UPDATE: a good article from Thomas White, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s vice president of student services and communications, titled, “What pastors need to know about the Jesus wife fragment“. He says essentially what I reported here. But better.
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LOL, the Gnostics are at it again, this time from Harvard Divinity School. News just in, a “new” fragment purporting to have the real information on Jesus is said to contain a writing referring to Jesus’ wife and a female disciple.
“The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”
“The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
“Much of the context, therefore, is missing. But Dr. King was struck by phrases in the fragment like “My mother gave to me life,” and “Mary is worthy of it,” which resemble snippets from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary. Experts believe those were written in the late second century and translated into Coptic.”
“The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous.”
Provenance means origin and the owner is secret. Well.
Yet many will take this fragment and run with it. They will be doing something akin to this medical metaphor: “Expert doctor says “I have a drug. I can’t tell you where it comes from and I can’t tell you where it was developed and I can’t tell you what’s in it. But if you take it, you will be healed.”
Would you eat it? Not on your life! But that is the fragmentary information liberal, mystical, gnostic Christians will cling to, as a validation that feminism was right all along, and that the Gospels that the Holy Spirit inspired are incomplete. Hath God said…?
The article goes on to make the spurious statement that the fragment will re-ignite the second century controversy ‘on whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.’
I guess those “Christians” never read 1 Corinthians 7.
The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife article is here.
Information on
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Mary
Michael Lawrence on Harvard Divinity, from 9Marks:
How to become a liberal without going to Harvard Divinity School
“The liberal theology of Harvard Divinity traded the knowledge of God for the knowledge of man. God’s revelation in Jesus Christ ceased to be the measure of truth, and in its place was substituted a lesser measure, one of our own devising. … May God protect us from such a mindset, and instead give us the mind of Christ, who laid down his life for the sheep, but not to their judgment. Instead, like the Good Shepherd, let us entrust ourselves “to Him who judges justly,” and from him “receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Pet. 2:23, 5:4).”