Jesus and Brian Conference, Day 2

William Telford and me

After a wonderful first day, the Jesus and Brian conference began again on Saturday morning with a paper from one of the real gurus of Jesus films, William Telford. He had a superb series of reflections on the ways in which the Life of Brian parodies the Jesus films, and his paper was superbly performed.  He does not just read his paper, in the manner all too common in the guild, but he acts it.  It was compelling stuff.


Just as compelling was the second paper, "Monty Python's Life of

Philip Davies and James Crossley

Jesus", in which first Philip Davies and then James Crossley took a more subversive look at the film and argued that it is not quite so benign in its intentions as it is depicted by Burridge and others.  After a coffee break, Helen Bond gave an eloquent and fascinating paper on laughing at crucifixion.

Helen Bond

The quality of the papers continued to be high. Guy Stiebel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem talked about "Romanti Ite Domum: Identity and Expressions of Resistance in Judaea", with fine use of Powerpoint, including one picture of some kind of ancient phallus, which caused lots of sniggers (and some remarks about "bigus dickus").

Steve Mason

Last night I blogged about my hunger after the canape reception, but today I was forced to eat my words after we were treated to a delicious sandwich lunch, and I was even invited into the speakers' room where I got to hang out with the swells.  I do miss nice British sandwiches, so it was a treat, and I sneaked one last one in to enjoy with the first afternoon paper, Steve Mason on "What have the Romans ever done for us?", a really fascinating study of first century politics and relations between Judaea and Rome, with superb use of Powerpoint (and it's not often that you can say that).

Paula Fredriksen

After Steve Mason came one of my favourite scholars, Paula Fredriksen. I must admit that I still feel a little starstruck whenever  I talk to her.  Her paper was called "Are you a virgin? Biblical Exegesis and the Invention of Tradition" and the best use of clips from the film -- each short clip was followed by some reflections on the Biblical text.

The last session of the day kicked off with a fascinating piece by David Shepherd, who explored another Biblical parody, Wholly Moses, starring Dudley Moore, which was something of a critical and commercial failure.  Shepherd showed several clips and explored the difficulties with the film.  The second of his clips, in which Dudley Moore as Hershel "does God" after having come down from the mountain, I found hysterically funny, so much so that when my head fell backwards I knocked someone's bag off their desk. The last paper of the day was given by Aaron Rosen, who talked about "Sonofagod: Images of Jesus in Contemporary Art".

There was just enough time in between the end of the formal programme and the conference banquet for a swift pint in a German style bierkeller with big screens showing the World Cup, and we just caught Argentina beating Iran 1-0 in the closing minutes.

The conference dinner took place in the Inner Temple Hall, and was hosted by Robin Griffith-Jones.  Earlier in the day, Richard Burridge had mentioned that he would try to get a chance to introduce me to John Cleese, and I was delighted that he did so.  Here, for posterity is the pic.:

Richard Burridge, John Cleese, me

Joan Taylor kindly took the picture.  I was delighted to get the chance to chat to Cleese, who was utterly delightful.  At the dinner itself, the top brass sat on high table with Cleese, with Fredriksen to his left, Griffith-Jones to his right, and Ehrman opposite.  The food was excellent and the wine flowed pretty freely.  Afterwards, Cleese gave a short speech and then invited attendees to ask him questions about the film, with Michelle going around with the mic.  Cleese dealt graciously and amusingly with each of the questions and I could have listened to him all evening.  A really marvellous occasion.

Sadly, this wrapped up my attendance at a wonderful conference.  I had a conference in Roskilde, Denmark, to get to, on Luke's Rewritten Bible (on which, more anon), so I jumped on the tube to Victoria and the train to Gatwick, in time to grab a couple of hours' sleep before my early morning flight.

The conference did continue today (Sunday) with several great speakers including A-J Levine, Adele Reinhartz and Bart Ehrman.  I would also really have liked to hear Richard Burridge's talk about the Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Stockwood programme.  Perhaps I'll be able to catch up via the conference video.  As far as I could tell the whole thing was being video-ed.

This pic. is nicked from the T & T Clark twitter feed, via Jim West's blog, and depicts Joan Taylor interviewing film editor Julian Doyle:

Joan Taylor and Julian Doyle

It's appropriate to conclude with a picture of Joan Taylor, who did so much hard work to make this conference a success.  It was a brilliant idea for a conference, superbly organized, with tons of amazing papers from top people.  And, of course, John Cleese.

Did I mention that I met John Cleese?

Jesus and Brian Conference, Day 1

Terry Jones, John Cleese and Richard Burridge

It's not every day that you get to go to a conference on Monty Python.  Jesus and Brian Or: What Have the Pythons done for us? is the mastermind of Joan Taylor at Kings College, London, with support from Richard Burridge.  The focus is Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979), and how it interacts with scholarship on the New Testament, Christian Origins, the Historical Jesus and the history of early Judaism.  The conference began today at King's College London and continues for the next two days.

As a long time fan of Life of Brian, and with an interest in Jesus films, I could not resist the opportunity to make it to this one.  Luckily, I have a conference in Denmark beginning on Sunday, and the chance to stop off in London on the way there made it irresistible.  Having said that, travel was not straightforward.  We had a flight cancelled on Wednesday evening and another on Thursday morning and only made it in in the early hours of Friday morning.  With no more than a few hours sleep over the last three nights, this does make it more of a challenge than I had expected, but I have no doubt that it will be worth it.

Joan Taylor introduces the conference

The conference began at around 4pm today.  Immediately one could see several scholarly celebrities around -- A.-J. Levine, Bart Ehrman, Helen Bond, George Brooke, Martin Goodman, Adele Reinhartz, Philip Davies, James Crossley, Eddie Adams, and so the list goes on.  Kings College is right in the heart of London, on the Strand, with theatres and swanky restaurants all around.  As long as you are not in a car, it's a fantastic location for a conference.  I tubed in from Heathrow to Covent Garden and had just a five minute walk.

Joan Taylor introduced the conference with a lively and witty piece on "the Historical Brian".  She mentioned her delight that the Pythons themselves had expressed enthusiasm about the conference and her amazement to get a phone-call from John Cleese.  She looked also at the comparison between the Life of Brian and the Hollywood Jesus films, and especially King of Kings.  

Martin Goodman

George Brooke

Martin Goodman then spoke about "The Life of Brian and the Politics of First Century Judea" and there was a lively Q&A session afterwards.  George Brooke spoke third, on "Brian as a Teacher of Righteousness", and got the best laugh so far when he said that Brian "puts the mess back into messianism".  The audience were taking a little while to warm up, but they were gradually getting there.



From this first session we went upstairs for a nice wine reception, with a few of those posh little canapés going around on trays, the kind where you need about five hundred to fill you up.  As it turned out, this was the only food of the evening, so it was important to grab as many as you could, and I'm not sure that I was quite up to the job.  Rick Trainor, Principal at Kings, gave some opening remarks, and uttered the heresy that he had not in fact seen the film!

Terry Jones, John Cleese, Richard Burridge

After the reception, we returned to the lecture theatre for the highlight of the day.  In fact, I'm sure it will prove to have been the highlight of the whole conference.  Richard Burridge interviewed Terry Jones and John Cleese for an hour.  It was an utterly compelling session.  I have to admit that I was a little starstruck.  John Cleese took the lion's share of the discussion and pretty much everything he said was quite fascinating.

Cleese expressed genuine pleasure that the film had resulted in a conference like this, and said that it might just be one of the best things the Pythons had done.  He talked about how good a director Jones was, adding that it was because he was a megalomaniac.  He talked about an alternate story line that came to nothing about Brian (or some other character) failing to make it to the last supper.  He spoke in the most disparaging way about the media ("second rate scum") and expressed little surprise when Burridge mentioned how little interest they had shown in this conference.

Jones did do a Mandy voice at one point, and he generally seemed rather chuffed with the whole discussion while broadly happy to let Cleese dominate.  Burridge did a fine job of allowing them to relax and chat while at the same time reining them in a bit and asking some very interesting questions, including a discussion of the now famous Stockwood and Muggeridge discussion of the film, with Cleese and Palin, on Tim Rice's programme.  Cleese said that he was an admirer of Muggeridge and felt sorry for him that his responses to the film were so poor.

Terry Jones, John Cleese, Richard Burridge

If anything, the discussion with Cleese and Jones was too good.  The hour went too quickly, and I could have continued listening for hours.  There followed an opportunity to watch the film (via DVD projection) in the same theatre, but over half the audience including most of the top brass flocked out, perhaps having realized that two or three canapes is not quite enough for dinner, and going in search of food and drink.  If the timing was not ideal, it was still nice to have a chance to watch the film again, all the more so in appreciative company, and good to brush up on it ahead of a whole raft of lectures tomorrow, all of which look like they will be fascinating.

The first day of the conference was every bit as good as I thought it would be and better.  Richard Burridge has an article in the Church Times here: Is he more than a 'naughty boy'? and there is a pre-conference podcast here.

I will continue to live-tweet the conference tomorrow, along with several others, and all your reactions, using the #JesusandBrian hashtag.

Jesus and Brian Conference in London - tickets still available!

I'm surprised that this one is not already sold out, but the good news is that tickets are still available for conference about The Life of Brian coming soon:

Jesus and Brian: What did the Pythons ever do for us?
Kings College, London, 20-22 June

Full details are at the link above.  As a life-long fan of Life of Brian, I am really excited about this event.  In fact, I booked my ticket back in March, as soon as I heard about the conference.  I hope to live-blog most of it too (though sadly I'll have to miss the Sunday because I'll be heading to Denmark for another conference, on more of which anon).

There is a stellar cast of scholars lined up to speak at the conference, including Paula Fredriksen, Adele Reinhartz, Helen Bond, Bill Telford, Bart Ehrman, James Crossley, Philip Davies, Martin Goodman, George Brooke, Steve Mason, Amy-Jill Levine, as well as locals Joan Taylor and Richard Burridge, and so the list goes on.

While the programme lists Richard Burridge engaging in a "conversation with mystery guests" for the Friday evening, I have it on good authority that the guest will be Terry Jones himself!  Julian Doyle (editor) is also lined up to appear on the Sunday.  And there is another "mystery guest" for the Saturday evening who can't yet be named.

Booking details are here.  I look forward to seeing lots of you there for what is likely to be a really wonderful event.

He's not the Messiah.  He's a very naughty boy.

Maurice Casey (1942-2014)

Maurice Casey in April 2008,
Synoptic Problem Conference,
Lincoln College, Oxford

I was so sad to hear of the death of Prof. Maurice Casey at the weekend (see JimWest, Dominic Mattos, Larry Hurtado, Jim Davila).  Anyone familiar with contemporary New Testament scholarship will know of the massive contribution that he has made.

His enduring legacy will probably be the stimulation to rethink the Son of Man question, in two key works, one in 1979 (Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7) and the other in 2007 (The Solution to the Son of Man Problem), which we were delighted to have in the Library of New Testament Studies series.  Alongside this, and equally important, is his underlining of the necessity to study the Aramaic sources of the Gospels, especially in Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel (1998) and An Aramaic Approach to Q (2002).  In spite of the importance of these contributions, he made his mark in other major ways too.

His book on New Testament Christology, the result of his Cadbury Lectures in Birmingham in 1985, is probably the best, clearest presentation of the view he so clearly articulates in its title, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, and I still assign students passages from this book when we discuss early Christology.

Like almost all of his writing, the strength of that book is that it develops a coherent and stimulating thesis and argues it with clarity and force.  There is no messing about in Casey's writing.  He doesn't just present data for the sake of it but marshalls evidence as part of a stimulating argument.  He does what he needs to do without going on for ever, and his prose is crystal clear.  One of his much underrated books is Is John's Gospel True? (1996) in which he robustly lays out the case for distancing John's Gospel from the historical Jesus.  While many contemporary scholars disagree with the book, it's an ideal starting point for getting to the heart of the debate about John and history.

Casey was writing right to the end of his life and although I am not as fond as his recent book on Jesus mythicism as I am of his other works, it would be fair to say that his big book on the historical Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching (2010), makes a major contribution to Jesus research.  It's a lively read but it is also intense, passionate and full of the emphases that made Casey so important a scholar -- the emphasis on reading the source materials in their original languages, the importance of understanding accurately Jesus' historical context, and the stress on working as an historian and resisting the urge to warp the evidence with contemporary theological concerns.

I was lucky to meet Maurice on many occasions while I was teaching at the University of Birmingham.  Maurice was down the road at the University of Nottingham and was a regular at the conferences, and it was always a pleasure to chat to him at the British New Testament Conference.  I think the first time I met him was in a taxi I shared with Maurice and Michael Goulder.  They had been good friends for years, and my association with Michael instantly put me in Maurice's good books -- I always felt like I bathed a little in Michael's reflected glory.  Although I never heard them talk about this, I suspect that they respected one another not least because it's not always easy being a scholar of religion when you don't believe in God.

I have been sorry not to see more of him since I have lived in America, but I have happy memories of long discussions over dinner at the Oxford Synoptic Problem conference in April 2008.  In spite of his occasionally acerbic and witty remarks about others, I always found him delightful, kind and very funny.  I still remember clearly several elements in our conversation at dinner, at which his much-loved graduate student and close friend Stephanie Fisher was also present.  One was the observation that scholars often get much more conservative the closer they get to the grave -- they are trying to write their way into heaven, he claimed.  The other was a lengthy discussion about the properties of port, which, he felt, were insufficiently appreciated by many of those present at the conference.

And so I am pouring a glass of port now and raising it to Maurice, who will be dearly missed, and whose like we may never see again.

Jesus' Wife Fragment: Another Round-Up

It's time for another quick round-up on the latest in the Jesus' Wife Fragment.  Now that the documentary has aired, and people have had time to reflect on some of the recent developments, it looks like we are at the point where the story will begin to receive less attention on the blogs, and certainly less attention in the media.  There is a kind of cycle here, and the experience of the last four weeks has been similar to the experience of September-October 2012.

The major difference this time around was that the documentary, originally scheduled for 30 September 2012, actually aired (trailer).  I must admit that I didn't watch it live, and although some of us have in the past live-tweeted documentaries like this, there didn't seem to be quite the appetite this time.  So I went to our local cinema grill to watch the first two episodes of the new 24 instead, and watched the Jesus' Wife documentary on the DVR when I got home.  I'm sorry if I sound shallow, but for me Jack wins over Jesus' Wife every time.

The documentary itself was very little changed from the version that aired in France several months ago.  There are several things I really enjoyed about the piece.  The interviews with Karen King were captivating, and I greatly appreciated her lucidity and enthusiasm -- she is an absolute natural in front of camera.  Likewise, AnneMarie Luijendijk was great.  I had not seen her on TV before, and she was also a natural.  Whereas all Prof. King's interviews appeared to take place at Harvard, Prof. Luijendijk was seen at Nag Hammadi (and we even got a retelling of the classic "find" story, jinn and all, in a single-person version, with an actor playing Mohammed 'Ali Al Samman) and the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

The documentary tended to play to a narrative that scholars of Christian origins will find familiar -- an ecclesial authority that is associated with celibacy and suppression of women is pitted against an anti-ecclesial counter-narrative in which the Jesus' Wife Fragment is now alleged to play a part.  In order to represent this visually, those speaking in favour of the fragment's authenticity -- Profs. King, Luijendijk and Bagnall -- were all presented in academic contexts, at their computers, in archaeological sites, in museums, whereas the other contributors, Dom. Henry Wansbrough and Robin Griffiths-Jones, were presented in churches and in recognizably ecclesial garb.  In so far as the forgery hypothesis came up, it was generally linked with "the Vatican", and the viewer was encouraged to think that it is only conservative types who were doubting the authenticity of the fragment.

The most disappointing element about the documentary was that it only appended one minute of additional material at the end to reflect recent developments, showing headlines in which the fragment was declared authentic.  The documentary concluded with the following statement:

"In short, there's much new evidence for its authenticity and none that it's a modern forgery.  The fragment will continue to stir controversy.  Scholars will continue to debate its meaning.  It will be some while yet before we can say whether the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is a footnote or a new chapter in the greatest story ever told" (emphasis original).

However, if the documentary itself came across as advocating very strongly for the authenticity of the fragment, the media more broadly has very much caught up with recent developments.  The highlight might just be Michael Peppard's remarkable turn on CNN:




(See the CNN HD version here). Like King and Luijendijk, Peppard is an absolute natural in front of camera -- he has a lightness of touch, and runs with the host's humour, but at the same time he is informative and lucid. By standing in front of graphic representations of the fragments, he is able to draw attention to some of the issues, including the writing round the hole.  (Yet still, we are dependent on images extracted from Harvard Divinity's PDFs; it would be wonderful to see good digital images released for detailed study).

Meanwhile, there are at least a couple of blog posts that are well worth reading for reflections on the fragment and the recent scholarly discussion.  First, Larry Hurtado comments:

The “Jesus’ Wife” Controversy: Scholarship, Publicity, and The Issues

And then Peter Head has some very helpful reflections on the lessons we can learn from this affair:

Pseudo-Gospel of Jesus' Wife as Case Study

Further, Münster has today issued a press-release that focuses on Christian Askeland's key contributions, featuring an endorsement from Prof. Stephen Emmel:

UMSTRITTENES "FRAU JESU"-PAPYRUS IST FÄLSCHUNG
Gastforscher Dr. Christian Askeland entlarvt angeblich antikes Schriftstück / "Der sichere Beweis hatte gefehlt"

. . . . Prof. Dr. Stephen Emmel vom Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie der WWU, der den Nachwuchsforscher betreute, war von der Arbeit seines Zöglings fasziniert. Erstaunt habe ihn, der schon 2012 Zweifel angemeldet  hatte, die Entdeckung der Fälschung allerdings nicht, sei sie doch so offensichtlich gewesen: "Bislang hatte einfach der absolut sichere Beweis gefehlt", meint Stephen Emmel.

Dass Christian Askeland seine Wege von der Kirchlichen Hochschule Wuppertal, seinem derzeitigen Arbeitgeber, an die WWU führten, sei ein glücklicher Umstand gewesen: "Er hat über die koptische Übersetzung des Johannesevangeliums promoviert. Somit war er genau der Richtige, der das entdecken konnte", sagt Koptologe Stephen Emmel. Die Fälschung hält er sogar für recht jung. "Sie dürfte in den vergangenen zehn Jahren entstanden sein", mutmaßt der Experte.

Meanwhile, there has been some interesting discussion about the language in which some of the blog posts have been couched, culminating in a thoughtful piece on the Religion Dispatches blog:

"Gospel of Jesus’ Wife" Less Durable Than Sexism Surrounding It
Eva Mroczek

The article is well worth reading, and focuses on the issue of the language in which some of the discussion of the Jesus' Wife Fragment has been couched.  Eva is too gracious to mention that I also participated in the very thing she exposes here, by echoing language about the Lycopolitan John fragment as "ugly sister", and about which I apologized sincerely.  Since many have expressed bafflement at the use of this metaphor, and since Eva herself does not explain its origins, I should perhaps explain that it was an ill-advised attempt to play on Roger Bagnall's description of the Jesus' Wife Fragment on the day of its publication:

""We put it up on the screen, and we all sort of said, ‘Eeew,’ ” said Bagnall, one of the world’s leading papyrologists. “We thought it was ugly. And it is ­ugly. The handwriting is not nice — thick, badly controlled strokes made by somebody who didn’t have a very good pen.” (Boston Globe, 18 September 2012). 

The point was to note that its sister fragment was equally as ugly.  Nevertheless, I do see that the use of the metaphor is unfortunate and offensive, and I would like to reiterate my apology also in this context, and to thank Eva for drawing attention to it.

Update (Saturday, 1.42am): I forgot also to add a link to a characteristically interesting post by Jim Davila on Paleojudaica, Papyrus Forgeries?, in which he picks up on Roger Bagnall's statement, "I don’t know of a single verifiable case of somebody producing a papyrus text that purports to be an ancient text that isn’t" (New York Times).  See also Jim Davila's earlier comments in GJW: Another Goodacre Round-Up.

Note also that April DeConick is asking What are the facts about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife?, adding a note of caution about some bloggers' claims, and getting some strong support from James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici, both of whom remain convinced about the authenticity of the fragment.  Simcha complains about pseudo-academic nay-sayers like me.  He calls us "sleeper-agents of Christian theology", though at the same time he notes that we "never sleep".

The Library of New Testament Studies has a new editor!

I decided several months ago that after several years as editor of the Library of New Testament Studies book series, the time had come for me to step down.  I have greatly enjoyed working on the series, and I am proud with what we have achieved over the last few years, with a fantastic editorial board and tireless work from Dominic Mattos at Bloomsbury, and recently with help from Katie Broomfield.

I have been editing the series almost as long as I have had a blog!  When I took over as editor in 2004, I was living in Birmingham, England, and the series was known as the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series ("JSNTSup" or "JSNTS").  It was published by Sheffield Academic Press, and it was of course associated with JSNT.  I was approached by Philip Law and Rebecca Mulhearn, who were working for Continuum Publishers, which had just taken over Sheffield Academic Press, T & T Clark and Trinity Press International, eventually combining Biblical Studies and Theology titles all under the imprint T & T Clark International (later just T & T Clark).

It was always a pleasure to work with Rebecca Mulhearn, and then also with Rebecca Vaughan-Williams and in recent years with Dominic Mattos.  In fact, the scale of the work involved would make it absolutely impossible if it were not for such great publishers.  We changed the series name to the Library of New Testament Studies in about 2005, if memory serves.  This had become a necessity when the journal went to be published by Sage, so severing the link between the journal and the series.  The new name was easy to choose, not least because T & T Clark were already using "Library of Biblical Studies" in advertisements, and it cohered with other series that had come from Sheffield to the T & T Clark stable like the Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament ("LHBOTS") and the Library of Second Temple Studies.

While a great deal of the work is done by exchange of emails, running to thousands over the last decade, one of the most pleasurable aspects of the job are the contacts we have, and board meetings, at SBL Annual Meetings, International Meetings and so on.  I think it's those contacts that I will miss most now that I am stepping down.  I will also miss the intellectual stimulation that comes from discussing so many interesting and diverse projects with prospective authors, and scouting for strong manuscripts for the series.  There is nothing more satisfying than pursuing a project with a new author, and seeing it through from its beginnings in a simple email, a tip or a conference presentation, to its full maturity as a published book.

So this post comes by way of a massive thank you to those I have worked with over the last few years, my wonderful editorial board, all those who have read manuscripts for us, Rebecca, Rebecca, Alinda, Katie and most of all Dominic, who is a true star.

But more importantly, this post is to announce that the new editor is Chris Keith, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary's University College, Twickenham.  I could not be leaving the job in better hands.  Chris and I have been working together in the last few months during the transitionary period and I know he'll do a fantastic job. I am absolutely delighted that Chris will be at the helm and I want to wish him all the very best, and hope that he enjoys the job as much as I have.

Jesus' Wife Fragment Round-up

It's been a few days since the last round-up on the Jesus' Wife Fragment, and there are several things worth mentioning.  The long-delayed Smithsonian documentary on the fragment is finally due to air in the USA today (Monday 5 May), and there is a short trailer available:

The trailer is a little less sensational than the one that was initially broadcast back in September 2012. It's nice to see Dom Henry Wansbrough making an appearance (one of my teachers in Oxford, and my DPhil examiner).  It is not clear if the documentary will be in other respects the same as the one planned back then.  The documentary has already aired in France.

Meanwhile on Live Science, Owen Jarus follows up on his earlier piece with the following article:

'Gospel of Jesus's Wife' Looks More and More Like a Fake
Owen Jarus

Jarus comments on Christian Askeland's investigations as well as following up on his own investigations on the mysterious figure of Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, the alleged prior owner of the fragment, some kind of "Superman"?

In the last few days, the mainstream media has been catching up with the story, and the Daily Mail published a sceptical piece:

Is the 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife' a fake after all?
Fresh doubts cast over ancient papyrus that suggested Jesus was married after another in the collection with the SAME handwriting is proved to be a forgery
Lizzie Edmonds

Here, as elsewhere, my graphic seems to be proving popular as a means of illustrating the issues with the Lycopolitan Gospel of John.

And then the Wall Street Journal also weighed in:

How the 'Jesus' Wife' Hoax Fell Apart
The media loved the 2012 tale from Harvard Divinity School
Jerry Pattengale

Yesterday (Sunday), Prof. Michael Peppard comments on PBS News Hour:




Peppard does a great job of summarizing the issues, drawing attention to Christian Askeland's and Alin Suciu's comments, but adding that Harvard Divinity School had not yet themselves made any comments about the latest discussions.  This then changed tonight, with the publication of a news story in the New York Times, which is well worth reading:

Fresh Doubts Raised About Papyrus Scrap Known as ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’
By Laurie Goodstein

Goodstein is one of the three reporters who initially broke the news of the fragment back in September 2012.  The current article is a well researched and lucid and Goodstein has gone directly to several of the key figures, Christian Askeland, Roger Bagnall, Malcolm Choat and Karen King herself:

“This is substantive, it’s worth taking seriously, and it may point in the direction of forgery,” Karen L. King, the historian at Harvard Divinity School, said in a telephone interview, her first since the recent developments. “This is one option that should receive serious consideration, but I don’t think it’s a done deal.”

It is encouraging to see Karen King and Roger Bagnall taking Askeland's and others' critiques seriously, though I can't help to some surprise at this quotation:

Roger Bagnall, a renowned papyrologist who directs the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, and who early on deemed the Jesus’ Wife papyrus likely to be genuine, said in an interview about the skeptics, “Most of the people taking this view wanted it to be a fake, and they haven’t asked critical questions about their own hypothesis.”

Speaking for myself, I'd have loved it if we had a new fragment of an ancient text of this kind -- it's what scholars of Christian origins long for.  Moreover, many of the sceptics are such because they have asked the critical questions about their own hypothesis, not because they have avoided them.  But we all say daft things in interviews.  I talked with Laurie Goodstein myself this weekend and while I am grateful to her for linking to the blog, I must admit that I was somewhat relieved that she did not quote our conversation since I was a little more focused, at the time, on making sure that I was not late to the new Spider-Man film, which is excellent, by the way.

More evidence of forgery in the Jesus' Wife Sister Fragment

Over on Alin Suciu's blog, Joost L. Hagen has a guest post in which he reports on an analysis of the Lycopolitan Gospel of John fragment with the Coptic Reading Group of the DDGLC Project at the University of Leipzig, Germany:

Possible further proof of forgery

A reading of the text of the Lycopolitan fragment of the Gospel of John, with remarks about suspicious phenomena in the areas of the lacunae and a note about the supposed Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

Joost L. Hagen

The post is also available as a PDF.  It's all worth reading, but there is one particular piece that is worth highlighting: the scribe writes around a large hole in the fragment that was already present.  As the scribe writes letters around the hole on the recto, his  ⲛ (N), in particular, is almost comically small.  In other words, the papyrus was already damaged before the scribe wrote on it.  This is problematic because the writing on the verso goes into the hole and not around it, as if the damage happened after writing and not before.  It is a scenario that only makes sense if we are dealing with a modern forger writing on an ancient scrap of already damaged papyrus.

Let's take a closer look.  Here is a picture of the recto of the fragment, extracted from the Infrared Microspectroscopy report on the Harvard Divinity School website:

Lycopolitan John, Recto, extracted from the Infrared Microspectroscopy Report

The lacuna in question is in the upper middle part of the fragment.  It's the largest hole you are looking at, and it spans lines 4 and 5 (bear in mind that 1 is illegible).  Hagen writes [font]

 - [ⲛ]ⲉ̣ⲛ̣ⲧⲁⲩ, for us, was the final "smoking gun" of this fragment: I had already noted that there is no place for ⲛⲉ in the lacuna, and that the surviving trace does not present a convincing ⲉ, when Frederic Krueger drew our attention to the fact that ⲛⲧⲁⲩ clearly seems to have been written under and next to an already existing gap in the papyrus: notice how ⲛ is only half the height of the other letters of the line, how ⲧ is already able to get somewhat bigger, and how ⲩ is finally able to stretch to full normal height. According to me, if the damage had occurred after the writing of the text, at the very least the ⲛ should look different.

Well done to Frederic Krueger for this key observation.  He's quite right -- ⲛ̣ⲧⲁⲩ (NTAU) is clearly written with the hole already present in the papyrus.  Let's take a closer look:

Detail of lacuna in Lycopolitan John 

The ⲛ (N), is very small and is written right underneath the hole; the ⲧ (T) next to it is larger, as proportions of the hole allow, and then the ⲁ (A) is larger and the ⲩ (U) larger still.

Harvard Divinity School have not yet released high definition images of this fragment and we are reliant on the one image that appears on the online PDF of the  Infrared Microspectroscopy report, and this is the best that I can do with them; when we magnify any further, they simply degrade.  Nevertheless, it's worth taking a second look at the detail of what we have just so that we can be sure we are not seeing things:

Another detail of lacuna in Lycopolitan John

It might be argued that the fragment was already damaged in late antiquity and that it is an eighth century scribe rather than a twenty-first century forger who wrote around the hole here.  However, a hypothesis like this would run into problems in the light of the evidence from the verso, where the scribe appears to be writing as if there was no such hole.  It is the curious nature of the scribal behaviour here that is so striking, simultaneously acting as if there is a hole present and as if there is not.

At this point, I can't help thinking of Leo Depuydt's remarks in his article in the latest Harvard Theological Review with respect to the Jesus Wife Fragment.  Like that fragment, it seems clear that this is a forgery, "and not a very good one at that" (HTR 107:2 [2014]: 172–89 [172]).  Of course we await HDS's release of better pictures of this fragment, but on the evidence of what we have I am strongly inclined to agree with Krueger's and Hagen's judgement on Suciu's blog.

It's in the Forgery 101 textbook that you do not write your text around existing lacunas in the papyrus fragment that you are using.  

To borrow a comment from Hugo Lundhaug, we now have enough smoking guns for an entire platoon.

Update (2 May, 7.29am): I have revised the wording of the post above to take more careful account of a useful point raised by Brice Jones in comments, adding an extra sentence or so to paragraph 3 and writing a fresh paragraph just under the last illustration, beginning "It might be argued . . ."

Update (2 May, 6.48pm): four typos corrected, with thanks to Mike Grondin.
  

Jesus' Wife Fragment Round-up

There are several items of interest on the Jesus' Wife Fragment that have emerged over the last few days or so and I hope readers won't mind if I draw attention to these in a "round-up" post.  If I have missed anything important, please comment and I'll add those too.

At this point, almost all of the important discussion about the fragment is taking place in the blogs and social media.  Today, there is a sign that the tide is turning, with CNN's Belief Blog featuring the following piece:

New evidence casts doubt on 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife'
Opinion by Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss, special to CNN

This is a clearly expressed, very useful piece that will bring people who have not followed recent developments up to speed.  Well done to Candida and Joel.  Incidentally, and this is just a sidenote, the piece illustrates the forgery of the Coptic John fragment using the graphic I produced for the NT Blog, including my caption, though without acknowledgement (which I don't mind too much -- the key thing is that the article gets this information out there).  [For the original, much clearer version, see here.]

Up to this point, the media at large had not caught up with the latest developments, with the exception of an excellent piece by Charlotte Allen:

The Deepening Mystery Of the 'Jesus' Wife' Papyrus
Charlotte Allen

Allen's post helpfully follows up on her earlier Weekly Standard piece, The Wife of Jesus Tale, which bucked the rather triumphalistic tone of the broader media coverage that somewhat prematurely announced the fragment's authenticity earlier in the month.  Her latest piece incorporates the key insights found in Christian Askeland's post and Alin Suciu's post, also discussed here (with illustration) in which the "sister" to the Jesus' Wife Fragment, a piece of Coptic John, shows very clear signs of modern forgery.

My favourite line in Allen's post is "This is getting into monkeys-with-typewriters territory."  She concludes with a call to Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Theological Review to reveal everything that they have about the fragment.  Given the increased difficulties about the provenance of the fragment, it indeed seems essential now to release these materials, especially the undated, unsigned hand-written note in which Prof. Fecht is alleged to have associated the fragment with Jesus' marriage.

Meanwhile, Andrew Bernhard has three new "News Briefs" in which he sets out the case for the forgery of the Jesus' wife fragment with admirable clarity, including graphic representations, which regular readers will know is something I greatly value:

The Gospel of Jesus's Wife: A Key to the Patchwork Text
Andrew Bernhard

The Gospel of Jesus's Wife: Internet Forgery
Andrew Bernhard

The Gospel of Jesus's Wife: Missing Evidence of Antiquity
Andrew Bernhard

Also of key importance is a fresh post from Christian Askeland in which he clearly and carefully discusses the new fragment, with pertinent observations and helpful graphics:

The Forgery of the Lycopolitan Gospel of John
Christian Askeland

And before bowing out of the discussion, Alin Suciu offers some further useful reflections:

The Gospel of Jesus' Wife Papyrus: Final Reflections
Alin Suciu

There are several other helpful and interesting pieces also worth studying.  Gregg Schwendner has uploaded several useful "work in progress" articles to academia.edu.  Note in particular:

The "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" as a Questioned Document: What Would Simulated Ancient Writing look like?
Gregg W. Schwendner

Chart comparing the letter forms in GJW and the Simulated GJohn
Gregg W. Schwendner

Christopher Jones has an excellent piece that I have been meaning to mention for some time, also on academia.edu:
The “Jesus’ Wife” Papyrus

The "Jesus' Wife" Papyrus

Christopher Jones

I quote here a part of his piece, which provides a salutary lesson: Finally, a lesson might be drawn from the debate over the supposed drawings of Galileo Galilei in two copies of his Sidereus Nuncius, one of them allegedly the proof-copy; the story is set out in an article by Nicholas Schindle [sic] in a recent New Yorker (“A Very Rare Book,” issue of December 16, 2013). One of the copies, alleged to contain Galileo’s own drawings, appeared in 2005, and was offered to a New York bookseller. A team of researchers at the Humboldt University in Berlin tested the book extensively, and declared that it was genuine. They published their findings in a two-volume work, Galileo's O, edited by Horst Bredekamp (Berlin, 2011). Independently, Nick Wilding, assistant professor at Georgia State, began to investigate the claims, and finally traced the book back to Massimo De Caro, previously Director of the Biblioteca Statale dei Gerolamini, Naples, who is now in prison and claims to have forged the book as a joke.

It therefore becomes imperative to trace the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus back to its source . . . 

I was not previously familiar with this fascinating case, but here is the link:

A Very Rare Book: The mystery surrounding a copy of Galileo’s pivotal treatise
Nicholas Schmidle

And note also his earlier useful contribution, Clement of Alexandria and the Celibacy of Jesus

Further, Michael Grondin is continuing his coverage of the latest developments:

The Jesus' Wife Fragment: 2014 Update

Finally, for the time being at least, Carrie Schroeder has a most helpful discussion of the issues in an interview over on the Jesus Blog:

Interview with Caroline T. Schroeder re: Jesus' Wife Fragment

Tentative chronology on Coptic "Jesus Wife" fragment

I am grateful to Stephen Goranson for this updated version of his tentative chronology on the Coptic Jesus' Wife Fragment:
--

Tentative chronology on Coptic "Jesus Wife" fragment
Stephen Goranson

[Items in brackets refer to a claimed Demotic Gospel of Thomas.] Corrections welcome.

2nd century: suggested date of a Greek "gospel" Vorlage
2nd-4th c.: claimed date of a Coptic Gospel of John ms in the same collection (claim before C14 tests give probable date about four centuries later)
4th century: claimed date of ms (claim before C14 tests give probable date about four centuries later)
[1875 Feb. 4 claimed presentation in New Orleans of a papyrus in "Unknown" language (actually Demotic)]
[1875 claimed publication of ms in (an unattested) proceedings supplement of New Orleans Academy of Sciences]
1923: March discovery of a Coptic Gospel of John codex, Qau el Kebir, Egypt; soon brought to England
1924: Herbert Thompson, The Gospel of St. John According to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript (London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, University College, 1924)
1945: Nag Hammadi mss discovered
1956: Coptic gnostic papyri in the Coptic Museum at Old Cairo, P. Labib. Facsimiles
1959: The Gospel According to Thomas. Guillaumont, Puech, Quispel et al. Coptic & English
1961: G. Fecht in Orientalia suggests Nag Hammadi Gospel of Truth was composed in Coptic not Greek
1963: claimed date Laukamp purchased in Potsdam, East Germany. But Smithsonian Nov. 2012 reported: "(In a later e-mail [from collector to King], however, the story seemed to change slightly, with the collector saying that the papyri had been in the previous owner's possession--or his family's--'prior to WWII.')"
1970-1981: P. Munro Director of the Kestner Museum, Hannover
1977: Nag Hammadi II facsimile published
1981: June ff Munro Professor in Berlin
1982: July 15 letter from Munro to Laukamp (claimed), giving remarkably early date to Coptic Gospel of John ms
1982-1983: Karen King at Free Uni., Berlin
1982: "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" published
1983: new Egyptian antiquities law
1983: T. Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic
1987: Fecht Festschrift, Form und Mass
[1990 claimed facsimile of New Orleans Demotic papyrus, with poor or misleading translation submitted from US to Discussions in Egyptology, Oxford]
[1991 Mark J. Smith retranslates the Demotic, containing Gospel of Thomas logia]
[1991 Demotic text recognized as a hoax by, among others, Leo Depuydt. See Financial Times, May 18 and 25]
1995: Munro ill, reportedly stays in Hannover (C.E. Loeben obituary)
1997: Karen King to Harvard
1997: claimed purchase from German-American collector according to Smithsonian Nov. 2012
1999: Nov. 12 claimed purchase from H.-U. Laukamp according to HTR 2014
2002: Hans-Ulrich Laukamp death according to Owen Jarus, Live Science April 22, 2014 (and not 2001 as in K. King 2012 HTR draft page 3; and not Dec. 3 2000 [death of a Dane, Gerhard Laukamp] as commented on a Nov 29, 2012 NT Blog post)
2002: Nov M. Grondin posts Interlinear Coptic Thomas; see his account.
2003: The Da Vinci Code published
2003: The Gospel of Mary of Magdala published by King
2006 May: Da Vinci Code film
2006 Dec. 13: Gerhard Fecht death (in Hamburg?). An undated unsigned handwritten note claimed "Professor Fecht ....is of the opinion that this could be evidence for a possible marriage." (Compare King in HTR 2014 158 that "no serious scholar considers [the ms] to be evidence of the historical Jesus's marital status.")
[2007 Jan. 7 death of Alessandra Nibbi, editor of Discussions in Egyptology]
2007: Elaine Pagels & Karen King, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
2007 Feb.: S. Jacobovici, The Jesus Family Tomb
2007 March 4: TV The Lost Tomb of Jesus
2009 Jan. 2: Peter Munro death (not 2008 as HTR 2012 draft p.2)
2009 July: Karen King: Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School
2010 July 9: email, collector to K. King; she suspects "forgery"
2011 June: email, collector again to King, contacting her "before I sell it"
2011 Dec.: ms to King; she (sometime) titles it "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife" (According to Smithsonian, the collector had already introduced it as "a Gnostic gospel that appeared to contain an 'argument' between Jesus and a disciple about Magdalene.")

For some more recent dates, see M. Grondin, A Question of Content; NT Blog; Evangelical Textual Criticism Blog and Harvard Theological Review April 2014.
---

Laboratory tests can’t always catch modern forgeries - as Harvard Theological Review has (inadvertently) proved

I am happy to have the opportunity to post a guest blog entry by Andrew Bernhard.  Those who have been following the discussions over the Jesus' Wife Fragment will know Andrew from his all-important contributions showing its dependence on Grondin's interlinear edition of the Gospel of Thomas (especially Jesus' Wife Fragment: Further Evidence of Modern Forgery and The Jesus' Wife Fragment: How the Forgery was done):

--
Laboratory tests can’t always catch modern forgeries - as Harvard Theological Review has (inadvertently) proved
Andrew Bernhard

We now know that laboratory tests used to assess the age of papyrus fragments don’t always catch modern forgeries.

In the April 2014 issue of Harvard Theological Review, the results of numerous laboratory tests run on a papyrus fragment were published (some in the periodical, some online). The tests were performed by top scientists from Harvard University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Arizona.

The papyrus fragment was studied by Micro-Raman Spectroscopy, which revealed the ink consistently had a chemical composition “very similar to carbon-based inks studied for a wide variety of manuscripts including several dated from the early centuries of the Christian era.”

The papyrus fragment was studied by Fourier Transform Infrared Microspectroscopy, which revealed that it was “composed of oxidized cellulosic material, which is consistent with old papyrus.”

Radiocarbon measurements of the papyrus fragment were carried out by accelerated mass spectrometry twice, first showing the fragment dated between 681 and 877 CE, then showing it dated between 648 and 800 CE (median 718 CE).

This papyrus was a fragment of the Gospel of John: nothing in the laboratory tests suggested it was a modern forgery . . . but it is.

Since seeing images of the papyrus fragment on Harvard Divinity School’s website last Thursday, Christian Askeland has demonstrated that this Gospel of John fragment simply cannot be a genuine ancient manuscript. It shares all 17 of its line breaks with another manuscript of John (Codex Qau). Given that scribes had different size handwriting, page widths varied, etc., authentically ancient manuscripts just don’t have this kind of similarity with each other.

And they certainly NEVER have the same kind of relationship Askeland has noted here. The recently examined Gospel of John fragment copies every other line break from Codex Qau . . . with one exception. The last two line breaks copied from Codex Qau are consecutive – it’s a page break in an edition of the codex published in 1924 that separates them instead.

While science has given us many exciting and powerful tools that can be used in laboratory analysis, these tools unfortunately can’t always answer the questions we would like. In the future study of manuscripts, we would all be better served if we gave other types of analysis (textual, paleographic, etc.) the consideration they genuinely deserve.

If one modern forgery could escape detection in laboratory tests, is there any reason to suspect that another couldn’t as well?
--

Illustrating the forgery of Jesus' wife's sister fragment

I blogged last night on Jesus' Wife and her Ugly Sister, picking up on Christian Askeland's devastating post, Jesus had an ugly sister-in-law, in which he drew attention to the the Coptic Gospel of John fragment that emerged from the same collector at the same time as the Jesus' Wife Fragment.  Askeland noted that this fragment, which is in the same hand as the Jesus' Wife Fragment, is clearly a forgery.

Alin Suciu, Christian Askeland finds the "Smoking Gun", helpfully illustrated how the verso of the John fragment was clearly copied from Herbert Thompson, The Gospel of St. John According to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript (London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, University College, 1924), line breaks and all.

What I would like to present here is the same kind of graphic illustrating how the recto of the John fragment copies from Thompson.  Often in this kind of work, a graphic is worth a thousand blogged words because it enables one to see the point quickly and straightforwardly (click on the pic for a larger version):

Herbert Thompson's Gospel of St John, page 7 (left); Coptic John fragment recto (right),
illustrating how the forger copied every second line of this text of John 5.26-30, line breaks and all

Thompson's edition is based on the Cambridge Qau Codex and like Grondin's Interlinear Gospel of Thomas that appeared to have been used for the Jesus' Wife Fragment, it is available online.  It is not clear from the ETANA website when the PDF was uploaded, but the properties of the PDF itself show that it was created in 2005 and modified in 2008, well within the time frame for the presentation of these fragments to Prof. Karen King.

The graphic above should speak for itself but essentially the point is this: the forger appears to have copied mechanically every other line from the Thompson edition.  Every line break is the same.  It is beyond reasonable doubt that this is a fake, and this conclusion means that the Jesus' Wife Fragment is a fake too.

Jesus' Wife Fragment: the Forgery of the Associated Fragment

It's just two weeks since the story of the Jesus' Wife Fragment re-emerged, with -- most importantly -- a full discussion in a peer-reviewed journal, Harvard Theological Review.  I won't dwell on these materials here -- the links can be found through following the Jesus' Wife Fragment tag on this blog.  What I simply want to draw attention to here is Christian Askeland's devastating post on Evangelical Textual Criticism, which discusses the Jesus' wife fragment's "sister" fragment:

Jesus had an ugly sister-in-law

The joke title relates to the fact that since the Jesus' Wife Fragment was released in September 2012, there has been talk of a sister fragment, a Coptic fragment of the Gospel of John.  This fragment, along with the Jesus' Wife Fragment, was alleged to have been part of a cache of six fragments, and many of us wondered whether studying this related fragment might help with establishing the authenticity of the Jesus' Wife Fragment.  The difficulty, however, was that pictures of this fragment had not been released.

It turns out, however, that the Harvard Divinity School's Website on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife in fact features several much fuller versions of the material tests published in the recent Harvard Theological Review, including a couple of pictures of the hitherto unpublished John fragment, one in the Ink Study page, specifically James Yardley's report (PDF), and one in the Infrared Microspectroscopy page, specifically Timothy Swager's report (PDF).

The images of the fragment of John are revealing. I am extracting them here from the PDF of Swager's report, which has the superior pictures:

Those of us who have spent a lot of time staring at the Jesus' Wife Fragment will have found it an eery experience to have laid eyes, finally, on this related fragment today.  It is remarkable just how similar the hand is here, as Christian Askeland points out.  Moreover, the text of the manuscript appears to replicate the text of Herbert Thompson, The Gospel of St. John According to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript (London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, University College, 1924), line breaks and all.

Askeland's astute observations are corroborated and echoed by Alin Suciu:

Christian Askeland finds the "Smoking Gun"

Suciu helpfully lays out the parallels between the verso of the fragment (above) and Thompson's edition.  I've checked the recto and the same is true for that too.  (I'll post an illustration tomorrow if anyone is interested).  Leo Depuydt has also been in touch today to say that he has checked up on the parallels and it is clear to him too -- this fragment is copied from Thompson's edition.

Like Grondin's Interlinear Gospel of Thomas on which the Jesus' Wife Fragment appears to depend, Thompson's 1924 edition is also available online.

The point, of course, is that if this fragment of John, in the same hand as the Jesus' Wife fragment, is clearly copied from a modern edition of an ancient manuscript, it makes a mockery of the idea that the Jesus' Wife Fragment could be genuine.  Moreover, as Christian Askeland explains:

Essentially all specialists believe that Lycopolitan and the other minor dialects died out during or before the sixth century.  Indeed, the forger tried to offer two manuscripts both in Lycopolitan, but made two crucial mistakes.  First, the NHC gospel of Thomas is not a pure Lycopolitan text, but the Qau codex is.  That is we have two clearly different subdialects of Lycopolitan, which agree exactly with published texts.  Second, this GJohn fragment has been 14C dated to the seventh to ninth centuries, a period from which Lycopolitan is totally unknown.

I should make clear that unlike Christian Askeland, Alin Suciu and Leo Depuydt, I have no expertise in these manuscripts and dialects.  But not only do I trust their judgement but also I have carefully studied the Thompson edition and this fragment of John and there seems little doubt to me that the one is copied from the other.   Kudos to Askeland, who was suspicious of the Jesus' Wife Fragment from the first, for taking the time to investigate this further and for sharing his expertise.

I am hoping to comment on these developments, and others, in due course, but one quick thought at this point: a great deal of time could have been saved by releasing images of this John fragment back in 2012.  It is material evidence in the case.  Even now, the pictures have only been released inadvertently as part of a study of the ink, not in order for the manuscript and language experts to study them.  I'd like to ask now, again, for a full release of all the other related materials -- the other four manuscripts in this cache as well as the associated back-story materials.

Update (30 April): I have changed the original title of this post, which echoed a joke about Cinderella's "ugly sisters" in describing this "sister" fragment as "ugly".  On reflection, I realized that the joke was in poor taste, and I would like to apologize to those who were offended by it.

Smithsonian to air its documentary on the Jesus Wife Fragment

Following on from the recent re-emergence of the Jesus' Wife Fragment, and notwithstanding continued discussions about its authenticity, Smithsonian Channel is going ahead with broadcasting its documentary on the topic:

'Gospel of Jesus's Wife' debuts May 5
By Hal Boedeker

Regular readers may recall that the documentary was originally scheduled to go out on 30 September 2012, within a few weeks of the media campaign that began on 12 September 2012.  However, Smithsonian decided to put the documentary on hold, and some began to wonder if it would ever see the light of day. It then surfaced in France under the title Révélations sur la femme de Jésus and now it is slated to appear in an English version soon in the USA.

More anon.

More doubts surface on the Jesus Wife Fragment

Live Science has been doing some digging in connection with the story associated with the Jesus Wife Fragment and this interesting article was published today:

'Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Doubts Raised About Ancient Text
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor

I'm impressed that Live Science has followed leads actually to investigate the back story to the alleged discovery.  Given the owner's apparent insistence on anonymity, and given Harvard's apparent reluctance (so far at least) to publish the documents that are associated with the  fragment, one of the only avenues available in tracing the fragment's back story is to investigate the names associated with it.  The Live Science article centres on the most mysterious of the three, Hans-Ulrich Laukamp.  This is the crucial passage in the article, but it's all worth reading:

Our findings indicate that Laukamp was a co-owner of the now-defunct ACMB-American Corporation for Milling and Boreworks in Venice, Fla. Documents filed in Sarasota County, Fla., show that Laukamp was based in Germany at the time of his death in 2002 and that a man named René Ernest was named as the representative of his estate in Sarasota County. 

In an exchange of emails in German, Ernest said that Laukamp did not collect antiquities, did not own this papyrus and, in fact, was living in West Berlin in 1963, so he couldn't have crossed the Berlin Wall into Potsdam. Laukamp, he said, was a toolmaker and had no interest in old things. In fact, Ernest was astonished to hear that Laukamp's name had been linked to this papyrus . . . .

Read the whole article here.

Update (10.18pm): Alin Suciu makes the good point that Laukamp would not have had trouble, if he had West German papers, in travelling to East Germany, so it may be that this aspect of the story requires revision.

Update (Wednesday, 12.56pm): Commenter lizw notes:

"West Berliners were treated differently from other West Germans by the East German authorities. In 1963/64, the only period when an ordinary West Berliner would have been able to cross to the East was over the Christmas period, from 17 December 1963 to 5 January 1964. (Detailed chronology in the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Berlin#Traffic_between_East_and_West_Berlin). So while it is not impossible that Laukamp obtained the papyrus in Potsdam that year, it seems unlikely for someone with no prior interest in such material." 

Moreover, Owen Jarus, author of the above article in Live Science writes:

This link discusses pass agreements between west-east Berlin.
http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=916

Border crossing only started December 17, 1963 and the crosser had to
have a pass, a relative in Berlin and the pass appears to be valid
only for Berlin only. Things improved in 1972 with the passing of the
Basic Treaty.
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=172&language=english

So it appears that indeed it is the case that a 1963 purchase of the fragment by Hans-Ulrich Laukamp in Potsdam is problematic.

Karen King is interviewed about the Jesus Wife Fragment

As far as I am aware, Prof. Karen King has not been interviewed about the Jesus Wife Fragment in public since the story first broke in September 2012.  But now WGBH has interviewed Prof. King about the fragment (broadcast yesterday).  I am delighted that Prof. King is now discussing this in public, something that will definitely contribute to the broader discussion about the fragment:





The interview is typical of the grace and clarity with which Prof. King approaches this subject as well as all her scholarship.  Although I am inclined to disagree with her on the subject matter, I, for one, am delighted that the dialogue genuinely appears to have opened up.

HT: Mike Grondin on the Gospel of Thomas e-list.

Jesus' Wife Fragment Latest: Leo Depuydt responds to Karen King

It's now almost a week since Harvard Theological Review published its issue focusing on the Jesus' Wife Fragment (The Jesus' Wife Fragment is Back).  I have enjoyed spending time reading and studying the issue over the last week and I am planning to offer some of my responses to it in due course.

Francis Watson composed an initial response last week, Jesus' Wife Attempts a Comeback: Initial Response, and I would also draw attention to Christian Askeland's helpful comments, Jesus' Wife Resurrected from the Dead, alongside his fascinating post drawing attention to an element in Leo Depuydt's article, Demotic Gospel of Thomas.

Leo Depuydt's article in HTR is entitled The Alleged Gospel of Jesus's Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of Authenticity, and it is followed by a response from Karen King.

Depuydt has now responded to Karen King's article, and I am happy to post that response here, with his permission:

The Papyrus Fragment and the Crocodile: When Discerning a Blunder Is Itself a . . .

Leo Depuydt

Update (Thursday, 8.50am): Jim Davila criticizes the sarcastic tone of Depuydt's response on Paleojudaica, concluding with the comment "I am still quite skeptical that the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is an ancient artifact, but King has made a real effort to keep the tone high and the skeptics should do the same."

The Jesus Mysteries, National Geographic Channel

Mary Magdalene (Alice Marshall), The Jesus Mysteries
(Juniper TV; National Geographic)

This weekend, National Geographic Channel are showing a two hour documentary entitled The Jesus Mysteries.  It is written and directed by David Caldwell Evans for Juniper TV and it is being shown internationally, including Australia (Friday 18th), the UK (Easter Day, 20th; Radio Times), Sub-Saharan Africa (Easter Day, 20th), and the USA (Saturday, 19th).  Here's the series blurb:

Jesus Christ is one of the most famous names in the history of mankind. But Gospel writers left out crucial details about pivotal events in Christ's life - historical moments that have been adapted, embellished and rewritten over the course of hundreds of years. This special re-examines elements of Christ's life and ministry, such as the nativity, the miracles and the crucifixion - questioning basic modern assumptions to reveal some surprising and often shocking details.

There are a couple of clips available.  The first focuses on "Rabble Rousing" and discusses the temple incident and features Bart Ehrman, Helen Bond, Larry Hurtado and me:

The second discusses Mary Magdalene, "Prostitute or Disciple", and features Kate Cooper and Helen Bond, alongside Alice Marshall as Mary Magdalene:





I was interviewed for this in July in St Andrews, Scotland, just before Helen Bond was interviewed too.  Although I have not seen it yet, I like the look of the mix of drama and CGI reconstructions with scholars' interviews.  And the handsome Jesus figure is played by Nick Simmons, son of Gene Simmons from the legendary rock band Kiss.  Here he is in the boat with Joseph of Arimathea:

Nick Simmons as Jesus in The Jesus Mysteries, National Geographic

This and other photographs suggest that there will be some idiosyncratic elements covered, including legends like Jesus in England.

Jesus' Wife Attempts a Comeback: Initial Response, Francis Watson

I am grateful to Prof. Francis Watson, Research Chair of Biblical Interpretation, Durham University, for permission to post here his initial response to the recent re-emergence of discussion on the Jesus' Wife Fragment (see The Jesus' Wife Fragment is Back):

Jesus' Wife Attempts a Comeback: Initial Response

Francis Watson

Earlier pieces by Prof. Watson on the fragment are gathered here.

The Jesus' Wife Fragment is Back

Regular readers of the NT Blog will know of my interest in the so-called Gospel of Jesus' Wife and after several months without news, a whole raft of news, features, interviews and -- most importantly -- articles in the Harvard Theological Review, all emerged today.  The media reaction to the news is often predictably over-simplified and over-stated, but the key resources for study are the following:

The Gospel of Jesus' Wife 2014 Update

Here, Harvard Divinity School provide a major update and revision of their earlier (September 2012) website on the fragment, with a new press release, an introduction, a revised Q & A, new digital photographs and scientific reports. Much of this is new material and repays careful reading.

The Harvard Magazine also has an article today:

The Jesus Wife Fragment: The Scientific Evidence

Most important, though, is the latest edition of HTR, which is dominated by materials on the fragment:

Harvard Theological Review

There are several articles on the fragment, including a massively revised version of Karen King's “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .'”: A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment, several scientific analyses of the papyrus and ink, a paleographical discussion by Malcolm Choat, an article arguing for forgery by Leo Depuydt, and a brief rejoinder from Karen King.

Media coverage has included pieces in the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

There has already been some strong discussion of the latest news in the blogs.  I would particularly recommend the pieces by Jim Davila, Larry Hurtado, Christopher Rollston and Bob Cargill, as well as the typically helpful round-up from James McGrath.

I have been in meetings all day, and at an enjoyable dinner for a retiring colleague this evening, so I have not had time to analyze the fresh evidence with the kind of care necessary to blog about it today, so I will wait until I have a moment to make some observations.  I have now had the chance to read almost everything, but I need to take some time to digest everything properly before adding my own additional comments.