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.
