Commentary

POSTED AT 10:48 PM ON Sep. 20, 2012  (UPDATED AT 11:00 PM ON Sep. 20, 2012)

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An aging piece of papyrus recently sent to Harvard researchers for translation and authentication asks the titillating question, “Did Jesus have a wife?”

I ask, “So what?”

The Coptic text has given added legitimacy to the theories touted in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”

Though the scholars have just a fragment, they were able to translate the words “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife’” and “she will be able to be a disciple.”

The scrap, which is being called “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” is declared authentic, as its author had poor penmanship, which is perhaps characteristic of persecuted Christians in 400 CE Egypt.

Obviously, the idea that Jesus was married or even allowed a female disciple flies in the face of many conventional Christian, and particularly Catholic, teachings.

It questions the Catholic limitations on who can join the clergy. More radically, it removes much of the religious justification for the subservience of women.

“Beyond internal Catholic Church politics, a married Jesus invites a reconsideration of orthodox teachings about gender and sex. 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,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Huffington Post blogger.

Sorry, Mike, but I wouldn’t count on any reconsideration of anything anytime soon.

The excitement surrounding this discovery is frankly somewhat lost on me.

As if a Harvard historian’s discovery is going to work itself into next Sunday’s sermon.  
I imagine there will be a lot of talk in the Harvard Divinity School, but not so much in the church down the street.

Traditional Christian teachings are already too ingrained in people’s lives. 

If churches suddenly pivoted and told their congregations to change how they view themselves, stopped asking wives to obey their husbands and insisted that sex was OK outside of procreation, I’m sure many people would stand up and walk out.

The belief that Jesus was celibate is too widespread to be overturned with this flimsy piece of evidence. 

Postulating a world in which Jesus was married is an interesting thought experiment but has little practical value. 

No matter what is historically true, we do not live in a world where Jesus was married because it is not a conventional belief. 

Maybe this scrap of papyrus will get some play on “Jeopardy” or its own card in the newest versions of Trivial Pursuit, but however scintillating the discovery seems now, I doubt it changes anything.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu