First Person: Why Consult Scholarship to Judge “Jesus’ Wife” Fragment?

Good journalism beats good scholarship. That’s the apparent lesson of a long article in the July/August 2016 issue of the Atlantic1 that is winning kudos all over for unmasking a fake ancient inscription in which Jesus refers to “my wife,” ostensibly indicating he is married. The inscription is in Coptic and inscribed on a piece of ancient papyrus the size of a business card. It came to Harvard Divinity School Professor Karen King, who holds the oldest endowed chair in the United States, via one Walter Fritz, who requested anonymity. The Atlantic piece was written by investigative journalist and […]