"Jesus said to them, my wife."

in this fourth century fragment of a book written in the Coptic language we have a new previously unknown gospel eight lines on the front six lines on the back the most exciting line in the whole fragment however is the sentence jesus said to them to his disciples that is Jesus said to them my wife what this does not mean is that Jesus had a wife it's not evidence for us historically that Jesus had a wife it's quite clear evidence in fact that some Christians probably in the second half of the second century that's between about 150 and 200 ad thought the Jesus had a wife we have of course in the last decades numerous examples of these kinds of of things where they found Jesus's tomb where they found James's ossuary so I was extremely skeptical and without actually too much trouble I saw how the sentence is right in front of what's existing that is to say what would be in the missing part that fit with the mother was very closely related to a particular saying in the Gospel of Thomas we spent several hours looking at this fragment discussing it in every possible way starting from the notion that it's a forgery you know and trying to convince ourselves you know trying to make arguments against that but the conclusion was that it was authentic and probably fourth century I was very interested in asking a question when was the first time that we have evidence of that anybody actually said Jesus was not married and I was surprised to find that it is indeed right during the same period when we're dating this fragment and so what we can see is that it's about a hundred a hundred and fifty years after Jesus died before the question is raised did Jesus have a wife or not and when it is raised it's tied to discussions even controversies even arguments you know the early Christian are having about proper Christian practice you know should christians marry or should they be solvent

Channel: Harvard University

Views: 924,706

Rating: 4.2380953 out of 5

Keywords: christianity, religion, papyrus, evidence, fragment, wife, jesus, bible

Id: vlmoILJmH4M

Length: 2min 29sec (149 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 18 2012