I've been out of the textual criticism game for a long time (undergrad degree), but from what I remember of it, I think this is a big nothing-burger. There are all sorts of wildly heterodox Christian texts floating around from the first couple centuries AD. We've known this for quite a long time, now. If this is real, it's just another one of them.
1: But do you think it's a "natural" fragment or a larger piece of papyrus that was cut up by someone to increase its resale value in the antiques market?
I thought the question was whether it was real or a forgery.
I think this is a big nothing-burger
But surely it means Dan Brown is right about everything! Next thing you know someone will be trying to blow up the Vatican with antimatter.
I would say the presumption in this sort of case (recent revelation of a document with no established provenance referring to Jesus) is that it is fake.
2, 3: My question is, if real, is it interesting? (No.)
Also, as this is certainly Gnostic, it's quite possible that it refers to a rather different kind of relationship than it appears to - not clear which one in this case, there were as many different kinds of Gnostic as you like, - but probably a bit off beat anyway:
St. Clement believes that they regarded birth as evil because the world is evil. It is the evil creator of the material universe who gave the command, "Increase and multiply," (Gen. 1:28) to fill the world with brutish men and women. They asserted that no spiritual, or even psychic (ordinary), believer in the Gospel would engage in sexual intercourse, and thereby increase the number of the brutish who are in any case predetermined to damnation.
Ascetic Gnostics placed a great reliance on the Gospel according to the Egyptians. For example, in a dialogue between Jesus and Salome, she asks, "Until when shall men die?" He answers her, "As long as women bear children." In another passage, Jesus says, "I come to destroy the works of the female."
At the other extreme were the licentious groups. They denounced private property, marriage, and the repressive nature of the Decalogue. "The followers of Carpocrates and (his son) Epiphanes," says Clement, "think that wives should be common property."
Midway between the two extremes, the rigidly ascetic and the freely licentious, were Basilides and Valentinus. Basilides and his son Isidore allowed marriage on the ground that it is better to marry than to burn (cf. 1 Cor. 7.9), but marriage was to be avoided by the man who was ambitious to attain perfection. After his death, Basilides' followers departed from their master's teaching and fell into licentious ways, "by living lewder lives than the most uncontrolled heathen, they brought blasphemy upon his name." According to St. Irenaeus, Basilides taught that the practice of all lusts was a matter of indifference, and said, "Marrying and bearing children are from Satan." Gnosticism, then, could not sanctify marriage as long as it had such an attitude towards matter and body; both, for the Gnostics, are evil. The Gnostic texts of Nag-Hammadi agree that marriage and procreation, as instigated by archontic powers, have no place in the perfect life.
Unfogged is so contrarian that when you have nothing more controversial to assert than "This is interesting!" you get 30 people arguing "No it isn't."
On preview, pwned by 6.
Of course Jesus had a wife. Why wouldn't he?
I mean sure, later traditions came along and projected all their various baggage on to him, but the dude still had needs.
9: Saint Paul would like a word.
11. Does Paul actually deny that Jesus was married anywhere?
12: No, I was too oblique. Paul argues why it's better not to have a wife (if you want to be all holy, etc).
13. Yebut nobut. Paul arguably introduced a lot of his own ideas into the mix, and he was late on the scene. His relationship with the core group was fairly tense, so it's quite possible that James' faction, for example, thought he was full of it on the question of marriage.
The Gospel of Philip already gives suggestive evidence that there were some 2nd and 3rd century christians who believed that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married or close to it. Even if the Gospel of Philip community didn't actually think they were married, you'd have to assume given the variety of beliefs at the time that if there are people saying what the Gospel of Philip says then there must also have been people saying that they were married. Still if authentic it would be proof of something that was only highly likely before.
It's kind of hard for any text that short to really be that important. But for something that's fewer than 200 letters long it's pretty interesting!
I thought the link in the story was going to go to this article, which is long but (like the fragment) interesting.
Also the document itself is currently estimated to be 4th century. The "2nd century" bit is guesswork that the original is probably greek and second century because most coptic gospels were translations and this is similar to known 2nd century gospels (Philip and Thomas, though Thomas may be earlier). The original could be 3rd century, and the specific "my wife" reading might not be in the Greek original.
14: A minister friend who had attended an Ivy divinity school told me that on the first day of New Testament class, the prof said "We're going to focus on the central figure in the New Testament - Paul." A couple of students walked out and more dropped the class.
There's one thing concerning Jesus and marriage that we can be pretty sure of, which is that Jesus was strongly opposed to divorce, and in particular remarriage. This is independently attested in Mark and by Paul in 1 Corinthians. Furthermore in Matthew and in Corinthians there's evidence that the authors don't really agree with Jesus's teaching on this point but are aware that it exists.
14: I don't disagree with a word of that.
(Which is to say, Matthew edits the version he found in Mark, indicating that the author of Matthew disagrees with Jesus's teaching on this point.)
I would say the presumption in this sort of case (recent revelation of a document with no established provenance referring to Jesus) is that it is fake.
Papyrologists are pretty convinced it's legitimate. It isn't evidence that Jesus had a wife, just that the argument whether he had a wife goes back at least as far as the 4th century. Which as annaH notes, isn't a particularly startling revelation.
Papyrologists are pretty convinced it's legitimate.
This has not been my impression from reading about it. A couple papyrologists think it's likely to be legitimate, but some other experts (including one of the referees) are not convinced. I think it's premature to be too confident one way or the other. It often takes some time for these things to sort themselves out.
It could be a legitimate 4th-century fake.
24. Yes it could. After all, the Epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus are legitimate 2nd century fakes.
But the Epistles of Paul to Timothy *claim to be written by Paul*. This fragment doesn't make any such claims, so I'm not sure what it would even mean for it to be a 4th-century fake.
It might be a 4th century copy of an authentic 4th century fragment containing the same text.
Now imagining 4th century Coptic hipsters arguing over whose manuscripts are more authentic.
Strike the word Coptic and you have just described Eusebius.
Am I thinking about the same Eusebius? Huge nerd, scarcely a hipster.
lw mistyped. He meant "Strike the word "tis hip" and you have just described Copsters.
Hipsters who enthusiastically discuss which ARcade Fire is the true Arcade fire and carefully study tiny distinctions in organic certification procedures are huge nerds. To the extent that the lifestyle being parodied exists at all, it's not relaxed and not hedonism, but a pursuit of orthodoxy.
I don't think Eusebius and Arius were indifferent to what food was eaten and what clothes were worn-- you can't let just anyone write for Pitchfork about the relationship between Christ and God.
Isn't the fragment consistent with Jesus being all hypothetical? My wife, if I had one, etc.
It's consistent with all sorts of things, including Jesus revealing himself to be a member of an alien species with four sexes in the very next line, which is unfortunately missing. As it stands, it's a scrap of paper the size of a special issue postage stamp, which doesn't necessarily include a single complete sentence. Make of it what you will.
Right, the question is whether hipster non-nerds exist, or whether by being fun-loving or vicious or whatever, the knit-cap wearing young person ceases to be a true hipster.
I look forward to many comments with careful citations of the SWPL site or its epigones.
Wasn't there a big news hoopla about a "Jesus's brother" thing a year or two ago, and some discussion about how actually "Jesus" was not a terribly uncommon name back then, and this could be some other Jesus? What aspects of this fragment definitely connect it to Jesus-Jesus?
I also just don't understand why this is a big deal. Archaeologists of the future might discover all sorts of weird things people wrote about, say, Elvis, but it wouldn't necessarily reveal much about 20th century culture. (Maybe they've discovered the second-century equivalent of the Weekly World News.)
I generally classify hipsters along two dimensions: scenesterism and dorkiness.
I also just don't understand why this is a big deal.
Yep. The hipster taxonomy question is way more interesting and relevant, though still not interesting and relevant. They both beat writing this paper I'm supposed to be writing, however.
Har/vard thinks it's important enough to highlight on their website, though. Which they didn't think about the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Apparently they found a helmet in a cave that may have meant that the historical Jesus had a Segway.
This has not been my impression from reading about it.
I hadn't read the linked article when I commented. The NYT article I'd read earlier didn't have the skeptical voices that are quoted in this one. Fair enough, but the point stands: if it is legitimate, it only indicates that people were disagreeing about Jesus' marital status a few hundred years after the fact.
41: They sure would have if you slackers had found the Higgs boson at Harvard.
44: I'm not sure how much any of the local experimentalists directly contributed to the discovery itself, but they at least contributed to building the machine and laying some of the groundwork. And as far as I understand the specifically asked the university's publicity people to feature it on the website and were turned down.
38: That was an ossuary, not a gospel. Lots of people died, much fewer had gospels written about them.
Furthermore, I think the conclusion was that "James son of Joseph" was a real inscription, but "brother of Jesus" was added. At any rate, everyone knows that Jesus had a brother named James, so it wasn't the data that was a surprise. I think the big deal there was that ostensibly it gave hard evidence that Jesus really did exist.
This fragment also includes "The disciples said to Jesus." It's pretty clearly part of a gospel (if it's genuine). Some other Jesus is vanishingly unlikely.
Ah. I guess "disciples" would be unlikely if it was Jesus the chariot salesman or whatever.
Some other Jesus is vanishingly unlikely.
He can turn himself invisible! It's a miracle!
Har/vard thinks it's important enough to highlight on their website, though. Which they didn't think about the discovery of the Higgs boson.
The Higgs boson was discovered by foreigners, though. Jesus was American.
Jesus the chariot salesman or whatever.
The Apocrypha, Unfogged edition.
I can't remember who I read bringing this up, but isn't it an odd gap in the history of holy relics that no one ever came up with Holy Furniture? If Jesus was supposed to have been a working carpenter, presumably there were a whole bunch of people in Palestine with some really, really wellmade dining-room sets.
If the hypothetical other Jesus had disciples, he was probably lead cythera player in a jam band. Followed around the Mediterranean by hordes of Thanatocephaloi.
Master and Margarita starts with JC doing contract work for the Romans, making crosses.
No, that's The Last Temptation of Christ.
Whoops. You're right. JC is doing something incongrous when he first appears-- but not the start of the book.
He's in front of Pilate, isn't he? Sorting out Pilate's headache?
If Jesus was supposed to have been a working carpenter, presumably there were a whole bunch of people in Palestine with some really, really wellmade dining-room sets. I wonder what he charged for bookshelves?
There is a lame comedy bit just waiting to be made about Jesus and his wife engaging in mundane marital arguments. "Sure, you can walk on water, but you can't take out the garbage!"
I'm picturing the woman who was Peg Bundy in the roll of the wife.
58: I found out about this whole thing from someone sketching out just such a bit on twitter. Could not figure out what he was talking about at first.
Man, Jesus furniture. I imagine it being really simply and beautifully designed, built to last forever. If only there were some furniture-maker nearby who lived by the creed What Would Jesus Build And What Would Jesus Charge For It.
I imagine it being really simply and beautifully designed,
This, from the same design firm that came up with the platypus and the ichneumon wasp?
I always picture him making A frames rather than furniture, but I suppose if you had a set of tools in the boonies in 1st century Judaea, you did what needed to be done.
The platypus is simple. If you hadn't seen birds and beaver first, you'd never think it funny.
When it sees a dragon, the ichneumon covers itself with mud, and closing its nostrils with its tail, attacks and kills the dragon.
I'm not understanding this strategy.
Covers itself with mud - like Arnie in Predator, in order to avoid the dragon's thermal imaging.
Closing its nostrils with its tail - to avoid inhaling its poisonous breath.
19 -- it's reasonably certain that Jesus was opposed to divorce as practiced under either Jewish or Roman law; it's far less certain as to whether this was a prophetic and hortatory claim (i.e., don't focus on divorce as a legal matter, focus on God and the godly life and there will be no need for divorce) or an attempt to set out a legalistic rule. Given that the most express prohibition in Mark is followed by the order to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, I think most scholars today run with the former meaning.
Man, Jesus furniture. I imagine it being really simply and beautifully designed, built to last forever.
So, like Shaker furniture?
Sure. I wasn't trying to make any points about the nuances of his opinion (which we can't possibly know) or how this teaching should be interpreted by christians today. I was just making the point that we know very little for sure about Jesus, but one thing we can be pretty certain about does involve marriage.
but one thing we can be pretty certain about does involve marriage.
Two, if you count drinking wine at weddings.
At least, that's what I always teld my mom when she suggests I drink less at weddings.
Does the NT actually ever describe Jesus practicing carpentry, or was that just his family trade from which he turned to mendicancy?
He was thirty when he started, so he must have done something earlier.
Clearly, you never met my inlaws.
I read somewhere that translating the greek word as "carpenter" is kind of misleading; he was more of a builder or a general handyman.
There isn't a scene where Jesus is making furniture and then a montage and then preaching, but Mark 6:3 does he was a carpenter.
Matthew 13:55 is talking about the same event but says carpenter's son.
67: I hope you don't believe that recently discovered vellum that suggests Shakers were married.
Ah, the word apparently is "tekton." Maybe Oudemia or someone can enlighten us with what that means.
Interesting - those are the only two uses of the word "carpenter" in the whole KJV NT.
And here we go from Wikipedia:
Jesus is described in Mark as a τεκτων (tekton)[57] and in Matthew as the son of a tekton.[58] Like most people at the time, he presumably was trained by his parent in the family trade. Tekton has been traditionally translated into English as "carpenter", but is a rather general word (from the same root as "technical" and "technology", derived from Greek) that at the time could cover makers of objects in various materials, and builders, from tent makers to stonemasons.[59] The specific association with woodworking is a constant in Early Christian tradition; Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) wrote that Jesus made yokes and ploughs, and there are similar early references.[60]
Crossan puts tekton into a historical context more resembling an itinerant worker than an established artisan, emphasizing his marginality in a population in which a peasant who owns land could become quite prosperous.[61] Some scholars, following S. J. Case, have noted that Nazareth is only about 6 kilometres from the city of Tzippori (ancient "Sepphoris"), which was destroyed by the Romans in 4BC, and thereafter was expensively rebuilt. It has been speculated that Joseph and Jesus might have traveled daily to work on the rebuilding. Specifically the large theatre in the city has been suggested, although this has aroused much controversy over dating and other issues.[62] Other scholars see Joseph and Jesus as the general village craftsmen, working in wood, stone and metal on a wide variety of jobs.[63]
My big Liddell is in a room with a sleeping baby in it right now! HOWEVER it looks like it means something like "handyman." I'm guessing it's related to "techne," which means skill or craft. Oh, fine, I will look it up on line. (I'm very lazy. Naptime is my prime Discovery ID time.)
It's a weird fact that Sepphoris is never mentioned in the gospels.
Why is there an "Orthodox Jewish Bible" translation of the Gospel of Mark?
And why does it translated Tekton into Hebrew?
That translation looks like some weird Yiddish-English-Hebrew mismatch. I wonder if it was intended as a joke.
Oh, huh. The NT isn't my bag, but it looks like in Homeric and Classical Greek it most often does mean someone who works with wood or is a "joiner" (though not always). Lots of "he was a tekton, he built ships" (and other stuff made of wood). And it's frequently used in opposition to being a smith or a mason. But there are also examples of it meaning the master of any art at all, or "craftsman" generally.
OT: oudemia, I thought of you when I read this article. Not sure why. http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hello-stranger-on-the-street-could-you-please-tell-me-how-to-take-care-of-my-baby
78, 81: LSJ entry here. At least in Classical Greek it appears primarily to refer to carpentry (sometimes contrasted with other crafts such as masonry).
So pwned, but with added link value.
When Plato talks about "the craftsmen" the word is "techné," right? Is that a different word than tekton or just a different form of the same word?
The link is a lot of added value! I was TOO LAZY. (I am so tired I want to be swallowed whole by the earth. It's the whole September light change thing -- makes me fugue-ish.)
91: Techne is the craft itself, not the dudes. There's no citation of Plato in the tekton entry, but the "divine craftsman" is demiourgos, no?
I was thinking about Socrates's quest from the oracle, where the last people he visits are the craftsmen. I'd always been picturing potters and stuff.
Here is the part I was thinking of.
It looks like the word there is τέχνην*, with a χ, rather than the κ in τέκτων. The link for τέχνην takes you to the name of the skill, rather than the person, but I think τέχνην καλῶς corresponds to "good artisans" in the translation.
Are these all variations on the same word? Did Socrates visit carpenters? Was Jesus a craftsman?
*Hey, the Greek characters cut and pasted properly!
95: No, you've got the wrong words. texnen is just the skill itself, the craftsmen are "agathoi demiourgoi."
Yes, they are all related words, though!
I'm going to start a religion where the word is TeXton and Donald Knuth is god.
Although earlier, in 22c, he uses cheirotechnas for the same dudes. You've got the techne (skill/craft) root in there, plus the word for "hand" -- so handicraftsman.
Does finding this out count as work?
Goofing around on Wikipedia about this, I learned that Paul Verhoeven (yes, that guy, the guy who directed Robocop) is a member of the Jesus Seminar and is a serious authority on the life of the historical Jesus. What?? How did I not know about this before.
Now look up what Buckaroo Bonzai does in his spare time. (Not kidding!)
I knew that Peter Weller was getting a Ph.D. (and did so after his career was basically over). But Verhoeven was a Jesus Seminar participant and apparently hardcore scholar at the same time he was making Starship Troopers. Amazing.
101: oh he is seriously into the historical Jesus, yes. A friend went to hear him give a talk and it was all about how Robocop was an extended Jesus metaphor.
Didn't Verhoeven write a book on the H. Jeez subject, too?
Oh hey he's doing a historical Jesus movie, which will be as follows:
According to Deadline Muse Productions are going to be backing the film with the producer being Chris Hanley, whose previous credits include American Psycho, Hounddog, Downloading Nancy, Boogie Woogie and The Killer Inside Me (Filmstalker review), films which just add that controversial label, and the writer Roger Avary who has Killing Zoe, Pulp Fiction, The Rules of Attraction, Silent Hill and Beowulf to his name, is the one to take the first shot at adapting it to a screenplay.
An "American Psycho/Historical Life of Jesus" mashup will be quite something. Seriously, how did I not know about this?
107: You wasted the critical time of your life reading about Cruz Bustamente and Aztlan.
Is 104 for reals? I'm going to have to watch it again. No hardship, as both it and Starship Troopers are excellent.
109: it's really what Verhoeven said, yes. My correspondent wasn't terribly convinced.
He does die and come back to life, so there's that.
[A] Jesus Seminar participant and apparently hardcore scholar....
Those are two different things.
83, 84: All the proper nouns are also translated into Hebrew. It appears to do the same sort of thing with the OT too, so it probably is some sort of joke.
There is however also a "Complete Jewish Bible" translation that uses Hebrew names but an otherwise pretty normal English text for both OT and NT. Also weird, but less likely to be a joke.
I've never seen either of those translations used in an actual Jewish Bible translation, but then I haven't seen very many of those. Jews don't care that much about translating the Bible.
I heard a really good talk on Robocop and the Oedipus Tyrannos.
As for the OP, I think the main thing this demonstrates is that Harvard Divinity School has an excellent press office.
114: Because you're all fluent in Hebrew?
Not fluent, per se, but we do tend to read the Bible in the original.
Some scholars, following S. J. Case, have noted that Nazareth is only about 6 kilometres from the city of Tzippori (ancient "Sepphoris"), which was destroyed by the Romans in 4BC, and thereafter was expensively rebuilt. It has been speculated that Joseph and Jesus might have traveled daily to work on the rebuilding.
Gosh, just like Auf Wiedersehn Pet.
Sadly, it's starting to look like it's a fake. There's lots of arguments about it floating around, the strongest might be the observation that part of it is copied from the Gospel of Thomas *in a way that preserves the line breaks from the one extant copy of that part of Thomas*. See Mark Goodacre's blog for more.
If teknon is used of people who built ships, maybe he made boats? weren't his first four disciples fishermen?
And indeed, their hovercrafts were full of eels.