Researchers resurrect debate over 'Jesus wife' papyrus

Once again experts have resurrected the debate over the authenticity of an ancient scrap of papyrus with writing that suggests Jesus may have been married.

The text, often referred to as the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, became a media sensation in 2012 when researchers first revealed it at an international conference in Rome. Although the small bit of papyrus contains only 14 incomplete lines, it appears one section says, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’” The following line says, “She will be able to be my disciple,” and two lines later, “I dwell with her,” according to the Smithsonian Magazine.

A short time after the text became public, scholars began to debate its authenticity. Researchers who ran lab tests on the papyrus and the ink concluded it was authentic, while experts in ancient languages, who conducted detailed analysis of the handwriting and phrasing, judged the scrap to be a modern-day forgery.

The text is, “beyond a reasonable doubt, a forgery,” Mark Goodacre, a professor of New Testament at Duke University, told The Atlantic. And the peer-reviewed journal, New Testament Studies, agreed.

In 2014, Live Science investigators concluded, “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, a papyrus written in Coptic and containing text that refers to Jesus being married, is looking more and more like it is not authentic.”

But recently the debate took on new life when researchers used a high-tech lab at Columbia University to run new tests on the ink. The researchers decline to say much until their report is published, but they told Live Science one of their findings could provide some support for the text’s authenticity.

On the same day the new round of lab tests was announced, Andrew Bernhard, New Testament blogger and scholar of ancient Christian texts, posted an essay that compiled new evidence suggesting the text was a forgery. The English translation of the text contains words and short phrases that appear knit together from an English translation of the Gospel of Thomas, which was published on the internet just 13 years ago, Bernhard said. The Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical, gnostic text.

As the debate continues, the scientific methods of carbon dating and ink analysis, which support authenticity, tend to dominate public attention, while the textual analysis which continues to support fraud gets little notice, Goodacre said.

Goodacre believes media attention has “idolized” science and simultaneously denigrated the work of experts in the field of early Christian texts. A paper published in the highly respected journal, New Testament Studies, concluded the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is a modern forgery, he said.

“And it barely got a mention in the media. Then there is a sentence or two of hearsay about ink in a LiveScience article, and the media is buzzing with fresh declarations about authenticity,” he said.

However the final analysis shakes out, even if experts determine the text is authentic, it doesn’t prove Jesus was married, Karen King, the Harvard scholar who discovered the papyrus, told The Atlantic. It would just mean someone in antiquity wrote that Jesus said he had a wife.

It is also entirely possible that the word “wife” in the text refers to the church, King told The New York Times.