A Faded Piece Of Papyrus Refers To Jesus's Wife - Nyt Article

[Amppax]

I talked about this today with a professor. Something I'd like to throw in here, this professor is really well respected, she isn't some crackpot. She's also in a statement (which I can't find) basically said the same thing that Mortify said. My professor was saying that it reflects more on the fact that 4th and 5th century Christians were having debates about marriage and celibacy at the time.

[Socrates]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1348081602' post='2484253']
Wonder if James Cameron is involved this time?
[/quote]
He's no doubt working on the screenplay as we speak.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Norseman82' timestamp='1348093210' post='2484352']
Actually, I learned in sacraments class that the sex is the difference between a man and woman living as husband/wife vs. brother/sister.
[/quote]

Soooo.... Are you suggesting the BVM and St. Joseph were not husband and wife but instead brother and sister?

[Socrates]

[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1348032088' post='2484054']
If we assume the fragment is not a forgery, the next question is what historical authority it bears. Being that it is purported to be a 4th century fragment, what knowledge does it reveal to us about the historical Jesus? I'm fascinated that people are more interested in that which has little to no historical relevence to Christ, and pass over that which really is significant, the New Testament, which is our *earliest* collection of writings on the life and teachings of our Lord.
[/quote]
Good point. The canonical gospels (which now most scholars have been forced to accept are from the first century) predate by centuries the gnostic "gospels" about Christ's marriage to Mary Magdalene and such (as do the Pauline Epistles). The gnostic "gospels" also contain a lot more weird and "fantastical" stuff than the canonical gospels.
Yet the secular media regularly treats the gnostic texts are if they reveal an earlier and "purer" Christianity - back before the Church was hijacked by all those awful repressive male sexist homophobic religious types.

[4588686]

[quote name='Basilisa Marie' timestamp='1348079798' post='2484238']
Shush, you. [/QUOTE]

No. As we have already established, I'm edgy and provocative.


[QUOTE]You think his original apostles would have mentioned it to Paul during the time he spent in Jerusalem.
[/quote]

Since the original Apostles didn't write anything down it's hard to say what they would have said on the matter.

[4588686]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1348096776' post='2484387'] back before the Church was hijacked by all those awful repressive male sexist homophobic religious types.
[/quote]

Not all religious people are homophobic. My grandfather is very religious. He even volunteered to go to Vietnam as a Chaplin with a medical evacuation unit. And yet he manages to go weeks at a time without thinking about sodomy and who might be sodomizing whom. The fact that so many on the religious-right are so fixated on male sodomy probably suggests more about their personal inner-turmoil than religious people in general.


8:16 on pertains to be relevant here

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrQYVm_qZ8A&feature=relmfu"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrQYVm_qZ8A&feature=relmfu[/url]

[Norseman82]

[quote name='homeschoolmom' timestamp='1348095338' post='2484376']
Soooo.... Are you suggesting the BVM and St. Joseph were not husband and wife but instead brother and sister?
[/quote]

It was a general reply to Tab's general statement.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Norseman82

[Norseman82]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348098531' post='2484402']
Since the original Apostles didn't write anything down it's hard to say what they would have said on the matter.
[/quote]

I'm sure that it was fresh in the memory of the apostles, and if Jesus had been married, would He not have entrusted her into somebody's care? After all, He entrusted His mother into St. John's care. Would not have the apostles introduced St. Paul to her?

And why would St. Paul write that it is better to remain unmarried if Jesus Himself was married?

[4588686]

[quote name='Norseman82' timestamp='1348099415' post='2484414']
I'm sure that it was fresh in the memory of the apostles, and if Jesus had been married, would He not have entrusted her into somebody's care? After all, He entrusted His mother into St. John's care. Would not have the apostles introduced St. Paul to her?[/QUOTE]

I don't know. The earliest Gospels were written decades later. Who know what Jesus said and did. Is this finding evidence that Jesus was married? No, except in the most marginal sense. Was Jesus married? I don't know and I don't really care.

[QUOTE]And why would St. Paul write that it is better to remain unmarried if Jesus Himself was married?
[/quote]

Because he believed that it was better to remain unmarried?

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348100316' post='2484433']
I don't know. The earliest Gospels were written decades later. Who know what Jesus said and did.
[/quote]

Irenaeus, in the late second century:

[indent=1]When I was still a boy I saw you in Asia Minor with Polycarp, doing splendidly in the royal court and striving to gain his approbation. I remember the events of those days better than the ones of recent years. What a boy learns grows with the mind and becomes a part of him, so that I am able to describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, his goings and his comings, the manner of his life, his physical appearance, as well as the discourses he delivered to the people, and how he spoke of his familiar conversation with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord, and how he would recall their words to mind. All that he had heard from them concerning the Lord or about His miracles and about His teaching, having received it from eyewitnesses of the Word of Life, Polycarp related in harmony with the Scriptures. [/indent]


Honestly, I think that Patristic Tradition is a fairly compelling stance.

[Groo the Wanderer]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348098531' post='2484402']
Since the original Apostles didn't write anything down it's hard to say what they would have said on the matter.
[/quote]

You mean besides Matthew and John and James and Peter, right?

[BigJon16]

From Catholic News Service:
Read the full article here, I'm going quote it all too...

[url="http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1203924.htm"]http://www.catholicn...cns/1203924.htm[/url]


[quote]
[size=3][font=Arial,Helvetica]Scholars are unlikely to agree anytime soon on the authenticity of a newly published text containing a reference to Jesus' "wife."

But the tiny papyrus fragment, purportedly dating to the fourth century A.D., has already stirred interest in the early church's attitudes toward marriage, sex and the role of women.

The fragment of papyrus with eight lines of Egyptian Coptic writing is the "only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife," wrote Karen L. King, historian of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, in an academic paper she delivered Sept. 18 at an international Coptic studies conference in Rome.

"It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married," she wrote, "given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition," at the end of the second century.

The best source of evidence giving an account of Jesus' life and ministry is still the Gospels in the New Testament, King told reporters the next day, "and they are silent about his marital status."

But she said the fragment is "direct evidence" that early Christians started debating in the second century whether Jesus could have been married or not.

Father Juan Chapa, a New Testament scholar at the University of Navarra in Spain, told [url="http://www.catholicnews.com/index.html"][color=#990033]Catholic News Service[/color][/url] that the "Gospels don't mention marriage, not because they wanted to hide something, but because it was clear that Jesus did not get married, and it's consistent in the church's tradition."

He also noted that the gnostic gospel genre to which the fragment evidently belongs is one of stories about Jesus that mainly take place after the resurrection, using language that is heavily allegorical. Thus, he said, the fragment's relevant words --"Jesus said to them, 'My wife'" -- were likely not meant as a literal assertion about the life of the historical Jesus.

King said that the significance of the fragment lies in the light it might shed on debates in the early church over the necessity of celibacy to living a holy life.

According to Michael Peppard, a professor of theology and Coptic language at Fordham University, a belief in asceticism saw rapid development in the second to fourth centuries, especially in Egypt where Christian monasticism was born.

Some bishops at the time "were saying that the highest ideal was asceticism," which included renouncing "all the trappings and worries of material life," including marriage.

But Peppard said other bishops in the same period "were figuring out how to give everyone their space," and letting it be known it was all right for Christians to live in the world.

The new text published by King may be a sign of early Christians "pushing back" against asceticism and moving closer to mainstream Jewish attitudes "of blessing sex and procreation," Peppard said.

Catholic teaching, Father Chapa said, holds that "Jesus' celibacy, by differentiating him from other rabbis, underlines his unique mission to fulfill the kingdom of God, and shows how he embodied the love of God" by renouncing conjugal love.

King said the reference to Jesus' wife could just be a symbol of the church, akin to the Gospel allegory of Jesus as bridegroom of the church.

"What if what's missing is saying, 'My wife is the church?'" King said.

But both Peppard and King argue that the word does refer to a real person, since the line just below it includes the words: "...she will be able to be my disciple..."

The "wife" in question could be a "spiritual wife," Peppard said. Other texts from the same period uphold "the image of an unconsummated spiritual marriage where the best kind of husband and wife live celibately," he said.

King acknowledged that there would be continued debate over the authenticity of the fragment, whose paper trail goes back only to the 1980s.

"I would say it's a forgery," Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg who was attending the conference with King, told the Associated Press. "The script doesn't look authentic" compared to other fourth-century Coptic papyri.

But Roger Bagnall, a papyrologist and director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, studied the handwriting, the grammar and how the ink was absorbed by the plant fibers, and concluded it was likely to date from the period between 350 and 400 A.D.

"We can't ever know or be 100 percent sure if it's authentic or a forgery," Peppard said.

King said any properly accredited scholar in the world is welcome to study the papyrus, and that criticism of her findings is part and parcel of any historical study.

"We want to do the best job we can with new historical data," she said.

Father Chapa called King's discovery "exciting," and nothing for believing Catholics to fear."Anything that helps us understand our past, to understand the history of the church and how the church defined herself in history," he said, "is very valuable and positive."[/font][/size]


[/quote]

[4588686]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' timestamp='1348107577' post='2484509']
You mean besides Matthew and John and James and Peter, right?
[/quote]

Well, if some Christians groups asserted decades after the texts were authored, in order to bolster their own authority, that the texts, themselves written decades after Jesus was killed, were written by the Apostles, then it must be true.

[Groo the Wanderer]

Got proof of that?

[4588686]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' timestamp='1348138019' post='2484613']
Got proof of that?
[/quote]

Yes. But it's not something I can really summarize. Go read the scholarly literature of the last 300 years or so. Or look at wikipedia.

[MIKolbe]

wait..

So if some Non-Catholic groups asserted 1600 years after the texts were authored, in order to bolster their own authority, that the texts, themselves written decades after Jesus was killed, were NOT written by the Apostles, then it must be true.
.

[4588686]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1348169175' post='2484697']
wait..

So if some Non-Catholic groups asserted 1600 years after the texts were authored, in order to bolster their own authority, that the texts, themselves written decades after Jesus was killed, were NOT written by the Apostles, then it must be true.
.
[/quote]

Who says they weren't Catholic?

[MIKolbe]

who says that matters?

[4588686]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1348172911' post='2484720']
who says that matters?
[/quote]

You made a point of saying the scholars were non-Catholics. Just because you're getting prettier doesn't mean you can get away with everything.

[Guest FrancisServusChristi]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348099076' post='2484410']
Not all religious people are homophobic. My grandfather is very religious. He even volunteered to go to Vietnam as a Chaplin with a medical evacuation unit. And yet he manages to go weeks at a time without thinking about sodomy and who might be sodomizing whom. The fact that so many on the religious-right are so fixated on male sodomy probably suggests more about their personal inner-turmoil than religious people in general.


8:16 on pertains to be relevant here

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrQYVm_qZ8A&feature=relmfu[/media]
[/quote]


As usual, I agree with Hasan <3