A
Anonymous
Guest
i'm sure i read somewhere that there was a scroll that points to them 'getting it on' or at least kissing places other than feet.
am i getting confused?
am i getting confused?
Very interesting.kamalktk said:According to a top religion scholar, this 1,600-year-old text fragment suggests that some early Christians believed Jesus was married—possibly to Mary Magdalene
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...nianmag/history-archaeology/archaeology+(Arch
The first claims of Jesus' celibacy did not appear until about a century after his death. Clement of Alexandria, a theologian and Church father who lived from A.D. 150 to A.D. 215, reported on a group of second-century Christians “who say outright that marriage is fornication and teach that it was introduced by the devil. They proudly say that they are imitating the Lord who neither married or had any possession in this world, boasting that they understand the gospel better than anyone else.”
...
Though King makes no claims for the value of the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” as, well, a marriage certificate, she says it “puts into greater question the assumption that Jesus wasn’t married, which has equally no evidence,” she told me. It casts doubt “on the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’ celibacy. They always say, ‘This is the tradition, this is the tradition.’ Now we see that this alternative tradition has been silenced.”
Harvard researcher Karen King today unveiled an ancient papyrus fragment with the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” The text also mentions “Mary,” arguably a reference to Mary Magdalene. The announcement at an academic conference in Rome is sure to send shock waves through the Christian world. The Smithsonian Channel will premiere a special documentary about the discovery on September 30 at 8 p.m. ET. And Smithsonian magazine reporter Ariel Sabar has been covering the story behind the scenes for weeks, tracing King’s steps from when a suspicious e-mail hit her in-box to the nerve-racking moment when she thought the entire presentation would fall apart. Read our exclusive coverage below.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-a ... z26xS59BDL
Gospel of Jesus's Wife is fake, claims expert.
Scholar says papyrus fragment believed to provide evidence that Jesus was married is a modern forgery
A New Testament scholar claims to have found evidence suggesting that the Gospel of Jesus's Wife is a modern forgery.
Professor Francis Watson, of Durham University, says the papyrus fragment, which caused a worldwide sensation when it appeared earlier this week because it appeared to refer to Jesus's wife, is a patchwork of texts from the genuine Coptic-language Gospel of Thomas, which have been copied and reassembled out of order to make a suggestive new whole.
In a paper published online, Watson argues that all of the sentence fragments found on the papyrus fragment have been copied, sometimes with small alterations, from printed editions of the Gospel of Thomas.
The discovery has already sparked fierce debate among academics, but Watson believes his new research may prove conclusive.
"I think it is more or less indisputable that I have shown how the thing was composed," he said. "I would be very surprised if it were not a modern forgery, although it is possible that it was composed in this way in the fourth century."
His paper claims the work was assembled by someone who was not a native speaker of Coptic, which is a polite way of saying that it is modern.
He may have shown how it could have been composed - but is that the same as showing how it was composed?"I think it is more or less indisputable that I have shown how the thing was composed," he said.
Hedging his bets, perhaps?He believes the papyrus itself may well date from the fourth century..
Analis said:But can't that be told of every Gospel ?
jimv1 said:For Jesus to have a wife, he would have to exist in the first place and there's not much in the way of proof of that.
rynner2 said:He may have shown how it could have been composed - but is that the same as showing how it was composed?"I think it is more or less indisputable that I have shown how the thing was composed," he said.
Hedging his bets, perhaps?He believes the papyrus itself may well date from the fourth century..
Monstrosa said:He's just saying that the papyrus may be indeed from the 4th century, but that the writing was applied much later.
"Gospel of Jesus' wife" fragment is a fake, Vatican says
By Naomi O'Leary | Reuters
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - An ancient papyrus fragment which a Harvard scholar says contains the first recorded mention that Jesus may have had a wife is a fake, the Vatican said on Friday.
"Substantial reasons would lead one to conclude that the papyrus is indeed a clumsy forgery," the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said in an editorial by its editor, Gian Maria Vian. "In any case, it's a fake."
Joining a highly charged academic debate over the authenticity of the text, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, the newspaper published a lengthy analysis by expert Alberto Camplani of Rome's La Sapienza university, outlining doubts about the manuscript and urging extreme caution.
The fragment, which reads "Jesus said to them, my wife" was unveiled by Harvard Professor Karen King as a text from the 4th century at a congress of Coptic Studies in Rome last week.
Her study divided the academic community, with some hailing it as a landmark discovery while others rapidly expressed their doubts [ID].
"It's really pretty unlikely that it's authentic," University of Durham Professor Francis Watson told Reuters after he published a paper arguing the words on the fragment were a rearrangement of phrases from a well known Coptic text.
Watson, who has previously worked on identifying forged gospels, said it was likely to be an ancient blank fragment that was written over in the 20th or 21st century by a forger seeking to make money.
Watson argues the words on the fragment do not fit grammatically into a larger text.
"It's possible to get hold of an old bit of un-written on papyrus and write some new stuff on it," Watson said. "There is a market for fake antiquities throughout the Middle East ... I would guess that in this case the motivation might have been a financial one."
ACADEMIC DEBATE
Manuscript experts who heard King's presentation quickly took to their blogs to express doubts, noting that the letters were clumsy, perhaps the script of someone unused to writing Coptic.
Writing from the conference, early Christian scholar Christian Askeland said specialists there were divided between two-thirds who were extremely skeptical, and one-third convinced the fragment was false.
"I have not met anyone who supports its authenticity," Askeland wrote from a session of the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, where King gave her paper.
In an email to Reuters after the conference ended and before the Vatican editorial, King said: "Whether, in the end, the fragment will be shown to be authentic is still to be finally determined, but the serious conversation among scholars has begun."
During the conference King stressed that the fragment did not give "any evidence that Jesus was married, or not married" but that early Christians were talking about the possibility.
AnneMarie Luijendijk, associate professor of religion at Princeton University, said she concluded that the fragment was indeed an authentic, ancient text, written by a scribe in antiquity.
"We can see that by the way the ink is preserved on the papyrus and also the way the papyrus has faded and also the way the papyrus has become very fragmentary, which is actually in line with a lot of other papyri we have also from the New Testament," Luijendijk told Reuters during the conference.
The idea that Jesus was married resurfaces regularly in popular culture, notably with the 2003 publication of Dan Brown's best-seller "The Da Vinci Code," which angered the Vatican because, among other things, it was based on the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had children.
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married and the Catholic Church, by far the largest in Christendom, says women cannot become priests because Christ chose only men as his apostles.
SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com/gospel-jesus-wife ... 33725.html
Anome_ said:The problem is that the fragment ends with "My wife". It could well be Jesus opening with a couple of gags to lighten the mood.
EnolaGaia said:Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married and the Catholic Church, by far the largest in Christendom, says women cannot become priests because Christ chose only men as his apostles.
'Jesus wife' documentary broadcast delayed amid doubts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19796163
The fragment, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, is no bigger than a business card
Related Stories
Ancient reference to 'Jesus wife'
A TV documentary about a 4th-Century papyrus fragment that makes reference to Jesus having a wife has been delayed amid doubts over its authenticity.
The Smithsonian Channel has pushed backed the broadcast to an unspecified date, while further tests on the Coptic script are carried out.
Scholars have questioned the fragment's authenticity on grammar and lack of known archaeological provenance.
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried.
Karen King, the Harvard professor who published the research, has said the fragment only shows some early Christians believed Jesus was wed.
The Smithsonian Channel had billed the papyrus as "one of the most significant discoveries of all time".
The documentary was originally due to air on 30 September until scholars began raising questions about the fragment.
Tom Hayden, the Smithsonian Channel's general manager, said the show would "take into account the upcoming tests as well as the academic response to the initial announcement".
"This will enable us to present a richer and more complete story," he said, adding that a new broadcast date would be announced in the upcoming weeks.
The text contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife". According to Prof King's research team, the text also quotes Jesus as telling his followers that she is worthy of being his disciple.
The fragment identifies the wife as Mary, prompting speculation the reference was to Mary Magdalene.
Scroll that mentions Jesus's wife is ancient, scientists confirm
April 10th, 2014 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
A ancient piece of papyrus that contains a mention of Jesus' wife is not a forgery, according to a scientific analysis of the controversial text, US researchers said Thursday.
The fragment is believed to have come from Egypt and contains writing in the Coptic language that says, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" Another part reads: "She will be able to be my disciple."
Its discovery in 2012 caused a stir. Since Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, it renewed long-running debates over celibacy and the role of women in the church.
The Vatican's newspaper declared it a fake, along with other scholars who doubted its authenticity based on its poor grammar, blurred text and uncertain origin.
Never before has a gospel referred to Jesus being married, or having women as disciples.
But a new scientific analysis of the papyrus and the ink, as well as the handwriting and grammar, show that the document is ancient.
"No evidence of modern fabrication ("forgery") was found," the Harvard Divinity School said in a statement.
The palm-sized fragment likely dates to between the sixth and ninth centuries, and could have been written as early as the second century CE (common era), said the study results published in the Harvard Theological Review.
Radiocarbon dating of the papyrus and a study of the ink using Micro-Raman spectroscopy was done by experts at Columbia University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"The team concluded the papyrus' chemical composition and patterns of oxidation are consistent with old papyrus by comparing the GJW (Gospel of Jesus' Wife) fragment with a fragment of the Gospel of John," said the study.
"Current testing thus supports the conclusion that the papyrus and ink of GJW are ancient."
Anonymous origins
The origin of the papyrus is unknown. Karen King, a historian at Harvard Divinity School, received it from a collector—who asked to remain anonymous—in 2012.
King, a historian of early Christianity, said the science showing the papyrus is ancient does not prove that Jesus was married.
"The main topic of the fragment is to affirm that women who are mothers and wives can be disciples of Jesus —- a topic that was hotly debated in early Christianity as celibate virginity increasingly became highly valued," King said in a statement.
"This gospel fragment provides a reason to reconsider what we thought we knew by asking what the role claims of Jesus's marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family."
The fragment measures four by eight centimeters (1.6 by 3.2 inches).
King said its late date—written centuries after Jesus's death—means the author did not know Jesus personally.
Its crude appearance and grammatical errors suggest the writer had no more than an elementary education, she added.
Leo Depuydt, a professor of Egyptology at Brown University, wrote an article, also published in the Harvard Theological Review, describing why he believes the document is fake.
"The papyrus fragment seems ripe for a Monty Python sketch," he wrote.
He noted grammatical errors and that the words "my wife" appear to be emphasized in bold letters, which are not featured in other ancient Coptic texts.
"As a student of Coptic convinced that the fragment is a modern creation, I am unable to escape the impression that there is something almost hilarious about the use of bold letters," he wrote.
King published a rebuttal to Depuydt's criticisms, saying in part that blotted ink was common and that the letters below "my wife" are even darker.
© 2014 AFP
"Scroll that mentions Jesus's wife is ancient, scientists confirm." April 10th, 2014. http://phys.org/news/2014-04-scroll-men ... cient.html