Another big “story” in the news, saying that a big shot Harvard professor has found proof that Jesus was married.
And if you believe that one, here is a copy of an ancient papyrus that I’d like to sell to you:
this one is from the ancient book of LOLCATBIBLEexodux 32
What? There was no LOLCatbible in ancient Israel? Who wudda thot?
So let me be a bit skeptical about headlines stories about a tiny piece of papyrus that was discovered who knows where and given to a feminist Harvard professor who is trying to rewrite the history of Christianity using feminist theory. She was so delighted in finding an ancient paper that agreed with her theories that she only bothered to ask two experts to authenticate it.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Most Catholics would agree with the the Curt Jester blog, who quips:
I am shocked by the story of the 4th century papyrus which refers to Jesus’ wife. Shocked I tell you.  Shocked that the story wasn’t released just before Christmas or Easter.
Oh well I guess this gives the History Channel some lead time for a new documentary for Christmas
It is always annoying when the press decides a questionable fragment of papyrus from the 4th century mean we can throw away 2000 years of Christian belief without noticing the late date of the purported fragment would put it into the beliefs of a 4th century gnostic cults. If it is written down, it must be true, right?
OR, as the CurtJester says, imagine if an archaeologist from 3000 AD finds a fragment from the book “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter”…
Or, to take another Egyptian example: Guess what: RamsesII lied about winning the battle of Kardesh. He has his version of the battle carved all over Egypt, and until the Hittite diplomatic records were found and deciphered, most scholars believed this braggart was telling the truth too.
As usual, after the lie story is trumpeted all over the world, some news stories are pointing out the problem: that a lot of scholars think the whole thing is a forgery.
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, …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 in an interview on the sidelines of the conference…
Another participant at the congress, 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 to other samples of Coptic papyrus script dated to the 4th century, he said.
But Professor King, who had two “experts” tell her it looked like the real thing, isn’t fazed when a couple of experienced experts point out a couple of minor problems:
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.
Huh? A major “breakthrough” and no one bothered to even test if the writer used modern ink? (Important because often forgers use old paper for their forgeries, and the scrap of papyrus has a lot of blotchy writing).
Reality check.
There is no reason that Christians should care if Jesus was single or married, from a theological point of view.
But what is going on is a tendency in academia to make yourself a reputation by bashing Catholic dogma. Heck, if we can prove not all Christians followed the Catholic dogma in the days of early Christianity (something that the writers of the books of Paul and John complained about in the New Testament, and Irenaeus noted in the early second century) we can prove those papists were wrong (or if you are Dan Brown, you can spin it into a conspiracy to take over the world).
Where does truth fit into this? Well, first you have to put it into context.
What is truth?
I tend to ignore a lot of the PC bible theories like the Jesus seminar, because their theories might make sense with an elite group, but Jesus was a working man who preached to ordinary folks.
After living among ordinary folks in three continents, the gospels read true to life.
Peter was a braggart who ran away. Judas was taking gifts bribes from those wanting to see Jesus, and probably skimming the purse. Jesus didn’t beat the merchants in the Temple for selling things, but for cheating the poor and paying kickbacks to certain officials. And, after exposing their fraud, some of those on-the-take got him arrested and eliminated by the authorities to shut him up.
Heh. Sounds like the Philippines. Except that here, the favorite way to eliminate whistleblowers is a drive-by shooting from a motorcycle.
Even the “miracles” are stuff we see every day. As a doc, I know most of them are coincidence, or placebo effect, or misdiagnosis, but never mind: the folks in the stories act just like folks would act here, or in the small African villages where I worked.
This doesn’t mean that the gospels prove Jesus is God, (that takes the gift of faith) but it does suggest that they were written by someone familiar with village life, not a highfalutin philosopher or monk or the second century equivalent of a university professor who thought religion was about secret formulas and rituals to help you get spiritual power (which is what gnosticism is about, once you get past the hyperbole).
Which is why, when you read the gnostic gospels, you don’t get the feeling of ordinariness.
So Jesus had a wife? No theological problem.
But why release the story as the truth, and start filming the TV special after only two “experts” confirm your theory?
again, from the SFGate story:
Some archaeologists were quick to question Harvard’s ethics, noting that the fragment has no known provenance, or history of where it’s been, and that its current owner may have a financial interest in the publicity being generated about it.
King has said the owner wants to sell his collection to Harvard.
why am I not surprised.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines.
6 users commented in " Skepticism about the Bible? I Haz That "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackExcellent writing. A couple more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit together thanks to you.
Thanks! I’ve been looking for more info on this very subject. I was thinking the same, “So Jesus had a wife? No theological problem.” This hole story had a bad stench of rotting Rats. Please keep this subject updated.
VERY good indeed.
The New Testament is silent on the matter concerning if Jesus was ever married or not. Many conflicting suppositions exist as to what Jesus meant by “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:11) This statement is not sufficent evidence to say that Jesus was never married becasue it is not known if Jesus spoke these words in reference to his own life or to his followers. Simply put, the stories contained in the New Testament are more concerned with the ethical and moral teachings of Jesus and not the facts about his own personal life. Speculations about the life of Jesus will continue forever so why should his followers be so concerned about a credit card scrap of Egyptian paprus? Personal faith in Jesus, as I understand it, is not about adherence to long held church traditions concerning his marital status. Protestants and Catholics have long disagreed about the facts of Jesus’ personal life including if he had real brothers and sisters or not. I have to ask myself this rhetorical question on this matter: Why would it matter if Jesus was married or single to my faith in Jesus and what he taught?
Joseph, your understanding of Christianity as personal faith and not joining a church implies the idea of individual choice. This is a Protestant concept that is a post enlightenment idea: that it’s me and God, i.e. personal salvation, and I can decide what parts of the Bible I want to believe.
Yet Jesus also stressed the communal aspects of faith, and his followers founded churches (assemblies is the Greek word) which are described in Acts and by the early church fathers.
In third world countries, one does not define oneself as an individual but as part of a family, and by extension part of a community or clan that takes care of one another.
A New Testament example is when Cornelius joined the church, his entire household did too. True, some who joined the church did so as individuals, especially women, which caused family disruption, but even then often they were converted by another in their household, usually a slave or tutor who was Christian. Jesus fortold this would cause trouble too, but as Paul pointed out, staying inside the family would lead to the entire family joining the church.
True, church worship often back then was in the home, not a building, but I suspect it was more like the forbidden house churches of modern China or the religious services in modern Saudi, where churches are forbidden, not the individual Bible reader you imply is the Christian.
In Jesus’ time, eunuchs were common in Asian courts: They were made eunuchs so that they could serve the government without trying to become king or steal stuff for their family, because they had no family. (Another problem common in the third world).
Hiring a eunuch meant he would be workaholic for you. So both Jesus and Paul pointed out that leaving family to serve God meant being a workaholic for God, not a disdain of sex per se.
Finally, Catholics say Jesus’ “Brothers” were cousins, and Orthodox say they were older half siblings by Joseph’s first wife. The claim that Mary was a virgin is ancient and was universal until the Protestants decided to diss Catholics and make fun of Mary.
Indeed, as anyone in African or Asian families could tell you, when Jesus’ brothers tried to stop him preaching, in most cultures younger siblings would never do this. The implication of the story was that they were older brothers, since in absence of a father, the oldest brother is head of the family and is obeyed by his younger siblings.
So there is no theological problem with the text, which if written would have been written a couple hundred years later by a heretical sect.
But the MSM is using it to ridicule Catholics and the idea that Christianity might be “true”, i.e. have a basis in fact, not a nice myth or legend, while painting the church as evil for trying to keep strange new ideas out of the church’s beliefs.
Are these the same two guys who certified BHO’s birth certificate?
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