What About the Back of the So-Called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife?
There has been a lot of chatter over the last week about the new Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, originally announced here. So much so, that it is quite difficult to keep up with the rapidly changing discussion about this text. Scholars all over the globe have chimed in, most questioning the authenticity of the fragment (see my original assessment here). Most recently, Francis Watson of Durham University has offered two short articles (here and here) which strongly suggest this fragment was a modern fake.
But in all of this discussion, I have noticed that far too little attention has been given to a very important piece … Continue reading...
The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife—Authentic or Not?
Yesterday, during the break for my Gospels class (and ironically just prior to my lectures on apocryphal gospels), I received the big news about the discovery of a new apocryphal gospel fragment. This fragment—aptly named The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife—contains a story where Jesus refers to “My wife” and is dated to the fourth century. No doubt this will reignite the firestorm felt during the release of The Da Vinci Code many years ago, and the major media outlets will be asking again about whether Jesus was married.
Since yesterday’s announcement, I have been inundated with emails and phone calls asking for my assessment of this new fragment. So, I … Continue reading...