Monday, September 24, 2012

"The Gospel of Jesus Wife:" What are we to think?

Perhaps you have heard in the news about this new "gospel" about Jesus having a wife. I put gospel in quotes because it is actually a fragment (about 13 partial lines of Coptic text). It is estimated that it (if genuine) was composed between the 4th and 7th Century AD. 

If you don't really know much about it, you can find a summary of what it is and says here. I found a comment by scholar Dr. Darrell L. Bock a helpful summary of what this "discovery" means:  
It is one speck of a fringe text in a sea of texts that say Jesus was single. It, if authentic, is the exception, to the rule of texts we have on Jesus. Thus, in the end, even if it says what people are suggesting, it tells us only about a fourth century group's views, not anything about Jesus.1

1. http://blogs.bible.org/bock/darrell_l._bock/quick_thoughts_on_the_new_jesus_wife_text

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