Jesus Was Married. NOT!

The latest hot find in the historical and archaeological world concerning Jesus suggests Jesus was married. Yes, we are back on that bus again. This go-round Dr. Karen King of Harvard Divinity School is the caretaker of a fragment of papyrus written in Coptic that has Jesus saying, “…my wife…she was able to be my disciple.” Ain’t that sweet? But is it true? Sadly truth is in the eye and ear of the beholder. I can’t read Coptic, Egyptian or Klingon. Coptic is Egyptian written with the Greek alphabet so suffice it to say it’s edging toward Latin in the dead language category. Dr. King teaches a course at Harvard on basic Coptic so she would be an expert. I consulted with the in-house language experts at Tyndale House (a Biblical studies group with lax enough rules to allow me in) and they concur that the newly-discovered text reads exactly as Dr. King states.

So what do we do with this? Say oops to the world and rethink our entire faith structure? Feel even sorrier for Catholic Christians who would be even more impacted than us? Or, read deeply into Dr. King’s thesis and see that even she doubts this has anything to do with the actual and historic Jesus. Let’s go with the latter option. The fragment has been authenticated and several scholars see it as being written in the third century. So it’s real and its revisionist history. Someone wanted Jesus to have been married (as was the case in the Gospel of Thomas) so they wrote that he had a wife (guess who?) on a scrap of papyrus and somehow it has survived until now.

So despite what Access Hollywood, National Enquirer or What's Happenin' 'n Jerusalem reports Jesus was not married to Mary Magdalene or anyone else. He was single in matters of matrimony, vision and purpose. Trust me on this, Paul would have told us if Jesus had been married. I can’t read Coptic but I can read Paul!

Michael McCullar