Posted on 09/22/2012 7:35:40 AM PDT by daniel1212
The whole world changed on Tuesday. At least, that is what many would have us to believe. Smithsonian magazine, published by the Smithsonian Institution, declares that the news released Tuesday was “apt to send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship — and beyond.” Really?
What was this news? Professor Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School announced at a conference in Rome that she had identified an ancient papyrus fragment that includes the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” Within hours, headlines around the world advertised the announcement with headlines like “Ancient Papyrus Could Be Evidence that Jesus Had a Wife” (The Telegraph).
The Smithsonian article states that “the announcement at an academic conference in Rome is sure to send shock waves through the Christian world.” The magazine’s breathless enthusiasm for the news about the papyrus probably has more to do with advertising its upcoming television documentary than anything else, but the nation’s most prestigious museum can only injure its reputation with this kind of sensationalism.
A Fragment of a Text, an Even More Fragmentary Argument
What Karen King revealed on Tuesday was a tiny papyrus fragment with Coptic script on both sides. On one side the fragment includes about 30 words on eight fragmentary lines of script. The New York Times described the fragment as “smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass.” The lines are all fragmentary, with the third line reading “deny. Mary is worthy of it,” and the next reading “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” The fifth states, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The papyrus fragment, believed to be from the fourth century, was delivered to Professor King by an anonymous source who secured the artifact from a German-American dealer, who had bought it years ago from a source in East Germany. As news reports made clear, the fragment is believed by many to be an authentic text from the fourth century, though two of three authorities originally consulted by the editors of the Harvard Theological Review expressed doubts. Such a find would be interesting, to be sure, but hardly worthy of the international headlines.
The little piece of ancient papyrus with its fragmentary lines of text is now, in the hands of the media, transformed into proof that Jesus had a wife, and that she was most likely Mary Magdalene. Professor King will bear personal responsibility for most of this over-reaching. She has called the fragment nothing less than “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” — a title The Boston Globe rightly deemed “provocative.” That same paper reported that Professor King decided to publicize her findings before additional tests could verify the fragment’s authenticity because she “feared word could leak out about its existence in a way that sensationalized its meaning.” Seriously? King was so concerned about avoiding sensationalism that she titled the fragment “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife?”
This is sensationalism masquerading as scholarship. One British newspaper notes that the claims about a married Jesus seem more worthy of fans of Dan Brown’s fictional work, The Da Vinci Code, than “real-life Harvard professors.” If the fragment is authenticated, the existence of this little document will be of interest to historians of the era, but it is insanity to make the claims now running through the media.
Professor King claims that these few words and phrases should be understood as presenting a different story of Jesus, a different gospel. She then argues that the words should be read as claiming that Jesus was married, that Mary Magdalene was likely his wife. She argues further that, while this document provides evidence of Jesus’ marital status, the phrases do not necessarily mean he was married. More than anything else, she argues against the claim that Christianity is a unified body of commonly-held truths.
Those familiar with Karen King’s research and writings will recognize the argument. Her 2003 book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, argued that another text from the era presented Mary Magdalene as the very model for apostleship.
A Preference for Heterodoxy
The thread that ties all these texts and arguments together is the 1945 discovery of some 52 ancient texts near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. These texts are known to scholars as Gnostic literature. The texts present heretical narratives and claims about Jesus and his message, and they have been a treasure trove for those seeking to replace orthodox Christianity with something different.
Several ambitions drive this effort. Feminists have sought to use the Nag Hammadi texts to argue that women have been sidelined by the orthodox tradition, and that these Gnostic texts prove that women were central to the leadership of the early church, perhaps even superior to the men. Others have used the Nag Hammadi texts to argue that Christianity was diverse movement marked by few doctrinal concerns until it was hijacked by political and ecclesiastical leaders, who constructed theological orthodoxy as a way of establishing churchly power in the Roman Empire and then stifling dissent. Still others argue that Christianity’s moral prohibitions concerning sexuality, and especially homosexuality, were part of this forced orthodoxy which, they argue, was not the essence of true Christianity. More than anything else, many have used the Nag Hammadi texts as leverage for their argument that Christianity was originally a way of spirituality centered in the teachings of a merely human Christ — not a message of salvation through faith in a divine Jesus who saves sinners through the atonement he accomplished in his death and resurrection.
Professor King, along with Princeton’s Elaine Pagels, has argued that the politically powerful leaders who established what became orthodox Christianity silenced other voices, but that these voices now speak through the Nag Hammadi texts and other Gnostic writings. Writing together, King and Pagels argue that “the traditional history of Christianity is written almost solely from the viewpoint of the side that won, which was remarkably successful in silencing or distorting other voices, destroying their writings, and suppressing any who disagreed with them as dangerous and obstinate ‘heretics.’”
King and Pagels both reject traditional Christianity, and they clearly prefer the voices of the heretics. They argue for the superiority of heterodoxy over orthodoxy. In the Smithsonian article, King’s scholarship is described as “a kind of sustained critique of what she called the ‘master story’ of Christianity: a narrative that casts the canonical texts of the New Testament as a divine revelation that passed through Jesus in ‘an unbroken chain’ to the apostles and their successors — church fathers, ministers, priests and bishops who carried these truths into the present day.”
King actually argues against the use of terms like “heresy” and even “Gnostic,” claiming that the very use of these terms gives power to the forces of orthodoxy and normative Christianity. Nevertheless, she cannot avoid using the terms herself (even in the titles of her own books). She told Ariel Sabar of Smithsonian, “You’re talking to someone who’s trying to integrate a whole set of ‘heretical’ literature into the standard history.”
Orthodoxy and Heresy: The Continual Struggle
Those who use Gnostic texts like those found at Nag Hammadi attempt to redefine Christianity so that classic, biblical, orthodox Christianity is replaced with a very different religion. The Gnostic texts reduce Jesus to the status of a worldly teacher who instructs his followers to look within themselves for the truth. These texts promise salvation through enlightenment, not through faith and repentance. Their Jesus is not the fully human and fully divine Savior and there is no bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead.
Were these writings found at Nag Hammadi evidence of the fact that the early church opposed and attempted to eliminate what it understood to be false teachings? Of course. That is what the church said it was doing and what the Apostles called upon the church to do. The believing church did not see heresy as an irritation — it saw heterodoxy as spiritual death. Those arguing for the superiority of the Gnostic texts deny the divine inspiration of the New Testament and prefer the heterodox teachings of the Gnostic heretics. Hauntingly, the worldview of the ancient Gnostics is very similar, in many respects, to various worldviews and spiritualities around us today.
The energy behind all this is directed to the replacement of orthodox Christianity, its truth claims, its doctrines, its moral convictions, and its vision of both history and eternity with a secularized — indeed, Gnositicized — new version.
Just look at the attention this tiny fragment of papyrus has garnered. Its few words and broken phrases are supposed to cast doubt on the New Testament and the doctrines of orthodox Christianity. A tiny little fragment which, even if authentically from the fourth century, is placed over against the four New Testament Gospels, all written within decades of Jesus’ earthy ministry.
“The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife?” Not hardly. This is sensationalism masquerading as scholarship. Nevertheless, do not miss what all this really represents — an effort to replace biblical Christianity with an entirely new faith.
He did have a bride, the Church.
It’s crazy to put any credibility into something written 400 after the fact. If I write something stupid about the 1600’s, are they going to give it credibility in another 2000 years?
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/does-new-document-prove-that-jesus-had-a-wife/
“Does New Document Prove That Jesus Had a Wife?” by Jimmy Akin
Wow. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
Do these fools not realize with this revealation they have utterly destroyed the homoesexual’s meme that Jesus and his disciples were gay?
They can’t have it both ways.
Way too late ... 1 John is clearly written to combat gnostic influences ... that was written in the 1st century. There were already false teachers in Pauls day ...
The Nag Hammadi gospels are neither as old as the Biblical gospels nor anywhere as well substantiated! Based upon internal and external evidence (comparison of fragments and quotations, historical correlations, examination of textual families, etc.) the Biblical Gospels are dated to the first century. Thousands of actual manuscripts exist today, many of which date prior to 200 A.D., including a fragment (writing materials of Biblical age did not last long) of the gospel of Mark. There are also fragments of other New Testament books such as Acts, which are dated to have been written around 50 A.D., and a fragment of the gospel of John dated at 125 A.D. or earlier. Nearly complete copies of both Luke and John exist which are dated from between A.D. 175 and 225.
In contrast, the manuscripts of the Gnostic Nag Hammadi library, which gospels were written 100 to 200 years apart, and discovered hundreds of miles apart, and were copied between A.D. 350-400, with most Gnostic literature being written between the late 2nd to the 5th century. No evidence exists to show that any of these books were written before A.D. 150.
In part of Dan Brown’s “spin cycle” he says that the Aramaic word for “companion” (used in regards to Mary in the Gnostic gospel) literally meant “spouse.” Not only is this translation denied by various Aramaic scholars, but even more critically, the Gnostic gospel of Phillip (in which this was found) was not even written in Aramaic, rather it was written in Egyptian Coptic, which may have been a translation from Greek!
Even in the Coptic translation found at Nag Hammadi, a Greek loan word (koinonos) lies behind the term translated “companion.” Darrell Bock observes that this is “not the typical . . . term for ‘wife’“ in Greek.{28} Indeed, koinonos is most often used in the New Testament to refer to a “partner.” Luke uses the term to describe James and John as Peter’s business partners (Luke 5:10). Michael Gleghorn ©2006 Probe Ministries www.probe.org/content/view/127/169/
Thanks
Damnable Dan Brown
Oh, they have shown that such logic things is not a problem, as they show in forcing sex into passages it does not belong, both in present life and in Scripture, and i was recently contending with such that do: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=13051555&postID=5099811203095067142&page=1&token=1348330594815&isPopup=true
I wasn’t fully aware of that, thanks for sharing. I was basing off of the dating of the Nag Hammadi library and the associated sects like Valentinus’ followers.
All I really remember was the incredibly jarring sexual imagery that was used abundantly in most of the texts, and the inverting of people like Judas and the Serpent as being good against the evil demiurge.
I feel like if most people actually bothered to read the actual texts of Gnosticism, that they’d be turned off quickly to such bizarre beliefs.
See 26 above
I won’t cite your entire #10, I’ll only say that I agree with it.
No scholarship there.
This is depressing to anyone capable of thought.
The very gnostic Coptics were well known for their rejection of reality.
A lot of predictions were made about Jesus prior to His birth.
A lot of information was presented about His life here on earth.
His own teachings are available for us to read.
Where in any of this, did He or anyone else reference his wife or anything similar to a wife?
If He had a wife or even a girl-friend, there would be references to it. Every person writing about Him would have referenced His relationship.
We are admonished to live a Christlike life. How do we do that if a major part of His life is left out?
We will have the servants of Satan with us until Christ returns to claim the righteous as His own.
His teachings about forgiveness, salvation through faith, and kindness to our fellow man, are what are important. Anything else can be sorted out in the new earth, where we’ll have eternity to study the perfection that rescued our pathetic selves.
The one thing I accept as bed-rock truth, is that we are not God forsaken. He sent His Son to save us.
How cool is that!
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Thanks daniel1212. |
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I love Dr. Mohler. He is a needed voice of reason against this theo-buffoonery.
I believe Israel is referred to as an Adulterous Wife, and the Church of believers (both Jew and Gentile) are categorized as His Bride.
More importantly, the thousands of doctrines available to the most elementary student of Scripture fly in the face of this purported manuscript, written on a parchment smaller than a business card.
The bulk of Scripture would far more disprove the legitimacy of the document than be counterchecked by it.
The announcement does indicate a significant lack of scholarship at the Harvard Divinity School. Good justification to discount their perspective.
The MSM overall disagrees.
Everybody in these times knew of a Joshua/Jesus. So if someone finds a legitimate or bogus name on a parchment there are numerous to number Joshua/Jesus's from these times.
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