One female scholar says a qualified YES. Now, the evidence she presented at an international congress is being attacked by - well, you can probably figure that out:
September 19, 2012 12:05 PM
Papyrus suggesting Jesus had wife scrutinized
Updated 1:06 PM ET
(CBS/AP) ROME - Is a scrap of papyrus suggesting that Jesus had a wife
authentic?
 |
| This Sept. 5, 2012 photo released by Harvard University shows a fourth century
fragment of papyrus that divinity professor Karen L. King says is the only
existing ancient text that quotes Jesus explicitly referring to having a
wife. (AP Photo/Harvard University, Karen L. King) |
Scholars on Wednesday questioned the much-publicized discovery by a Harvard
scholar that a 4th century fragment of papyrus provided the first evidence that
some early Christians believed Jesus was married.
And experts in the illicit antiquities trade also wondered about the motive
of the fragment's anonymous owner, noting that the document's value has likely
increased amid the publicity of the still-unproven find.
Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School,
announced the finding Tuesday at an international congress on Coptic studies in
Rome. The text, written in Coptic and probably translated from a 2nd century
Greek text, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he
identifies as Mary.
As correspondent Allen Pizzey reported on Wednesday for "CBS This Morning,"
the tattered piece of papyrus resembling perhaps a discarded business card dates
back to the 4th century. Written in an ancient dialect, it contains just eight
broken lines in faded black ink.
King's paper, and the front-page attention it received in some U.S.
newspapers that got advance word about it, was a hot topic of conversation
Wednesday during coffee breaks at the conference.
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried. Any evidence
pointing to whether Jesus was married or had a female disciple could have ripple
effects in current debates over the role of women in the church.
"The whole idea of the priesthood being male and being celibate is based on
the historical assumption that Jesus was male and was celibate and single,"
Serene Jones, president of New York City's Union Theological Seminary, told CBS
News. [Of course, that "assumption" centuries after many married Popes and married priests had served in what became the Roman Catholic Church.]
Stephen Emmel, a professor of Coptology at the University of Muenster who was
on the international advisory panel that reviewed the 2006 discovery of the
Gospel of Judas, said the text accurately quotes Jesus as saying "my wife." But
he
questioned whether the document was authentic.
"There's something about this fragment in its appearance and also in the
grammar of the Coptic that strikes me as being not completely convincing
somehow," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.
Another participant at the congress,
Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the
University of Hamburg, was more blunt.
"
I would say it's a forgery. The script doesn't look authentic" when compared
to other samples of Coptic papyrus script dated to the 4th century, he said.
King acknowledged Wednesday that questions remain about the fragment, and she
welcomed the feedback from her colleagues. She said she planned to subject the
fragment to ink tests to determine if the chemical components match those used
in antiquity.
"We still have some work to do, testing the ink and so on and so forth, but
what is exciting about this fragment is that it's the first case we have of
Christians claiming that Jesus had a wife," she said.
She stressed that the text doesn't provide any historical evidence that Jesus
was actually married, only that some two centuries after he died, some early
Christians believed he had a wife.
Wolf-Peter Funk, a noted Coptic linguist, said there was no way to evaluate
the significance of the fragment because it has no context. It's a partial text
and tiny, measuring 4 centimeters by 8 centimeters (1.5 inches by 3 inches),
about the size of a small cellphone.
"There are thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things," said
Funk, co-director of a project editing the Nag Hammadi Coptic library at Laval
University in Quebec. "It can be anything."
He, too, doubted the authenticity, saying the form of the fragment was
"suspicious."
Ancient papyrus fragments have been frequently cut up by unscrupulous dealers
seeking to make more money.
An anonymous collector brought King the fragment in December 2011, seeking
her help in translating and understanding it. In March, she brought it to two
papyrologists who determined it was very likely authentic.
On Tuesday, Harvard Divinity School announced the finding to great fanfare
and said King's paper would be published in January's Harvard Theological
Review. Harvard said the fragment most likely came from Egypt, and that its
earliest documentation is from the early 1980s indicating that a now-deceased
professor in Germany thought it evidence of a possible marriage of Jesus.
Some archaeologists were quick to question Harvard's ethics, noting that the
fragment has no known provenance, or history of where it's been, and that its
owner may have a financial interest in the publicity being generated about
it.
King has said the owner wants to sell his collection to Harvard.
"There are all sorts of really dodgy things about this," said David Gill,
professor of archaeological heritage at University Campus Suffolk and author of
the Looting Matters blog, which closely follows the illicit trade in
antiquities.
"This looks to me as if any sensible, responsible academic would
keep their distance from it." [Really? That's a particularly vituperative remark - basically accusing King of being a willing participant in attempting to perpetrate a fraud! I wonder, was he born a schmuck or did his momma drop him on his head one too many times so he can't help himself?]
He cited the ongoing debate in academia over publishing articles about
possibly dubiously obtained antiquities, thus potentially fueling the illicit
market.
The Archaeological Institute of America, for example, won't publish articles
in its journal announcing the discovery of antiquities without a proven
provenance that were acquired after a UNESCO convention fighting the illicit
trade went into effect in 1973.
Similarly, many American museums have adopted policies to no longer acquire
antiquities without a provenance, after being slapped with successful efforts by
countries like Italy to reclaim looted treasures.
Archaeologists also complain that the looting of antiquities removes them
from their historical context, depriving scholars of a wealth of
information. [Yes, of course - but when was it proven that THIS is a looted antiquity?]
However,
AnneMarie Luijendijk, the Princeton University expert whom King
consulted to authenticate the papyrus, said the fragment fit all the rules and
criteria established by the International Association of Papyrologists.
She
noted that papyrus fragments frequently don't have a provenance, simply because
so many were removed from Egypt before such issues were of concern.
She acknowledged the dilemma about buying such antiquities but said
refraining from publishing articles about them is another matter.
"You wouldn't let an important new text go to waste," she said.
Hany Sadak, the director general of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, said the
fragment's existence was unknown to Egypt's antiquities authorities until news
articles this week.
"I personally think, as a researcher, that the paper is not authentic because
it was, if it had been in Egypt before, we would have known of it and we would
have heard of it before it left Egypt," he said. [The Egyptians would have known about it? OH YEAH, RIGHT. This is one instance where I am actually rolling on the floor laughing my ass off!]
© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc.
All Rights Reserved
