`Gospel of Jesus’ Wife` papyrus to be further tested for authenticity

`Gospel of Jesus’ Wife` papyrus to be further tested for authenticity

London - The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus, which has been alleged to be a forgery, seems to be in limbo, as the Harvard Theological Review has pulled the article describing the discovery from their upcoming issue.

This withdrawal, however, doesn’t mean the journal will never publish the findings by Harvard historian Karen King on the supposed lost Gospel.

“Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish Professor King’s paper after testing is concluded so that the results may be incorporated,” Kit Dodgson, director of communications at Harvard Divinity School, wrote in an email.

The business-card-size papyrus at the center of the controversy, described as ‘The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,’ by King on September 18, was supposedly from the fourth century and written in Coptic, the language of a group of early Christians in Egypt.

King and her collaborators believed that the papyrus, the first ancient evidence of Jesus speaking of a wife, was authentic.

Two Coptic scholars — AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton University and Roger Bagnall of New York University — considered the text authentic and dating back to the fourth century, according to the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Hershel Shanks.

To get to the bottom of the papyrus’s authenticity, several analyses will be conducted.

“The owner of the papyrus fragment has been making arrangements for the next round of analysis of the fragment, including testing by independent laboratories with the resources and the specific expertise necessary to produce and interpret reliable results,” Dodgson wrote.

“This next phase is likely to take several weeks, if not months,” he added.