Catholic News Service
ROME — Scholars are unlikely to agree anytime soon on the authenticity of a newly published text containing a reference to Jesus’ “wife.”
But the tiny papyrus fragment, purportedly dating to the fourth century A.D., has already stirred interest in the early church’s attitudes toward marriage, sex and the role of women.
The fragment of papyrus with eight lines of Egyptian Coptic writing is the “only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” wrote Karen L. King, historian of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, in an academic paper she delivered Sept. 18 at an international Coptic studies conference in Rome. Read more »