially been deemed a fake. The Harvard Theological Review, which was originally planning to support it, has decided to reject publication of the paper supporting this fragment.


Blog post by Daniel Wallace

Odale: Nice reference to John Stewart. He really does make some great points.


Mordos: Wikipedia is not an accurate reference for currently known New Testament manuscripts. The totals are closer to the following:

1st 1
(This manuscript is newly discovered and will be formally published next year. Here is an interview about it.)

2nd ~10 Papyri
(P52, P90, P98, P104, six more to be published next year)

2nd/3rd 7 Papyri
(P32, P46, P64/67, P66, P77, P103, 0189)

3rd 37 Papyri, 1 Majuscule/Uncial
(P1, P4, P5, P9, P12, P15, P20, P22, P23, P27, P28, P29, P30, P39, P40, P45, P47, P48, P49, P53, P65, P69, P70, P75, P80, P87, P91, P95, P101, P106, P107, P108, P109, P111, P113, P114, P118, GA0220)

3rd/4th 11 Papyri, 3 Majuscules/Uncials
(P13, P16, P18, P37, P38, P72, P78, P92, P100, P102, P115, GA0162, GA0171, GA0312)

Items starting with P are papyri. Items starting with GA are majuscules/uncials.
My primary references were here and here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top