“Robert Siegel speaks with Elaine Pagels, religion professor at Princeton University, about the discovery of an ancient papyrus fragment that suggests some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife, and possibly a female disciple.”
“Robert Siegel speaks with Elaine Pagels, religion professor at Princeton University, about the discovery of an ancient papyrus fragment that suggests some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife, and possibly a female disciple.”
I am surprised that NPR hasn’t hauled out Spong too. It would be nice if NPR would interview someone reputable, but then that wouldn’t be NPR would it.
I haven’t read any of these stories in full, but I keep being surprised by the comments along the line that “some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife, and [b]possibly a female disciple[/b]”
Excuse me. But DUH!
[blockquote]Luk 8:1-3 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.
Luk 24:22 Moreover, some women [b]of our company[/b] amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning,
Act 1:14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.[/blockquote]
Pagels is the soul of scholarly detachment and a credit to her university.
There are more thyan that Elaine Pagels and I disagree about than there is room in the world to list, but I think she’s pretty much on target here. The scrap is unprovenanced and written in an unusual style, but apparently convincingly ancient; it alleges that Jesus had a wife (a claim we’re not surprised to hear, whether we lend it credence or not); and we have no way to know about the context of this passage, so no clue about what Jesus may have meant by ‘my wife’. Bears more investigating, but so far not especially surprising.
‘more things that’… Sorry, the page went haywire right when I was editing my earlier comment.
Not only did he have a wife, but escaped crucifiction to lead the quiet life in Argentina.
Here is the problem with King and Pagles:
[blockquote]King and Pagels both reject traditional Christianity, and they clearly prefer the voices of the heretics. They argue for the superiority of heterodoxy over orthodoxy. In the Smithsonian article, King’s scholarship is described as “a kind of sustained critique of what she called the ‘master story’ of Christianity: a narrative that casts the canonical texts of the New Testament as a divine revelation that passed through Jesus in ‘an unbroken chain’ to the apostles and their successors – church fathers, ministers, priests and bishops who carried these truths into the present day.”
***
Those who use Gnostic texts like those found at Nag Hammadi attempt to redefine Christianity so that classic, biblical, orthodox Christianity is replaced with a very different religion. The Gnostic texts reduce Jesus to the status of a worldly teacher who instructs his followers to look within themselves for the truth. These texts promise salvation through enlightenment, not through faith and repentance. Their Jesus is not the fully human and fully divine Savior and there is no bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead.[/blockquote]
http://www.albertmohler.com/
If even Elaine Pagels thinks this isn’t necessarily what it sounds like, there isn’t much to it.
Someone somethere asked what an archeologist would think if they found a Chick tract 1600 years from now. Say The Death Cookie ? What would it prove about what Christian belief?
It’s a good point: as there are now, and always have been, various communities of Christians – and Christian heretics – believe different things to one degree or another. It’s part of an agenda, not scholarship, to claim that an ancient text means anything other than that some person somewhere believed something.
I will say that it’s an interesting new meme to claim that a man of Jesus’s age would have intense social pressure to be married, so he probably was. Perhaps we can agree that his marital status is not theologically significant, but after 2000 years, we have a NEW discovery! Nwe and Improved, one would think.
I should be clear that I am not addressing Elaine Pagels specifically. As a matter of fact, I have read The Gnostic Gospels and don’t have much use for giving them any theological weight. But this who “Gospel of Jesus Wife” is just silly.