A tiny scrap of papyrus is creating quite the buzz lately. Last Tuesday, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King made public the text of this tentatively authentic fragment, which includes an alleged quote from Jesus saying the phrase “My wife …” followed by, “She will be able to be my disciple.”
Riveting stuff, I know.
But in all seriousness, these words have the potential to revolutionize several different areas of Christianity. This evidence breathes new life into the age-old debate about Jesus as a man and as a symbol. Also of particular interest for me as a full-fledged Berkeley-inspired feminist, it reopens the conversation about women in the church, especially in the Roman Catholic denomination.
Quick review: Jesus is the messiah of Christian believers, a notable prophet in Islam and the rejected savior of Judaism. His most important role is, of course, within Christianity, but he is a pervasive figure in American culture. But for Christians specifically, he was God in the flesh without the multifarious issues that plague the undivine human male — his mother was a virgin, he lived without sin and allegedly had no family (in the traditional sense of the word). Much of Jesus’ mystique comes from this contradiction: He lived in the corporeal world without bending to its material demands.
But if you throw a wife in the mix, then all of a sudden, Jesus becomes a lot more complicated. His marital status prompts questions about desire, sexuality, spousal relations, etc. The “lone wolf” depiction of Jesus that currently dominates his accepted identity is a lot simpler and safer because it keeps the “divine” at a manageable distance from the profane world. In short, Jesus would be a lot more human than divine if he were hitched.
I spoke with one member of the Cal Christian Fellowship about this very complication. Senior Kirsten Kuwatani feels this argumentation is a little premature, given the nature of the new evidence. In Christianity, the relationship between Christ and the Church is commonly framed as that of husband and wife. Kuwatani said this common motif was likely being employed in the translated papyrus, which is a valid position considering the ambiguity of the phrase.
The limitations of this type of discovery are apparent in Kuwatani’s response. How much can a piece of papyrus from well after Jesus lived fundamentally alter the cult of personality around this man that has been built up for more than 2,000 years? Only time will tell how important this information will be in restructuring overall Christian ideology. Nonetheless, the possibility of a wife figure of Jesus has struck a different, and core, nerve in Catholicism.
Jesus’ permanent state of bachelorhood and his entourage of all-male disciples have been used to uphold a ban against women in the Catholic clergy. In a world where feminist and equality movements have touched nearly every public and private sphere and have even started discussions in religious contexts, the Vatican has remained staunch in its opposition to the integration of female priests. Their logic relies heavily upon the fact that Jesus did not appoint women to be his disciples, nor as priestesses. He was the model of clerical excellence, and his ruling, as extrapolated from his actions, serves as the final word on the subject to this day.
In light of this reality, King’s revelation is no longer as inconsequential as it initially seems. Jesus explicitly uses a feminine pronoun, regardless of whether or not he was referring to his wife, in delineating who can legitimately be among his disciples. And if the Catholic Church stays loyal to its previous process of justification, discipleship and the priesthood would therefore be open to women, according to Jesus’ model. This pint-size papyrus may perhaps even pave the way for a Popess!
Certainly, this would be a positive move toward equality for the historically conservative Catholic Church, but it is underscored by the reality that only a male figure — Jesus — could bring about this change. If Jesus really did have a wife, it is tragic that history has managed to erase her existence almost entirely. But history is never static, and it is promising and exciting that such new developments, with their undercurrents of feminism and all, can still enter into categories “closed” to revision.
I may offend Nietzsche here, but this papyrus is impressive largely because it demonstrates that religion is not dead. And although I am sometimes frustrated and disheartened by how religion reinforces larger structures of patriarchy, I am thrilled at the prospect of learning how these devotees may negotiate that relationship in a new way.
Contact Hannah Brady at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter: @brady_hm.
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To Hanna-
The fact is that we know very little bout Jesus, as the Gospels were written in Roman Cities, long after the fact, and written in a language not used by Jesus. Jesus spoke to his people in a semitic language, and God spoke to Jesus when he was alone. Even Jesus’ birthday was a Roman invention to have a cohesive bind with the much older Roman celebration of the winter solstice in December. We can only gather that Jesus was another Jewish Rabbi with an idea.
How do you know Jesus didn’t speak Greek? The area was full of Greeks, ever since Alexander’s conquest 300 years prior. Do you think Pilate addressed him in Aramaic? Hardly likely; the trial was conducted, as almost all Roman business was conducted, in Greek. And please explain to me how Antioch and Ephesus are Roman cities, while you’re at it. Yes, at the time the texts were written they were part of the Roman empire, but so was Jerusalem.
The date set for Christmas was intended, not to bind with the celebration of the Sol Invictus, but to eclipse it. The exact date of Jesus’ birth isn’t important; what is important is celebrating the fact of the Incarnation.
And perhaps you wish to gather that Jesus was another Jewish rabbi (anachronistic, actually, since rabbinic Judaism was in its very early stages then) with an idea. That’s your prerogative. But asserting that the Bible can’t be taught as a factual document opens up all kinds of other questions that you don’t even address. In fact, you make a number of assertions in your posts which are based on misconceptions and misinterpretations of facts; your competence to pronounce on historical matters, let alone religious ones, isn’t looking too good from where I sit.
To Mr. Beeswax-
It is true that the elites did in fact speak Greek, but Jesus would have certainly spoke in a semitic language to his people. His conversations with God when he was alone, were certainly not recorded in Greek.
God Spoke to Jesus in what language? Were there any witnesses? (John 12,27) “I am troubled now. Yet, what should I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again”. The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder, but others said, “An angel has spoken to him”.
“But others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him’ ”, the others, who were not there, say so (like all Christians today), but wouldn’t the live testimony of the crowd there who heard it and said it was thunder be more accurate. The crowd there did not believe that it was God; they said it was thunder. Even the account of this fictional story is questionable. The Bible cannot be taught as a factual testimony.
Even the most basic story of Adam and Eve and the dictation of what was said in the story must be a fabrication. Human bones have been found in East Africa that scientists agree are over one million years old. Again, that story was created by man less than four thousand years ago, in a semitic language. Can you, in all honesty teach the first man’s story with any semblance of accuracy? Don’t you need a factual basis to document testimony as fact?
The Greek issue is beside the point. The Gospels were written in Greek because it was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire. The Gospels were collected as a lectionary for the Church, and the Church’s liturgy was conducted in Greek because it was the language that almost everyone in the Empire spoke.
The Bible contains a number of different kinds of literature. It’s not all meant to be taken as reportage, Much of Genesis is clearly folktales; the Psalms are hymns; Paul’s Epistles are letters; and the Song of Songs is an epithalamion. You don’t read all those different genres as literal history, unless you’re a blockhead.
It is generally agreed that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, most likely a Galilean dialect clearly distinguishable from that of Jerusalem. Most historians view the Gospels, not as an objective account of Jesus, but as the product of men writing at a particular period, and grappling with particular theological as well as political issues. But you say it is not to be taken a literal history, and that is why I say it cannot be taught as factual history, unless, of course, you are a blockhead.
OK, so what’s the substance of your objection again?
It is that we really don’t know very much about Jesus and what he actually said, nor can we trust ancient text when it clearly says the crowd interpreted thunder as thunder, but when others said it was an angel speaking to Jesus, Christians choose to believe the least likely option every time, and they salary clerics to confirm things they are not sure of. No basis for it, other than business.
The fact that the ancient text is honest about reporting the differences
in the interpretation of a sound is what leads you to distrust the
text? I’m having trouble following that line of reasoning; it seems to me that it testifies to what actually happened, regardless of whether you believe that sound to have been thunder or the voice of an angel.
I’d be willing to bet that for most Christians, the ancient text is a corroboration of personal experience. They trust the Church and the Scriptures because the Church and the Scriptures confirm what they have already felt and experienced. So your forensic approach seems to me a bit beside the point. Perhaps you’d like to try convincing people who have had religious experiences that you know better about what has happened to them than they do.
At least you admit that you have trouble with line of reasoning. I only hope you are never called for jury duty. People only have a religious experience when things go their way. And when their child is killed by a drunk driver? Then God works in mysterious ways. Ask God why year after year, decade after decade millions of children in Africa die every year from AIDS, malaria, dysentery, war, drought, and famine, while children in the West enjoy eating to the point of brain damage, every day of the week? Does God love our children more than He loves their children. Why are their religious experiences different than yours? Try telling those children that God loves them.
I said I was having trouble following *your* line of reasoning, which was a more polite way of saying your argument makes no sense.
And people do not have religious experiences only when things go their own way. Ask believers and most of them will tell you : it is when they were at their lowest points that they felt closest to God.
Christianity does not claim that prosperity in this world is a sign of God’s favor, nor that suffering in this world is a sign of his disfavor. I don’t know where you’re getting that idea, because Jesus promises his followers only that the rest of the world will not love them for their faith–that they will be persecuted wherever they go, and that those who kill them will think they are doing God a favor.
Evil exists in the world because of original sin. Human beings are depraved and unable to choose the right things for the right reasons. Our moral compasses are deficient. Thus some people gorge themselves while others go hungry.
God does love those suffering children. I’ll bet many of them believe it. And unlike some human beings, God doesn’t pimp human suffering to make clumsy rhetorical points.
So you are happy that God’s only begotten son, Jesus, suffered so much on the cross, otherwise no one would have died for your sins? Are you happy he was murdered this way? You would think the almighty, in his all loving manner, would certainly find a kinder more gentler solution.
John 7:41-43 Others said, “He is the Messiah.” Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s family and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” Thus the people were divided because of Jesus.
And last, what “original sin” are you talking about? Remember, human bones have been found in East Africa that are over one million years old. Who wrote this story about the original sin and in what language did they speak one million years ago?
Are you still buying the creation story? Fossils show a pattern of change over geological time, and that we have molecular evidence to link all the diverse lineages of life on earth, which is called evolution.
Of course I’m happy that Jesus suffered on the cross. His sacrifice redeemed the human race.
You’re working under the mistaken impression that the purpose of the Incarnation was so that Jesus could teach people to live right. In fact, the whole ethical content of his ministry comes straight from the Torah. The purpose of God becoming Man was to offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. The Crucifixion is not a deplorable event that could have been averted if we’d been better people; without it, the Incarnation would have no purpose, and without it, there would have been no Resurrection.
The creation story is a myth whose point is the complete sovereignty & authorship of God. The take-away is not that the world was created in 6 days. Again, an awareness of literary genre might help; the Bible is not a computer manual.
I’m not sure why you think human depravity is somehow linked to evolutionary theory and the age of the earth, but if it makes you feel better to raise absurd objections to points that nobody’s making, please feel free to knock yourself out.
I can see how redeemed the human race is (sarcasm).
If Jesus were really born of a virgin, by the Holy Spirit, everybody in such a small community would have known this and would have talked about it for the first thirty years. But this was not the case. Everybody knew that Jesus was the son of Joseph and not born from the Holy Spirit by a virgin:
(Jn 6:42) and they said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, I have come down from heaven?
For the first thirty years, the Jews knew that this man was born from Mary and Joseph. Even his own disciples knew that Joseph was his father and that he was from Nazareth (hence not from Bethlehem):
(Jn 1:45) Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one whom Moses wrote about in the Law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”
At the beginning, even his own disciples knew that he was the son of Joseph and from Nazareth. It was not until later when Jesus convinced his stupid disciples that those were true miracles that he was able to brainwash them with his virgin birth. The virginity story shocked the Jews when he was already thirty! Even his own brothers did not believe that their mother was a virgin nor believed his fake miracles:
(Jn 7:3-5) Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. 4 No one works in secret if he wants to become a public figure. If you do these things manifest yourself to the world.” 5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Who would have known him more than his own brothers? His brothers knew him and knew their mother long enough to believe him or not. If he were really born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, they would have believed him and believed his miracles. At least they would have believed the Holy Spirit, but still they didnt believe him nor believed his Holy Spirit.
Keep in mind that the Church declared that the ideas of Copernicus, that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved around it were “false” and “altogether contrary to Holy Scripture”, Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus. It is still contrary to scripture.
Look up the meaning of the word “redemption.”
I’m unclear which argument you’re trying to have here. If Scripture is unreliable, then why are you quoting it to support your contention that Jesus was not conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary?
Each time that I counter an objection of yours, you switch to a completely different topic. News flash : I am not trying to convert you. I respect the fact that you don’t believe in God, and don’t accept the claims of Christianity. That’s not the issue; the issue is that when it comes to Christianity, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I have shown this in nearly every post since this exchange began. Get an education, or at least stop displaying your ignorance in public. It’s unseemly.
In any case, I don’t have unlimited time to continue discussing this with you, and so I’m going to leave you what you obviously so desperately desire : the last word. Make it worthwhile.
You cannot counter facts with non facts. I quote the scripture because the scripture exists and people believe it. But even the fictional scripture contradicts itself, and I pointed that out. I wrote the first post in which you asked “how do you know Jesus did not speak Greek” the language used to write the gospels. To which I replied, Jesus would have spoken in a semitic language to his people. To which you responded that my assertions were misconceptions of facts. Your premise was based on a fictional account, so you started off by boxing yourself in a corner.
Hannah and Ms. King seem to be so interested in getting Jesus married that they ignore all the requirements for historical documents. Any historian would look at one piece of paper in comparison to all the other pieces, and tell Ms. King to get busy finding more collaborating evidence before jumping to conclusions. I had hoped for more from your articles Hannah than what you gave us today.
Exactly. Thousands of manuscripts from the 2nd century mean nothing, but one fragment from the 4th century apparently means everything. Color me underwhelmed.
This is heresy. There’s nothing new about these theories. You either accept the New Testament and the Nicene Creed and are a Christian, or you don’t (as I do not) and are not a Christian. But no need to pervert Christianity with this politically-motivated BS.
There are many theories about Jesus’ wife, made popular by Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. Some think she is Mary Magdalene. Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” shows a beardless androgynous disciple sitting immediately to the right of Jesus, who could have been his wife. Although Hannah Brady sees the new evidence as a hopeful sign that her church will become less patriarchal, how would she react to the increasingly common theory that Jesus never existed at all, since Nazareth did not exist during Biblical times?
Count the number of figures in Da Vinci’s painting. There are 13 : Jesus plus the 12 Apostles, all of which are mentioned by name in the Gospels. None of them are Mary Magdalene. The beardless, androgynous disciple is St John the Evangelist, as any beginning student of Christian iconography knows.
Nazareth is not mentioned in Jewish sources prior to the 3rd century, but the sources are far from encyclopedic–it’s not like we have atlases and gazetteers from that period. And Yardenna Alexandre has excavated (c. 2009) remains in the area that may date to the early Roman period, so your sweeping assertion that Nazareth did not exist may be a bit premature.
The whole “Jesus never existed” thing relies overmuch on arguments from silence. If we apply the same criteria to Aeschylus or Alexander the Great, then neither of them ever existed, either.
Hannah stated in her first article that she is an atheist. She does not belong to the Catholic church or any other church. I would also think twice before using a painting from much later or a fiction book as historical sources. Stick to the documents and artifacts from the time period.
If Jesus truly said that his wife should be his disciple, he is only slightly better than that pedophile Mohammed who married one of his wives when she was six and consummated–make that fucked–the little girl when she was nine.
If the manuscript is correct Hanna says, ”
She will be able to be my disciple.” Big difference from “should” as it implies choice and respect. To make an intelligent argument or comparison perhaps it would be better served to speak from a more neutral position.
Your argument doesn’t seem logical. I can’t make that large leap from disciple to pedophile.