Blogs Abuzz for Jesus' Wife

[Peter Kirby]

In case you haven't heard the news... "it's authentic."

http://peterkirby.com/50-blogs-abuzz-fo ... -wife.html

Whole buncha links just from today.

[andrewcriddle]

Others disagree
e.g. Watson

Andrew Criddle

[Peter Kirby]

I tend to think it's a fake, myself. The modern kind.

[Peter Kirby]

Interesting. Stephan, you can file this under more evidence that "Jesus was a myth" has gone way beyond the biblical studies crowd:

http://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.c ... esus-wife/
http://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.c ... el-moroni/

This is a blog I check sometimes. It's got nothing to do with biblioblogs, but there you go.

[toejam]

I really don't see what all the fuss is about. AT BEST, all this fragment shows is that people in the 8thC were writing about Jesus having a wife. I could have guessed as much. For all we know, this is just 8thC entertainment ficiton - their equivalent of "The Da Vinci Code"! I don't see that it has to be a "sacred Gospel". It doesn't shed any light on the Historical Jesus or the pre-Constantine branches of early Christianity - which is what most people are interested in I suspect.

[Blood]

What I find interesting are all the comments you see posted in these articles. It is constantly repeated as if fact that the NT was compiled at Nicea; or, otherwise hundreds of years after the second century (the actual date it was compiled). Which just goes to show how utterly futile/non-existent Biblical scholarship is to the masses. I get the impression most people never thought about when/how the NT was compiled until they read "The DaVinci Code." Pop culture mythology will trump scholarship every time.

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Blood,

I have found the evidence that the NT was compiled before the time of Constantine less than convincing and about equal to "wishful thinking". Please provide your best evidence. Please note that the Muratorian Fragment originally placed by 18th Century Catholic Scholars in the Second century, has more recently been placed by more objective scholars in the Fourth Century where all the other evidence for the New Testament compilation lies.
I believe the Internet culture of wide-spread instantaneous information has allowed the the masses to leap ahead of the Religious Biblical writers who fashion themselves as scholars and are still using pre-Baconian, 16th Century methodologies for their medieval inspired scholastic scholarship

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

What I find interesting are all the comments you see posted in these articles. It is constantly repeated as if fact that the NT was compiled at Nicea; or, otherwise hundreds of years after the second century (the actual date it was compiled). Which just goes to show how utterly futile/non-existent Biblical scholarship is to the masses. I get the impression most people never thought about when/how the NT was compiled until they read "The DaVinci Code." Pop culture mythology will trump scholarship every time.

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Andrew Criddle,

Professor Watson appears to have no qualifications whatsoever for determining the authenticity of ancient documents. Despite lacking these qualifications, he has written articles not only denouncing the authenticity of the document in question before any scientific tests had been run, but also denouncing the authenticity of the "Secret Gospel of Mark." Having written articles labeling two documents as modern conspiracies without any any scientific evidence to back up his conclusions, may we now label him a conspiracy theorist?

Others disagree
e.g. Watson

Andrew Criddle

[TedM]

From the article in question, we have the following:

..the text has been constructed out of small pieces–words or phrases–culled from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (GTh), especially Sayings 30, 45, 101 and 114, and set in new ontexts...The author has used a kind of “collage” technique to assemble the items selected from Thomas into a new composition. While this is a very unlikely way for an ancient author to compose a text, it’s what might be expected of a modern forger with limited facility in the Coptic language.4I do not see anything in Dr King’s response to cause me to retract that last sentence.Furthermore, I pointed out that the very first line of the fragment begins in the middle of a word, at exactly the same place as in the equivalent passagei n the one surviving Gospel of Thomas manuscript. And line 1 ends with the same ending as the following line in Thomas.This is quite a coincidence, and it suggests that the author f[the Jesus’ wife fragment]may have drawn his Thomas material from a modern printed edition

If the part in italics is correct, IMO this text is almost certainly a forgery, and there is no need for experts to weigh in. All that is needed is some common sense.

[JoeWallack]

JW:
In general, this is another hit on the credibility of CBS (Christian Bible Scholarship), starting with the conclusion that The Gospel of JW is a modern forgery before the hard evidence is presented (trying to proof-text based on supposed modern parallels). Obviously Believers don't like evidence such as Jesus being married because it is clearly contradicted by what they think the evidence shows/proves. One of my criteria for evidence of fiction is likelihood in general. In Jesus' supposed setting, most men were married, so evidence supporting this should not be surprising.

Specifically, I currently have Mark Goodacre ranked as the top Internet Christian Bible scholar since Daniel Wallace jumped off the deep theological end. Goodacre has taken a hit here since he was so supportive of Modern Forgery:

http://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/je ... ce-of.html

and even worse, is not now confessing his sin.


Joseph

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