Monday, June 23, 2014

That John fragment and the GJW again

ALIN SUCIU: Guest Post: Stephen Emmel – The Codicology of the New Coptic (Lycopolitan) Gospel of John Fragment (and Its Relevance for Assessing the Genuineness of the Recently Published Coptic “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” Fragment).
Thus the reconstructed John manuscript is either an extraordinarily tall and narrow single-column codex, or it is a short and even more extraordinarily wide two-column codex. If its existence be accepted as a fact, it would appear to deserve to be acknowledged as the tallest (or widest) papyrus codex yet known. Among extant papyrus codices written in Coptic in particular, this hypothetical John codex would stand out as even more extraordinary.
Hey, we won the lottery again! Either that or the John fragment is a fake. And by implication, the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment is likely a fake too.

UPDATE (18 July): For some reason this post seems to have been trapped in draft form when I thought it was published. I just noticed this, and so it is finally posted. Apologies for the delay.