Up date on the Jesus' Wife Fragment

Not surprised. As soon as the original story mentioned that they hadn't done a test on the ink yet, I knew it was supposition and publicity-mongering.

 

There's a lot of inconsistencies with the piece and the way it has been brought into the national conversation. (Although I was happy to be distracted from the incessant idiocy of the presidential campaigns.)

There are a number of challenges and a lot of the scholars have said "Whoa!" in an almost uniform manner. Since Dr King, the Harvard scholar who "discovered" the fragment, immediately coined it the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" she ultimately made the whole thing into a massive story that necessitated an immediate response from across the scholastic realm. Then when her antiquities dealer noted that he would be happy to sell the rest of the piece the whole affair got really sticky. Maybe this whole episode will go down in the books like the (thankfully) failed James Ossuary and the highly suspect lead codices. Also, I don't think it helped that Elaine Pagels jumped on board and supported this scholar. That really irked some people.

Some of the guys I've been reading and corresponding with have put together some really good pieces of inquiry and refutation. Here's a round up of the folks I've been reading:

Mark Goodacre (Prof at Duke Divinity) has a great blog and has been posting up stuff from some scholars, particularly Francis Watson. Check it out: http://ntweblog.blogspot.com/

Larry Hurtado (who I referenced in the previous thread about this) has made a number of points on his blog: http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/ I'm particularly intrigued by how fast the NYTimes pushed this out without consulting major scholars. The UK papers all waited and consulted. That is a HUGE black-eye for the NYTimes.

AP added this note, that the Harvard Theological Journal, is probably not going to publish Dr King's work. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...Qpykcw?docId=10c470c348444f919ca69ffc638caaba

Darrell Bock, who should have been consulted from the beginning, has some good thoughts: http://blogs.bible.org/bock/darrell_l._bock/quick_thoughts_on_the_new_jesus_wife_text

Also, so does Dan Wallace: http://danielbwallace.com/2012/09/21/reality-check-the-jesus-wife-coptic-fragment/

Basically most major textual scholars jumped on this within 24 hours and the whole thing is under a pale of controversy. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing becomes an important footnote in historical Jesus studies.

James McGrath (whom I think is overrated as a scholar) has been having a bit of fun with all of this, but has a pretty interesting point about how modern technology (i.e. Bibleworks 9) helped ask serious questions about this piece: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/explor...ibleworks-9-and-the-gospel-of-jesus-wife.html

Richard Bauckham's point about composition is probably the key point in really dismissing this thing. It was made a comment on Mark Goodacre's blog. See this is the power of insightful scholarship. If anything we should have more confidence in the academic processes for getting to the bottom of these issues when properly confronted with evidences and given time. I'm pretty impressed at how quickly and uniformly this got handled by proper academicians. The tip off for a lot of them was why scholar in Ecclesiastical History got a hold of the piece, which is obvious part of a larger work, out of the blue.

It is pretty clear that what was driving this whole thing was collusion between the Smithsonian, NYTimes, Harvard Divinity faculty, and (a still not named) antiquities dealer. A book is already being written, documentaries filmed, and major exhibitions planned. All of this to try to a) disparage a Christian belief that doesn't really amount to much, b) sully the doctrine of Christology (or something) and c) attempt to give evangelical Christians a black-eye for their "crazy" beliefs.

 

Every true Christian knows it's fake anyway. It's just an anti Christ thing.

 

James' ossuary needs something to store in it.