In 2012 we reported in these pages the claim of Harvard University professor, Dr Karen L. King, to having discovered the ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’.
On a small ancient fragment she had identified Coptic text in which Jesus spoke of Mary Magdalene as his wife. With the wild conspiracy theories of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code in the air the media were primed to pick up and run with the sensational claim: the church has been covering up the truth about Jesus and his marriage.
Fake news
No scholar claimed that the purported Gospel fragment belonged to the first century. King herself was in no doubt that it was a fourth-century writing. But the implication was that there were alternative traditions about Jesus in the early church and that the orthodox view was only one of a number of rival stories. King wove her claims into a particular feminist narrative which argued that the church had been suppressing the voice of women and the humanity of Jesus for nearly 2,000 years. The ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ served that purpose.
