This was some real gobbledygook, even by HuffPo standards.
HuffPo:
Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King says she has found an ancient papyrus fragment from the fourth century that, when translated, appears to indicate that Jesus was married.
Karen L. King:
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim
Karen L. King:
It was not until around the year 200 that Christian followers began to say Jesus was unmarried, according to a record King cites from Clement of Alexandria. In his writing, Clement – an early theologian – said that marriage was a fornication put in place by the devil, and that people should emulate Jesus by not marrying.
Karen L. King:
One or two decades later [mid-third century], Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa declared that Jesus was “entirely unmarried” and told Christians to remain single. But Tertullian did not come out against sex altogether and allowed couples to get married one time, denouncing divorce and remarriage as overindulgent
So let me get this straight. Prof. King believes that there exists “no reliable historical evidence” to support a celibate Jesus. Yet she cites more than one example of
historical evidence which supports a celibate Jesus from sources less removed from the historical Jesus than this newly rediscovered papyrus. So the preponderance of evidence suggests that said evidence isn’t reliable? Sounds almost conspiratorial!
HuffPo said:
The papyri included a handwritten German description that had the name of a now-deceased professor of Egyptology in Berlin who called the fragment a “sole example” of a document that claims Jesus was married.
Wow! So an
Egyptologist who presumably was the last professional to study this papyrus
from Egypt once concluded that it was the only document claiming that Jesus was married. Let’s compare that with Prof. King’s credentials:
HuffPo:
King …] focuses on Coptic literature, Gnosticism and women in the Bible, [and] has published on the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala.
Ah! The cherry picking of evidence all makes sense now. I have an inkling as to Prof. King’s motive here, but I wonder what’s HuffPo’s motivation in publishing this article…
HuffPo Blogger Michael D'Antonio:
If Jesus had a wife, then there is nothing extra Christian about male privilege, nothing spiritually dangerous about the sexuality of women, and no reason for anyone to deny himself or herself a sexual identity.
Ah! HuffPo being HuffPo. The cards have all fallen into place, now. I can’t let this one slide, though. Notice the missing, implicit premise here: Having a wife precludes “male privilege” (whatever that necessarily entails), and being (what kids these day call) “sex-negative”. Anyone who has known a jealous, controlling, abusive, and/or chauvinistic man
who also just so happened to be married can see that this obviously does not follow.
: 