The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife May Be a Forgery

Two recent articles appeared in The Atlantic  which appear to put the nail in the coffin of the badly named Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

The first article shows the dodgy provenance (chain of custody) of the piece.  It is a bit long but worth the read.  You can read it here or here’s the URL to that article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/485573/

The second article may be the most important, because in it Karen King, the Harvard scholar who brought the fragment too light and has defended its authenticity, now concedes it is probably a fake.  You can read it here or here is the URL:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/karen-king-responds-to-the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/487484/

As Simon Gathercole said to me, now we don’t have to worry about that text.  The forged text and our response to it tell us more about ourselves than about the ancient church.