Wednesday, August 12, 2020

More on Sabar, Veritas

ARIEL SABAR'S BOOK, VERITAS, continues to receive media attention. Here are a couple more articles:

The Harvard Professor Who Told the World That Jesus Had a Wife (Mark Oppenheimer, New York Times).

The New York Times headline is, of course, incorrect. It is disappointing when that happens.

Professor King did not say that Jesus had a wife. She did not say that the GJW proved that Jesus had a wife. At most she thought it likely that an ancient text from long after Jesus' time told a legend about Jesus having a wife.

I was complaining about this media misunderstanding five years ago. Evidently even the NYT does not yet get this nuance.

I do not hold the writer of the review responsible for the headline. But some editor should get in trouble over it. Many more people will read the headline than the article.

The review itself tries too hard ("It’s a barely believable tale, crazier than a tweed-sniffer in the faculty lounge"). But otherwise it seems basically sound.

What Ever Happened to the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife? (Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic).

The Atlantic broke Mr. Sabar's breakthrough article on the GJW back in 2016.

This piece has a long interview with Mr. Sabar. It recaps the story and includes lots of background to the book. And it reveals who has the GJW fragment now. That will surprise you. At least it surprised me.

Background here and links.

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