Hi there, let’s talk about Jesus.
Generally those words are followed by the sound of people swiftly locking their doors.
Not so much lately, since Harvard Professor Karen L. King unearthed a fourth-century scrap of papyrus with the words, “And Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’” scrawled across it in Coptic. Christ is making a comeback.
At least in the fiery world of early Christian academia at stuffy Ivy league divinity schools, he is.
The snippet of text has been carbon dated and checked by several scholars on the subject, and it does appear authentic.
Dan Brown is probably cackling over steepled fingers at the amount of money he’s about to make.
The big implication here is that Jesus may have been married; elsewhere in the text it says, “She will be able to be my disciple,” and “Mary is worthy.”
This forlorn tidbit of almost-scripture is made all the more mysterious by the fact that it appears to have been intentionally torn down to the size of a small post card – purposefully cutting off the most intriguing sentences.
That being said, the text is from about the fourth century, 300 years after Christ walked the Earth and around the time the first official version of the Bible was codified.
According to King, the writing is most likely a translation of an earlier Greek text, or might be a hodgepodge of verses taken from the non-canonical Coptic Gospel of Thomas.
But this probably won’t mark a monumental shift for many Christians — it’s simply too unsubstantial.
The slip of papyrus does raise some interesting points, however.
Before the early Church came together and put down what would become the well-known Bible found in the drawers of nightstands in cheap motels across the country, it was more of a freeform text with many rivals.
King believes her slip of papyrus scripture may have been damaged and thrown out by the opponents of Gnostic Christianity, a heretical school of thought that has virtually disappeared from the modern mainstream.
The bigger implication here is that early Christians were not of the same mind on the basics of their fledgling faith.
What has become set Christian orthodoxy wasn’t always the mainstream, rather there was a lively debate about what was and wasn’t Christian back in the days in which the Bible was first bound.
Michael Peppard, a professor of theology at Fordham College and a contributor to the Washington Post, wrote that Christians have nothing to fear from King’s papyrus, and that understanding Christian roots can only lead to a reinvigorated Christian dialogue.
And why not? It took Martin Luther more than a millennium to get around to nailing his 95 theses to the door of a German church.
Early nonsanctioned copies of the Quran were rounded up and burned, Confucians still think Lao Tzu travelled east and inspired the Buddha and Judaism is centered on a temple that no longer exists.
King’s papyrus will almost certainly soon be forgotten, but there is a lesson here.
We, as believers, must be able to approach our faith with a critical eye and open heart — if we can’t look upon our past without losing what we believe in, then perhaps it’s time we re-evaluate what faith really is.
