A fourth-century fragment of papyrus has relit the debate over whether or not Jesus Christ had a wife. A report from Reuters says the words on the scrap, written in Coptic, include the phrase “Jesus said to them, my wife …” The piece is about one and a half inches by three inches in size. The finding was introduced by Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, at a conference in Rome earlier this week.
“Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim,” King said in a statement released by Harvard. “This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage.”
Darrell L. Bock, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, told The Christian Post that this is one text among a mountain of texts that say Jesus was single. If the papyrus is authentic, it would be the first text to suggest that Jesus had a wife. But even so, he added, it represents “a very small minority in a much later period than original Christianity.”
Other experts plan to examine the papyrus, which is owned by a private collector. King will publish her analysis findings in an upcoming edition of the Harvard Theological Review.
