Sunday, September 23, 2012
Take my wife, Amen.
About that scrap of paper that has the media and religious circles in an uproar . . .
The scrap of papyrus, dated from the 4th century AD, says, "Jesus said to them, "My wife . . ." at which point it's cut off. For the past week, I've seen countless breathless stories in the media about how this might shake up Christianity and all sorts of analysis to that effect.
So here's the deal.
The papyrus is from 400AD which is four-hundred years after Christ supposedly lived. It's value as evidence for Jesus having a Mrs. Jesus is the same as finding a piece of paper written today that says Peter the Great (17th century Russia) loved to fondle giraffes. That is to say, it has no evidentiary value at all. It's not remotely contemporary to Jesus.
The only thing it demonstrates is that in 400AD, someone was thinking about Jesus having a wife. It could have been fan fic for all we know.
Stop overreacting, people.
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2 comments:
The papyrus is from 400AD which is four-hundred years after Christ supposedly lived.
King (the researcher who published the fragment) suggests that the document may have been originally composed in Greek in the second half of the second century. One of her reasons for thinking so, is that there were debates during that period about whether Jesus was married. So, in that sense, the only thing of note here is that it is the only known quote attributed to Jesus mentioning a wife.
In the third sentence in her paper, she says, “It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century.”
She's being smart and scientific. The media and those religious folks all atwitter, are not. No big surprise there.
Thanks for the additional analysis.
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