{"id":4645,"date":"2012-10-05T11:25:52","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T17:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4645"},"modified":"2012-10-05T13:44:19","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T19:44:19","slug":"following-up-the-hint-of-jesus-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4645","title":{"rendered":"Following Up the Hint of Jesus&#8217; Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0 recent announcement of a bit of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Coptic_language\">Coptic<\/a> writing that <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4608\">apparently referred to Jesus&#8217; wife<\/a> has stirred up plenty of controversy. Was the inscription really as old as claimed? Was it a forgery? Did it really mean &#8220;wife&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>At the <em>Bulletin for the Study of Religion <\/em>blog,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.equinoxpub.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/5133\/\"> Ian Brown will bring you up to speed.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But whether or not <em>GosJesWife<\/em> was written in the 4<sup>th<\/sup> century or the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century is not actually all that interesting to me (for the record, I suspect it is 4<sup>th<\/sup> century, although here I defer to the papyrologists and paleographers who have also drawn that conclusion). Yes, I do Christian origins and am always happy with more data. But I am more interested in the ways in which the initial story was taken-up by the media, particularly the conservative reaction\u00a0arguing it to be a modern forgery. Regarding the former, it seems we are still standing in the shadow of the <em>Jesus Seminar<\/em>. Popular interest is focused almost exclusively on the possibility that the historical Jesus was married, and not at all interested in the fact that, assuming its authenticity, people in the 4<sup>th<\/sup> century were telling stories about a married Jesus\u2014a detail which I, for one, think is pretty neat! Regarding the latter, well, we are still in the shadow of the <em>Jesus Seminar<\/em>, only here we feel echoes of the conservative reaction against its version of the historical Jesus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At <em>Heterodoxology<\/em>, Egil Asprem <a href=\"http:\/\/heterodoxology.com\/2012\/09\/27\/1377\/\">passes along some more commentary<\/a>, focusing on the paleographic questions.<\/p>\n<p>And the reaction of the Vatican<a href=\"http:\/\/religion.blogs.cnn.com\/2012\/09\/28\/vatican-newspaper-calls-fragment-referring-to-jesus-wife-a-fake\/\"> is predictable.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0 recent announcement of a bit of Coptic writing that apparently referred to Jesus&#8217; wife has stirred up plenty of controversy. Was the inscription really as old as claimed? Was it a forgery? Did it really mean &#8220;wife&#8221;? At the Bulletin for the Study of Religion blog, Ian Brown will bring you up to speed. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-4645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1cV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4608,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4608","url_meta":{"origin":4645,"position":0},"title":"Evidence of Jesus&#8217; Wife?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"You don't think a good Jewish boy from a peasant culture got to be thirty years old without being married, do you? Now there is textual evidence that suggests that he was. \u201cThis fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,\u201d Dr. [Karen] King said.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12490,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12490","url_meta":{"origin":4645,"position":1},"title":"Who Benefited from the Vinland Map?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Vinland Map has been controversial since the 1960s when it popped into public view. Did it really record a Norse partial-mapping of North America? Its modern history is viewed as scandalous. Most scholars who examined it leaned toward its being a forgery. But from when? And for whose benefit?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/vinland_map_hires-300x208.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7932,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7932","url_meta":{"origin":4645,"position":2},"title":"Assessing a New Book on Jesus&#8217; Wife","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to think that of course Jesus was married \u2014 what normal 1st-century small-town Jewish man would not be married? Answer: most of the Essenes, to name one group. The perennial interest in an actual bloodline of his descendents is periodically stoked by books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1605986100","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":615,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=615","url_meta":{"origin":4645,"position":3},"title":"Vinland 2Part 1Fake or not,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Vinland 2Part 1Fake or not, the Kensington Runestone was fervently defended by one Hjalmar Rued Holand, a local historian. His promotion resulted in a 1940 Smithsonian exhibition and later the creation of a museum in Alexandria, Minnesota.Nevertheless, expert opinion remained generally skeptical. The 1967 Newfoundland discovery seemed to obviate any\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6148,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6148","url_meta":{"origin":4645,"position":4},"title":"What Did Jesus Know about Rome?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting short essay in which a historian conjectures just how much Jesus of Nazareth would have known about the Roman Empire, in which he lived. The assumption is that he spoke Greek as a second language; otherwise, how did he communicate with Pontius Pilate, not to mention the centurion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/a\/ac\/JesusHealingCenturionServant.jpg","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/a\/ac\/JesusHealingCenturionServant.jpg 1x, https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/a\/ac\/JesusHealingCenturionServant.jpg 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":389,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=389","url_meta":{"origin":4645,"position":5},"title":"YVWH's WifeThis is not news\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"YVWH's WifeThis is not news to religion scholars, but it's interesting that Archaeology magazine's March\/April magazine carries an article on Hebrew polytheism, \"The Lost Goddess of Israel.\"\"Biblical scholars were at first reluctant to accept the pairing of Yahweh and Asherah. Those who were wont to take the biblical narrative at\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4645"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4649,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions\/4649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}