4th century papyrus scrap credits Jesus with saying 'my wife'

By D. Beeksma
On September 18, 2012 At 8:01 pm

Category : News
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Responses : 3 Comments

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Harvard Professor Karen King told the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies today that four words on a previously unknown papyrus fragment provides the first evidence that some early Christians thought that Jesus had been married.

The fragment dates back to the 4th century and was written in the Coptic language.  The finding indicates that there is a lost gospel.  It also refers to Jesus saying "my wife," which King says is not evidence that Jesus had a wife.

The fragment is authentic, King reports.  She says that during the same period, there were writings that said that Jesus did not have a wife.  She finds it interesting that discussions about whether or not Jesus was married did not occur until about 150 years after he died, corresponding with a period in time when Christians began to question they should marry or remain celibate.


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D. Beeksma

One of the growing crowd of American "nones" herself, Deborah is a prolific writer who finds religion, spirituality and the impact of belief (and non-belief) on culture inspiring, fascinating and at times, disturbing. She hosts the God Discussion show and handles the site's technical work. Her education and background is in business, ecommerce and law.

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  • skater60

    A previously unknown papyrus fragment? What exactly does that mean?

  • Peter

    Or is this just another poor academic looking for a book deal by making a controversial statement. Prof. Bart Ehrman is a master at this.

  • T Whyman

    I trust the eye-witness accounts in the Bible which have been tried and tested as authentic over this scrap written centuries removed from Christ. Didn't those who fell for the Da Vinci Code learn when that was debunked tens of thousands of times over?

    "… for the New Testament there are circa 24,000 manuscripts (about 7,000 in Greek and the rest in other languages). For the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” there is ONE fragment. Oh, but you will be told to not concern yourself with that, as that ONE fragment is thought to successfully discredit the 24,000.

    Also, why is it that for New Testaments the demand is that we must have the earliest possible ones. However, for anything that appears to contradict it one, two, three, four centuries from Jesus’ time is perfectly acceptable, the later the better.

    We are dealing with a substandard double standard."

    http://www.examiner.com/article/was-jesus-married-manuscript-says-yes?cid=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook