Francis Watson and others have demonstrated that the new “Gospel” is in effect a collage of words and phrases from The Gospel of Thomas. Now, some very telling signs are turning up successively that the papyrus text has been copied from Mike Grondin’s on-line interlinear translation of the same. The possibility was pointed out first by Andrew Bernhard because of the awkward translation of line 6. From what I hear, Bernhard will present more compelling evidence on his website devoted to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife very soon. Stay tuned!
Update: Voila (Andrew Bernhard)!
The straw that breaks the camel’s back: “Line 1 of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment copies a typo from a website interlinear of Coptic Thomas“ (see Mark Goodacre’s post)
Our previous posts in chronological order:
Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (Askeland’s “live report” from the Coptic Congress in Rome where the fragment was announced by Karen King)
Yet Another Question about the So-Called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
A New Twist in the So-Called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Saga
Top-notch Coptologists Judges GJW to Be a Fake
Was Mrs Jesus Pimped?
More questions on Jesus’ Wife Fragment
tentative chronology (corrections welcome):
ReplyDelete2nd century claimed date of Greek "gospel"
2nd-4th c. claimed date of a Coptic Gospel of John ms
4th century claimed date of ms
1960s claimed date Laukamp purchased in East Germany
1961 G. Fecht in Orientalia suggests Gospel of Truth was composed in Coptic not Greek
1982 July 15 letter from Munro to Laukamp
1982-1983 K. King at Free Uni, Berlin
1983 Egyptian antiquities law
1987 Fecht FS
1997 claimed purchase from German-American collector
1997ff copyright dates of Mike Grondin online Coptic Thomas
2001 Hans-Ulrich Laukamp death
2006 Gerhard Fecht death
2008 Peter Munro death
2010 July 9 email, collector to K. King
2011 Dec. ms to K. King
http://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/jesus-wife-fragment-further-evidence-of.html
ReplyDeleteThis appears to be excellent work by Francis Watson, Alin Suciu, Andrew Bernhard, et al.
ReplyDeleteI have no hesitation about calling this fragment a forgery. Perhaps now the same media that called it "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife" will find a more appropriate name for it.
Any word from Bagnell and Luyendijk [sic]?
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
I tend to think that the cumulative argument of Bernhard - that all the grammatical oddities in GJW can be explained as arising from incompetent compositional practices - is stronger than the argument from the agreement in lacking a single letter.
ReplyDeleteIf Bernhard is right then it basically requires a more recent forgery, and hence that the apparatus around the manuscript and indeed the whole German connection, is part of the fakery.
ReplyDeleteI would say that without some more argument or evidence in support of its antiquity then GJW is dead in the water.
ReplyDeleteThat could still come in either the ink analysis or the letters claimed to have been purchased with the manuscript.
Or someone could attempt a response/rebuttal of either the compositional arguments (Watson, Goodacre, Bernhard), the scribal arguments (Askeland, Suciu) or the palaeographical/papyrological arguments (Head?).
But so far the Tendenz of the internet discussions is becoming clear - whatever aspect of this you investigate closely, the more you look the more questions arise.
The gun is indeed smoking, but we can't yet see who was holding it when it went off.
ReplyDeletePeter,
ReplyDeleteAbout ink-analysis: isn't it possible to create artificially old ink by using genuinely old ingredients?
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
The ink analysis will not say anything about the age. It will describe the ink's ingredients. So, yes, the ink analysis will not tell us much, unless the forger was so dumb as to have used a marker. Actually, I would not be surprised from the character formation if this were the case.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what sort of analysis of the ink they are doing. If it turns out that the ink uses ingredients typical of antiquity then that would have to be taken into account. That would be surprising to me. I'm with Christian - I suspect a marker pen of some sort.
ReplyDeleteTo supplement (and, in small degree, correct) Stephen Goranson's chronology:-
ReplyDeleteThe film, the Da Vinci Code, was released world-wide between 17 and 26 May 2006 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/releaseinfo
Fecht died on 13 December 2006, http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/er/oldnews/oldnews18.html
aged 84 http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2007/01/professor-gerhard-fecht.html
Munro died on 2 January 2009 (not 2008), six days before his 79th birthday
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/er/oldnews/oldnews19.html
Responding to Peter Head's last comment, if I may: as reported in late September, the papyrus fragment was sent to the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (a department of the Harvard Art Museums), with a result expected imminently. The Straus Center website shows that their conservators use (among other technologies), Raman spectroscopy.
ReplyDeleteThis precise non-invasive technology was used in 2002 on the analysis of the inks used on the Vinland Map as conducted by Katherine L. Brown and Professor Robin J. H. Clark of the Christopher Ingold Laboratories, University College London. For those interested in seeing how the process works and what deductions can be made from the results obtained, the 2002 report can be read here: http://www.webexhibits.org/vinland/paper-clark02.html
The 2002 investigation concluded that the lines on the map comprised a yellow underlay (speculatively identified as an attempt to mimic the use of gallotannate) with a carbon overlay. The yellow underlay exhibited traces of anatase (first synthesised in the 1920's). According to Brown and Clark "the presence of anatase in a genuine medieval ink is extremely unlikely and has not been detected by us on any other such manuscript prior to this study." In 2003, Jacqueline Olin (a research chemist who had seemingly retired from the Smithsonian Institution in 1995) disputed Brown and Clark's conclusions, arguing that precipitated anatase could have resulted from a particular mediaeval process for manufacturing black ink, and as recently as 2009 a team of scientists led by Rene Larsen, rector of the School of Conservation under the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, argued that the anatase could have derived from sand used to dry the wet ink.
In other words, expectations of a definitive and irrefutable answer from non-invasive analysis of the ink are perhaps over-sanguine.
Thanks, Bain. Here's a revised version. Lacking is the exact date of Hans-Ulrich's death (and was he German-American?). Also, Fecht at some point may have moved from Berlin to Hamburg, though of course he may have returned to Berlin.
ReplyDelete2nd century claimed date of Greek "gospel"
2nd-4th c. claimed date of a Coptic Gospel of John ms
4th century claimed date of ms
1960s claimed date Laukamp purchased in East Germany
1961 G. Fecht in Orientalia suggests Gospel of Truth was composed in Coptic not Greek
1982 July 15 letter from Munro to Laukamp (claimed)
1982-1983 Karen King at Free Uni, Berlin
1982 "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" published
1983 new Egyptian antiquities law
1987 Fecht Festschrift
1997 claimed purchase from German-American collector
1997ff copyright dates of Michael Grondin online Coptic Thomas site
2001 Hans-Ulrich Laukamp death
2002 Nov 11 M. Grondin posts Interlinear Coptic Thomas
2003 "The Da Vinci Code" published
2003 "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala" published by King
2006 May Da Vinci Code film
2006 Dec. 13 Gerhard Fecht death
2009 Jan. 2 Peter Munro death
2009 July K. King to Harvard
2010 July 9 email, collector to K. King
2011 Dec. ms to K. King; she (sometime) titles it "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife"
You and your readers may be interested in a page about the GJW controversy that I've recently added to my website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gospel-thomas.net/x_gjw.htm
For those who've perused it previously, there are two new postscripts this morning - one in particular about the possible use of my interlinear.
Focussing on media coverage, the (temporarily?) shelved Smithsonian Channel documentary puffed the fragment as "one of the most significant discoveries of all time." An embarrassing piece of hype soon removed from the channel's website but preserved in a report by USAToday http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/09/28/smithsonian-channel-jesus-wife-papyrus-vatican/70001351/1
ReplyDeleteThe hype recalls the title of Jacobovici's book The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History published in February 2007, twinning with the Discovery Channel documentary aired on 4 March 2007 incautiously entitled "The Lost Tomb of Jesus".
Two more dates for Stephen's chronology, perhaps.
Thanks for that info on the ink Bain.
ReplyDeleteLate last night (17 October) Mark Goodacre (NT blog) reported the latest from Prof. King via Kevin Madigan (co-ed of HTR). As of 17 October it "will possibly take several weeks, if not months" to produce and interpret "reliable results". The mystery seems to be whether or not, as at 17 October, Prof. King has actually submitted the fragment for testing. According to Madigan, she said "she is making arrangements to submit the fragment for extensive testing".
ReplyDeleteexcuse me< what is difference in canonicity between this manuscript & manuscripts of the NT????
ReplyDeleteboth of them:-
((1))work of unknown auther and editor
((2)) lake evidence which prove that it is a work of one of students of jesus Peace be upon him
((3))their is a dark period between the manuscripts and its origin
so , please .... what is is the standard of canoicity???
i thik christians have no standard except the faith they have drunk
so you had a faith and then you had looked for abook which is suitable for ths unknown origin faith
Dear Omer,
ReplyDeleteThe difference is this. We have thousands of manuscripts of the Gospels which are genuine. Our Gospel witnesses exist in a variety of translations from a variety of time periods. These canonical gospels are eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus, not the reconstruction of a 2nd or 6th century author. The use of our four gospels in the Christian church is corroborated by sources dating into the second century.
The text of this fragment mentioning Jesus' wife is documented only by one fragment which has all the appearances of a fake. I am not aware of any factual support for this fragment's authenticity on textual or paleographic grounds.
At least Oxford recognizes the value of enlisting amateurs in cataloging the tremendous volume of papyri from Oxyrhynchus:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hayatv.tv/info/bible-books/3627.html
Oops, wrong link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/scholars-seek-amateur-assistance/