The Gospel of Jesus' Wife

I haven't really paid much attention to the whole brouhaha surrounding the sensationalistic presentation of the coptic text presented as potentially purporting to indicate that Jesus was married. But I just watched a great discussion provided around this issue, presented by Darrell Bock and Richard Taylor (both faculty at Dallas Theological Seminary); their presentation takes place at a DTS chapel. These kinds of things seem to be popping up every now and again, and they are presented in a way, that, again, is sensationalistic and not careful; it is simply intended to eventually sell books, and make the ratings for the media. Anyway, if you are interested in watching this, I am providing the video below of the presentation. Here it is:

If you are interested in gaining further access into this whole type of discussion --- like on critical New Testament scholarship, and Jesus Studies in particular, then a great little introductory book you should read is Craig A. Evans' newer book Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. 

The Gospel of Jesus' Wife 4th Century Papyrus

It is always interesting to me how hard people charge toward discrediting the Jesus of the Apostles. We don't see people trying to do this with Muhammed (except for a few here and there); we don't see people trying to do this with Buddah; but Jesus is a different story. The back story on all of this is that this is a spiritually instigated thing; a battle between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of the son of his love (of Christ). Some scholars, for various reasons, would love nothing better than to be able to undercut the historic teaching and person of Jesus Christ; and some of them will go to great and inventive lengths to achieve their goal. I am not saying, necessarily, that this was/is Karen King's intent (the Harvard faculty member who made this coptic fragmentary text public); but I am saying that there are many (Bart Ehrman, for example) who are on a mission to discredit the Christian faith at all costs.

It should be noted, in closing, that the fragmentary Coptic text that was disclosed by King, even if it turns out to be authentic, is a text that can be situated in the genre of Coptic and/or Gnostic Gospels (like Thomas, Judas, Mary etc.). So it does not give us insight into the historical Jesus of the Gospels, instead it could give us a tiny bit more insight into the theology of fourth century (and maybe even second century) Gnostic Christianity (which really isn't Christianity at all). If you watch the video you will hear these gents discussing these same points with further elaboration.