Reviews of Sabar’s New Book on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

Ariel Sabar’s new book on the saga of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife releases tomorrow and already there have been a slate of glowing book reviews. My copy is on pre-order so I have not read it. But all accounts so far are that it is a page-turner with important lessons for those of us who ply the scholarly trade. Here are some excerpts for you from the reviews I’ve read so far.

Lucas Wittmamn at Time Magazine

In our moment of truthiness, to borrow a term from Stephen Colbert, Veritas offers a vital lesson less about Christianity than about what happens when a scholar decides that the story is more important than the truth. King had spent her career presenting an important scholarly narrative about the need to re-evaluate and reinterpret the canonical story of Christianity, to allow for women to play a central role and to question some of the central tenets of how established churches told the world’s most famous story. But in Sabar’s convincing and damning assessment, when it came to Jesus’ wife, she bypassed the facts, ignored peers who warned her something was amiss and failed to thoroughly interrogate how Fritz came to possess this stunning artifact.

Katherine A. Powers at the Minneapolis Star Tribune

You could not find a better demonstration of the central truth about forgeries: that historical verisimilitude does not lie in reflecting the sensibility of the past but rather in fulfilling the persuasions and aspirations of the present. But there is more to this story than wishful thinking. Why did King suddenly change her mind about the authenticity of the scrap of papyrus and decide to accept it? Why did she move so quickly in presenting it to the world?

It would be unfair to tell you, for, in truth, the book is as good as a detective novel, possessing plot, subplots, hidden motives, bees in eccentric bonnets and startling revelations.

Alex Beam at the Wall St. Journal (paywalled)

‘Hotwife’ Pornographer Gulls Harvard Prof With ‘Wife of Jesus’ Hoax.” The headlines could have been worse for Karen King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. But not much worse.

David Mikis in Tablet

Veritas is a gripping thriller, and a perfect beach read. I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t reveal the possible involvement of Harvard’s administrators in the Jesus’ Wife fiasco. Suffice it to say that Harvard, not just King, fell for Fritz’s tantalizing papyrus. Sabar’s book adds to one’s sense that the ivory tower is tottering, with professors peddling wishful thinking that masquerades as scholarship, and letting their progressive values freely rewrite history.

Candida Moss in The Daily Beast

The negative reviews raise questions as to why King went ahead with her announcement and why the editors of HTR would allow publication to proceed. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been rejected. HTR had been spooked, Sabar reveals, but published it in 2014 and without peer-reviewing the scientific data supplied in her article. (The editors at the time have recently been replaced.) Sabar adds that King refused to allow a (negative) response to be published alongside her article in HTR and that when she released her story to the press she did so on the condition that they only speak to pre-approved scholars. Had King not been a senior figure in the field, and had the editors of the journal not been her immediate colleagues, the outcome might have been different.

TC Articles in the Latest Issue of NTS

From the latest issue of New Testament Studies, three articles on topics of interest to ETC readers.

P45 and the Problem of the ‘Seventy(-two)’:
A Case for the Longer Reading in Luke 10.1 and 17

Zachary J. Cole 

At Luke 10.17, most modern critical editions incorrectly cite the wording of P45 as ἑβδομήκοντα δύο (72) instead of ἑβδομήκοντα (70). As this is one of the two oldest witnesses to the verse, this revision of external evidence calls for a fresh examination of the textual problem as a whole. Previous discussions have focused almost exclusively on the perceived symbolic values of ἑβδομήκοντα (+ δύο) to identify the ‘more Lukan’ wording, but this essay argues on the basis of new transcriptional evidence that the earlier reading is more likely ἑβδομήκοντα δύο.

Postscript: A Final Note about the Origin of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

Andrew Bernhard

The owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife provided Karen King with an interlinear translation of the text. Like the Coptic of the papyrus fragment, the English of this interlinear translation appears dependent on ‘Grondin’s Interlinear Coptic/English Translation of the Gospel of Thomas’. It shares a series of distinctive textual features with Grondin’s work and even appears to translate two Coptic words found in the Gospel of Thomas but not in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Consequently, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife seems undeniably to be a ‘patchwork’ of brief excerpts from the Gospel of Thomas created after November 2002.

Anger Issues: Mark 1.41 in Ephrem the Syrian,
the Old Latin Gospels and Codex Bezae

Nathan C. Johnson

While the vast majority of manuscripts portray Jesus in Mark 1.41 as ‘moved to compassion’ (σπλαγχνισθείς) before healing a leper, five putative witnesses in three languages depict him ‘becoming angry’ (ὀργισθείς/iratus). Following Hort’s dictum that ‘knowledge of documents should precede final judgments on readings’, this article offers the first thorough examination of the witnesses to ‘anger’, with the result that the sole putative Syriac witness is dismissed, the Old Latin witnesses are geographically isolated, and the sole Greek witness linked to the Old Latin as a Greek–Latin diglot. Since the final grounds for Jesus’ ‘anger’, that it is the lectio difficilior, also prove insubstantial, σπλαγχνισθείς is concluded to be original, with ‘anger’ originating in the Old Latin manuscript tradition.

Upcoming Conference on Manuscript Forgeries in Kristiansand

On 14-16 September I will participate in a conference at the University of Agder in Kristiansand (Norway), Fragments of an Unbelievable Past? Constructions of Provenance, Narratives of Forgery – conference schedule below (not including coffee and meals).

I will present a paper on the famous 19th-century forgerer Constantine Simonides: “Simonides’ New Testament Papyri: Their Production and Purported Provenance.” Since the Friday is devoted to the Gospel of Jesus Wife saga, including the concluding conversation between Prof. Liv Ingeborg Lied (MF, Oslo) and Ariel Sabar about his his recent Atlantic Magazine investigation, I will also attempt to draw some parallels between Simonides and Walter Fritz – the owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment (for our earlier post on Fritz, see here). I look forward to the conference very much.

Conference Schedule

Wednesday

Open lecture at Myren Gård:

18:00– Nina Burleigh (Newsweek), “Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land”


Thursday (A7–006)

9:00 – 9:15 Årstein Justnes (University of Agder), “[An Unbelievable] Introduction”


Session I, chair: Årstein Justnes (University of Agder)

9:15 – 10:15 Nina Burleigh (Newsweek), “The Post-Factual Museum: Curating Ancient History to Influence Politics 101”

10:30 – 11:30 Roberta Mazza (University of Manchester), “Papyrology and Ethics: The Problem of Provenance”

11:30 – 12:30 Nils Hallvard Korsvoll (MF Norwegian School of Theology), “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: How Is Authenticity Dealt with When Provenance Is Not an Issue?”


Session II, chair: Tor Vegge (University of Agder)

13:15 – 14:15 Nicola Denzey Lewis (Brown University), “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Library”

14:15 – 15:15 Eva Mroczek (University of California, Davis), “The Secret Lives of Texts: The Discovery Narrative as a Literary and Theological Tradition”

15:45 – 16:30 Torleif Elgvin (NLA University College), to be announced

16:30 – 17:30 Kipp Davis (Trinity Western University), “Gleanings from the Cave of Wonders? Patterns of Correspondence in the Post-2002 DSS Fragments”


Friday (A7-006)

Session III, chair: Torleif Elgvin (NLA University College)

9:00 – 10:00 Liv Ingeborg Lied (MF Norwegian School of Theology), “Media Dynamics and Academic Knowledge Production: Tracing the Role of the Media in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Saga”

10:00 – 11:00 Tommy Wasserman (Örebro School of Theology & Ansgar School of Theology), “Simonides’ New Testament Papyri: Their Production and Purported Provenance”

University Library, 2nd floor

11:30 – 13:00 “The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife”: A conversation between journalist Ariel Sabar and professor Liv Ingeborg Lied about his Atlantic Magazine investigation into the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife

See more about the conference on the blog of the organizers, The Lying Pen of Scribes.

More on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and Walter Fritz

Peter Gurry has just blogged on Ariel Sabar’s Atlantic article on Walter Fritz. Apparently, Fritz admitted in writing that he is the owner of the Gospel of Jesus Wife papyrus. Among other revelations, the article contends that Fritz:

• studied egyptology at the same institution where the GJW was verified in 1982 according to the forged accompanying documents,
• purchased www.gospelofjesuswife.com weeks before Karen King’s Rome announcement,
• approached Sabar about writing a factually erroneous book on “the Mary Magdalene Story,”
• and has a higher regard for the “Gnostic” gospels than the canonical gospels.

Several of us have been convinced since October 2015 that Fritz played some central role in the Gospel of Jesus Wife saga. The first player in identifying Fritz as a person of interest was Owen Jarus of LiveScience, who interviewed Fritz much earlier, and directed me to Walter Fritz and his wife’s “Nefer Art” website. Here, I encountered a picture of the above Nefer Art Forgery (above), written in the sort of minuscule script (complete with accents!) appropriate to a modern printed edition.  The cut along the left hand side resembles one on the GJW. The Greek text, apparently some sort of magical love spell, features a likely image of Venus with Cupid and references the Titan Phoebe and her daughter Hekate. I have not been able to determine the text from which this was fabricated.

This led me to one of blogs related to Fritz’s wife, namely “Cute Art World,” in which she advertises her hand-made pendants embedded with ancient papyrus and inscribed with a Coptic nomen sacrum IC (not Greek). She blogged (31 Aug 2009),

Pendants of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus in her arms. On the picture there is IC with a dash over it, which is the Coptic writing for “Jesus”. The little roundel in the lower part of the pendant contains a small, approx. 1/12” long papyrus fragment with the original black ink on it. I glued these fibers in between the picture and the glass.  These fragments are really old and come from a larger christian papyrus, dating back to the 2nd Century A.D. The larger papyrus was probably part of a gospel or an early christian text, written in the Sahidic Coptic language. Coptic is is the final stage of the Egyptian language and consists of Egyptian words, written in Greek alphabet. Early Christians used the Coptic language, besides Greek, to write down the Gospels and other early texts about Jesus.  |  This is no hoax. I can guarantee that the small fragments in the roundel are indeed over 1800 years old. They date back in a time period shortly after Jesus’ crucifixion. I got these fragments from a reputable manuscript dealer who was restoring a larger papyrus with a christian gospel on it. The fragments were left over and couldn’t be incorporated into the big papyrus any more because they were so small. I have photos of the restoring process.

This was surprising. My guess was that the Gospel of Jesus Wife had been created sometime after the death of Peter Munro (02 Jan 2009), and these images suggest that Hans-Ulrich Laukamp’s business partner has an interest in such papyri. Around the same time, Andrew Bernhard blogged about the Owner’s Interlinear, which conclusively proved his earlier hypothesis about the GJW’s reliance on Grondin’s GThomas PDF. In the wake of this new discovery, I shared some of my findings with Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe, who would then become the first individual to discover Walter Fritz’s 1991 article:

Walter Fritz, ‘Bemerkungen zum Datierungsvermerk auf der Amarnatafel Kn 27’ Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur 18 (1991): 207-214.

Walter Fritz thanks Prof. Dr. Jürgen Osing for the concept for the paper, having studied at the FU - Berlin with Osing in the summer of 1990. The article details a difficult reading of a Middle Egyptian Amarna tablet relating to the reigns of Amenophis III and IV, and describing the use of “Quarztlicht,” or UV light, which naturally is only useful when one is working with carbon-based inks.  One has to know about the composition of ancient inks. The GJW and related forgeries all appear to have been written with carbon (=soot) mixtures.

I offer here a timeline of where we have now arrived.

Sept 2012  Karen King announces the discovery of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus.  Almost immediately, Francis Watson and Simon Gathercole notice a relationship between the GJW and the Gospel of Thomas.

Nov 2012  Andrew Bernhard’s Patchwork Hypothesis proves that the GJW was copied from Grondin’s interlinear.

Apr 2014  The current blog revealed that an accompanying papyrus with the same handwriting was a forgery, calling into question the authenticity of all of the accompanying documents.

Aug 2015  With the revelation of the owner’s interlinear, Bernhard’s Patchwork hypothesis becomes irrefutable.

June 2016  Walter Fritz, a former FU-Berlin Egyptology student, claims to be the owner of the GJW.

[Update: Karen King has conceded that the GJW papyrus is probably a forgery.  Fritz had lied to her, she said, according to Ariel Sabar’s update.]

The Owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Unveiled

Walter Fritz, owner of the GJW (photo credit).

Wow. The most recent issue of The Atlantic has an incredible story uncovering the formerly anonymous owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus. His name is Walter Fritz, a German-born man who now lives in Florida with his, shall we say, eccentric wife. Fritz denies forging the papyrus, but the reporter of the story seems unconvinced. And for good reason.

The article is long but well worth reading. It gets stranger at almost every turn. It’s a fine piece of detective work by the journalist, Ariel Sabar.

Here’s a clip from near the end:

One thing did become clear, though. When we first started talking, Fritz had claimed that he had no stake in the papyrus’s message. But I began to see that he in fact cared deeply. As a teenager he wanted to become a priest, he said, but he later came to believe that much of Catholic teaching was “bullcrap.” Particularly flawed was the Church’s claim that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were truer accounts of Jesus’s life than the Gnostic Gospels.

He pointed to the fact that almost no papyri bearing the canonical Gospels have been carbon-dated, because such testing would cause physical damage to the New Testament’s seminal manuscripts—damage that institutions like the Vatican Library would never countenance. But with the new ink tests at Columbia—the ones King had told me about—scientists can date papyri without damaging them. Fritz said these tests could well show that most of the Gnostic Gospels were written before the canonical Gospels, making them better witnesses to the historical Jesus—a view that virtually no serious scholars share.

“All that discussion that the canonical Gospels were way before anything else—that’s utter bulls**t,” Fritz told me. “The Gnostic texts that allow women a discipleship and see Jesus more as a spiritual person and not as a demigod—these texts are probably the more relevant ones.”

My favorite line—and there are many good ones in this story—has to be this one:

He [Fritz] had even more scorn for critics of the Jesus’s-wife papyrus, deriding them as “county level” scholars from the “University of Eastern Pee-Pee Land” who think their nitpicking of Coptic phrases can compete with scientific tests at places like Columbia University and MIT that have yielded no physical proof of forgery.

I trust Christian will be updating his CV accordingly!

Read the whole thing here. 

ETC Blog and GJW in the Boston Globe

The ETC Blog found its way onto the front page of the Boston Globe today as part of a surprisingly well-written article on the current state of doubt about the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Speaking of Christian Askeland’s blog post on the John fragment (this one, I assume), the Globe writer says that “for many scholars who had been withholding judgment, Askeland’s insight tipped the balance in favor of forgery.”

As far as info about the fragment, I don’t see anything new. What was new—at least to me—was an admission from Karen King that it could be a forgery and an update from Malcolm Choat who seems to favor forgery now.

“I’m open that, in the end, it might be a modern production,” King said in an August interview. “But right now, the important thing is process.”

And this about Choat:

Finally, this month, Choat, the Australian papyrologist, returned to Cambridge to study the Harvard papyri on his way to a conference in Atlanta.
He spent more than eight hours inspecting the papryi at the Houghton Library, supervised by a member of the library’s staff.
In one spot on the John fragment, Choat detected ink where it shouldn’t be. In another area, ink was absent where it should have been present.
Wrong dialect, line breaks that exactly replicated another manuscript, and now, misplaced ink: To Choat, the most logical explanation was forgery.

The line that really stood out to me though was this one: “For now, though, it is hard to find anyone who will defend the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife as authentic.”

You can read the whole article at the Boston Globe’s website.

King with GJW.

The Gospel of Jesus Wife and Grondin's Interlinear

Breaking News

Andrew Bernhard, independent scholar, has produced new evidence that once again demonstrates the modern origins of the Gospel of Jesus Wife (GJW).  For the technical details, I refer the reader to Bernhard’s analysis, here.

Grondin’s Interlinear

I am a huge fan of Michael Grondin’s online resources.  He has been a trailblazer in terms of making resources related to the Gospel of Thomas and related topics accessible online for more than a decade.  As Bernhard argued in 2012, Grondin’s interlinear translation of the Gospel of Thomas was particularly helpful to the forger of the GJW in creating a patchwork text in which Jesus says “my wife.”  Several facets of the Coptic clearly were gleaned from the Grondin PDF, indicating that the GJW itself could be no older than the PDF uploaded in 2002.

The Owner’s Transcription

A modern owner of the GJW wife provided Karen King with a transcription and translation of the papyrus, which is now available online.  Bernhard has shown that this transcription is not itself a transcription and translation from the GJW fragment, but clearly a reiteration of Grondin’s PDF.  The cumulative weight of the agreements is startling and irrefutable.  I mention only one of many agreements, here, as it reflects a Greek term.  The third line of the GJW uses the Greek-Coptic loanword derived from ἀρνέομαι.  Both Grondin and the Owner’s Translation render this loanword as “abdicate,” a gloss not found in, for instance, the LSJ or BDAG.

Some Notes on the Image

Although I leave the content of the Owner’s Transcription to Bernhard, my own analysis can be downloaded as a PDF (cf. link below).  I would like to note some contextual clues which this new document provides to our story:

• This Owner’s Transcription was prepared after the inscription of the GJW papyrus, since it cites the forger’s own errors.
• The owner has apparently photographed a print-out of this document with a cell phone.  The paper has creases and is bowed at the top and bottom.  A few characters are cut off of one side.  The manila coloring derives from indoor lighting on normal printer paper.  There is a small hole or blemish in the midst of the transcription.
• I would guess that the forger has used the ASCII font CS Coptic Manuscript.  This document was not prepared by Peter Munro in the 1980s on a typewriter!   The document includes numerous typos, some of which indicate a weak knowledge of Coptic.
• The file creation date has been wiped. One can only read the XMP version (Adobe XMP Core 4.1-c036 46.276720, Mon Feb 19 2007 22:13:43).  Please let me know if you can make anything of this.
• The wording of the title is definitely leading since the text contains no clearly Gnostic material, “Coptic Papyrus, Sahidic, Gnostic Gosple (sic), probably 3-5th Centruy (sic) A.D.”  This could be a synthesis of popular opinion on the Gospel of Thomas, or could reflect opinion on the Gospel of Judas, which was big around 2008.  I would suggest that the GJW emerged from the latter hype — and probably after the death of Peter Munro (2 Jan 2009).
• As already mentioned, this is sloppy on many levels and suggests that the forger has a weak command of Coptic at best, and probably no experience with editions of ancient manuscripts.
• I always wondered if the forger had any riddles built into the seemingly unreadable verso.  The Owner’s Transcription does not offer any clues to what was written on the verso.

What’s Next

This only proves beyond question what essentially all specialists already had concluded.  If we are to continue the discussion with this forged papyrus, as has recently been suggested, then the next step is pursue the remaining documents to attempt to identify the forger.  Who knows what the other documents may hold in terms of clues?  In particular, I would like to see the handwritten note, which probably preserves the forger’s hand.  If the current owner is the person mentioned in the bill of sale, then he/she has some interesting questions to answer.  I enthusiastically thank Karen King for uploading the Owner’s Transcription, and would like to request that the remaining documents (bill of sale, handwritten note and typed note) also be shared, if possible.

My PDF outline of the Owner’s Transcription.

The Gospel of Jesus Wife — the saga continues ...

This is a synthesis of some breaking news developments on the Gospel of Jesus Wife forgery with a short comment by myself at the end.

Karen King, Harvard professor 

On pages 8–9 of the most recent BAR issue (Sept–Oct 2015), Karen King responded to prior comment, indicating that she still believed that the GJW could be an authentic ancient witness to a married-Jesus tradition in the Early Church or Islamic-era Egypt.

At this point, when discussions and research are ongoing, I think it is important, however difficult, to stay open regarding the possible dates of the inscription and other matters of interpretation, to consider the implications that scholars are operating with different methodological assumptions, and to take into account the enormity of the gaps in our knowledge of both ancient and modern contexts.

Owen Jarus, Live Science reporter

In terms of investigative journalism, Jarus was the first to openly call the GJW story into question, especially with regard to the person of Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, the purported former owner of the papyrus.  I was skeptical of his Laukamp arguments at first, but now it is clear that the entire modern history of the GJW is indeed a forgery.  In a recent Live Science article, Owen Jarus has produced handwriting samples from Laukamp which, he argues, could be used to authenticate or inauthenticate the accompanying documents.  Further, he reports that further tests may be used to revive the debate.

In addition, James Yardley, a senior research scientist at Columbia University, told Live Science that the new tests confirm that the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife holds different ink than the John papyrus. This could undercut Askeland’s argument that the two papyri were written by the same person.

Andrew Bernhard, independent scholar

Andrew played a crucial role in the beginning of the controversy, publishing a patchwork theory which amalgamated prior assessments by Gathercole, Lundhaug-Suciu, Watson and others, and which further linked the GJW to a particular modern source, a 2002 online PDF produced by Mike Grondin.  Bernhard has just renewed a call for King to release the documents related to the GJW controversy, with a summary stressing why such a release remains necessary (here).

Nonetheless, I have become convinced that identifying (or at least trying to identify) the forger may be the only way to bring an end to the strange saga of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. This will require that Professor King identify the owner (as she has said she can legally), make the three supporting documents cited in her article (p. 31) available for public inspection, and release the English translation given to her with the papyrus fragment. We need access to anyone who may have been involved with what now seems to be an obvious forgery, and we need all potentially pertinent evidence to be made available.

My own response

I have expressed my opinion that the GJW has been so exhaustively proved a forgery, that the matter could be laid to rest.  With regard to provenance documents and the identity of the present owner, I had surmised that King had legal or ethical reasons for withholding these.  After all, what more could be gained from identifying the forger when everyone knows that the GJW is a fake?  Her suggestion that the GJW could be authentic has caused me to reconsider.  I would suggest that, if she considers the debate “ongoing,” then she should without hesitation produce the relevant materials.  Furthermore, I would suggest that it would be disingenuous of King to conduct further Raman-spectroscopy testing (or the like) in highly-speculative support of authenticity and to simultaneously withhold documents which would almost certainly demonstrate forgery.

King cited the prior set of scientific tests and paleographic analysis infelicitously, suggesting that they supported authenticity.  Readers can reference my reaction, here.  I am concerned that Yardley’s tests will further murk up the waters, by exaggerating some minor differences between the ink of the GJW and the Harvard Lycopolitan John.  This would be an appeal to science for something that (1) is fairly plain to the naked eye and (2) was already covered with a prior test.  These two documents are remarkably similar in regard to their ink, writing instrument and character formation — and in their utter dissemblance from any known ancient parallel.  Even the prior Raman tests suggested only minor differences.  In the New Testament Studies response, Ira Rabin argued,

It is noteworthy that their own statistical analysis does not support the conclusion that the inks of the two sides of GJW are distinct from that of JnFragm offered in the executive summary. In Fig. 8.2 (top) of the report ID/IG, the intensity ratio of the disordered and ordered bands for both fragments clearly falls within the error bars. (363)

In other words, the prior study, when accurately interpreted, demonstrated that the two shared essentially the same ink.  I would suggest that we let the matter drop.  If Karen King would like to continue to the discussion, then she should produce the documents which will allow scholars to potentially identify the forger.

Gospel of Jesus’s Wife ... Again

The most recent issue of the journal New Testament Studies offers a series of articles on the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife controversy, all contending that the fragment is a modern creation and not an authentic ancient manuscript.  The following list summarizes the articles:

New Testament Studies 61.3 (July 2015)

• Francis Watson, ‘Editorial,’ 289–291
• Simon Gathercole, ‘The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: Constructing a Context,’ 314–334
• Christian Askeland, ‘A Lycopolitan Forgery of John’s Gospel,’ 314–334
• Andrew Bernhard, ‘The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery,’ 356–367
• Myriam Krutzsch and Ira Rabin, ‘Material Criteria and their Clues for Dating,’ 356–367
• Christopher Jones, ‘The Jesus’ Wife Papyrus in the History of Forgery,’ 368–378
• Gesine Schenke Robinson, ‘How a Papyrus Fragment Became a Sensation,’ 379–394

Update (TW): And here is a video interview about the story with Simon Gathercole produced by Cambridge University Press in conjunction with the NTS volume.

The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, Part II: Jesus’s Wife Rediviva

BL Add. MS 17202 dated colophon

"The date of writing is given in l. 1 and l. 3 as A.S. 880 = A.D.569. This must have been the date of the completion of the work, of which different parts were written at different times; thus 12,4 was written in 561, and 12,7 in 555; 10,12, which I have restored from Michael (see below), would appear, on the prima facie interpretation of the words to have been written in 545 ; but, since the style of the narrative makes it incredible that it was written within a year of the events recorded, " this year 8 " must be understood to mean " this year 8, with which we are now dealing." Throughout the history of Justinian's reign the author speaks of the Emperor in terms which imply that he was still living." Hamilton & Brooks, 1899, p. 5.

Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson have published a new book which is attracting considerable media attention. The monograph contends that a well-known ancient text, “Joseph and Aseneth,” is actually a coded witnesses to an early Christian tradition which believed that Jesus was not only married, but also had children. Although this text is known in Armenian, Greek (the original language), Latin and Syriac, the new thesis is primarily interested in the earliest manuscript, the Syriac witness BL Add. MS 17202. I will survey what I have been able to initially glean from this monograph via Google Books, below. Unfortunately, this medium does not allow me to accompany my quotes with page numbers.

Synopsis

“When interpreted in the way that ancient Christians understood their sacred writings, this is absolutely the first written document that makes the personal life of Jesus apparent.  After all, it tells the story of how Jesus met his wife, how they married, and how they had children.  More than this, it goes into details of who she was and what happened in their lives after the marriage and before the crucifixion.  It’s surprising—perhaps shocking to some—but it presents a history that has thus far been hinted at but not otherwise known.”

Most are familiar with the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis. In Genesis 41:45, Pharaoh gave Aseneth, daughter of an Egyptian priest, to Joseph in marriage. In 41:50–52, Aseneth gave birth to two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. The apocryphal account of Joseph and Aseneth describes Aseneth’s journey from pagan worship to monotheistic Israelite faith. Jacobovici and Wilson argue that this account is a coded story, which in its interpretation is actually a gospel account.

Joseph as Jesus

“In Syriac Christianity, whom does Joseph stand for?  Remarkably, we find that Syriac-speaking Christians did see Joseph as a type.  In fact, in Syriac Christianity, Joseph is a surrogate for none other than Jesus himself.”

Aseneth as Magdalene

“Aseneth is literally the woman in the tower — she’s the ‘Tower Lady,’ if you will… Since we have firmly set this story in a Christian context, we know of only one tower lady in Christian tradition, and she happens to be intimately associated with Jesus.  She is none other than Mary the Magdalene… Migdal [sic] in Hebrew (Magdala in Aramaic) means—of all things—Tower.  Translated literally, Mary the Magdalene’s name does mean Mary the Tower.”

Aseneth as Artemis

“If we are right, Mary the Magdalene was seen by her followers as the incarnation of a specific goddess—Artemis.  Jesus, therefore, would have been associated with a bee goddess and, as the Gospels record, his opponents may well have charged him of heretically healing in her name.”

The authors note Artemis is associated with bees (as Athena is associated with an owl), and Aseneth is attacked by bees in the story (ch. XVI). Likewise, Aseneth lived in a tower (mentioned thrice?), and Artemis wore a tower on her head.

The Church

“Aseneth and Mary the Magdalene are both Towers and types of the church. The logic is clear: Aseneth and Mary the Magdalene are identical, the former acting as a surrogate for the latter.”

Mark Goodacre and Richard Bauckham

Readers should note that Goodacre and Bauckham responded to this a year ago, here and earlier here.

Sources

• Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus' Marriage to Mary the Magdalene. Pegasus Books: New York, 2014. (Google Books)
• F. J. Hamilton and E. W. Brooks, eds.The Syriac chronicle known as that of Zachariah of Mitylene. Methuen & Co.,: London 1899. (archive.org)
• (Although Joseph and Aseneth was in this manuscript, this section was not translated; the editors instead cited the Greek editions, cf. p. 8, fn. 2)
• Randall D. Chesnutt, From Death to Life: Conversion in Joseph and Aseneth. JSP Supplements 16. Sheffield Academic Press: 1995. (Google Books)
• Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. (Google Books)
• Angela Standhartinger "Recent Scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth (1988-2013)" Currents in Biblical Research 12.3 (2014): 353-406. (Sage Journals)
• Joseph and Aseneth: Translated by David Cook (via Mark Goodacre), http://www.markgoodacre.org/aseneth/translat.htm
• Syriac Chronicle … Zachariah of Mitylene (via Roger Pearse), http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/zachariah00.htm

Pseudo-Gospel of Jesus Wife as Case Study

In his article in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'How the 'Jesus' Wife' Hoax Fell Apart', Jerry Pattengale concludes with an interesting comment: 'this episode is not totally without merit. It will provide a valuable case study for research classes long after we're gone and the biblical texts remain.'

So, given that the whole debacle is basically over (except for mopping up exercises), what lessons can be learnt?

a) It is possible for a forger to get hold of papyri, mix ink according to ancient conventions, compose a semi-plausible pastiche of a text, and mislead scholars, academic institutions, the media, and the public. Exactly what he (or she) hoped to gain from it is not clear, but if it was simply mischief, then he has probably far exceeded his wildest dreams. Given this possibility it is important that if someone approaches you with an unpublished text which meshes in with your own academic interests, then critical skepticism rather than credulity should control your responses. Nothing is innocent until proven guilty in this scenario. Also the forger will target a scholar who he thinks is persuadable, not a manuscript expert, and who has wider credibility to make the discovery known (remember that in this case Prof King at first didn't respond to the invitation, but the forger didn't go to some other scholar, he waited a year and then went back to reel in Prof King).

b) Get the back story straight and get all the documents involved. Although at the time and in retrospect we may think that the problems of palaeography, subject matter, and textual composition with the Pseudo-Gospel of Jesus' Wife* were sufficient to conclude it was a fake; the additional confirmation of that came from the Pseudo-Gospel of John Fragment and the proof that it was copied from a published form of a text. That conclusive anachronism becomes the nail in the coffin which is universally convincing (just as its demonstrable dependence on a published edition of Mark finally did for 2427). So the people calling for access to the whole collection in 2012 are vindicated.

c) The results of scientific tests need to be carefully interpreted. Don't just read the summaries that are repeated in the press releases. Get hold of the full scientific reports. Again, that was an incidental key step in this process (because the scientific ink report also happened to have a photo of Ps-John).

d) Careful observation of the actual manuscript (or good images) may generate suspicion and even offer pointers to forgery which may be individually persuasive, but generating a consensus requires multiple points of suspicion (and/or clearcut anachronism).

e) Get high resolution images on the internet and let some crowd-sourcing do the critical work. In this episode the scholarly blogs on the subject come out pretty well, while the Harvard folk are looking a little gullible. The blogs sorted in a month what Harvard couldn't. We all know when bloggers get their teeth into something they can be tenacious and feed off each other. Surely there will now be scholarly articles on this mess, in NTS and hopefully in HTR, but I doubt they'll offer more than the blogs have already done.

f) Composing a plausible ancient text by free composition is difficult. Several recent forgeries have involved creating text by copying and adapting existing published texts of similar type (both of these obviously Ps-GJW as Watson, Bernhard and others showed; Ps-John as Askeland, Suciu, have now shown, and presumably some of the others in the same collection which haven't been made public yet; the lead codices, etc.). So scholars should look, not only at comparing new documentary finds with other ancient texts, but also with published forms of similar texts. Here tell-tale anachronisms (like following the Grondin misprint or having 17 line endings agree except when a page is turned) are perhaps the most generally conclusive bits of the evidence.

g) Forgers invent fake histories, provenance and documents to bolster the authenticity of the forgery, but these are a potential weak link. No surprise that in this case all these documents have been kept from the scholarly community. 

h) don't worry if your PhD is in something other people think is obscure (like Coptic manuscripts of John) one day you might have the very bit of information that the rest of us need. 

The forgery of the Lycopolitan gospel of John

Introduction

A second fragment containing the gospel of John traveled with the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife fragment (GJW), and this Gospel of John fragment (GJohn) is clearly a forgery.  Because both fragments share the same writing, the GJW must also be a forgery.  I am grateful for the input that Alin Suciu, Mark Goodacre and many others have offered concerning the newly available Gospel of John fragment.  I will use the present page to post photographs, a comparative transcription and relevant links. Please note, this will be a dynamic page, and I will no doubt update the transcriptions and main points.  Over the course of the next week, I will write an article for the June 2014 Tyndale Bulletin discussing the paleography and text of this fragment.

Photographs

Mark Goodacre has identified clearer photographs which I share, here (Jn 5:26-30 and 6:11-14, respectively).  The dimensions are ca. 11 × 8 cm (versus ca. 7.5 × 4 cm for GJW.)

Qau compared

The following transcription represents in green the extant text of the forgery.  Mark Goodacre offers an eloquent discussion of how this inauthenticates both this fragment and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife fragment which were created through the same scribal event (font).

1. Notably, seventeen of seventeen line breaks are the same.  This defies coincidence.  
2. Alin Suciu first announced the relevance of Sahidic ⲉⲃⲟⲗ for Lycopolitan ⲁⲃⲁⲗ.  The Sahidic spelling is not possible given the extant dialectal orthography which, for example, otherwise consistently has the Lycopolitan Alpha in lieu of the distinctly Sahidic Omicron.
3. I note here that the omitted ⲕⲣⲓⲛⲉ results in total nonsense. 
4. Likewise, the one instance where the forger has not copied every second line (verso, ll. 7–8), is an instance in which the intermediary text is a secure stock phrase “they were saying that”.  The presence of additional text here is impossible.  The forger erred when he turned from page eight of Thompson’s PDF to page nine, having also passed plate 25/26.
5. Naturally, the fact that we are seeing Lycopolitan in a fragment radiometrically dated to the seventh to ninth centuries is a huge problem.  The minor dialects (Achmimic, Lycopolitan and Middle Egyptian) are not present in the extensive documentary tradition from the sixth to eighth centuries.

Radiometric dating

The fragment under discussion was carbon-dated twice by labs in Arizona and Massachusetts.  The resultant rounded, callibrated two sigma dates are, respectively, 680–880 and 640–800 CE (fract.mod. results: 0.85680±0.0033 and 0.85030±0.00410).  Along with the results for the GJW wife fragment, I have graphed the results using OxCal, here:

Codex Qau

Codex Qau, Jn 16:33–17:19

The most recent discussion of codex Qau may be found in a recent award-winning contribution to the subject of the Coptic versions of John’s gospel (esp. pp. 141–143, also 94–105, 195–208).  Therein, one learns that the jar and linen cloth which protected this manuscript of John’s gospel have recently been rediscovered in Cambridge.  The manuscript was apparently buried in a cemetery used “in Predynastic, early Dynastic and Roman times”  (Thompson, 1924, ix).

Brunton, Qau, vol.3, xlii

According to the archeological publication, a group of coins was also found buried in a pot nearby, “No. 33 contained the papyrus of St. John’s gospel (late fourth century), and 28, 29, contained the hoard of gold coins” (Brunton, Qau and Badari III, 26; cf. also 31).  The coin hoard contains mint condition dated coins up to the year 361 CE (ibid., 29–30).  The idea that an ancient scribe copied our current fragment from Qau is problematic, given the provenance.  Whereas Qau had 33–37 lines per page, GJW-GJohn apparently would have had about 60 lines per page.  Stephen Emmel has demonstrated the absurdity of the forgery by reconstructing it hypothetical original and by comparing the reconstruction to known codices, here.

Peter Munro’s typed note

In her primary GJW article (p. 154, fn. 107), Karen King has provided the following information:

The second document is a photocopy of a typed and signed letter addressed to H. U. Laukamp dated July 15, 1982, from Prof. Dr. Peter Munro (Freie Universität, Ägyptologisches Seminar, Berlin), stating that a colleague, Professor Fecht, has identified one of Mr. Laukamp’s papyri as having nine lines of writing, measuring approximately 110 by 80 mm, and containing text from the Gospel of John. Fecht is said to have suggested a probable date from the 2nd to 5th cents. c.e. Munro declines to give Laukamp an appraisal of its value but advises that this fragment be preserved between glass plates in order to protect it from further damage. The letter makes no mention of the GJW fragment. The collection of the GJW’s owner does contain a fragment of the Gospel of John fitting this description, which was subsequently received on loan by Harvard University for examination and publication (November 13, 2012).

Conclusion

Unless compelling counter-arguments arise, both this fragment and the Gospel of Jesus Wife fragment should now be considered forgeries beyond any doubt.  Furthermore, the inauthenticity of the present fragment draws into question the broader group of documentation surrounding the Gospel of Jesus Wife which the owner provided to Karen King (contract of sale, typed note from Munro, handwritten note).  This was already problematic, as the bill of sale is dated to 1999, three years before Grondin’s GThomas PDF was available online.

Links (suggestions by email welcome)

• Codex Qau online PDF
• Harvard spectroscopy results with images
• Goodacre’s summary
• Suciu’s final summary
• Depuydt’s summary
• Conan O’Brian’s evidence
• Summary by Carrie Schroeder
• May 5 Smithsonian documentary
• Livescience article
• Wall Street Journal opinion article
• Hagen on scribal habits
• Goranson’s Chronology
• New York Times article
• PBS NewsHour video clip
• Washington Post article
• Mashable article
• ABC News article (Spanish)
• Slate article
• CNN video clip
• Harvard Crimson article

Jesus Had a Sister-in-Law

[For updated information, cf. The forgery of the Lycopolitan Gospel of John]

recto, Jn 5:26-30

Through Gregg Schwendner and Malcom Choat, I have just become aware of something that I should have seen much earlier.  I read all of the Harvard Theological Review articles about the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, and assumed that the links on the Harvard dedicated GJW webpage essentially linked to the same.  However, the website contains a longer version of the Ink Results which offers the pictures of the associated gospel of John fragment here.

verso, Jn 6:11-14

The shocker here is this.  The fragment contains exactly the same hand, exactly the same ink and has been written with the same writing instrument.  One would assume that it were part of the same writing event, be it modern or ancient.  In some sense, this is not a surprise, as the Ink Results indicated that the ink was very similar.  (The ink on both sides of GJohn was identical or similar to one another; the GJW had slightly different ink on both sides.  All of the inks were highly similar.)

Actually, if you are a Coptic nerd, there apparently is a bigger shocker...  The text is in Lycopolitan and apparently is a(n exact?) reproduction from the famous Cambridge Qau codex, edited by Herbert Thompson.  What is so shocking about that?  Essentially all specialists believe that Lycopolitan and the other minor dialects died out during or before the sixth century.  Indeed, the forger tried to offer two manuscripts both in Lycopolitan, but made two crucial mistakes.  First, the NHC gospel of Thomas is not a pure Lycopolitan text, but the Qau codex is.  That is we have two clearly different subdialects of Lycopolitan, which agree exactly with published texts.  Second, this GJohn fragment has been 14C dated to the seventh to ninth centuries, a period from which Lycopolitan is totally unknown.

These are my initial thoughts, and I will update this blog within the next hours.  My first assessment is that this a major blow to those arguing for the authenticity of GJW.

Update

Alin Suciu has created a reconstruction, demonstrating that the verso follows the line breaks of Herbert Thompson’s edition precisely.  Leo Depuydt came to the same conclusion on his own.  All three of us would conclude that this almost certainly marks this GJW-John fragment as a modern fake.  Alin noted also that the transcription only deviates in altering Lycopolitan ⲁⲃⲁⲗ to Sahidic ⲉⲃⲟⲗ.  Given the surrounding dialectal realities, here, this is nonsense, and further evidence of forgery.  Mark Goodacre’s reconstruction is the best illustration of the forgery.

For the reader who has not closely followed the story so far, I would underscore the importance of this discovery.  The inauthenticity claims against the Gospel of Jesus Wife fragment have been primarily based upon the fact that the GJW is clearly reconstructed from Grondin’s 2002 PDF of the Sahidic (with Lycopolitan influence) Gospel of Thomas, and secondarily based upon the bizarre appearance of the manuscript.  All of us assumed that the Coptic John anchored the GJW with a real group of fragments with a known history, although this history was based upon photocopies of older documents possessed by a mysterious anonymous figure.  These arguments find a perfect parallel with this second fragment.

My prior theory that the GJW was a forgery inserted into an otherwise authentic group of papyri has been shattered.  We must now question whether the anonymous owner is nothing more than a prankster.  I would not be surprised, if said owner vanishes into the aether.  If the owner is not a prankster, he should come forward with the information necessary to reveal the forger (or vindicate the GJW).  I am tempted to think that the forgery has roots in Germany, still, since there is an apparently idiomatically-composed handwritten note in German describing the Gospel of Jesus Wife.  I hope that this will be released by Karen King or the owner.

Mark Goodacre’s synopsis post with better images
Mark Goodacre visually illustrates GJW-GJohn forgery
Leo Depuydt responds

Postscript (07 May 2014)

Several individuals have expressed concerns about the use of the term “ugly” in my title’s metaphor.  The word choice was not intended to be offensive to any particular individual or to perpetuate an established “ugly women/sister” trope.  The term no longer appears in the title, but is still visible in the URL.

Hans-Ulrich Laukamp and the GJW

Mark Goodacre has posted on a Livescience article which claims to have invalidated part of Karen´s King reconstruction of the modern history of the Gospel of Jesus´s Wife.  In particular, the article identifies the former owner of the papyrus, Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, as "a co-owner of the now-defunct ACMB-American Corporation for Milling and Boreworks in Venice, Fla."  According to King´s recent GJW article (p. 153):

The current owner of the papyrus states that he acquired the papyrus in 1999. Upon request for information about provenance, the owner provided me with a photocopy of a contract for the sale of “6 Coptic papyrus fragments, one believed to be a Gospel” from Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, dated November 12, 1999, and signed by both parties. A handwritten comment on the contract states: “Seller surrenders photocopies of correspondence in German. Papyri were acquired in 1963 by the seller in Potsdam (East Germany).” 

The Livescience article cites Laukamp's attorney (Rene Ernest) as claiming that Laukamp did not own papyri and was not a collector, although this was never claimed by King.  In fact, King cites the deed of sale as being an English-language document.  Furthermore, the Livescience report erroneously claims that because Laukamp lived in West Berlin in 1963 (when the deed of sale claims Laukamp bought the papyrus), he could not have travelled to Potsdam.  Potsdam is a separate town, immediately adjacent to West Berlin.  Although East Germans could not travel to West Berlin, West Berliners could travel into East Germany.  In fact, this fits perfectly with King's narrative which directly links the notes to the Freie Universität in 1982, located in West Berlin.  Thus, King's narrative seems to fit with the Livescience article, except for the claim from Rene Ernest, an estate attorney, that Laukamp was not a collector and did not own such a document.  Naturally, Laukamp would not have owned the document when he died in 2002, because he sold it in 1999 according to King's narrative.

" 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Doubts Raised About Ancient Text", Owen Jarus, Live Science

Announcement from Leo Depuydt on Jesus's Wife

April 16, 2014
Bedtime story for the budding little grammarian (and for all those eternally young of spirit). Set in larger font to accommodate the unformed inquisitive mind. (PDF)

The Papyrus Fragment and the Crocodile: When Discerning a Blunder Is Itself a ... 

By Leo Depuydt 

I recently published an analysis in the Harvard Theological Review (HTR) of what has widely come to be known as the Wife of Jesus Fragment (WJF).(1) My conclusion is that it is 100% certain that the fragment is a forgery. Grammatical blunders committed by the forger play a central role in my analysis.

The main body of the analysis was on purpose completely self-contained in that it consisted in its entirety of independent observations that made no reference to anything else that anyone else has had to say on the matter. In this specific case, I exceptionally saw no need for outside references or scientific tests to fully meet the paper’s design. And I still don’t.

However, my analysis is now no longer free-standing. The same issue of HTR contains a response to it.(2) Asked a couple of days after its publication what I thought of it, I had a look. It took me about sixty seconds to diagnose another you-call-it-what-you-want, but not one of the forger’s this time.

The response holds that I “incorrectly analyzed” the grammar of line →6 of WJF. What I had described as a “grammatical monstrosity” in that line is nothing but—thus the author of the response—an “error of analysis” on my part.(3)

It would be ironical that, after hurling the epithet “grammatical blunder” gingerly and repeatedly at a forger, my true opponent by the way, I would be guilty of one myself. That would be hubris. We haven’t had that recently. Or have we?

The author of the response relies mostly on experts for the evaluation of fine points of Coptic grammar. But no sooner did the same author just for once dip a toe into the strong Nile currents of Coptic grammar to embark on an independent foray than a crocodile lunged and grabbed it, dragging all attached down with it ☹. How so?

What is my alleged “incorrect analysis”? It is that I identified the Sahidic Coptic verbal auxiliary, or conjugation base (Polotsky), ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare in the line in question as a negated aorist. In fact, no one has ever doubted that, in standard Sahidic Coptic, ⲙⲉⲣⲉ mere, not ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare, is the conjugation base of the negated aorist. What is more, no one has ever doubted that ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare is the verbal auxiliary of the affirmative jussive in all of Coptic. And that is how the author of the response under discussion identifies the instance of ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare in question, as a jussive. So far so good.

Have I then, as the author implies, committed a blatant grammatical blunder by identifying ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare as anything else but a jussive? In fact, I have not. How can this be?

It is a dirty little fact, as it were, of Coptic grammar not widely known even to Coptologists that—in the Gospel of Thomas (GT)—the form of the verbal auxiliary of the negated aorist is exceptionally not ⲙⲉⲣⲉ mere, as most everywhere else, but ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare. I do note this striking fact somewhere in my initial report.

In other words, in GT, the negated aorist ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare is written exactly like the affirmative jussive ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare. Identifying instances of ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare in GT as a negated aorist is therefore altogether a legitimate option. Disenfranchising the grammarian from exercising this option is a clear are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking.

And since Professor Francis Watson of Durham University and I both independently discovered that WJF is but a patchwork of phrases from GT—totally clueless and error-ridden, I venture to add—nothing comes more natural than identifying certain instances of ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare in WJF as a negated aorist.

What is more, as I show in detail in the initial report, the instance of ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare under discussion and certain phrases in its immediate context are clearly taken from a passage in GT in which ⲙⲁⲣⲉ mare is undoubtedly the negated aorist and not the affirmative jussive.

So, my little friend, sleep soundly and dream sweetly because there has been no “error of analysis.”

And in the end, the story even has a happy ending.♫ The crocodile happened to be of the rare herbivorous kind. ☺

(1) L. Depuydt, “The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment andEvaluation of Authenticity,” Harvard Theological Review 107 (2014), pp.172–89.

(2) K. King, “Response to Leo Depuydt, ‘The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of Authenticity’,” Harvard Theological Review 107 (2014), pp. 190–93.

(3) Ibid., p. 191.

Demotic Gospel of Thomas

On page 178 of his Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (GJW) rebuttal, Leo Depuydt informed the reader of a parallel incident from 1990, which never made headlines in North America. In this case, someone forged and disseminated the following proceedings chapter, which Leo Depuydt has kindly shared:

R. S. Walker, “Fragmentary inscriptions in an unknown script from a private collection” Proceedings of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences 1874–1875 (1875): 31–34.

The article and accompanying informal translation “preserve” a Demotic text with snippets from the gospel of Thomas. Depuydt has demonstrated that the Demotic text is a forgery by analyzing the Demotic grammar, showing that the Demotic text contains a prepositional phrase which is explained in the most compelling way by the faux pas of a modern translator relying on the known Coptic text. Whereas one would expect the Coptic text to use the form ⲙⲙⲟϥ with the Greek-Coptic loanword τηρέω, the indigenous Egyptian word (in Coptic and Demotic) requires ⲉⲣⲟϥ, not the equivalent of ⲙⲙⲟϥ (font).

Coptic	Demotic
ϩⲁⲣⲉϩ ⲉⲣⲟϥ	ḥrḥ r.r.f
ⲧⲏⲣⲉⲓ ⲙⲙⲟϥ	ḥrḥ n.jm.f

In her response article, Karen King fails to see how this is relevant to the parallel discussion. Depuydt’s argument, however, is fairly simple. He is demonstrating that the literary parallels in GJW (just as in the Demotic GThomas) are best explained by a modern forger, due to grammatical irregularities which only a modern forger would have produced. Whereas this was clear with the Demotic GThomas through the instance cited here, the case is even clearer with GJW, with its repeated errors and the shared error with Michael Grondin’s PDF.

18 May 1991 Financial Times "New Light on the Saying of Jesus"
25 May 1991 Financial Times "Batson comes out of the belfry: The history books may not have to be rewritten..."

Jesus’s Wife Resurrected from Dead

INTRODUCTION

Eight of the eleven articles in the most recent issue of the Harvard Theological Review discuss the authenticity of the so-called Gospel of Jesus Wife (GJW), which Karen King publicized through a shrewdly-orchestrated media frenzy in September 2012. The core relevant articles include a survey of the papyrus scrap by King, a refutation of authenticity by Leo Depuydt and a response by King. Five supporting articles detail two spectroscopy examinations of the ink (Yardley and Hagadorn; Azzarelli, Goods, Swager), two radiocarbon datings of the papyrus (Hodgins; Tuross), and a paleographic evaluation (Choat).

Karen King’s initial argument that this fragment demonstrates a fourth century literary manuscript of the “the Gospel of Jesus Wife” is now officially dead, by her own admission. We are left with a deflated seventh to ninth century semi-literary scrap ... or a fraud. We have no plausible direct literary evidence for a new non-canonical gospel. The question remains as to whether we should recognize this scrap as an ancient semi-literary document or a modern fraud. According to King, the arguments concerning fraud are highly problematic, and the scientific and linguistic evidence repeatedly affirm authenticity. 

“The scientific testing completed thus far consistently provides positive evidence of the antiquity of the papyrus and ink, including radiocarbon, spectroscopic, and oxidation characteristics, with no evidence of modern fabrication.” (King, “Jesus said,” 2014, 154)

THE INK

According to the results, the ink used is indeed the most obvious choice for a modern forger — carbon ink. The ink is composed of soot. “The inks used in this manuscript are primarily based on carbon black pigments such as ‘lamp black.’” (Yardley etal., 164) King attempts to paint the resultant test as proving the implausibility of fraud, arguing that “their research to date shows that details of the Raman spectra of carbon-based pigments in GJW match closely those of several manuscripts from the Columbia collection of papyri dated between 1 B.C.E. and 800 C.E., while they deviate significantly from modern commercial lamp black pigments.” (King, “Jesus said,” 2014, 135) However, no one would suggest that this was forged with modern commercial pigments. Someone would have mixed soot with a solvent, producing the obviously low quality and uneven writing medium on the papyrus.

RADIOCARBON DATING

Using two labs, the GJW fragment and a Sahidic John fragment associated with the same papyri lot were carbon dated. The rounded 2-sigma ranges for the manuscripts are as follows:

	GJohn	GJW
Harvard	640–800 CE	650–870 CE
Arizona	680–880 CE	410–200 BCE

The second test (14 March 2014) was apparently ordered after the extremely early date arrived from Arizona (June–July 2013). Whatever the case, if one of the two GJW 14C dates were to be accurate, it would probably be the Harvard range (650–870 CE), which is corroborated by the related GJohn manuscript (chart above). Having said this, the result remains somewhat inconclusive. (δ13C levels were also higher than expected, suggesting contamination in all samples.)

So does this confirm the authenticity of the GJW? Such a late dating bulldozes King’s first appraisal of the manuscript as a fourth century witness. The GJW fragment under question is broken on all sides except the top, where apparently the modern forger cut the empty section off of a larger fragment which was in fact ancient. Carbon dating has no value for authenticating such a manuscript, although if the Ptolemaic date (410–200 BCE) offered by the Arizona AMS lab were accurate (of which I am not convinced), fraud would be certain.

PALEOGRAPHY

Choat’s assessment of the scribal hand is hardly an enthusiastic endorsement of its authenticity:

“Overall, if the general appearance of the papyrus prompts some suspicion, it is difficult to falsify by a strictly paleographical examination. This should not be taken as proof that the papyrus is genuine, simply that its handwriting and the manner in which it has been written do not provide definitive grounds for proving otherwise.” (162) 

His article surveys the oddities of the scribal hand, noting the lack of clear literary or documentary parallels. Choat states, “[w]hile I cannot adduce an exact parallel, I am inclined to compare paraliterary productions such as magical or educational texts.” (Choat, 161)

DEPUYDT

Leo Depuydt presents the argument which is accepted by most specialists who are familiar with the GJW. The modern forger (1) created the text by rearranging several sentences from the Gospel of Thomas and (2) unintentionally left evidence of the fraud through two grammatical infelicities ("blunders"). The first is the omission of the object marker ⲙ- in line one (ⲧⲁⲙⲁⲁⲩ ⲁⲥϯ ⲛⲁⲉⲓ ⲡⲱ̣[ⲛϩ]). The second is the awkward construction ⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩ (more correctly ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩ or ⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉϥϩⲟⲟⲩ). Depuydt also mentioned a third serious error, which I believe to be the most damning evidence against authenticity (186); in line 6, the forger has combined a positive habitual from GThomas with a negative habitual to create the nonsense chimera verbal phrase ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩ ϣⲁϥⲉ{ⲓ}ⲛⲉ (“Evil man habitually does not he does habitually bring” sic). Notably, Francis Watson, Alin Suciu-Hugo Lundhaug, and Andrew Bernhard have popularized many of these arguments, detailing how Depuydt’s first "blunder" seems to derive from a typo in Michael Grondin’s 2002 online PDF of the Gospel of Thomas.

KING’S RESPONSE ARTICLE

In Karen King’s mind, if one can not exhaustively prove the inauthenticity of the GJW fragment, then it must be accepted as authentic. The results from spectography, radiometric dating and Choat’s paleographic analysis all leave the door open, therefore the fragment is undeniably authentic. Karen King maintains the problematic infinitive form ϣⲁϥⲉ “swell,” and ignores the persuasive reasoning behind the reconstruction of the damning error above. I encountered no serious discussion of this in her original article. In my opinion, this argument alone inauthenticates the GJW fragment, yet King is unconcerned, instead positing an unattested verbal form. I could imagine why someone might differ with me on various issues here, I can not identify with the stiff-necked concluding statement of King: “In conclusion, Depuydt’s essay does not offer any substantial evidence or persuasive argument, let alone unequivocal surety, that the GJW fragment is a modern fabrication (forgery).”

CONCLUSION

If a husband were to genetically test his children to determine whether his wife had been faithful, and the tests returned indicating that the children could not conclusively be proven to not be his, would this assure him of his wife’s fidelity? Could he then, based upon these tests, be confident that he had indeed fathered the children? Karen King has produced no new evidence to authenticate this fragment. On the contrary, her prior contentions that the GJW fragment was (1) part of a literary codex and (2) was fourth century are now indefensible. Her method of argumentation was not self-critical or objective, but will doubtlessly be sufficient for those who already want to believe.

THE HANDWRITTEN NOTE

One has to ask why Karen King has not published the notorious handwritten note. A typed 1982 note signed by Peter Munro accompanied the fragments which indicated that a Coptic John fragment was among the manuscript group (cf. King, “Jesus said,” 2012, 2). The second notorious handwritten note reads as follows:

“Professor Fecht believes that the small fragment, approximately 8 cm in size, is the sole example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech with reference to having a wife. Fecht is of the opinion that this could be evidence for a possible marriage.” (King, “Jesus said,” 2014, 153)

Odd, is it not, that Munro mentioned a dime-a-dozen Sahidic manuscript in the typed note, but detailed the GJW in a handwritten note separately?! This handwritten note potentially bears the hand of the forger, who cut the papyrus, falsified the text, and aided its journey with the convenient handwritten note. King’s failure to publish this handwritten note conveniently eliminates a clear avenue for identifying the perpetrator.

• Larry Hurtado's Announcement
• Harvard Gospel of Jesus' Wife website
• Harvard Theological Review Issue
• Antinoou Coptic font to view Coptic text on this page
• Francis Watson maintains inauthenticity (via NT Blog)