The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

GlobalChristianPost — A historian from Harvard Divinity School revealed on Tuesday what she claims to be a fourth century fragment of papyrus containing the phrase (in Coptic) “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife … ‘”

The small fragment – referred to as the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife – suggests that some early Christians might have held the view that Jesus was married, according to Professor Karen King, who unveiled the findings at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome. What the text does not do, she stressed, is prove that Jesus had a wife.

“The aim of this analysis is not to reconstruct the historical Jesus, that is, to argue whether the historical Jesus had a wife or was celibate,” King wrote in her analysis for the upcoming January edition of the Harvard Theological Review. “Nor do I argue that historically there is any evidence that if Jesus was married, it was to Mary Magdalene. She appears in the most reliable historical information as a prominent disciple of Jesus.

“Rather, the importance of the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife lies in supplying a new voice within the diverse chorus of early Christian traditions about Jesus that documents that some Christians depicted Jesus as married.”