Friday, May 02, 2014

The GJW in the WSJ

JERRY PATTENGALE: How the 'Jesus' Wife' Hoax Fell Apart. The media loved the 2012 tale from Harvard Divinity School. (Wall Street Journal).
In September 2012, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King announced the discovery of a Coptic (ancient Egyptian) gospel text on a papyrus fragment that contained the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'My wife . . .' " The world took notice. The possibility that Jesus was married would prompt a radical reconsideration of the New Testament and biblical scholarship.

Yet now it appears almost certain that the Jesus-was-married story line was divorced from reality. On April 24, Christian Askeland—a Coptic specialist at Indiana Wesleyan University and my colleague at the Green Scholars Initiative—revealed that the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife," as the fragment is known, was a match for a papyrus fragment that is clearly a forgery.

[...]
It's a good sign that word of the latest developments regarding the Gospel of Jesus' Wife are being picked up by the mainstream media, even if in this case the article doubles as an advertisement for the Green Collection.

Background on the GJW and the Harvard John fragment is here and links. Related post here.