Many papers were agog today with an official announcement made yesterday at The Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome which describes the discovery of an ancient fragment in which Jesus refers to his wife. The disclosure was made by Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. The double sided fragment, likely to have originated from Egypt, is made of papyrus and has been dated to the fourth century. This would bring it to within a few generations away from Jesus and indicate, at the very least, that the idea that Jesus was married pre-dates the likes of Dan Brown, and was current during the formative years of Christianity. Interestingly enough, the text also suggests that the wife in question could be Mary Magdalene.
"...not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe]...
"The deciples said to Jesus...
"...deny. Mary is worthy of it...
"Jesus said to them, 'My wife...
"...she will be able to be my disciple...
"Let wicked people swell up...
"As for me I dwell with her so that...
"...an image...
Faded side:
"...my moth[er]
"...three...
"...forth which...
"It would be impossible to forge...
There were possibly dozens, if not hundreds of apocryphal gospels; the wonder is that so few managed to escape the censorship of the nascent Magisterium. One could expect that a lot more salient things were said about Jesus. The inherent problem with dogmatic "revealed" religions is that at the end of the day it is always earthly powers who have to decide what is and what is not "revealed" and in that atmosphere it is always better to destroy what is discarded, in order to circumvent further debate. Jesus did not hand his disciples tablets of stone in the way Moses is reputed to have done with the Ten Commandments. The written Gospels started off as disparate fragments of papyri written decades after Jesus had died and compiled over the first few centuries of the Christian era. The early Church was confident in its position as arbiter thanks to Jesus's endorsement:
"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you consider loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven." Matthew 16:19.
But the attribution of a divine origin to these word is also, in the final analysis, subject to human selection. In fact the first council that codified the New Testament, more or less as we know it now, was probably the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa in 393 A.D., around the same time as this fragment was circulating. Ultimately, however, we all chose to believe what we believe thanks to that voice within, so dogma is always second hand. And the debate on whether Jesus was or was not married cannot do Christianity any harm.
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