Painting by Alexander Ivanov 1834, "The Appearance of Christ to Maria Magdalene"from here
To keep this blog up-to-date I feel I must write a post about this subject, since it has been floating around in the media recently. We talked about this in seminary the other day, and I would love to hear your point of view on this as well.
In this article from Harvard magazine you can read about the papyrus fragment that emerged from a private collector and ended up on the desk of professor Karen L. King. It is estimated that the fragment dates back to the fourth century, but the dating of the ink is not completed yet. Furthermore experts believe that the writing on the papyrus is a copy of a text from approximately 150 A.D. and is translated from Greek to Sahidic.
The most newsworthy part of the text, is that it says : "...Jesus said to them: 'My wife...'" Which of course has called a lot of attention to this - perhaps - history changing papyrus.
But professor King ask us to remember that even though the ink, and the text is real, it is not a proof that Jesus in fact has a wife, but only that some people at the time of the production of the text, believed that he had.
I wondered if it wouldn't actually make a lot of sense in your theology, that Jesus was married, because of the emphasis on the family and the marriage as a key to the Celestial Kingdom. But maybe Jesus didn't need this? And would he have had children, and thereby great grandchildren, still living on this earth ?
The most newsworthy part of the text, is that it says : "...Jesus said to them: 'My wife...'" Which of course has called a lot of attention to this - perhaps - history changing papyrus.
But professor King ask us to remember that even though the ink, and the text is real, it is not a proof that Jesus in fact has a wife, but only that some people at the time of the production of the text, believed that he had.
I wondered if it wouldn't actually make a lot of sense in your theology, that Jesus was married, because of the emphasis on the family and the marriage as a key to the Celestial Kingdom. But maybe Jesus didn't need this? And would he have had children, and thereby great grandchildren, still living on this earth ?
- Do you ever think about the "historical Jesus", and how does his life affect your religious belief?
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