Ancient clue to Christ's marriage
A HARVARD University professor has unveiled a 4th century fragment of papyrus she says is the only existing ancient text quoting Jesus explicitly referring to having a wife.
Karen King, an expert in the history of Christianity, said the text contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to ''my wife'', whom he identifies as Mary.
King says the fragment of Coptic script is a copy of a gospel, probably written in Greek in the 2nd century. Professor King helped translate and unveiled the tiny fragment at a conference in Rome.
She said it did not prove Jesus was married but speaks to issues of family and marriage that faced Christians.
Four words in the 3.8 by 7.6- centimetre fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, she said.
Those words, written in a language of ancient Egyptian Christians, translate to ''Jesus said to them, 'my wife','' Professor King said in a statement. In the dialogue the disciples discuss Mary's worthiness. Jesus says ''she can be my disciple''.
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried even though there was no reliable historical evidence to support that, Professor King said.
The new gospel, she said, ''tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage''.
''From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry,'' she said, ''but it was over a century after Jesus' death before they began appealing to Jesus' marital status to support their positions.''
Professor King presented the document at a six-day conference being held at Rome's La Sapienza University and at the Augustinianum Institute of the Pontifical Lateran University.
The fragment belongs to an anonymous private collector. Nothing is known about the circumstances of its discovery. Professor King cautioned that the fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus was actually married.
The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature was silent on the question, she said.
But the discovery is exciting, Professor King said, as it was the first known statement from antiquity that referred to Jesus speaking of a wife. ''There was, we already know, a controversy in the 2nd century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.'' AP, NEW YORK TIMES