Harvard has been gracious enough to provide free access to King's 2014 article online:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/hand ... sequence=1
One purpose of the article is to offer a critical edition, as stated in the first sentence:
This article offers a critical edition of a papyrus fragment in Coptic that contains a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples in which Jesus speaks of “my wife.”
The critical edition begins with a transcription of the Coptic text and English translation, followed by a discussion of the material artifact (papyrology, paleography, form and uses), language, interpretation, and the history of the manuscript. Summary reports of analyses performed on the ink and papyrus completed to date follow.
A critical edition is an essential part of the scholarly study of any text, whether it is known to be a forgery, known to be authentic, or something else.
As the lead researcher with access to the fragment, King had worked with a variety of collaborators who provided essential data:
In addition to those already named, let me acknowledge and thank the following for their enormous generosity of time and expertise: Rose Lincoln and B. D. Colen produced high-resolution digital photographs. Malcolm Choat examined the fragment during a visit to Harvard (November 14-15, 2012). Microscopic imaging was conducted by Douglas Fishkind and Casey Kraft with Henry Lie at the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging (December 17, 2012). Raman testing of the ink was done by James Yardley with Alexis Hagadorn at Columbia University (March 11-12, 2013). Radiocarbon analysis was performed by Greg Hodgins at the University of Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory (June-July, 2013). Funding for the carbon-14 (14C) testing was generously provided by a gift from Tricia Nichols. Multispectral imaging was performed by Michael Toth and select images were processed by William Christians-Barry (August 26, 2013). Timothy Swager, Joseph Azzarelli and John Goods performed Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) testing at MIT (November 5, 2013). Harvard librarians, especially Douglas Gragg, were gracious and patient supporters. Harvard’s communications professionals took the lead in public dissemination. Noreen Tuross gave invaluable advice and conducted a crucial range of testing, including a second radiocarbon determination.
It's obviously appropriate for all this data to be entered into the scholarly record, in the form of a journal article.
There is a substantial discussion in the article about "Dating the Manuscript and the Question of Forgery":
Dating the Manuscript and the Question of Forgery
From the moment the fragment’s existence was announced, discussion of dating focused on the question of whether it was produced in antiquity or was fabricated in modernity with the intent to deceive (“forgery”108). This question deserves serious consideration and requires taking account of all the pertinent factors as a whole. These include: characteristics of the materials (papyrus and ink); application of the ink on the page; handwriting; language; compositional practice; the provenance of discovery; and historical contextualization.109 Let us consider each in turn.
The scientific testing completed thus far consistently provides positive evidence of the antiquity of the papyrus and ink, including radiocarbon, spectroscopic, and oxidation characteristics, with no evidence of modern fabrication. Hypothetically, a clever forger could acquire a piece of ancient papyrus and fabricate ink from ancient papyrus fragments or other vegetable matter—both of which would pass these kinds of inspection. Yardley comments, however, that while correct, “in practice this may not be so simple. The soot created in this way would not be at all the same as the soot normally used for inks unless the person who burned the papyrus was exceedingly careful to follow a procedure similar to or related to the processes used by the ancients.”110 Moreover, the very early (unreliable?) 14C dating is problematic since it requires hypothesizing either that a scribe already in antiquity acquired a centuries-old papyrus to inscribe or that a forger acquired and inscribed it in modernity; both of these hypotheses have difficulties. Further testing that indicates a date for the GJW papyrus within the seventh to eighth centuries resolves these difficulties.
Shadows on the relatively low-resolution photographs that were initially published seemed to indicate ink on the lower layers of the recto fibers and led to speculation that a forger inscribed the ancient papyrus after it was damaged. Microscopic examination disconfirms this suggestion.
Papyrologists agree that the clumsiness of the script indicates an unprofessional, inexperienced hand but differ in their evaluation of whether it is due to the elementary educational level of an ancient writer or a forger’s inexperience writing on papyrus. They also noted the small “tails” on some letters that may indicate an anachronistic use of a brush rather than a pen, but Choat finds this point inconclusive. Bagnall suggests a poor pen may be a factor.
The initial estimation of a fourth-century C.E. date for the extant manuscript of GJW was based on paleography, but this method has significant limitations given the current state of the field.111 A later date is indicated by the age of the papyrus.
The tiny fragment contains two rare grammatical features, which can be accounted for as 1) unusual but not unknown syntactic features, 2) scribal errors, 3) indications of a forger with a poor knowledge of Coptic, or 4) copying from the November, 2002 online, interlinear version of the Gos. Thom. 50:1 by Grondin, which erroneously omits the ⲙ̄¸ before ⲡⲱⲛϩ.112 The fact that, even if these rarities are regarded as grammatical mistakes, they are attested in ancient Coptic manuscripts (i.e., they are the kind of errors that native speakers make) tends to persuade me against option three. 113 This point also makes option four less likely, and indeed this option has an additional difficulty in requiring proof that the statements and documentation provided by the owner are also false or forged.
Moreover, in my opinion, option four lacks any plausibility unless the hypothesis is proved correct that the content of GJW was composed by “cobbling together” extracts from modern editions of the Gospel of Thomas.114 This hypothesis is, however, highly problematic.115 The method used by forgery proponents to establish this compositional practice assumes forgery and then produces similarities between the two works (as they suggest a forger would) by locating parallels dispersed throughout Gos. Thom.Sometimes the parallel is only a single detached word or a grammatical form. The method also requires positing hypothetical editorial changes or grammatical errors by the forger or by emending the text of GJW to account for differences from Gos. Thom.116 It should be noted that while the proposed parallels are largely made up of very common vocabulary, the fragment’s two most distinctive or unusual terms (ⲧⲁϩⲓⲙⲉ and ϣⲁϥⲉ) have no parallels in Gos. Thom. As Peppard and Paananen have pointed out, such a method cannot distinguish between “authentic and fake” passages nor even show direct literary dependence.117
The results, therefore, are not evidence for forgery, but at best might be one way of accounting for the text if forgery were to be established by other methods. More to the point, the GJW fragment can easily be accounted for by the ancient compositional practices used by all early Christian literature (including ancient forgeries). These ancient practices are characterized by a lack of fixity as well as continuity; they include memory and oral composition, performance, and transmission, as well as excerpting and “editing.”118 The relation among the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) is a well-known example combining literary dependence with redactional change to produce theologically distinctive dialogues and narratives, such as forgery proponents suggest for GJW’s relation to Gos. Thom. One does not, however, have to posit modern forgery to account for GJW’s literary dependence upon Gos. Thom. (or other comparands), since that would have been possible in antiquity as well. Moreover, GJW fits well generically among gospel literature composed and circulated in the early centuries of Christianity.
The interpretive contextualizations offered by forgery proponents have variously pointed toward contemporary debates over whether Jesus was married or over ecclesiastical leadership, as well as the portrait of Mary Magdalene in popular media and fiction, and (alleged) modern hoaxes.119 If the fragment concerns the discipleship of wives and mothers, however, these are mostly irrelevant as well as unsubstantiated.
Rather, scholarship on ancient Christianity has established significant and widespread attention by Christians in the first to sixth centuries C.E. to issues of marriage and reproduction, virginity and celibacy, sexual desire and sin, family and discipleship, and Jesus’s marital status. These form a demonstrable ancient historical context for the GJW fragment, even though the claim that Jesus had a human wife is rare, if not unique.
The lack of information regarding the provenance of the discovery is unfortunate since, when known, such information is extremely pertinent. Given that the provenance of the discovery of small Coptic papyrus fragments is frequently unknown, however, the lack is neither unusual nor decisive for the question of dating. While we can wish for strong evidence, such as an inscribed date or provenance established by professional archaeological excavation, arguments from silence based on these deficiencies are not determinative of the question one way or the other.
On the basis of the criteria considered above and the research done to date, where does the weight of evidence fall in considering the date of the GJW fragment? On the side of a date in antiquity, all the evidence can be marshaled: the placement of the ink, its chemical composition, the age of the papyrus, and patterns of aging and damage support ancient fabrication and inscription. The inexperienced handwriting and linguistic features fit a poorly trained scribe (with a poor pen?) who is a native speaker. The genre and literary comparands (including the Gospel of Thomas) are a fit for ancient Christianity, as are the topics of discussion. On the side of a date in modernity, the gravest difficulty for me lies in explaining how a forger incompetent in Coptic language with poor scribal skills (perhaps even anachronistically using a brush) was yet so highly skilled as to secure ancient papyrus, make ink with an ancient technique, leave no ink traces out of place at the microscopic level, achieve patterns of differential aging, fabricate a paper trail of modern supporting documents, and provide a good fit for an ancient historical context—one that no serious scholar considers to be evidence of the historical Jesus’s marital status. In my judgment such a combination of bumbling and sophistication seems extremely unlikely. Further research or the development of new methods may offer determinative evidence, but for now, I would judge the weight of evidence to fall on the side of dating the GJW as a material artifact to antiquity, probably the seventh to eighth centuries C.E.
Was King right or wrong? I think King was wrong. King now thinks King was wrong. At the time, though, there was no definitive proof either way, even though people did claim definitive proof of forgery very early on.
King did have a deficit of knowledge about the nature of the modern forger and their capabilities, which led to an incorrect conclusion about the plausibility of a forger that had access to everything but a world-class command of the ancient Coptic language (something that is rare even among historians and NT scholars). But coming to the wrong conclusion is not a moral failing. The standards of scholarship are to provide a thorough review of all the evidence. King provided that in the article, interacting with all of the most powerful arguments for forgery that had been put forward.
As I said, even at the time of publication, the mood among scholars was very sour on the fragment. Most were already very satisfied with themselves for spotting the fake right away. Publishing a different view took some amount of courage. Developing that view as the discussion unfolded further shows integrity.
Taking pot shots likes this over five years later shows neither courage nor integrity.