Harvard scholars may have been duped by a forged ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’ | Hacker News Reader

Harvard scholars may have been duped by a forged ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’

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33 pointsilamont18 comments

There several "gnostic gospels" from all around Roman times, that mention whatever the authors intended. It's not like those are unknown, it's that they don't reflect the canonical body chosen by the Christian faith.

It's like discovering a fan-fiction of Star Wars were Obi Wan is a cross-dresser. Might be amusing, but it's not the canonical version of the story. It's not like yet another gospel can change that.

Heh, forget the technical considerations. A manuscript fragment of massive historical implications being passed to them by an 'anonymous source'?

That's improbable enough by itself.

With how archaeology evolved as a field and the current black market, it is not surprising to have an anonymous source for an historical artifact.

With how Jesus scholarship as a field has evolved and how achademia as an industry operates, it is not surprising that a "scholar" was duped.

I believe this is right. The trade in ancient manuscripts is surprisingly cloak-and-dagger. (Edit: I base this on such vast experience as having read a couple New Yorker articles about it.)

Just curious, but how do you get in the loop on the ancient manuscript trade? It's not even an area of work I have ever thought about before.

Potentially unrelated, but I had some very brief conversations with a paleontologist I worked for a while back (working for a very respectable public institution) about black market fossil trade; it's VERY common (and often fronted through "legitimate" fossil/mineral traders) and if you're at all in the academic side of obtaining these sorts of items, you very readily run into people obtaining them for many sources, and get a better view of the "flow" of these items. I would imagine similar fields (in terms of dealing with "historical" items of value) have similar black market systems.

Eh, with such a small fragment, couldn't the article have given a translation of what it says?

I gather it must just be a collection of parts of senteces, not what you would call a "fragment" but just several of them (the papyrus does not seem to contain whole lines, as I see it). But I may be wrong. Or not.

I think one of the lines is:

Then Jesus said, "Take my wife... please!"

Does anyone know how common the name "Jesus" was in those days? For all we know it could the equivalent of John or Mark today..

Super common in the 1st century, since it's a form of Joshua. Not that it would have any bearing on this document, with its vastly later date.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

In general, I'd prefer it if more popular media included technical details (like full translations) in their articles.

The places I've been finding translations are mostly the blogs of interested academics. The second fragment is a Coptic translation of (parts of) John 6:11-14. [1] Wikipedia has a translation of the text from Dr. King's original article. [2]

[1] http://alinsuciu.com/2014/04/24/christian-askeland-finds-the... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Jesus'_Wife

If the forger had used italics in addition, one might be in danger of losing one’s composure.

Those theologians. So droll.

Given these stories, I sometimes wonder if 750 years from now, a copy of the National Enquirer will be found in pristine condition, and, it will be taken as representative of today's society... people will start using "Kardashian" as an archaic honorific, for example...

Yep. Those Kardashians are a real pain.

Especially Gul Kim.

I thought she was still only a glinn.

what would be the difference between people 750 year in the future looking at Kardashian images (or various adult Internet content of today) and us looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines ? Would they come to the same conclusions about Matriarchy and Goddesses of Fertility?

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