Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

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

Post by ficino »

This blogger concludes that the fragment is a forgery because another fragment, also in Coptic, is from the same pen and seems to be cribbed from a known MS.:

http://alinsuciu.com/
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DCHindley
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by DCHindley »

ficino wrote:This blogger concludes that the fragment is a forgery because another fragment, also in Coptic, is from the same pen and seems to be cribbed from a known MS.:

http://alinsuciu.com/
I agree that this little tid-bit seems to support the idea of forgery, but only if his opininon (although it appears it is a considered opinion by a qualified expert) is correct that the text was written in the same hand, and with the exact same ink and even the same writing instrument.

However, while the "hand" of this fragment of the Gospel of John does look remarkably similar to the Jesus' Wife fragment, the ink of the Jesus' Wife fragment has been tested and the papyrus carbon dated, which is something NOT done with the Gospel of John fragment he compares it to, at least as far as I know.

The fact that the ends of each line of this new fragment of the Gospel of John duplicates exactly the ends of every other line of a previously known manuscript of the gospel of John, a phenomenon unlikely to have occurred by pure chance, does suggest that the former copied from the latter. Instead of the two columns per page of the latter known example there would have to have been, in the new fragment, a single wider column on each page where each line exactly represented precisely the amount of the text from two lines of the narrower columns.

I wonder, though, whether this might not represent a copying exercise by a student scribe. The dialect of Coptic used would have been long out of use by the carbon date of the Jesus' Wife fragment, which would support the idea of it being a copying exercise ("Now Boy, copy this text exactly as it appears in this manuscript before you, but preserve the stichometry by a ratio of two to one, since we get paid by the line copied, not by line written").

The author of the blog also assumes that the fragment of the Gospel of John which was purchased with the Jesus' Wife fragment will also date similarly if tested. However, without testing of the Gospel of John fragment, I don't like making such generalizations. If the Gospel of John fragment was also tested along with the Jesus' Wife fragment, then I am babbling. I have not followed this thing especially closely, not having anything invested in it emotionally or intellectually.

But for the moment let me assume they are both of 8th century provenance and came from the same scribe. That still does not rule out two copying exercises carried out by the same (student?) scribe, all ending up in a dump or as binding materials for a codex. We just had the extraordinary luck of the exemplar of the Gospel of John fragment having already been discovered and catalogued. We did not have this same luck with the Jesus' Wife exemplar.

DCH
Mental flatliner
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by Mental flatliner »

Peter Kirby wrote:In case you haven't heard the news... "it's authentic."

http://peterkirby.com/50-blogs-abuzz-fo ... -wife.html

Whole buncha links just from today.
The analysis demonstrates that the document dates to the 4th, 5th or 6th centuries.

No one in these centuries knew if Jesus had a wife, and forgeries in Christendom were already hundreds of years old. I hope you're not suggesting this proves Jesus had a wife?
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by Peter Kirby »

Mental flatliner wrote:
Peter Kirby wrote:In case you haven't heard the news... "it's authentic."

http://peterkirby.com/50-blogs-abuzz-fo ... -wife.html

Whole buncha links just from today.
The analysis demonstrates that the document dates to the 4th, 5th or 6th centuries.

No one in these centuries knew if Jesus had a wife, and forgeries in Christendom were already hundreds of years old. I hope you're not suggesting this proves Jesus had a wife?
No, I'm not.

(I've said as much in the article and in this thread, but, no worries.)
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
ficino
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by ficino »

Christian Askeland makes a fuller case for forgery, based on the exact, line-by-line match of the relevant passage of John in Coptic translation. Askeland's case assumes that the copyist of the later John fragment and the copyist of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment was the same person:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/us/fr ... forgery%2F

Roger Bagnall, quoted for a contrary view in the NYT article, was a professor of mine. He doesn't think that Askelan's argument is conclusive. I point out, as David did above, that we may be dealing with slavishly made copies from late antiquity. I don't know whether the copyist of the John and of the Jesus' Wife fragments was the same person.

I understand that the Green Initiative is basically a fundamentalist endeavor to find material proof for biblical claims. I have heard that they (i.e. scholars who are funded by or encouraged by Green, the owner of Hobby Lobby) are early-dating manuscripts and the like. My knowledge of their endeavors is only hearsay, and it doesn't follow that everything they say is wrong, even if they serve fundamentalist agenda.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by Leucius Charinus »

PhilosopherJay wrote:While many writers wrote gospels and apostolic letters, to argue various points, none had a reason or the power to create a real canon before the time of Constantine. (I hope to write a book to demonstrate this idea).
Hi Philosopher Jay,

I hope to write such a book also, but with the emphasis on "late Catholic Church forgeries". But my first book will be about the "far side of Christian Origins" and the Greek literature of gnostic heretics, who I think were just deriding Constantine's Bible, power and agenda.

Wish me luck. I'll be out of here soon and leave everyone to focus and meditate upon Dear Jesus and Dear Paul, and upon the very exiting transcendental events of the 1st century of the very common and ruthless era.



LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
PhilosopherJay
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by PhilosopherJay »

Hi Leucius Charinus,

Good luck. Be sure to price the book under $20 so I can afford a copy.

If you leave, people will consider me an over-the-edge late dater. While you're here, I can still claim to be a moderate between the 1st century and 4th Century extremists.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin
Leucius Charinus wrote:
PhilosopherJay wrote:While many writers wrote gospels and apostolic letters, to argue various points, none had a reason or the power to create a real canon before the time of Constantine. (I hope to write a book to demonstrate this idea).
Hi Philosopher Jay,

I hope to write such a book also, but with the emphasis on "late Catholic Church forgeries". But my first book will be about the "far side of Christian Origins" and the Greek literature of gnostic heretics, who I think were just deriding Constantine's Bible, power and agenda.

Wish me luck. I'll be out of here soon and leave everyone to focus and meditate upon Dear Jesus and Dear Paul, and upon the very exiting transcendental events of the 1st century of the very common and ruthless era.



LC
Clive
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Re: Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

Post by Clive »

I thought the wedding in Cana is a slam dunk on this. Whose wedding is this?

Therefore the character Jesus or stories about a HJ state he was married, and knew tricks with inventions of Hero.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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