Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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pakeha
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by pakeha »

DCHindley wrote:As I have been watching TV coverage of the missing Malaysian 777 and the passenger families' complaints about the handling by Malay authorities, I noted an overlap with this "Jesus' Wife" fragment.

Folks 1) making up their minds about cause, in advance of evidence, 2) refusing to consider any other alternatives, 3) offer misleading and twisted versions of actual evidence as it becomes available to favor the predetermined view, and 4) vilify the key persons involved.

These exact same traits have happened with Jesus' Wife as well as Smith's Secret Gospel.

What on earth are these folks afraid of? The sky will fall if 1) a plane can disappear without a trace without sinister forces affecting things, 2) 6th century or later Gnostics believed Jesus was married, 3) 2nd century Gnostics believed that Jesus performed secret initiations all oddy nagoy.

DCH
Other than not knowing what oddy nagoy means, I'm in agreement with you.
TedM
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by TedM »

DC, It is not clear that you understood Roger's point. New demands attract forgery if there is money to be made. Therefore since the "Jesus was married" is a new demand in recent years the fact that something worth money in relation to it has suddenly 'appeared' is questionable on that basis alone: Why didn't it appear in the previous X years if it was real? There may be good answers, but to the extent that there are not it smells of forgery.
DCHindley wrote:Roger,

I must not have as sensitive a sense of smell as you have.

To me, it is just a line of text that is not an implausible product from a 6th-8th century CE Egyptian Gnostic (provided Gnosticism still actually existed in that time). Perhaps a mystical text with an Islamic twist? Muslims have no problem with a married prophet like Jesus.

Nothing in it prompts me to immediately have to denounce it as if all Christendom will collapse if Jesus was thought to be married by someone 6 or more centuries removed from Jesus' time.

The owner of the full manuscript from which this sample was cut (I think everyone agrees that it was cut with scissors) certainly hopes to sell the whole ms if the sample can be verified as ancient. If I am not mistaken, it is believed that a number of ancient mss, maybe even from Qumran caves or Egypt, are out there, wasting away in poor conditions, by folks who are now afraid to be caught with contraband. Short of a general amnesty and the promise of a 'finders fee" they will likely be burned in the oven before they will ever be turned over to a reputable institution.

It may turn out to be in such hands, and the unsophisticated way the sample was supplied suggests that whoever holds it is not a reputable artifact or manuscript dealer. Think of something spirited away from Egypt in Napoleon's time by a soldier or bureaucrat as a souvenir. Now, discovered in a dusty library long after the death of the souvenir taker, the present holder hopes to make a buck or two.

Whoo wee! But so what. The truth will come out eventually.

DCH
Roger Pearse wrote:You [DCH] are obviously more theologically minded than I am.

Forgeries have a certain smell to them. One of their characteristics is that they appeal very strongly, not to the fads of the time in which they were supposed to be written, but to those of the period in which they ARE written. This fingerprint is inevitable; because unless an item is "exciting", then it will not attract notice. And you don't forge something for it to not attract notice. Consequently you may be sure that any item which presses a hot-button in a particular period is quite likely to have been composed in and for that period. Real finds tend to be dull.
outhouse
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by outhouse »

TedM wrote: Why didn't it appear in the previous X years if it was real? There may be good answers,

A married jesus fits the cultural anthropology of these people's for a wide ranges of centuries.

Belief was wide and varied due to the multiple cultures that found importance in this mythology and no reason to follow orthodoxy.




Should this be questioned and any statement with certainty avoided on both sides of the coin? Absolutely.
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DCHindley
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by DCHindley »

pakeha wrote:
DCHindley wrote:What on earth are these folks afraid of? The sky will fall if 1) a plane can disappear without a trace without sinister forces affecting things, 2) 6th century or later Gnostics believed Jesus was married, 3) 2nd century Gnostics believed that Jesus performed secret initiations all oddy nagoy.
Other than not knowing what oddy nagoy means, I'm in agreement with you.
It means "alone and naked" in Nadsat, the slang language of young hip folks in the book/movie A Clockwork Orange. I am seriously thinking of mimicking scholars like Ehrperson, but rather than use their Greek, Hebrew and Latin mumbo jumbo, I would increase the incomprehensibility of my posts by using Nadsat, or Pig-Latin.

CH-Day
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DCHindley
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by DCHindley »

TedM wrote:DC, It is not clear that you understood Roger's point. New demands attract forgery if there is money to be made. Therefore since the "Jesus was married" is a new demand in recent years the fact that something worth money in relation to it has suddenly 'appeared' is questionable on that basis alone: Why didn't it appear in the previous X years if it was real? There may be good answers, but to the extent that there are not it smells of forgery.
...
Forgeries have a certain smell to them. One of their characteristics is that they appeal very strongly, not to the fads of the time in which they were supposed to be written, but to those of the period in which they ARE written. This fingerprint is inevitable; because unless an item is "exciting", then it will not attract notice. And you don't forge something for it to not attract notice. Consequently you may be sure that any item which presses a hot-button in a particular period is quite likely to have been composed in and for that period. Real finds tend to be dull.
Oh, I think I understand his point. I don't think we know enough to make a judgment now, and since the implications of the find, if ultimately proven to be genuine, have absolutely no bearing on whether Jesus was actually married or not, I have no problem waiting for the rest of the manuscript to show up, and a more thorough examination be made of it.

I think what smells worse is the way some folks feel the need to be insulting and rude because their own religious convictions are threatened, whether in reality or not, and suddenly they see the antichrist and must destroy him/her.

DCH
TedM
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by TedM »

I"m not sure how this relates to what I wrote.
outhouse wrote:
TedM wrote: Why didn't it appear in the previous X years if it was real? There may be good answers,

A married jesus fits the cultural anthropology of these people's for a wide ranges of centuries.

Belief was wide and varied due to the multiple cultures that found importance in this mythology and no reason to follow orthodoxy.




Should this be questioned and any statement with certainty avoided on both sides of the coin? Absolutely.
TedM
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by TedM »

Hi DC,

I hope you aren't referring to me or Roger as being insulting or rude. Are you? Your post is quite puzzling. We always are making value judgements based on what we know, so the question is whether we can make a definitive judgement, and of course the answer is no. But we certainly CAN judge whether the fragment 'smells' funny in light of cultural trends. And it absolutely does. The hoopla in recent years of Jesus being married -- and personally I do think it was quite possible that he was -- is reason to suspect forgery. If you disagree I'd like to understand how.

No ill will intended, Ted
DCHindley wrote:
TedM wrote:DC, It is not clear that you understood Roger's point. New demands attract forgery if there is money to be made. Therefore since the "Jesus was married" is a new demand in recent years the fact that something worth money in relation to it has suddenly 'appeared' is questionable on that basis alone: Why didn't it appear in the previous X years if it was real? There may be good answers, but to the extent that there are not it smells of forgery.
...
Forgeries have a certain smell to them. One of their characteristics is that they appeal very strongly, not to the fads of the time in which they were supposed to be written, but to those of the period in which they ARE written. This fingerprint is inevitable; because unless an item is "exciting", then it will not attract notice. And you don't forge something for it to not attract notice. Consequently you may be sure that any item which presses a hot-button in a particular period is quite likely to have been composed in and for that period. Real finds tend to be dull.
Oh, I think I understand his point. I don't think we know enough to make a judgment now, and since the implications of the find, if ultimately proven to be genuine, have absolutely no bearing on whether Jesus was actually married or not, I have no problem waiting for the rest of the manuscript to show up, and a more thorough examination be made of it.

I think what smells worse is the way some folks feel the need to be insulting and rude because their own religious convictions are threatened, whether in reality or not, and suddenly they see the antichrist and must destroy him/her.

DCH
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pakeha
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by pakeha »

DCHindley wrote:
pakeha wrote:
DCHindley wrote:What on earth are these folks afraid of? The sky will fall if 1) a plane can disappear without a trace without sinister forces affecting things, 2) 6th century or later Gnostics believed Jesus was married, 3) 2nd century Gnostics believed that Jesus performed secret initiations all oddy nagoy.
Other than not knowing what oddy nagoy means, I'm in agreement with you.
It means "alone and naked" in Nadsat, the slang language of young hip folks in the book/movie A Clockwork Orange. I am seriously thinking of mimicking scholars like Ehrperson, but rather than use their Greek, Hebrew and Latin mumbo jumbo, I would increase the incomprehensibility of my posts by using Nadsat, or Pig-Latin.

CH-Day
I've yet to watch or read A Clockwork Orange.
So much to do, so little time...
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DCHindley
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by DCHindley »

TedM wrote:I hope you aren't referring to me or Roger as being insulting or rude. Are you? Your post is quite puzzling. We always are making value judgements based on what we know, so the question is whether we can make a definitive judgement, and of course the answer is no. But we certainly CAN judge whether the fragment 'smells' funny in light of cultural trends. And it absolutely does. The hoopla in recent years of Jesus being married -- and personally I do think it was quite possible that he was -- is reason to suspect forgery. If you disagree I'd like to understand how.

No ill will intended
None taken.

I just find it a downer to think that the way many choose to deal with discomfiture of our personal beliefs is to vilify those who propose them. We impute nefarious motives to say, Eisenman, because he sold a few popular books on James the Just and unpublished DSS in the 1990s when J D Crossan sold may times more popular books without any question of his integrity. Smith, as odd a ball as he was, writes two books on a tenuous find of a snippet of a letter containing reference to a secret version of the gospel of Mark, hand written into the end leaves of a printed book in a very old monastery, and he is a gay bald swindler. But Tischendorf literally stole codex Sinaiticus from a monastery, later having the Czar himself make it "OK" by means of a donation, and he is a hero of NT criticism. Folks even ask, rhetorically, "why didn't Smith spirit (read "steal") the end leaves out of the place and vindicate his find? Because he didn't, he is a gay bald swindleler!!!

When I saw a pre-publication version of Stephen Carlson's book Gospel Hoax, I publically called it on Crosstalk2 a "hatchet job" rather than the piece of brilliant investigative work as everyone else on the bandwagon was, and I was criticized for my POV. It was quite a shock to realize that I seemed to be the only person who saw it for what it really was.

My faith in academia has never been the same since.

DCH (I must go and produce something for dinner that doesn't contain meat, my wife and son are Catholic)
TedM
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by TedM »

I understand now what you are saying. I don't know enough to judge the truth on these things but do agree that the preferred beliefs people have bring out unwarranted emotion and judgement, all the time. It's very hard to look with a critical eye at what one agrees with already. I wish I had the time to really dig into all these kinds of things to try and determine 'historical truth', but I'd never forgive myself if I did. As it is, I tend to read something very cursory and if it supports my bias I see it more favorably than is probably warranted in some cases, and vice versa. Human nature, I guess. Take care, Ted
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