A Egyptian papyrus fragment describing Jesus Christ as discussing his "wife" has been making global news recently. The idea of Jesus being married is many centuries old, having been circulated beginning in the late second or early third century and popularized in modern times by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. In 1999, I wrote in The Christ Conspiracy (13):
Jesus has "of late become a black, a white supremacist, a gay, a woman, a heretic, a Mediterranean peasant...a 'Cynic-sage,' an Arab, as well as the husband of Mary Magdalene and father of many children."
Although there remains skepticism as to its authenticity, the papyrus fragment may date to the 4th century and reflects a Gnostic dialogue typical of the latter half of the second century. The fragment obviously does not provide earth-shattering proof of Jesus's existence as a historical figure. The Greek god Zeus is widely known to have had a wife as well, as have gods too numerous for me to list here.
A New York Times article, "A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus' Wife", describes the discovery of the small scrap of papyrus by Harvard Divinity School's Dr. Karen L. King. The papyrus's origin or provenance is purportedly unknown, but the majority of experts who have studied it have asserted it is unlikely to be a forgery. The fragment has also not been carbon dated yet, because of its small size.
We next read in the NYT article:
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage....
...Dr. King was struck by phrases in the fragment like "My mother gave to me life," and "Mary is worthy of it," which resemble snippets from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary. Experts believe those were written in the late second century and translated into Coptic. She surmises that this fragment is also copied from a second-century Greek text.
The papyrus fragment's legible text of "33 words, scattered across 14 incomplete lines" is translated as follows:
- "not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe]"
- "The disciples said to Jesus"
- "deny. Mary is worthy of it"
- "Jesus said to them, My wife"
- "she will be able to be my disciple"
- "Let wicked people swell up"
- "As for me, I dwell with her in order to"
- "an image"
According to the Smithsonian article about this fragment, King's analysis is that the "wife" to whom Jesus refers "is probably Mary Magdalene, and Jesus appears to be defending her against someone, perhaps one of the male disciples":
"She will be able to be my disciple," Jesus replies. Then, two lines later, he says: "I dwell with her."
The Smithsonian writer cautions that this text is of no more historical value than The Da Vinci Code, thus emphasizing the fact that scores of people in antiquity were composing fictions about Jesus.
The multiple Marys
In her paper on the fragment, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife…': A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus," Karen King refers to the multiple Marys of Christian tradition, noting that they have been confusedly dealt with, often with the result that they are depicted interchangeably. For example, Mary the Mother has been equated with Mary Magdalene. As King points out in her analysis of the "Mary" in the papyrus:
The second issue is to identify Mary: Is she Jesus's mother...or his wife...? Scholars have long noted "the confusion of Marys" in early Christianity, due not least to the ubiquity of this name (Maria, Mariam, Mariamme) for Jewish women in the period. One of the most influential confusions has been the identification of Mary of Magdala with three other figures: Mary of Bethany (John 11:1-2; 12:1-3), the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11), and the sinner woman (Luke 7:37-38), resulting in the erroneous portrait of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute. Another is the confusion of Jesus's mother with Mary of Magdala, and even the substitution of the mother for her, for example as the first witness to the resurrected Jesus in John 20:11-17.
We would submit that the reason these Marys are treated haphazardly is because they represent not distinct "historical" figures but mythical manifestations of the "Triple Goddess." As Barbara G. Walker remarks in The Women's Encyclopedia of Books and Secrets (614):
Thus it seems Mary the Whore was only another form of Mary the Virgin, otherwise the Triple Goddess Mari-Anna-Ishtar, the Great Whore of Babylon who was worshipped along with her savior-son in the Jerusalem temple. The Gospel of Mary said all three Marys of the canonical books were one and the same... The seven "devils" exorcised from Mary Magdalene seem to have been the seven Maskim, or Anunnaki, Sumero-Akkadian spirits of the seven nether spheres, born of the Goddess Mari...
(It should be noted that the "Anunnaki" are not "real people" but mythical figures.)
The heavenly yoking together
Speaking of the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, a text evidently from the latter half of the second century, in which Jesus is depicted as often kissing Mary Magdalene, King notes:
Magdalene is represented as the image of the heavenly syzygy between the Savior and Sophia, a pairing that replays the syzygy of Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The Greek word syzygy means "yoking together" and represents in Gnostic literature a pair of energies or beings, here the mystical or allegorical couple of the Gnostic savior Jesus and the Gnostic divinity Sophia, the anthropomorphization of not only "wisdom," as her name means in Greek, but also the "female spiritual power." In other words, Sophia is Jesus's consort or wife, a coupling reflected in the Gnostic Mary Magdalene, with whom he "dwells," as in the fragment.
In the complex Gnostic ideology, Sophia resides in the "incorruptible realm" above the material world, and since antiquity she has been identified with Mary Magdalene, the embodiment of Sophia and her role as Christ's syzygy. Hence, we need look no further for Jesus's wife than to Sophia/Mary, an allegorical and mythical figure.
History or myth?
It is admitted that the Gnostic stories concerning Jesus, dwelling in the celestial realms and interacting with Sophia, Ialdabaoth, the Aeons and Archons, are allegorical, mythical and fictional, not literal history. Significant Gnostic literature actually appears earlier in the historical record than do the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as we have them. Indeed, these historicizing and literalizing biblical texts emerge clearly in the historical record at the end of the second century, seemingly as a response to the allegorical Gnostic texts.
In the press release of this papyrus discovery, Dr. King "repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married." Nor should this fragment be taken as proof that Jesus was a historical person in the first place. So long as these artifacts are interpreted through the false lens of historicity, they will not make sense.
These tales do not represent literal history, and this fragment would serve as further evidence that we are discussing mythmaking here, not historical facts. The "Jesus Christ" of the Gnostic (and canonical) texts is a composite of characters, some real and mythical, compiled as the supposed historical speaker of numerous sayings that in reality are pre-Christian and proto-Gnostic.
Further Reading
"Jesus said to them, 'My wife…'": A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus by Karen L. King
The Gospel of Jesus's Wife: A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus
The Inside Story of a Controversial New Text About Jesus
Harvard claim of Jesus' Wife papyrus scrutinized
Reality check on Jesus and his 'wife'
Who was Mary Magdalene?
Who is the Virgin Mary?
The Gospel according to Mary Magdalene
Pistis Sophia
Religion and the PhD: A Brief History
Aeon (Gnosticism)
Who are the Anunnaki?
When were the gospels written?
