PUBLICITY OR PERISH: THE SAD FINALE OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS’ WIFE SAGA

As many people suspected from the beginning, the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” fragment is a fake. According to a masterful piece of investigative journalism just published in The Atlantic, Ariel Sabar has delved into the murky depths of what now appears to be a remarkable modern scholarly scandal. As it turns out, the story is so bizarre—and at times sordid—that it is almost easier to accept the authenticity of the bogus fragment than the outrageous tale of its origins. Real life, as is so often the case, is far stranger than fiction.

Painstakingly pulling together a wide variety of tangled threads, Sabar has demonstrated that this much publicized scrap of Coptic papyrus is the handwork of Walter Fritz—a would-be Egyptologist, aspiring pornographer, and (it would seem) purveyor of fabricated antiquities. Formerly a student at Berlin’s Free University, Sabar suggests that Fritz was driven by an unscrupulous desire for profit, an ancient grudge against the academic elite, and an idiosyncratic theology of sacred sexuality—his own wife allegedly spoke ancient Aramaic during intercourse. The remarkable details are far too complex to detail here, but what is more truly remarkable is how members of the Ivy League elite were taken in by this blatant con.

From the initial unveiling of the fragment in 2012, many experts in the field could immediately see that something was amiss. The scribal hand was sloppy and peculiar. The syntax was odd. The text itself appeared modelled on a widely available transcription of the Gospel of Thomas. In short, the much publicized artifact just didn’t look right. Predictably, the academic establishment dug in its heels. After all, who were a bunch of precariously employed adjuncts and bloggers to question the tenured wisdom of the Ivy League? Accusations of sexism further complicated the discussion. All the same, claims and counter-claims continued to be exchanged. In some ways the process was a case-study in peer-review, although the manner in which the fragment was initially dropped upon the scholarly community seem designed to circumvent that tradition.

At the center of this controversy and ultimately its unwitting victim is Dr Karen King, a widely respected expert in early Christianity, particularly non-canonical Coptic texts that the fragment was intended to mimic. King has spent a long and illustrious career helping to develop a more nuanced understanding of the early Christian movement, especially the role of woman. Sadly, it’s no surprise then that she was specifically targeted by the forger who assumed he’d find a sympathetic and credentialed ear.

At the same time, one had the sense from the beginning that the content of the fragment—implying a conjugal relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene—fit a little too neatly in the trajectory of King’s own feminist scholarship. Of all the passages of an as-yet-unknown apocryphal gospel to survive on a random scrap of papyrus, this one happened to be a Dan Brownian dream come true. The gods of papyrology are never so gracious or accommodating.

In this way, the Jesus Wife saga serves as a cautionary tale. It speaks to the well-known dangers of confirmation bias. When we examine evidence, we bring with us our pre-conceptions. We often see what we want to see simply because we want to see it. As a result, no amount of red-flags, contrary interpretation, or even clear-cut evidence can dissuade us from our preferred interpretation (although King it seems has finally conceded). This tendency is particularly acute in the study of early Christianity, a tradition in which most of the scholars who study it are heavily invested—in both positive and negative ways. Objectivity gives way to apologetics and polemic; academic rigor yields to activism. Very often, it seems to me, masquerading as an effort to study and describe the early Christian movement is a desire to re-invent it. Since some don’t see the church they want in the world, they conveniently find it hidden in the fragmentary past. Scholars need to ask themselves why they are studying this past—to understand it or remake it?

A final and equally problematic point to consider in this scandal is a pronounced paradigm shift in modern academia. The oft-repeated cliché used to be publish or perish. Today, it seems to me, this has been replaced by a new imperative—publicity or perish. The humanities and social sciences are in a constant struggle to justify their existence in the face of shrinking funding and the ever increasing emphasis on the STEM disciplines. At the same time, universities place enormous emphasis on publicity and prestige. Nothing attracts the interest of donors like a well-placed interview on CNN. As a result, for the modern academic, it’s not enough to work away meticulously in some narrowly technical field and publish the results for the enjoyment of other scholars. That’s not going to get you tenure these days. In this age of academic celebrity and infotainment, a CV without at least a History Channel appearance or a National Geographic special seems second rate and decidedly lacking in scholarly star-power. Back in 2012, when the Jesus’ Wife fragment was announced, the high-powered publicity machine was already in full swing. Documentaries were already in production. Special publications were in press. All of this, as stated above, before the claims made about the fragment and its interpretation were properly vetted by others in the scholarly community. A similar fan-fare accompanied the solemn unveiling of the Gospel of Judas (just in time for Easter) and is bound to envelope any Jesus-related scholarly sensation, in the wake of which there’s money to be made.

To her credit, Karen King always asserted that even if the fragment were genuine it would not necessarily mean that Jesus and Mary were married. That’s impossible to know historically. The most we could say was that some early Christians believed they were. Even without the Jesus’ Wife fragment other genuine textual evidence suggests that some may have held this belief. At the same time, why this persistent obsession with Mary Magdalene? As though the role of women in the church can only be validated if Jesus himself slept with one. Such a focus does a real disservice to all the women we actually know were active in the early church, particularly in the ascetic movement. That story is interesting and important in itself, though it’s not likely to make headline news. It’s not sexy and salacious enough. In the real-time world of the social media news cycle, there seems to be no room for scholarly subtlety. While I do believe it’s important for scholars to communicate the implications of their research to the public, the tendency towards sensationalism and hyperbole is acute.

If anything, the controversy around the Jesus’ Wife fragment reveals that the academy, like the world at large, is not immune to con-artists and fraudsters. I have met a few in my time. Moreover, there have been forgeries and academic scandals in the past and there will be more in the future. But in that future, let us learn from our mistakes and resist the urge to jump up on the public stage or pre-empt peer-review. In the end, the contributions of the scholarly tortoise far outweigh those of the sensationalizing hare.  

REVIEW of The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices

RBL REVIEW (forthcoming)

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 97; Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 332p.

In The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott set out to answer a rather straightforward question—Who produced and read the actual books collectively known as the Nag Hammadi Codices? This question, when it has been considered at all, has often been obscured by the preconceptions of scholars about what the terms “gnostic” and “monastic” mean. The authors, however, are not concerned with who originally might have composed the texts or their pre-codex literary history. These are separate questions that are not directly relevant to the books’ terminal users, who the authors seek to identify.

            Chapter 1 (“The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics?”) addresses the history of the question and debate around the circumstances of the discovery. In this context the early work of Jean Doresse has cast a long shadow, since he famously asserted that “whoever may have possessed (the books), they cannot have been monks” (p. 1). Others who have looked at the question, such as Khosroyev, insisted that the codices contained theologies that would have been incompatible with a monastic setting, particularly a Pachomian one (p. 2). In fact, many scholars have seen the Nag Hammadi texts as too “bizarre,” “esoteric,” or “untraditional” to have come from a monastery (p. 2-3). As a result, a variety of alternatives have been proposed, from a group of urban intellectuals, to a “gnostic” sect, to a wealthy collector of esoterica. It has also been argued that the manuscripts served as Christian “books of the dead” (p. 3-5). In spite of all this, a few things are relatively clear: 1) the books can be dated to the 4^th-5^th centuries CE (p. 10-11), 2) they were found near a cliff at Jabal al-Tarif, near the Hamra Dum village (NB: the question of whether the site was a “cemetery” is open to interpretation, although there are certainly tombs nearby) (p. 17-19), and 3) Christian monks were active in the area as early as the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE (p. 17-19).

            Chapter 2 concerns “Monastic Diversity in Upper Egypt,” a region known to have been inhabited by male and female ascetics who lived both solitary and communal lives (p. 22). Recent studies have shown that there was more interaction between monks (not all Pachomian) and villagers than has normally been assumed (p. 24-25). Moreover, some of the monks were highly educated (p. 25) and held a diversity of theological opinions (p. 34-38). In fact, and this is key, the cartonnage material from the covers of the Nag Hammadi codices does contain a substantial amount of monastic material (p. 47-49).  

            Chapter 3 briefly addresses the vexing question of “The Gnostics?” Once again, the authors assert that their interest lies in determining the origin of the actual codices themselves, not with speculating about what persons or theological factions might have authored the texts they contain (p. 77). Still, Lundhaug and Jenott underline the degree to which scholarly theories about “Gnosticism” have and continue to obscure a “clear analysis” of the codices (p. 73). While this is certainly a pertinent point, the chapter puts an overwhelming emphasis on the work of Alastair Logan as representative of gnostic studies as a whole. This seems like a rather narrow assessment of the field.

            In Chapter 4 (“Contrasting Mentalities?”) the authors continue to unpack the many preconceptions that interpreters have imposed on the codices. Often, assumptions are made about what people at the time, particularly monks, would or would not have read. The content of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts has been labelled as “anti-biblical” and “syncretistic” material meant for the weak minded (p. 74-75). Ideas about what constitutes the “monastic” (i.e. orthodox) perspective abound (p. 75). Khosroyev serves as a particularly egregious example of this, when he referred to the “bizarre mentality” contained in the codices (p. 75). Attached to such assumptions is the equally stereotypical corollary that such speculative literature couldn’t possibly have interested the poor, ignorant Copts (p. 76, 78, 91). While there are certainly allusions to Greek culture and philosophy in the texts, one need not assume that these elements would have been of primary interest to the readers of the codices (p. 92). Here the authors emphasize an often overlooked point. If the readers of the codices are imagined as sophisticated urban intellectuals (as some have proposed), steeped in Greek philosophical culture, why render them into Coptic? (p. 94). Greek continued to be used in Egypt well into the Byzantine period (p. 96). Therefore, the books must have been intended for a Coptic-speaking audience (p. 100-101).

            Chapter 5 (“The Cartonnage”) explores what material from the codex coverings may or may not tell us about their creators and users. Once again, previous scholars have gone to extraordinary lengths to disassociate these supposedly “heretical” books from their notions of Pachomian orthodoxy (p. 132). Many have assumed that early Egyptian monks existed in total isolation, although this stereotype has proven to be a hagiographic fiction. Monks and monasteries did have many (often necessary) contacts with “the world” of the local villages (p. 132-3). Thus, it would not be surprising if some of the cartonnage material consisted of receipts and official documents. Such material has been used to suggest that the books were owned by soldiers, bored bureaucrats, or an esoteric “underground.” A bit of Ockham’s Razor might well be applied here. What is more likely, that a group of religious books containing largely Christian material was produced by local Christians known to produce books (i.e. monks), or some imagined hypothetical alternative? What’s more, a letter from the cartonnage of Codex VII is addressed to “father Pachomius” himself (p. 136-137). Though such concrete evidence has often been ignored or dismissed as co-incidental.

            Chapter 6 makes clear that some Christians at the time did, in fact, approve of the reading of “Apocryphal Books,” while repeated denunciations of such works by monastic authorities well into the 6^th century CE surely speaks to their continued use (p. 176-177). Chapter 7, for its part, explains that the language of “The Colophons” also fits comfortably within a monastic milieu and provide useful information about the book exchange networks employed by the creators (p. 178-206).

            Chapter 8 looks at “The Codices” themselves. Here the authors argue that given the diverse character of the Pachomian federation, it should not be surprising that multiple book production practices co-existed (p. 212). Moreover, biblical manuscripts from the Dishna Papers closely resemble the Nag Hammadi codices and themselves are associated with local Pachomian communities (p. 231-233). Here again, it is startling the length that scholars have gone and continue to go in an effort to insulate their perceived notions of orthodoxy from their perceived notions of heresy. Cornelia Römer is a case in point. As the authors point out, in a recent study she has argued that Coptic manuscripts containing both canonical and non-canonical material emerged during the same period and evidence the same scribal and codicological techniques. Yet, instead of entertaining the possibility that the same group of people might be responsible for both groups of books, the existence of a separate class of commercial, freelance scribes is postulated (p. 207).   

            After a systematic appraisal of both internal and external evidence pointing to a monastic origin of the codices, Chapters 9 and 10 turn to the question of what sort of “Monks” might have been responsible and what are the implications of such a conclusion. As the authors point out, there is plenty of material in the codices that might have interested monks (p. 234) and that the monastic milieu of 4^th-5^th century Egypt was far from homogeneous. One could find Melitians and “Origenists” in addition to Pachomians (p. 235). In fact, much of the textual material might have appealed to those with an enduring interest in Origenist theology (p. 244-6). Some such people were certainly part of the Pachomian scene (p. 247). The monastic interest in demonology is well-known (p. 259-260), as is an interest in heavenly ascents (p. 260-261). The so-called “gnostic” themes, which certainly aren’t present in all the texts, may not have interested the monks at all (p. 264). We should be wary of assuming that any ancient reader would have shared our thematic interests, or that they were incapable of reading selectively and with discernment. After all, Christians have always read even their Bibles in a highly selective fashion—highlighting some parts, ignoring others. Why would the monastic readers of the Nag Hammadi codices be any different? In the end, the authors assert that the preponderance of evidence points to a “cenobitic monastic community” (p. 256), probably Pachomian (especially in light of the letter from Codex VII cartonnage [p. 238]).

            Based on the evidence, who else could reasonably be said to have produced and read them? As Tito Orlandi has remarked, all manner of hypothetical groups and sects have been invoked to explain the Nag Hammadi Codices, except the ones we know actually existed in the Nile Valley during the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE (p. 262). Resistance to this seemingly obvious conclusion has been remarkably resilient. Although the authors don’t say so explicitly, I suspect that there has been a persistent and latent tendency to want to insulate and protect “orthodox” Pachomians from the perceived contagion of the “gnostic heresy.” Moreover, there has been a parallel tendency to segregate the various corpora of Coptic literature instead of studying them in conjunction (p. 262). It is, after all, completely normal for people in antiquity, as today, to entertain conflicting and even contradictory opinions (p. 266). Unfortunately, deeply rooted theological biases have impeded an honest historical assessment of this material. An impediment that Lundhaug and Jenott’s book goes a long way toward overcoming.

            In closing, I would like to note that The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices is a model of clarity, careful research, and well-articulated argument. It is entirely free from the academic jargon and theoretical mirages that cloud so much work being done in the field. It was a pleasurable and rewarding read. In addition, the book contains a number of helpful images, maps, and tables, as well as a comprehensive bibliography and an excellent set of indices. It is highly recommended.

SPOILERS OF WAR: EPIC VIOLENCE FROM TROY TO WESTEROS

War and violence are common themes throughout much of world literature. From time-honored works such as the Bible and Homeric poems to more popular contemporary productions of science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars and Game of Thrones. The perennial struggle between the forces of good and evil have long held a deep fascination for audiences across cultures. War, it would seem, is the stuff of epic. Violence is what makes heroes and forges nations…or so we are led to believe. Yet, beneath the surface of such works of epic literature, which are often seen as glorifying and validating war, there is sometimes something deeper going on. If we are attentive, we can perhaps discern thematic elements that reflect upon and problematize our preconceived notions of violence and conflict. This is certainly the case with two very prominent examples of epic saga—Homer’s Odyssey and George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, upon which the popular HBO series Game of Thrones* is based. Both of these narratives address the issue of war and violence in some surprising, even subversive, ways.

In both worlds, the protagonists are dealing with the aftermath of large-scale war and are faced with issues such as rebellion, civil strife, usurpation, and regicide. The old established order has been violently swept away and the aftershocks of violent upheaval are being felt by succeeding generations. As a result, an intense desire is felt by the key players to re-establish a sense of balance and equilibrium—to bring order out of chaos. In the case of Homer’s poem, Odysseus finds himself as one of the few surviving heroes from the ill-fated siege of Troy, while his son Telemachus seeks to prevent the usurpation of his household by a gang of would-be suitors vying for his mother Penelope. Meanwhile, in Westeros (which plausibly resembles the world of Homer) a long-established dynasty has been overthrown and replaced by an unstable new regime of upstart houses. Political intrigues abound as rivals compete for the Iron Throne.   

Tellingly, both stories involve a coalition of rulers declaring war on a greater power due to the abduction of a woman. In Homer’s case, it is Helen, wife of the Mycenaean king Menelaus, who was carried away by Paris, a Trojan prince, as a reward for declaring Aphrodite the most beautiful of the Olympian goddesses, while in Westeros it is the abduction of Lyanna Stark by prince Rhaegar Targaryen, even though she had already been betrothed to Robert Barathaeon. In such heroic universes, even though the honor of women has been violated, it is the men who claim even greater offence, deprived as they are of their marital property. Since the men’s only response to this kind of offense is to declare war, violence inevitably begets more violence.  

The two stories also take place in what anthropologists might term “honor and shame” societies. As such, in both Westeros and the Homeric world, honour and shame are understood as hereditary. Sons and daughters regularly pay for the sins of their parents or are accorded a respect that they themselves did not earn. Why else would Telemachus feel such an urgent need, obligation really, to defend the honor of a father he has never known? Or, why do the Stark children risk their own lives to avenge their father’s murder? Offenses to honor, real or imagined, serve to feed the warrior ethos.   

Moreover, the two epics are filled with restless spirits of the dead. The Westeros saga is haunted by the memory of Aerys Targaryan, the so-called “Mad King”, while the Odyssey is haunted by the spectre of Agamemnon, chief ruler of the Mycenaean coalition. Some of whose actions are no less mad. For instance, when the gods are preventing the Greeks from sailing to Troy, Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter, Iphigenia, in order to receive favorable winds. On his return home from the conflict, he brings with him a captured concubine, Cassandra, only to be murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. In response, the royal couple’s exiled child, Orestes, must return to avenge his father’s death and execute his own mother. In the Odyssey, this sort of decisive action is repeatedly presented to Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, as a model to be emulated. Yet, it is such ghosts, combined with the ethos of honor and shame, that perpetuate the cycle of violence throughout the generations. In Westeros, as in ancient Greece, the response to war is more war; murder is met with murder. On it goes seemingly without end or resolution.     

Yet, appearances can be deceiving. As much as Game of Thrones employs a fairly gratuitous amount of explicit violence (it is a HBO series after all), the real heroes are not in fact the warriors and lords of the great houses—most of whom wind up meeting rather gruesome ends. Instead, the fate of Westeros appears to rest in the hands of some rather unlikely individuals—a disabled boy with visionary powers, a bastard exile with no real name, and an orphaned girl who bends great cities to her irresistible will. Similarly, the protagonists of the Odyssey are equally atypical. Odysseus himself is not the usual Homeric hero. He is more inclined to use his wit rather than his sword when faced with adversity, while Telemachus is characterized as an indecisive youth. Penelope, for her part, who is equally as crafty as her husband, is instrumental to the poem’s climactic resolution. Moreover, since all of Odysseus’ warrior companions die during the homecoming, he has to rely on a series of female characters (Nausikaa, Circe, Calypso) and servants (Eumaios and Eurykleia) to restore his household and his honor. In both stories, it is people who are normally obscured and victimized by war and violence that are brought to the foreground and who are the central focus of the narrative arc. In this way, both the Odyssey and Game of Thrones work to subvert the traditional heroic narrative in unique and often surprising ways.

In the Odyssey nowhere is this subversion of the heroic ethos more poignantly expressed than in Book 8, where the singer Demodokos recounts the story of the Wooden Horse and the sacking of Troy. Strikingly, Homer then compares Odysseus' emotional reaction to the story, in which we might expect him to take pride, to the fate of a woman weeping over the dead body of her husband and conquered city as she is carried off into slavery (8.523-530). Such a juxtaposition shifts the emphasis from the conqueror to the conquered and undermines the traditional epic narrative. Later in Book 22, when the nurse Eurykleia rejoices over the slain bodies of the suitors, Odysseus rebukes her, saying: “It is not piety to glory so over slain men” (22.412 trans. Lattimore). Here, we might imagine, Odysseus is seeking to halt the cycle of violence—unavoidable at times, but not an end in itself.      

Obviously, in the case of Game of Thrones, the plot has yet to play itself out. So we cannot be sure how the saga will eventually resolve its deeply rooted violence. Will the Mother of Dragons return to Westeros and burn her enemies to ashes? Perhaps. Or will Jon Snow restore some kind of balance to the North, ushering a new Golden Age? Will the writers troll everyone and leave only Ramsay Bolton alive? (Edit: clearly not) If there’s one thing we do know, Game of Thrones has always toyed with its audience. The series is constantly undermining our expectations and dashing our hopes. From the startling execution of Ned Stark in season one to the slaughter of his apparently worthy successor at the Red Wedding. We, as the audience, are consistently deprived of the heroes that we think we want, only to get the villains we more probably deserve. Still, the primary focus of the series so far has not been on glorifying the great battles between the houses, but on exploring the suffering and confusion of those caught in the middle and brutalized by war and blood-feud. To be sure, the scenes of violence (particularly sexual violence) are often gratuitous and grotesque, but they shouldn’t distract us from some of the more implicitly important themes. At times, the regret and disillusionment with such savagery is palpable, as when Jon Snow says to Sansa Stark in “Book of the Stranger” (S06 E04): “we should have never left home.”

Perhaps they shouldn’t have. Nor should the Greeks have ever sailed to Troy. Still, in both stories the protagonists find themselves in situations and dynamics well beyond their control. How they respond is key. Will they be corrupted by the violence of war, or will they over come it? Will they allow it to destroy their humanity, or will they be transformed? Only time will tell. In the interim, it is useful to reflect how some of our core cultural narratives present, explain, and even sometimes work to undermine the savage impulses of the human heart.   

*My discussion is restricted to the HBO series.