Remember those bits of ancient papyrus that had bits of words that suggested it was from the “Gospel of Mary”? It had stuff that would have made any current day Jesus’ loving women’s libber proud.
Unfortunately it is now considered by all the “authorities” on that sort of thing, to be a forgery. Some of their evidence is stated in the link provided above.
Interesting. Guess I no longer need to be offended by Jesus telling another disciple that he will make Mary a man either in that text or another, because it’s a sexist jerk who wrote it, IMO. I’m a women’s libber and I found parts of it insulting, if it’s the text I think it is. Oh wait, that’s not The Gospel of Mary? I never heard of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.
Unfortunately it is now considered by all the “authorities” on that sort of thing, to be a forgery. Some of their evidence is stated in the link provided above.Who would forge such a thing? It's the stuff of cancel culture to tear up foundations of social traditions.
<p style=“text-align: left;”>I think replacing traditions is just called progress.</p>
@timb Thanks for posting this.
I had seen this story in one of my feeds. The link you provided is a nice summation. What is the source of the link?
The link was in this article:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/13/us/jesus-wife-gospel-forgery-sabar/index.html
Interesting. Guess I no longer need to be offended by Jesus telling another disciple that he will make Mary a man either in that text or another, because it’s a sexist jerk who wrote it, IMO. I’m a women’s libber and I found parts of it insulting, if it’s the text I think it is. Oh wait, that’s not The Gospel of Mary? I never heard of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.Maybe it wasn't sexist. Maybe that's just what he was into. He did hang out all day every day with 12 dudes and nobody else, after all. Maybe he was all like, "I am really into you." (assuming it's not THAT Mary you're talking about. There was another, I believe) "If only you didn't have an icky, icky vagina!"
I think replacing traditions is just called progress.You think so? How would you like to replace all traditions with scientifically rational guidelines to bring about an ideal society of perfectly formed humans?
How about just a little honesty dude.
Who would forge such a thing? It’s the stuff of cancel culture to tear up foundations of social traditions.What the heck are you talking about anyways?
Cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming.This was exposing a forgery.
https://nebula.wsimg.com/f7bf9174e94fcd10bcb290443e55c03f?AccessKeyId=7FECC3FA0F0362C6C7C2&disposition=0&alloworigin=1The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Evidence of Modern Forgery
A reference with sources and citations. Warning: this document contains spoilers.
For use with Ariel Sabar’s Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.[last update: August 17, 2020]
OVERVIEW
Historians and literary scholars use a wide variety of evidence to decide whether a newfound manuscript is authentic or fake. In the case of a papyrus fragment known as “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” internationally renowned scholars in a number of disciplines have concluded on multiple grounds that the manuscript is a fake. They believe that a modern forger wrote the Coptic text on a pre-cut scrap of genuinely ancient, probably Egyptian papyrus, using a soot-based ink as easy to make today as it was in antiquity.How was it done? The strongest evidence suggests that the text is a patchwork of phrases “cut and paste” from an easily accessible online typescript of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. A retired computer programmer in Michigan had typed up an “interlinear” Coptic-English translation and posted it as a PDF to his popular Gospel of Thomas website in November 2002. Scholars believe that a forger with a basic grasp of Coptic downloaded the PDF, cherry-picked phrases from it, and used it to say something new that sounded like something old. The PDF has unique typographical errors in Coptic that are reproduced in the “ancient handwriting” of the Jesus’s Wife papyrus; it also has unique English translation errors that recur in the English translation that came with the Wife papyrus. The presence of one-of-a-kind errors in two languages that trace to a single online source are powerful evidence of the forgery’s 21st-century source material.
The forgery is thought to have been done sometime between that November 2002 date and July 2010, when the papyrus’s owner—a German immigrant and former Egyptology student named Walter Fritz— first emailed photos of it to Harvard Divinity School professor Dr. Karen King.
A case for forgery is often multidisciplinary. If done well, it draws on expertise ranging from handwriting examination, linguistic analysis, and historical research to microscopic imaging, laboratory studies, and investigations of provenance, or ownership history. Rarely is a single piece of evidence enough to deem a manuscript authentic or fake. But when many kinds of evidence point in the same direction—a phenomenon experts call “consilience”—scholars gain confidence in their conclusions.
For readers who want a deeper look, here is a detailed breakdown of some of the key pieces of evidence, along with sources and citations. Note: If you have not yet read Veritas, you may want to stop here, as this list contains a number of spoilers.
HANDWRITING …
GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ANCIENT WRITERS WOULD NOT MAKE …
THOROUGHGOING EVIDENCE OF COPYING FROM ONLINE 2002 PDF OF THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS …
INK APPLICATION …
CARBON-14 DATE …
PAPYRUS’S CHOICE OF WORDS FOR “MY WIFE” IS UNPRECEDENTED IN DOCUMENTED HISTORY …
GOSPEL OF JESUS’ WIFE HAS SAME HANDWRITING AS FRITZ’S FAKE GOSPEL OF JOHN FRAGMENT …
BLANK SPACES AT ENDS OF LINES 3 AND 6 SHOULDN’T BE THERE …
THOUGH THE PAPYRUS’S SHORT LINES ARE SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE RANDOM SENTENCE FRAGMENTS FROM THE MIDDLE OF SOME UNKNOWN PAGE, EACH LINE EXPRESSES A SURPRISINGLY FULL THOUGHT …
ALL FORGERIES IN THE ORBIT OF WALTER FRITZ EMPLOY THE SAME “CUT AND PASTE” M.O., WHETHER “ANCIENT” PAPYRI OR MODERN LETTERS AND DIPLOMAS …
KEY WORDS “MY WIFE” ARE SPOTLIGHTED …
STATEMENTS & ALLEGED ACTIONS BY WALTER FRITZ …
ALIGNMENT WITH SKILLS, LIFESTYLE, AGENDAS OF WALTER FRITZ AND HIS WIFE …
PROVENANCE STORY TOLD BY FRITZ DOESN’T WITHSTAND SCRUTINY …
DR. KAREN KING BELIEVED PAPYRUS WAS A FAKE FROM THE START, BEFORE CHANGING HER MIND. NOW SHE AGAIN BELIEVES IT’S A PROBABLE FAKE. …,
THE FEW SCHOLARS WHO ONCE CONSIDERED THE PAPYRUS AUTHENTIC NO LONGER DO …
THE HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW’S PEER REVIEW PROCESS WAS MARRED BY UNDISCLOSED CONFLICTS OF INTEREST THAT APPEAR TO HAVE VIOLATED THE ETHICS POLICY OF ITS PUBLISHER …
You think so? How would you like to replace all traditions with scientifically rational guidelines to bring about an ideal society of perfectly formed humans?How did "tradition" become "eugenics" in your head? In what possible way is "celebrate Christmas" ANYTHING like "Kill the imperfect babies"?
I think replacing traditions is just called progress. -- Lausten You think so? How would you like to replace all traditions with scientifically rational guidelines to bring about an ideal society of perfectly formed humans? -- SreeYou're totally not worth it, but I have a few minutes to kill.
I wouldn’t like replacing anything with some utopian wet dream that no doubt would fail. If we could do “ideal” and “perfect” we would be working on that. Whatever it might be, it would be better than replacing agrarian lifestyles with limited resource extraction, blowing the tops of mountains off, and labor laws that are just barely keeping slavery in check. Not that some idyllic farm life ever existed, but the wisdom of small communities had advantages that we’ve forgotten about and devalued.
I wouldn’t like replacing anything with some utopian wet dream that no doubt would fail. If we could do “ideal” and “perfect” we would be working on that. Whatever it might be, it would be better than replacing agrarian lifestyles with limited resource extraction, blowing the tops of mountains off, and labor laws that are just barely keeping slavery in check. Not that some idyllic farm life ever existed, but the wisdom of small communities had advantages that we’ve forgotten about and devalued.Reading between the lines, I sense a tortured soul praying to God for a better world. Better than what? The world, as we see it, is what we have collectively created. Would you say that it’s a lot better than 200 years ago? As an individual, I would say yes, definitely, and have much to be grateful for. Now, why would you see the world still filled with woes?
Reading between the lines, I sense a tortured soul praying to God for a better world.Really? In your "better world" the consensus would be, "Screw you, old people! You MIGHT cost me money so you can just die a horrible death in the streets and you are NOT getting medical care to ease your passing!"
Really? In your “better world” the consensus would be, “Screw you, old people! You MIGHT cost me money so you can just die a horrible death in the streets and you are NOT getting medical care to ease your passing!”There are humane ways to end life with dignity and love. If we are not afraid to die, then eternal oblivion becomes a blessing to all concerned. There is no better world; just this one in which dying is a part of living.
Would you say that it’s a lot better than 200 years ago? As an individual, I would say yes, --SreeYou answered your own question. Do you think it's better by accident? Or were there people imaging a better world back then and taking action?
Do you think it’s better by accident?Absolutely! The world did not get better in accordance with a master plan cooked up by intellectuals and ideologues. Society got better through the random evolution of culture.
Society got better through the random evolution of culture. -- SreeThat's actually what I said. This is pretty common among trolls. It's why I play your game. I already said this, pages ago. I never said anything about a master plan. And if you know anything about me, or read my websites, you would know that I include the variety of cultures in my mix, including the Jewish culture. They threw off the bonds of the Egyptians and created a more egalitarian society. They did a terrible job of writing it up and no doubt suffered from the common problems of how to maintain that culture, but some of their lessons managed to survive for centuries.
If you just tried to understand the words “random evolution”, you would get this. Evolution doesn’t create a diversity of life without some kind of force toward life being present. Notice I didn’t say “desire”. I can’t explain how life began but I don’t need to. It’s here. The human species will end just like all the others did, but life will go on somewhere for sometime after that.
Society got better through the random evolution of culture.Cultural characteristics evolve by surviving to being passed on by the people of the culture. If the cultural characteristics make the people better off and/or otherwise increases the ranks of members of that culture, then that cultural practice can be passed on.
It is analogous to but not the same thing as the evolution of organisms (in which physiological characteristics can be passed on by survival to reproduction.)
It is analogous to but not the same thing as the evolution of organisms (in which physiological characteristics can be passed on by survival to reproduction.)Cultural evolution is a fact. The evolution of organisms is a belief. You are making the same argument of a creationist who deduce that since an intricate watch must have a maker, therefore, the solar system must also have a maker.