JCC Jesus may have been married, according to new evidence

1600-year old Coptic papyrus manuscript has Jesus saying the phrase "My wife"

Right . . .

It's probably impossible that he was referring to the Church, too.

What's the context in which the phrase was said?

"Take my wife... No seriously, take her."

...?

Coptic? Did he also say something offensive about Muhammad?

/timely

Dan Brown told me this like 8 years ago, so you're behind.

Damn shame he didn't name her in that scroll, if only to throw the Church into another hissy fit.

What if Danthe is Dan Brown?

Okay, yeah. I could see marinating a chicken in that.

A Harvard historian has identified a faded, fourth-century scrap of papyrus she calls "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife." One line of the torn fragment of text purportedly reads: "Jesus said to them, 'My wife …'" The following line states, "she will be able to be my disciple."

The finding was announced to the public today (Sept. 18) by Karen King, a historian of early Christianity, author of several books about new Gospel discoveries and the Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School. King first examined the privately owned fragment in 2011, and has since been studying it with the help of a small group of scholars.

According to the New York Times, King and her collaborators have concluded that the business card-size fragment is not a forgery, and she is presenting the discovery today at a meeting of International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome.

http://news.yahoo.com/jesus-had-wife-newly-discovered-gospel-suggests-202727064.html

The Smithsonian article is great, though it ends with

I hope we get to find out the results of the ink's spectrum analysis.

Even if it is real, it's still 300-400 years after Jesus' death... much, much later than all the other gospels. And there's been nothing else discovered so far to support this new claim.

However, if there's a string of discoveries that back this new claim, and some of the are actually close to the time of Jesus' life and when the other gospels were written... that's a whole different story.



Either way, I think it's irrelevant. Or at least it is for my Christian beliefs... but I guess there is still a significant percentage of Christians who view marriage and sex as somewhat flawed, and women as not completely equal to men. The Catholic leadership still hasn't embraced female priests, or re-embraced married priests; and many evangelical Protestant churches criticize sex itself as somehow being immoral or flawed or sinful in some way.

i wonder if his wife liked his beard or if she was constantly bugging him to shave.

She better have liked his beard.

Sure it has. In Greco-Catholic liturgy married men can be ordained as priests, too (they must be married before they're ordained, though - once a single man is ordained, he cannot marry and must remain celibate).

Yeah, and it's indicating there's a gradual transition underway, but right now they're more like exceptions to the rule.

I read the NYT article on the way in to work this morning, certainly very interesting, on the one hand absolutely no context (the piece of paper is about the size of a business card), on the other hand, what else could "my wife". One thought that occurred to me was that Jesus was telling a parable. Or he was quoting The Who's "My Wife" 1.5 millenia before the song was written.

Sorry to butt in and to derail the thread with this topic, but it just irks me when Catholic discipline is misunderstood.

Actually it's not a exception to the rule, since it is in fact the norm for many of the other 22 Catholic Churches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholicism) Which have been around for about 600 years. Also, if the Maronites claim to unbroken communion with the Bishop of Rome are to be believed then the Church has never had to re-embrace anything. And even then since the Church accepts the validity of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East's Holy Orders and Matrimony, then Rome has always accepted the married priesthood. It's just that it's not what is done in the Latin Church(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Church)

I was talking about the Roman Catholic Church, the one with over 1 billion members, obviously.

And I know that even they used to have married priests in the past, which is why I said "re-embrace."

Having married priests in the RCC today is still an exception to the rule, they're grandfathered in, but they currently believe that a priest must be fully committed and therefore shouldn't have any spouse/family that might take away their devotion to the church. That's why people who were born, baptised, raised, and confirmed as Catholics, who then go on to marry, are not allowed to become priests. Deacons, yes, but not priests. It's a simple fact. Saying "the Catholic Church doesn't embrace married priests" may be a generalization, but is it really complex enough to demand a nuanced description of the RCC's policies and history and comparison to other "catholic" churches? No. You can add nuance to it, but the statement is still accurate.

The Eastern Catholic Churches are still part of the Catholic Church and recognise the Pope as their head. They only differ slightly in liturgy and other traditions, and the fact that they can ordain married men. So the statement "Catholic Church doesn't allow married priests" is incorrect. The "Roman-" and "Greco-" prepositions mainly serve to distinguish between the different rites. But they're still one Catholic Church.

Turns out he also had no magic powers?

No no, remember, those early writers and editors were still figuring out what his superpowers would be before they became G-canon.

Ah so just like before Superman could fly? Just jump stupidly far?