Karen King’s laptop died somewhere over the Atlantic, on the flight from Boston to Rome. The mechanical failure left her in a lurch without the notes and photos she’d prepared. She apologized to the room. A talk without the appropriate visual reference was frowned upon in this world – especially when focused on objects of such archeological and religious significance.
The audience of scholars had gathered not for the session’s rather benign title, so much as its presenter’s resume. When King spoke, people in this world listened – even in the rare case in which no visual cue exists. The newly promoted Harvard Hollis Professor of Divinity delivered a talk to that gripped the room, owing to a recent discovery which she had given the suitably sensationalistic name, “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.”
It was a world-changing discovery that had initially been flagged by the school’s spam filter, dumped into a folder labelled “suspect” along with the countless unhelpful messages she received on a frequent basis. Being one of the world’s prominent biblical scholars attracts a very specific form of following. Media properties like The da Vinci Code brought their own brand of helpful outsiders offering to unlock 2,000-year-old secrets.
Another fan suggested an even more direct line into the life of Jesus. “Some woman offered me ‘True facts about Mary Magdalene,’” King noted, years later, “because, she told me, ‘I am Mary Magdalene.’ ”
Most messages remained in “Suspect,” where they belonged. The occasional email would, however, graduate to inbox status. “Coptic gnostic gospels in my collection” managed the feat, in part due its seemingly credible subject line. The sender identified himself a collector without the scholarly learnings to identify an object that had come into his collection.
“Unfortunately, I don’t read Coptic,” he wrote King. He had, however, sought out a translation that suggested it offered “a gnostic gospel, in which Jesus and a disciple had an argument about Mary.” But it was only a fragment. When King expressed interest in the objects, he sent a dozen photos showcasing the discovery.
The centerpiece was a tiny piece of papyrus, measuring 1.5 x 3 inches. It was ripped on all sides, showcasing eight Coptic sentence fragments,
not to me. My mother gave me life…
The disciples said to Jesus, …
…deny. Mary is worthy of it…
… Jesus said to them, My wife…
…she is able to be my disciple…
…As for me, I dwell with her in order to…
…an image…
It was “peje Iēsous nau ta-hime” -- “Jesus said to them, My wife” – that immediately jumped out to the biblical scholar. The fragment ran counter to centuries of prevailing wisdom. The surrounding text appeared to imply that Jesus was not only married, he had married Mary Magdalene, a follower whom late-sixth century church leadership had pegged as a prostitute.
King wrote the fragments off as forgery and told the collector she wasn’t interested. He responded with a plea, noting that a potential buyer had offered an unusually large sum for the pieces, “One situation I want to avoid is a situation whereby this fragment disappears in some archive or private collection for good, if it really is [w]hat we think it is,” he explained. “Before letting this happen I would like to either donate it to a reputable manuscript collection or wait at least until it is published, before I sell it.”
Four months after rejecting the offer, King reversed course. She wrote the collector,
If authentic, the fragment is of important historical value, as well as public interest. As you suggest, publication would ensure that it not be lost into the oblivion of a private archive. I would also be happy to intervene for you with the Harvard University Library collection, where the fragment would be well taken care of, and join one of the ancient fragments of The Gospel of Thomas among other important works.
The experts she forwarded the object to were impressed. The work was, they believed, too poorly written to be a modern work. It bore none of the telltale signs of a modern forger creating a product that looked too good to be authentic.
King’s presentation of the piece caused immediate sensation, due, in no small part, to the headline-ready title, “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” She told The Boston Globe she believed the object was fourth century Egyptian papyrus, torn from the pages of a codex. The scholar again offered caution, but it was focused in an altogether different direction. “It’s not saying we’ve got the smoking gun that Jesus is married,” she told the paper.
It does, however, shed some doubt of long held beliefs about his celibacy. She noted in a statement to Harvard’s news department,
From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better to marry or to be celibate, but it was over a century after Jesus’ death before they began using Jesus’s marital status to support their different positions. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married, but now another newly discovered writing, The Gospel of Philip, shows that some Christians claimed Jesus was married, probably already in the late second century.
Roger Bagnall, who initially helped authenticate the piece, added, “It helps to remind us that practically everything that later generations told about Jesus was put together and edited by somebody well after his death, and represents the view of Jesus that they were trying to get across.”
Another person involved in the process put things even more bluntly, “It would be impossible to forge.”
At the time of publication, further tests were needed to determine the piece’s authenticity. Chemical testing would be used, as carbon dating would almost certainly destroy the piece. Results from testing would be published by The Harvard Theological Review early the following year. “This is not a career maker,” said King told The Globe. “If it’s a forgery, it’s a career breaker.”
Subsequent testing pointed to a probable forgery. Signs suggested modern carbon-based inks applied to medieval papyrus. Four years after the initial stories, an investigation by The Atlantic shed some light on the anonymous collector. He owned several websites, including the domain gospelofjesuswife.com and a cuckoldry porn site featuring his wife that noted, “I am college-educated with a technical MA-degree form [sic] a major university, and an associate degree in arts. I speak three languages fluently and read two old languages.”
It was precisely that resume that brought the piece’s authenticity into question. He had failed to tell King that he had attended the at Free University’s Egyptology institute and studied the Coptic language. His wife, meanwhile, had published books describing her ability to communicate with God and the Archangel Michael.
King called the piece “very helpful,” and told its writer that the investigation, “tips the balance towards forgery.”
Sources:
Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife by Ariel Sabar
Historians Find Hints That Jesus Was Married https://c.o0bg.com/metro/2012/09/18/harvard-professor-identifies-scrap-papyrus-suggesting-some-early-christians-believed-jesus-was-married/VzqcRBAfiDRVFL9nWt4iTN/story.html
Karen King Responds to ‘The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife’ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/karen-king-responds-to-the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/487484/
A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html
The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’ Wife https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/485573/