Jesus had a wife -- or so says a fourth century papyrus

To read the full story - and watch a related video: http://huff.to/QXr9iI

This kind of story drives the Catholic Church crazy..... we do love our religious stories and myths and do not like it when they are challenged with another counter story or myth. I hope they find a papyrus that says Jesus had a boyfriend named Todd. That would definitely be a great monkey wrench.

"The Gospel Of Jesus' Wife," New Early Christian Text, Indicates Jesus May Have Been Married
Posted: 09/18/2012 1:55 pm

A discovery by a Harvard researcher may shed light on a controversial aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King says she has found an ancient papyrus fragment from the fourth century that, when translated, appears to indicate that Jesus was married.

The text from the New Testament is being dubbed "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife." The part of it that's drawing attention says, "Jesus said to them, 'my wife'" in the Coptic language. The text, which is printed on papyrus the size of a business card, has not been chemically tested to verify its dating, but King and other scholars have said they are confident it is a genuine artifact.

"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," King said at a conference in Rome on Tuesday. "This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’s death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions."

King, who focuses on Coptic literature, Gnosticism and women in the Bible, has published on the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala. She presented her research Tuesday evening in Rome, where scholars are gathered for the International Congress of Coptic Studies.

The idea that Jesus was unmarried and chaste is largely accepted by Christian denominations and forms the backbone of the practice of celibacy among Roman Catholic priests.

"Beyond internal Catholic Church politics, a married Jesus invites a reconsideration of orthodox teachings about gender and sex," said journalist and author Michael D'Antonio, who writes about the Catholic Church, in a blog on The Huffington Post. "If Jesus had a wife, then there is nothing extra Christian about male privilege, nothing spiritually dangerous about the sexuality of women, and no reason for anyone to deny himself or herself a sexual identity."

The quote about Jesus' wife is part of a description of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples. In the conversation, Jesus talks about his mother twice and speaks once about his wife. One of them is identified as "Mary." His disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy of being part of their community, to which Jesus replies, “she will able to be my disciple.”

The fragment has eight incomplete lines of writing on one side and is badly damaged on the other side, with only three faded words and a few letters of ink that are visible, even with the use of infrared photography and computer-aided enhancement.

The private owner of the papyrus first approached King in 2010. King said she didn't believe the document was authentic, but the owner persisted. She then asked the owner to bring the papyrus to Harvard, where she became convinced it was a genuine early Christian text fragment. Along with Princeton University professor Anne Marie Luijendijk and Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, King claims to have confirmed the document is real. The document's owner has not been named and King said he does not want to be identified.

It's unclear when the text was initially discovered. The owner who showed it to King found it in 1997 in a collection of papyri that he acquired from the previous owner, who was German. The papyri included a handwritten German description that had the name of a now-deceased professor of Egyptology in Berlin who called the fragment a "sole example" of a document that claims Jesus was married.

The scholars believe the text is from Egyptian Christians before the year 400, as it is written in the language used at that time. Since writing appears on both sides of the fragment, scholars believe it came from a codex, a kind of book, and not a scroll. The scholars also believe the document is a translation of an earlier one that was likely written in Greek.

King notes in her research that the idea of Jesus' celibacy hasn't always existed, and that early Christians debated whether they should marry or practice celibacy. It was not until around the year 200 that Christian followers began to say Jesus was unmarried, according to a record King cites from Clement of Alexandria. In his writing, Clement -- an early theologian -- said that marriage was a fornication put in place by the devil, and that people should emulate Jesus by not marrying.

One or two decades later, Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa declared that Jesus was "entirely unmarried" and told Christians to remain single. But Tertullian did not come out against sex altogether and allowed couples to get married one time, denouncing divorce and remarriage as overindulgent. A century later, the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy said in the New Testament that people who forbid marriage are going by the "doctrines of demons," but did not include anything about Jesus being married in order to make the point.

The point of view that ultimately became dominant was that celibacy is preferred as a high sexual virtue among Christians, but that marriage is needed for the sake of reproduction.

"The discovery of this new gospel," King said, "offers an occasion to rethink what we thought we knew by asking what role claims about Jesus's marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy, and family. Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The Gospel of Jesus's Wife now shows that some Christians thought otherwise."

The life of historical Jesus is often a matter of controversy, and this is not the first time it's been proposed that Jesus was married. Most recently, Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" depicted Jesus as being married to Mary Magdalene. The book was published as fiction, but nonetheless attracted loud criticism from Vatican officials

Maybe Todd was black it would do wonders equality..maybe more than religion.

And the poor catholics been screwing themselves up (if that is the right word) for years when they need not have. For 2000 years confession ' I had sex last night but at least I did not enjoy it'..bless you

Love this. Needless to say (in my opinion), Buddhists have something to learn here as well.

I agree Kozan I learn how religious views and opinions ( especially mine) can tie us in knots,separate people ,countries and even start wars.

'By following ideals' we can come o a dead end what ever our view of reality it is only a view

:-) Here's the link to the UK HuffPo article (no video); slightly different entry...http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/19/jesus-married-christ-gospel-wife-karen-king-harvard-_n_1895862.html

This story has just been on our world news with a quick interview with Karen King

https://youtu.be/jgFBU0ycwDo

unfortunately the you tube video would not work i will try and find it else where

some of our news programs may not work in the UK. I think there are copyright or some legal issues. This was a news story on the PBS NewsHour program. I can send the full link, but you still might not be able to view it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgFBU0ycwDo&feature=player_embedded

another link to same piece - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/july-dec12/papyrus_09-20.html

http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/what-if-jesus-had-a-wife-allowing-clergy-to-marry-could-save-the-catholic-church/

this link worked for me

i am pleased people are talking about it.it is interesting points of view,I mention this story to a group of friends yeater day and said maybe jesus was married to mary Magdelin and they all said she was a prostitute ..the guy on the video says it does not say this in the bible propaganda is so strong..interesting what he says in the video that some people think that St Paul may have been gay,andd also that in 1100 priests were not allowed to marry so their children did not inherit the land. All very dark...I think all these dark myths come about because normal is too difficult..being here and now is simply not the place to be, man can not realize on his own there has to be authority to say right and wrong it is almost that the truth has to be told about and not realized ...dark stuff indeed

to me, the interesting aspect is the whole process of how we create these big myths and stories, and then there are the official versions, well edited and rewritten, hundreds of years after the events supposedly took place. And how there are always different versions of the story that are suppressed, declared to be heretical or false. And how most people just assume that the official versions are true, wholly or mostly, or historically accurate

And do we humans make up entire stories? Yes, we do. Just because, "it is written" doesn't mean "it is true." The entire Christ story may be completely, 100% fiction. There are some scholars who think that it is just a fabrication and amalgam of early myths and tales. And then of course others think there must have been such a person - a wandering mystic, so the gospels are based on a real person, but much of the miracles are later fabrications, and of course the story was revised to suit the needs of later times. And still others of course, and most Christians, believe that the bible is mostly or wholly true, with the fundamentalists believing that every word is Gods' word, perfect and pure and beyond doubt. Such is the nature of stories.

Worth reading - i may have mentioned this elsewhere, i forget -- THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE by Shlomo Sand. Fascinating. As it turns out, the Jews were never in Egypt, there was no exodus across the desert for 40 years, there was no Moses, there was no exile. All of this was written / fabricated hundreds of years after those events supposedly took place, for political reasons, to create a good tribal myth. Rather than read the book, Shlomo Sand has many lectures on You Tube - where he explains his insights and research - and they are pretty good. So you can save the money and just watch a video or two.

Here are some links to his talks on line:

https://youtu.be/1EmvANgw9Mk

https://www.youtube.com/channel/HCRQOkVDLNPzc

i will watch them later,I agree with what you say about the stories and myths and of course it is not in any agenda to put them down, and see things for ourselves,I think the moment anyone does this the established religion feels threatened.In Zen it seems that the teaching has to come from the teacher,wheras it should come from ourselves.I think a really good teacher wil allow that to happen..not many of them around,..so many teachers work hard keeping themselves indispensible and important, and big instiutions like the catholic church are based on story and authority,following ..not being a lamp onto oneself..one has to carry the story rather than let it go

I watched the you tube lecture by Shlomo Sand . i do not know too much about the Jewish history. I think this is a challenge they would find too much, because I think their belief in their history is not allowed to be challenged. i agree with you Josh we carry alot of old and new with us,and buddhism for alot of people is accumulation of opinions. You can't carry an accululation of opinions into a zendo or one starts nodding and thumbs fall apart...time for the kyosak.. lol

:- ) Another story...

(? first televised 2004)
http://davidrohlontour.blogspot.co.uk/2012_01_01_archive.html
http://davidrohlontour.blogspot.co.uk/2012_09_01_archive.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Rohl)

Another good one,living without a past is too difficult it will never catch on... reality is not our dreams..oh ek

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/21/jon-stewart-jesus-wife-video_n_1903105.html?utm_hp_ref=comedy

The link does not work in my location,I will wait till Anne finds a link that works..thanks Anne

The link was from Comedy Central - the John Stewart Show. It was re-posted on the Huffingtonpost.com -- it's a funny take on the news story. There has been lots of comedy routines on American TV about this story. There is nothing important about the post - just amusing.

I am not sure how some of these websites work in terms of what can be viewed inside or outside the U.S. Probably the content that is based on film and TV might be restricted geographically? It seems so.

John Stewart clip is very funny. Point seems to be that JS can say those things on TV without having American Christians riot and pillage and blow up the Comedy Central building.

:-) I've browsed about for a UK-viewable version, CMH, but nothing so far. Sorry to disappoint.