Thursday, September 20, 2012

More on "Gospel of Jesus' Wife"

There continues to be analysis and discussion of Karen King's release of the fragment she has called "Gospel of Jesus' Wife."  Below are a few of the posts and links to check out for more on this discovery.  (See UPDATES at bottom of post)

More on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife

The 'Wife of Jesus' Fragment a Day Later: Some Concerns About Authenticity but also see this person's update Two Days Later: Another Evaluation of the Jesus' Wife Papyrus

Harvard Divinity School has set up a site with pictures and Q/A

Karen King's 52 page article for Harvard Theological Review discussing the find

James McGrath has an article with a number of links to other scholars' views

Evangelical Textual Criticism has some good discussion in these posts HERE (which raise issues of authenticity)and a follow-up HERE.

Albert Mohler weighs in with The Gospel of Jesus' Wife? When Sensationalism Masquerades as Scholarship

Ben Witherington's blog has a piece by NT scholar Simon Gathercole Simon Gathercole on the Jesus' Wife Papyrus

Update: September 21, 2012

Dan Wallace gives a very good and thorough overview of facts and possibilities regarding fragment Reality Check: The "Jesus' Wife" Coptic Fragment

Update: September 22, 2012

Francis Watson argues that the new fragment is a forgery and is based off the Coptic Gospel of Thomas 
The "Gospel of Jesus' Wife": How a Fake Gospel-Fragment Was Composed

His summary reads as follows:
Six of the eight incomplete lines of GJW recto are so closely related to the Coptic GTh, especially to Sayings 101 and 114, as to make dependence virtually certain. A further line is derived from Matthew; just one is left unaccounted for. The author has used a “collage” or “patchwork” compositional technique, and this level of dependence on extant pieces of Coptic text is more plausibly attributed to a modern author, with limited facility in Coptic, than to an ancient one. Indeed, the GJW fragment may be designedly incomplete, its lacunae built into it from the outset. It does not seem possible to fill these lacunae with GTh material contiguous to the fragments cited. The impression of modernity is reinforced by the case in line 1 of dependence on the line-division of the one surviving Coptic manuscript, easily accessible in modern printed editions. Unless this impression of modernity is countered by further investigations and fresh considerations, it seems unlikely that GJW will establish itself as a “genuine” product of early gospel writing.

Update: October 2, 2012

Michael Kruger weighs in again with concerns about the back of the fragment and the spacing of the letters HERE.

Update: October 12, 2012

The facts and analysis continues to mount that the fragment is a forgery.

Andrew Bernhard has a site devoted to the fragment.  His most recent essay is entitled How "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife" Might Have Been Forged: A Tentative Proposal.

Over at Evangelical Textual Criticism there is a post entitled "Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Final Death Throes?