Analyses of Jesus' Wife Fragment Finally Published

[One Bad Pig]

I wasn't aware of Mary Magdalene's place in Orthodoxy. Now that's interesting. Do you know how that differs from the Roman Catholics?

Unfortunately, no. The path not taken, and all that. I have, um, a couple hundred books in my "to read" stack[s], and only a handful of the theological works are from the Roman Catholic perspective. Perhaps a Roman Catholic will deign to shed some light?

[Juvenal]

Correct. At the end of the day, we have a 4th-8th/7th-10th century (depending on who you read) non-codex, non-liturgical (non-Gospel) fragment of papyrus with ink on it that mentions Jesus and a wife who is a disciple with no surrounding context. Assuming its not a forgery (there is still real debate among serious scholars on the matter) its late date may indicate Islamic influence on the community who wrote it. We also know that it was probably offered to Professor Karen King at Harvard to examine, because she specializes in historical Christian studies with a feminist and Gnostic bent, but we don't know who gave it to her, or why the fragment was cut the way it is. For the good dirt on all this, Prof. Hurtado, Christian Askeland, and McGrath's blogs are worth checking out. Prof. Tabor has posted on it, but nothing that can't be read elsewhere, likewise with Cargill, Goodacre, and DeConick. Almost all of the relevant scholars in the blogosphere are pointing to Prof. Hurtado's breakdown as the place to go, and also mention Watson's reply to the results (since, as I previously pointed out, he was leading the way in the forgery claim).

Unfortunately, no. The path not taken, and all that. I have, um, a couple hundred books in my "to read" stack[s], and only a handful of the theological works are from the Roman Catholic perspective. Perhaps a Roman Catholic will deign to shed some light?

That.

As ever, Jesse

[robrecht]

... The other is the suggestion of Islamic influence. When I first encountered the Qur'anic depiction of the Father, Son, and Mary as the Christian trinity, I naturally wondered how that came to be. I'd imagine that points to Christian sects in the early 7th century, in or somewhere near the Arabian peninsula, who followed that tradition. Now if the origin of this fragment could be more localized, we would have another piece of the tapestry of the early Christian churches and their diversity on issues involving women. ...

If the text is authentic, and depending upon its interpretation, of which there is very little to go on. Do you think it is authentic?

I'm not aware of any Christian sects that considered Mary was part of the Trinity. Someone please correct me if I'm ignorant on this point. I think it is also likely that Mohammed or other Muslims may have made this assumption based on a limited understanding of early Marian devotion or a proto-Protestant critical interpretation of this devotion.

[OingoBoingo]

Anthony Le Donne, PhD, has some interesting musings on the subject here: http://historicaljesusresearch.blogs...n-and-why.html

[Juvenal]

If the text is authentic, and depending upon its interpretation, of which there is very little to go on. Do you think it is authentic?

Yeah, I think it's probably authentic. The forgery arguments I've seen, even the good ones, aren't convincing, and most of them aren't good, remarkably poor in fact when I look at the literature arguments. It's patched together from GoThom? How does that say anything other than GoThom was its literary source?

Not even the earliest estimates put this fragment before GoThom. Don't we all talk of Q as a common source for the synoptics? If it's patched together from Q, it's a forgery?

That's the carelessness of "I'm 100 percent certain." The other side has upped their game with further analysis of the fragment, and now it's up to the forgery camp to come up with a test to show their case is better or go sulk. It's academics, guys. It's not personal. It's authentic or it's not, and either way, there are questions that need answers.

Surely, the questions are more interesting if it's authentic. We've got yet another Coptic manuscript to go along with the horde of gnostic manuscripts out of the black markets in Cairo; I would not be at all surprised to find this one came from there, too. This includes not just the Gospel of Thomas, but the Gospel of Mary, leading candidate for wife if he was going to have one. We could write a number of believable Jesus stories for those sects from those pieces.

I'm not aware of any Christian sects that considered Mary was part of the Trinity. Someone please correct me if I'm ignorant on this point. I think it is also likely that Mohammed or other Muslims may have made this assumption based on a limited understanding of early Marian devotion or a proto-Protestant critical interpretation of this devotion.

Either Muhammad misunderstood the Christian beliefs he portrayed or there were Christians with those beliefs around him. I've also seen it argued that's a misinterpretation of Muhammad, as he doesn't speak of both the trinity and that triple together, but there are no holy spirit references, and there is Sura 5:116:

And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, "O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, 'Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah ?'" He will say, "Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen.

Was he mistaken, or was he misinformed, or only informed of the beliefs of a splinter community? When there's not enough data for one good answer, many not so good answers fill the void.

I can see Muhammad hearing about this trinity thing, and seeing Marian devotion, and putting those together. But I also remember my very Catholic assistant coming up to me one day many years ago, all excited because she'd heard that Mary was going to be joining the Trinity. I think there was room for a community to spring up around that belief, unmolested by orthodoxies in far away Rome, living in the southern Arabian peninsula.

As ever, Jesse

[robrecht]

Yeah, I think it's probably authentic. The forgery arguments I've seen, even the good ones, aren't convincing, and most of them aren't good, remarkably poor in fact when I look at the literature arguments. It's patched together from GoThom? How does that say anything other than GoThom was its literary source?

Not even the earliest estimates put this fragment before GoThom. Don't we all talk of Q as a common source for the synoptics? If it's patched together from Q, it's a forgery?

That's not a very good analogy. Mt & Lk show verbal agreement, extremely exact in some places, over a substantial range of text. In fact, some even say there is too much agreement in some places for there to be independent use of a common source. This fragment does not show agreement with the gospel of Thomas about Jesus being married.

... But I also remember my very Catholic assistant coming up to me one day many years ago, all excited because she'd heard that Mary was going to be joining the Trinity. ...

Funny! Did you ever find out what she was referring to? Perhaps some talk a while back about co-mediatrix maybe?

I have not engaged in the debate about authenticity, and am not qualified to come up with arguments of my own about this, but I do think there are legitimate, doubts about its authenticity based on the respect I have of some that I know who have put forth their arguments against it.

[Paprika]

I'm no expert, but I don't think King will be able to conclusively show that it is genuine unless she uses carbon dating to date the ink

[robrecht]

I'm no expert, but I don't think King will be able to conclusively show that it is genuine unless she uses carbon dating to date the ink

I have not read the new articles, but I think that was in fact done. No?

[Paprika]

I have not read the new articles, but I think that was in fact done. No?

It wasn't. One does wonder why King hasn't had it done

[Paprika]

Another note: the results of the first carbon dating - which gave a dating from 405 to 209 BC - on papyrus from the fragment was considered unreliable because of possible contaminants, . The second carbon dating, performed about 6 months later, gave a value of 659 to 869 AD, but the highly abbreviated report doesn't address at all how the issues of the first dating were addressed.

So even the dating of the papyrus can't be verified because the full report hasn't been published. If this is true, then I don't know what on earth King is doing..

[Paprika]

I refer now to King's main paper on the fragment: in the section on "Dating the Manuscript and the Question of Forging", she writes (emphases mine):

unless the person who burned the papyrus was exceedingly careful to follow a procedure similar to or related to the processes used by the ancients Moreover, the very early (unreliable?) 14C dating is problematic since it requires hypothesizing either that a scribe already in antiquity acquired a centuries-old papyrus to inscribe or that a forger acquired and inscribed it in modernity; both of these hypotheses have difficulties. Further testing that indicates a date for the GJW papyrus within the seventh to eighth centuries resolves these difficulties.

So basically the ink is forgeable; King acknowledges the possibility but provides no sufficient reason to rule it out. I have also noted in an earlier post that the testing of the ink provides no dating: no termini and no probability.

On the general case for antiquity against modern forgery, she writes that
I'm not able to address the arguments and counter-arguments about Coptic. Her counter-argument that "a combination of bumbling and sophistication seems extremely unlikely" isn't convincing not least because the skill sets for the separate task are different. Additionally, one notes that the "paper trail of modern supporting documents" hasn't been published at all. Finally, it is worth noting that she herself doesn't consider that her stance has been conclusively shown because there hasn't been any "deteminative evidence".

[Paprika]

From the ink study:


This chart compares Raman spectra of the ink of the recto and verson of the Jesus' wife fragment with the Gospel of John Fragment and two references (in blue) made by contemporary combustion of two different materials. The authors note that while "for the manuscripts of this investigation, we did not find spectral features characteristic of any of these well‐known black pigments other than those which clearly belong to carbon black. The spectra illustrated in Fig. 6‐2 are clearly similar to our reference spectra for lamp black and vine black shown in Fig. 6‐3. These spectra are also quite similar to many reported Raman spectra of black features for papyrus and other manuscripts both ancient and modern".

I argue from this that there is no conclusive evidence that the ink cannot be a modern formulation, or a modern attempt to create an ancient formulation. The authors do not rule out these possibilities at all.

[robrecht]

It wasn't. One does wonder why King hasn't had it done

Thanks. I must have read something about the ink study or tests too quickly or with wrong assumptions.

[OingoBoingo]

I don't understand why the fragment continues to be called "ancient" if it dates to approx. the 8th century. What's the cutoff for "ancient"? I thought it was the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Wouldn't a 7th-8th century date place the fragment in the Byzantine or medieval period?

Also, as someone pointed out on Prof. Hurtado's blog, is it coincidence that this news was released just in time for Easter?

[Juvenal]

That's not a very good analogy. Mt & Lk show verbal agreement, extremely exact in some places, over a substantial range of text. In fact, some even say there is too much agreement in some places for there to be independent use of a common source. This fragment does not show agreement with the gospel of Thomas about Jesus being married.

Sorry, but no. You're not reading the argument correctly, and unwinding what you've got here is not part of my fun-filled weekend plans.

Funny! Did you ever find out what she was referring to? Perhaps some talk a while back about co-mediatrix maybe?

No, and nope! She was very specifically talking about making Mary part of the trinity.

I didn't handle it as well as I should have, and ended up apologizing. My immediate reaction was to what looked like an arithmetic fail. "What's this, some new kind of Jackson 5 thing? Gonna have the Trinity plus One? Just shove another Osmond into the group? Trinity means three! Not three plus one! We call that four. Four parts of a trinity doesn't make sense."

I have not engaged in the debate about authenticity, and am not qualified to come up with arguments of my own about this, but I do think there are legitimate, doubts about its authenticity based on the respect I have of some that I know who have put forth their arguments against it.

Now that was fun reading. If I've got this right ... you respect some folks. They think it's a forgery. So there are legitimate doubts. I think that's what you're saying.

There's this, too. If it's authentic, she gets the glory. Some folks naturally dislike that idea, thinking it should have been them instead. But if it's a forgery ... yeah, like that. I read one blog link from this thread that actually went there, questioning why she got the fragment, what made her the person at the receiving end.

I do hope you're not handing out respect to Dr. "100 percent certain." I note he's the one with the concurrent rebuttal. If that's the best they've got, what we're looking at is cranked up volume trying to make up for ratty speakers.

As ever, Jesse