Gospel of the wife of Jesus

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Papyrus fragment with the gospel of the wife of Jesus.

The gospel of the wife of Jesus (English Gospel of Jesus' Wife ) is a papyrus fragment of unknown origin with a most likely forged Coptic text. It was presented to the public in 2012 by the church historian Karen King (* 1954) and immediately disputed by experts as possibly spurious. In the meantime (June 2016) it is also under strong suspicion for King to be a modern fake .

The fragment got its name and received a lot of media attention from the fact that Jesus refers to "my wife" in it. A document drawn up so long after Jesus 'death was not a historical source for Jesus' marital status , King noted. She originally thought the text was a translation from the second half of the 4th century, which is an original text from the 2nd century. After a radiocarbon date of Harvard University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , the material of the papyrus stems most likely from the 8th century.

publication

King presented the fragment on September 18, 2012 at the International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome .

The editors of the Harvard Theological Review initially refused to publish King's article on the fragment due to doubts as to its authenticity, as was made known in 2012 by Craig A. Evans. A revised version of the article was published in April 2014, along with the results of further paleographic and chemical analyzes.

The papyrus is privately owned by Walter Fritz. King states that the papyrus was checked as early as 1982 by Peter Munro , then professor of Egyptology at the Free University of Berlin , and that it was considered authentic. However, this investigation by Munro probably never took place, because the letter that confirmed the authenticity later turned out to be a forgery.

Description of the papyrus

Of the eight lines, lines 4-5 ( recto ) attracted particular public attention. They are read by King as follows (in German translation):

"... Jesus said to them: My wife ...

... she will be able to be a disciple ( sic ) for me and ... "

Since the edges are broken off, it is unclear how these words are related. The fragment measures 7.6 × 3.8 cm, is broken off on both sides and contains parts of nine lines. The text is written in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic . The letters on the back (verso) are illegible. Compared to other Coptic manuscripts, such as the Nag Hammadi Codices , the writing gives the impression that the scribe was inexperienced. Because of these paleographic features, King dated the papyrus to the second half of the 4th century. It assumes that the text was originally written in Greek in the 2nd century . She justifies this with the substantive relationship with the Gospel of Thomas , the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Egypt .

Arguments for the inauthenticity

As early as 2012, several researchers expressed doubts about the authenticity of the papyrus:

  • Hugo Lundhaug and Alin Suciu argued that the shape of the letters suggests that they were written with a brush. In ancient times, however, papyrus was written on with a pen (kalamos). This speaks for a modern counterfeit.
  • Francis Watson examined in detail the quotations and allusions from the Gospels of Thomas and Matthew . He came to the conclusion that the great similarity of the texts suggests a modern forgery.
  • The coptologist Georgeos Díaz-Montexano argued based on comparisons with real papyri that it was definitely a fake. The extremely poor writing technique and the irregularities in the writing style left the impression as if several scribes had placed the letters randomly one after the other. Some letters had different shapes and stroke widths. The setting of a diacritical mark shows that the forgery must have taken place after 2007. These and other observations on the text led him to the conclusion that the writer was neither familiar with the Coptic alphabet nor with the Coptic grammar. He also pointed out that a Coptic text from the 4th century was unsuitable to be able to say anything reliable about the marital status of Jesus.

The critics, who doubted the authenticity of the papyrus, continued to see their arguments as irrefutable and accused King of presenting the results of the research in the press one-sided. Francis Watson emphasized that the investigations into the dating of the papyrus and the composition of the ink would be the most Do not advance the debate, and he referred to the Egyptologist Leo Depuydt of Brown University (Rhode Island, USA). Because it is easily possible to describe an ancient papyrus with an ink as it was used at the time. In April 2014, Depuydt assessed the document as a modern forgery based on its linguistic and grammatical analysis.

At the beginning of May 2014, further doubts about the authenticity were expressed. King stated that these should be taken seriously and pointed in the direction of a fake. Many previous defenders of the authenticity of the text changed their minds when a comparative codex from the same private collection turned out to be a forgery.

In July 2015, all the arguments of the critics were compiled in a special edition of the New Testament Studies . The debate thus seemed to have been decided against the authenticity.

In June 2016, King himself also expressed that it was probably a modern fake and that it was possibly made by the owner. The American journalist Ariel Sabar found it while searching for the origin of the papyrus. According to Sabar, it is the former Egyptology student Walter Fritz , who lives in Florida (USA).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Papyrus from the 4th century. "Jesus said to them: My wife". In: Spiegel Online . September 19, 2012, accessed December 24, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Papyrus Fund. Did Jesus have a wife? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . September 19, 2012, accessed December 24, 2017 .
  3. ^ Joel Baden, Candida Moss: The Curious Case of Jesus's Wife. In: The Atlantic . December 2014 ( theatlantic.com [accessed November 4, 2015]).
  4. ^ Karen L. King: “Jesus said to them, 'My wife…'”: A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment. In: Harvard Theological Review. 107, No. 2, 2014, pp. 131–159.
  5. ↑ Craig A. Evans: . In: nearemmaus.com. Near Emmaus - the biblioblog of Brian LePort, Daniel James Levy, and JohnDave Medina, September 25, 2012, accessed December 15, 2019.
  6. ↑ Harvard Theological Review. 107/2 (April 2014).
  7. ↑ a b Ariel Sabar: The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus's Wife. In: The Atlantic. July / August 2016 edition ( theatlantic.com [accessed June 19, 2016]).
  8. ↑ Coptic text by Karen L. King: “Jesus said to them: 'My Wife…'”. A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus ( September 19, 2012 memento in the Internet Archive ). P. 14. In: hds.harvard.edu, accessed on December 15, 2019.
  9. ↑ Karen L. King: "Jesus said to them: 'My Wife ...'". A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus ( September 19, 2012 memento in the Internet Archive ). P. 14. In: hds.harvard.edu, accessed on December 15, 2019.
  10. ↑ Alin Suciu, Hugo Lundhaug: On the So-Called Gospel of Jesus's Wife. Some preliminary thoughts. In: alinsuciu.com, September 26, 2012, accessed December 15, 2019.
  11. ^ Francis Watson: The Gospel of Jesus' Wife: How a fake Gospel fragment was composed. In: dur.ac.uk, September 20, 2012, accessed October 20, 2015.
  12. ↑ Georgeos Díaz-Montexano: Coptic Papyrus about “Mary, Jesus' Wife”. Real or Forgery? Scientific Atlantology International Society (SAIS), 2012, ISBN 978-1-4800-5846-0 , p. 11 ( agonfilosofia.es ; also as PDF; 1.1 MB; English, also in the original Spanish version).
  13. ↑ Georgeos Díaz-Montexano: Coptic Papyrus about “Mary, Jesus' Wife”. Real or Forgery? Scientific Atlantology International Society (SAIS), 2012, ISBN 978-1-4800-5846-0 , p. 23: “… these dots are only used in that position in modern editions of Coptic texts (post 2007), and never in ancient documents. The forgery, thus, must be recent. ”( Agonfilosofia.es ; also as PDF; 1.1 MB; English, also in the original Spanish version).
  14. ↑ Georgeos Díaz-Montexano: Coptic Papyrus about “Mary, Jesus' Wife”. Real or Forgery? Scientific Atlantology International Society (SAIS), 2012, ISBN 978-1-4800-5846-0 , p. 36 ( agonfilosofia.es ; also as PDF; 1.1 MB; English, also in the original Spanish version).
  15. ↑ Georgeos Díaz-Montexano: Coptic Papyrus about “Mary, Jesus' Wife”. Real or Forgery? Scientific Atlantology International Society (SAIS), 2012, ISBN 978-1-4800-5846-0 , p. 10 ( agonfilosofia.es ; also as PDF; 1.1 MB; English, also in the original Spanish version).
  16. ^ Francis Watson: Jesus' Wife Attempts Back: Initial Response. (PDF; 214 kB) In: markgoodacre.org, accessed on November 14, 2015: “It has never been doubted that the Jesus' Wife fragment may well have been written on a piece of genuinely ancient papyrus, using ink whose composition followed ancient practice. "
  17. ^ Leo Depuydt: The Alleged Gospel of Jesus's Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of Authenticity. In: Harvard Theological Review. Vol. 107/2 (April 2014), pp. 172-189, doi: 10.1017 / S0017816014000194 .
  18. ↑ Jerry Pattengale: How the 'Jesus' Wife' Hoax Fell Apart. In: The Wall Street Journal . May 1, 2014 ( online.wsj.com [accessed December 15, 2019]).
  19. ↑ Laurie Goodstein: Fresh Doubts Raised About Papyrus Scrap Known as' Gospel of Jesus' Wife '. In: The New York Times. May 4, 2014 ( nytimes.com [accessed December 15, 2019]).
  20. ^ Christian Askeland: The forgery of the Lycopolitan gospel of John. In: New Testament Studies. 61, pp. 314-334. Cambridge University Press, 2015, doi: 10.1017 / S0028688515000065 ( gospel-thomas.net [PDF; 416 kB; accessed November 14, 2015]).
  21. ↑ Joost L. Hagen: Possible further proof of forgery: A reading of the text of the Lycopolitan fragment of the Gospel of John, with remarks about suspicious phenomena in the areas of the lacunae and a note about the supposed Gospel of Jesus' Wife. In: alinsuciu.com, May 1, 2014, accessed November 14, 2015.
  22. ↑ Ancient document referencing Jesus' wife may be a forgery. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Michael Peppard of Fordham University . (No longer available online.) In: pbs.org. May 4, 2014, archived from the original on May 16, 2016 ; accessed on December 15, 2019 .
  23. ^ New Testament Studies. Vol. 61.3 (July 2015), Cambridge University Press ( journals.cambridge.org [article overview]).
  24. ↑ Lisa Wangsness: 'Jesus's wife' papyrus likely fake, scholar says. In: The Boston Globe . June 18, 2016: “It appears now that all the material Fritz gave to me concerning the provenance of the papyrus… were fabrications” ( bostonglobe.com [accessed June 24, 2016]).
  25. ↑ Ariel Sabar: Karen King Responds to 'The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus's Wife'. In: The Atlantic. June 16, 2016, accessed June 19, 2016 ( theatlantic.com [accessed December 15, 2019]).