It caused quite a stir in the media, the report that a historian from the prestigious Harvard University had discovered a fragment of an unknown gospel in which Jesus addresses "his wife". Preliminary investigation showed that it was an authentic document. The Vatican soon spoke of a forgery. Who's right? And how can we know?
It is a papyrus fragment about the size of a business card and is written on both sides with text in Coptic, an ancient language spoken by Egyptian Christians. One of the lines reads, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" and "She may become my disciple." Historian Karen L. King, who specializes in the history of early Christianity, was sent the loose fragment from an anonymous collector with the request to examine it.
According to King, this gospel was probably written in the fourth century AD, possibly as a copy of an earlier text from the second century. So it cannot be seen as historical evidence that Jesus did indeed have a wife. But the discovery is interesting nonetheless.
According to King and other religious scholars, the fragment shows that at least some early Christians considered the possibility that Jesus had a wife. Besides the four gospels from the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), there are still many so-called 'apocryphal' gospels, which often give a different picture of the historical Jesus and are not included in the Christian Bible.
Da Vinci Code
King presented the piece of papyrus at a scientific conference in Rome. In an accompanying article, she indicated that several authoritative papyrologists and specialists in the Coptic language labeled the fragment as authentic. The authenticity has not yet been fully established, but we are convinced enough to proceed with publication. For example, no research has been done into the ink yet.
Nevertheless, many media immediately saw exciting parallels with the famous book and film The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, in which two heroes slowly discover how the Vatican has obscured the fact that Jesus was married for years to justify the disadvantaged position of women in Christianity.
Less than a week later, the Vatican itself came up with a response. The official newspaper of the church state, L'Osservatore Romano , stated in a lead editorial that the papyrus fragment is a "clumsy, bad forgery." Such a statement is easily dismissed as biased, because the Vatican could obviously have a vested interest in it. It wants to prevent as much as possible that alternative visions of God's son do the rounds. According to the Bible, Jesus is not married. Incidentally, this also applies to the historical Jesus, insofar as historians know anything about this figure.
Even without a chemical analysis of the ink, many religious scientists, Coptic linguists and other researchers say they have strong indications that the document is a modern forgery. The piece of papyrus itself may date from the fourth century, but the text was put there later, possibly even very recently, they say. Does the Vatican have the science behind it this time?
Cut and paste
According to Francis Watson, professor of theology and religious studies at Durham University, the Coptic text on the papyrus fragment was copied line by line from another Coptic gospel, the Gospel of Thomas. According to Watson, the author of this text took words and phrases from Thomas and simply shuffled the order to create a new text.
"A very unusual way for a classical author to compose a text, but something to be expected from a modern forger with very limited knowledge of Coptic," Watson said in his lucid article. The way in which the Coptic letters are written also does not match other documents from that time. The letters are too sloppy, and the ink is missing here and there. The latter suggests that they were not written with the usual writing instruments at the time.
Shortly afterwards, a more extensive article by Andrew Bernard of the University of Oxford appeared. He also describes how a forger could use the Gospel of Thomas, of which there is an English sentence-by-sentence translation, to create the papyrus about Jesus' wife. According to Bernard, the sentences were literally extracted. Because Jesus has to speak about 'her' and 'she' on the papyrus, which does not occur in Thomas, the author has here and there changed some personal pronouns from the Coptic masculine singular to feminine singular.
Inescapable?
Michael Grondin, compiler of a translation of the Gospel of Thomas, eventually came up with a very strong indication that the papyrus is a forgery. He points to a spelling error in the first line of the Coptic text. That rule, translated into Dutch, reads:'...(cannot) be my disciple. My mother gave (to) me life." The last part of this sentence, "gave (to) me life," is copied verbatim from the Gospel of Thomas, according to Bernard and Watson. But:a letter is missing on the papyrus (see image below).
Grondin then checked his freely accessible online PDF version of his translation again and came up with the startling conclusion that exactly the same letter was missing there. Is it now inescapable to conclude that a modern forger has made blatant use of this modern translation available online?
“I have always been skeptical about this discovery, because the context of this find is unknown,” responds Jan Willem van Henten, Professor of New Testament at the University of Amsterdam. “As far as I'm concerned, research into the material and the ink is the first thing that should be done. Until that is done, I remain suspicious and initially think of a forgery. Bernard's hypothesis of cutting and pasting from the translation of another Gospel is appealing, on account of the common error.”
Nevertheless, Van Henten believes that there is an important objection to Watson and Bernard's conjecture. “The important keyword 'my wife' is nowhere in the Gospel of Thomas. That contradicts this hypothesis. In short:further technical research, especially into the age of the ink, is the only thing that can determine whether it is a counterfeit or not.”
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