[PDF of this blog post available here]
For nearly three
years, there has been considerable controversy and confusion about whether a
business-card sized papyrus fragment dubbed the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is an authentic ancient artifact or not. The
current scholarly consensus already holds that the fragment is forgery. In
addition, a recent development has confirmed that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is a forgery created using a specific
internet edition of the Gospel of Thomas.
It seems that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife forgery
debate has finally come to an end.
The Patchwork Forgery Theory
Shortly after Professor Karen King of Harvard Divinity School unveiled the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife at an academic conference in September 2012, a scholar named Francis Watson pointed out that the text appeared to be little more than a “patchwork” of words and short phrases culled from the lone surviving manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic (a form of the ancient Egyptian language). Building on the work of Professor Watson and other scholars (including Alin Suciu and Hugo Lundhaug), I soon suggested that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife could have been created by someone with limited knowledge of Coptic using a specific modern edition of the Gospel of Thomas prepared by Michael W. Grondin.
As I researched
the textual relationship between the Gospel
of Thomas and the Gospel of Jesus’
Wife, I began to collect evidence that ultimately convinced me that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was indeed prepared
by someone relying directly on the PDF edition of Grondin’s
Interlinear Coptic/English Translation of The Gospel of Thomas posted online in November 2002. I
discovered that the textual similarities between the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and the Gospel
of Thomas were overwhelming. Basically, to create the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, all
a forger would have had to do was “cut and paste” text from the Gospel of Thomas, switch a few masculine
pronouns to feminine (a single letter change in Coptic), and place two key
Coptic words (meaning “Mary” and “my wife”) into the “patchwork” text to create
its “sensational” content. The only other change that would have been needed
was the simple deletion of the two-letter Coptic word meaning “not” in line 5.
The figure below
illustrates the relationship between the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife and the Gospel of
Thomas. It presents the Coptic text of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
papyrus fragment: text that appears to have been copied verbatim from
the Gospel of Thomas is underlined
(double underlined if it might easily have
differed). Parallels to the Gospel of
Thomas (with their manuscript page and line numbers in parentheses) are
noted beneath the Coptic text. The Coptic pronouns that appear to have been
changed from masculine to feminine are printed in green italics. The Coptic words
not copied verbatim from the Gospel of Thomas that look like they have
been specifically inserted into the “patchwork” text are printed in bold red:
“Mary” (line 3) and “my wife” (line 4).
Every single
line of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
contains one or more snippet(s) of text found in close proximity to each other
in the Gospel of Thomas; indeed, for
each individual line, the relevant snippets always appear in a single screen view
of the PDF of Grondin’s Interlinear
at 100% size on an average-sized laptop. In addition, the Coptic text of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife contains at least five suspicious features
(denoted by superscript Latin letters in the figure above):
(a) Line 1 of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife unexpectedly shares a line break with the lone surviving
Coptic manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas: both split the same word in
the same place. This could be explained as a coincidence, or it could be
attributed to a forger’s dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear. As a
line-by-line edition of the lone surviving manuscript of the Gospel of
Thomas in Coptic, Grondin’s Interlinear repeats all of that
manuscript’s line breaks.
(b) Line 1 and the corresponding passage in Grondin’s Interlinear both
unexpectedly omit the required direct object marker (ⲙ-) before the final word
visible on the line. This Coptic grammatical error might reasonably be compared
to writing “She played the dog for me” rather than “She played with the dog for me.” A few other
ancient manuscripts do contain an analogous mistake, but the Coptic grammatical
error could also be attributed to a forger’s dependence on Grondin’s
Interlinear. The 2002 PDF version of Grondin’s Interlinear omitted
the direct object marker by accident as the result of a typographical error (unlike any other
version of Grondin’s Interlinear).
(c) Line 4 unexpectedly
omits the Coptic word ϫⲉ (je),
which would function something like a comma and an opening quotation mark in
English. This omission could be explained as non-standard (if not completely
unattested) Coptic grammar, or it could be attributed to a forger’s dependence
on Grondin’s Interlinear. A forger might well have omitted the Coptic conjugation
by accident because it is separated from the (seemingly complete) Coptic phrase
meaning, “Jesus said to them” by a line break in Grondin’s Interlinear.
(d) Line 6 presents a relative clause (ⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩ) after a non-definite noun (ⲣⲱⲙⲉ) in
violation of Coptic grammar. This grammatical construction has only been
explained as "a rare attestation of an as yet only partially understood phenomenon" (without
any examples from ancient manuscripts provided), but it could also be
attributed to a forger’s dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear. In its
original context in Grondin’s Interlinear, the relative clause (ⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩ) follows the appropriate kind of noun (ⲡⲉϥⲉϩⲟ) in accordance with
standard Coptic grammar.
(e) Line 6 also contains a verb that has been conjugated
twice (that is, the single verb in the line has been modified by two verbal
prefixes); * as a result, the line is ungrammatical. The text could be compared to an
English statement something like, “Let no wicked man does bring.” When the
pertinent words from Grondin’s Interlinear are juxtaposed, the ungrammatical
line of Coptic text makes perfect sense . . . in English:
The following table summarizes
the different explanations that have been offered to explain the suspicious
textual features of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife:
While all five of
the suspicious textual features of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife could hypothetically
be explained if the papyrus fragment were an ancient artifact, it is startling
that so many suspicious textual features appear on a papyrus fragment so small that
it contains just seven lines of text with more than a single word. The simplest
(and most persuasive) explanation for these suspicious textual features is that they are all the result of a forger’s
dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear.
[For my full analysis
of the relationship between the Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife and Grondin’s Interlinear, see the July
2015 issue of New Testament Studies (Cambridge
University Press).]
"This" in the English translation given to Professor King
In early April 2014, Harvard Theological Review released an issue devoted primarily to the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Shortly after, Mark Goodacre and I were reviewing information that had been published about the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife soon after it was first unveiled in 2012. Each of us noticed the following passage in the first Gospel of Jesus’ Wife article published by Smithsonian:
[The owner] sent along an electronic file of photographs and an unsigned translation with the bombshell phrase, “Jesus said this to them: My wife…” (King would refine the translation as “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife … ’”) (emphasis added)
The appearance
of the word “this” in the translation of the most notable line of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife was odd because nothing in the Coptic text of the papyrus
fragment corresponds to this word. After discussing the matter, Professor
Goodacre and I realized that “this” was apparently a translation of the
unexpectedly absent Coptic conjugation ϫⲉ (je) in line 4, and the word was mistranslated as “this” . . . just as in Grondin’s
Interlinear.
We concluded
that the “translation” of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife that the owner of the papyrus fragment had
given Professor King was almost certainly dependent on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear, just as we
believed that the papyrus fragment itself was almost certainly dependent on the
Coptic text of Grondin’s Interlinear.
But we did not have access to the owner’s
“translation” at the time, so we had no way to test our theory.
I noted our observation in a PDF on my website and commented on it again
in my 2015
New Testament Studies article on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (abstract; pages 347-348, 355).
New Testament Studies article on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (abstract; pages 347-348, 355).
Confirming Evidence of Forgery: The Release of the Owner's "Translation"
On August 27, 2015, Professor King generously released the English “translation” that the owner had provided her, and it is dependent on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear (just as we had predicted). The extensive verbal correspondence between the owner’s “translation” and the English of Grondin’s Interlinear cannot reasonably be attributed to anything but direct literary dependence.
The owner’s “translation” of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife displays evidence of dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear in every line with more than one word. It
includes repeated English “translations” of Coptic words not even present on
the papyrus fragment itself, incorrect translations of Coptic text, and
distinctive translations as well – all of which can be traced back to Grondin’s
Interlinear.
The English words and word order in both Grondin’s Interlinear and the first line of the owner’s “translation” are identical, but they should not be. The word that means “for” appears in the Coptic text of Grondin’s Interlinear, but it does not appear in the owner’s Coptic transcription of line 1 (or on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment). Grondin has placed “ - - - ” beneath the word ⲅⲁⲣ (gar: “for”) and inserted the English word “for” in parentheses before “my mother” in his translation, presumably because he preferred to use English (rather than Coptic) word order. The person responsible for the owner’s “translation” has obviously not translated a Coptic word meaning for from the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife because no such Coptic equivalent is present. Obviously, the word “for” has been copied directly from the English of Grondin’s Interlinear.
This observation
and many others like it demonstrate that the owner’s “translation” of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is not an actual translation
of the Coptic text of the Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment; it was prepared by someone incapable of
translating Coptic who borrowed straight from the English of Grondin’s Interlinear.
[For a more
detailed discussion of the evidence that the owner’s “translation” borrowed
directly from the English of Grondin’s
Interlinear, see my recent blog posts here and here.]
Conclusion
We can now be confident not only about the modern origin of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife but also about how the text itself was prepared. The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was created simply by “cutting and pasting” text from the Gospel of Thomas, switching a few pronouns, and inserting the key Coptic words meaning “Mary” and “my wife” into the “patchwork” text. In addition, the modern forger has left many “fingerprints” on this purportedly ancient text: detailed analysis of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife has revealed that it contains at least five suspicious textual features that are most persuasively explained by a forger’s dependence on the Coptic of Grondin’s Interlinear.
On the basis of
the theory that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
papyrus fragment was prepared by someone using Grondin’s Interlinear (and the presence of the single word “this”
in a seven word excerpt from the owner’s “translation”), we were able to
predict that this “translation” would show direct dependence on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear. Our prediction
has now been confirmed by the recent release of the owner’s
“translation.”
It is not
plausible that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus
fragment was created independently of the owner’s “translation.” Both must
have been prepared after 1997, when Grondin’s
Interlinear was first posted online (two years before
archive.org recorded its existence). I suspect that they were prepared
using the PDF version of Grondin’s
Interlinear posted online on November 22, 2002. The first line of the
papyrus fragment appears to repeat a typographical error found only in this
version of Grondin’s Interlinear;
also, using either of the graphical versions (page-by-page or saying-by-saying) would have
required flipping back and forth between graphics online in a manner that would
have made the forgery more difficult.
I think it is
now safe to assert that the legitimate Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife forgery debate has come to an end. Ideally, any ongoing
research efforts related to the Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife will be focused on identifying the person(s) responsible for
the forgery. The still-unidentified individual who brought the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife to Professor King also
provided her with at least two more documents suggesting that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was examined by a
pair of German scholars in Berlin in 1982 (fifteen years before it could have
been created), as well as an obviously
forged Coptic papyrus fragment containing a part of the Gospel of John. I hope that
scholars can work together to prevent
the dissemination of additional forged papyrus fragments that could disrupt historical
research.
* In technical terminology, the
single infinitive in the line has been modified by two conjugation bases.
