Albert Mohler on Masquerade Scholarship

[Jim Watt]

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September 20, 2012


 The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife? When Sensationalism Masquerades as Scholarship
-

Thursday, September 20, 2012

<http://www.albertmohler.com/files/2012/09/122487884.jpg>The whole world
changed on Tuesday. At least, that is what many would have us to believe. *
Smithsonian* magazine, published by the Smithsonian Institution, declares
that the news released Tuesday was “apt to send jolts through the world of
biblical scholarship — and beyond.” Really?

What was this news? Professor Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School
announced at a conference in Rome that she had identified an ancient
papyrus fragment that includes the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’”
Within hours, headlines around the world advertised the announcement with
headlines like “Ancient Papyrus Could Be Evidence that Jesus Had a Wife” (*The
Telegraph*).

The *Smithsonian* article states that “the announcement at an academic
conference in Rome is sure to send shock waves through the Christian
world.” The magazine’s breathless enthusiasm for the news about the papyrus
probably has more to do with advertising its upcoming television
documentary than anything else, but the nation’s most prestigious museum
can only injure its reputation with this kind of sensationalism.
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*A Fragment of a Text, an Even More Fragmentary Argument*

What Karen King revealed on Tuesday was a tiny papyrus fragment with Coptic
script on both sides. On one side the fragment includes about 30 words on
eight fragmentary lines of script. *The New York Times *described the
fragment as “smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in
black ink legible under a magnifying glass.” The lines are all fragmentary,
with the third line reading “deny. Mary is worthy of it,” and the next
reading “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” The fifth states, “she will be
able to be my disciple.”

The papyrus fragment, believed to be from the fourth century, was delivered
to Professor King by an anonymous source who secured the artifact from a
German-American dealer, who had bought it years ago from a source in East
Germany. As news reports made clear, the fragment is believed by many to be
an authentic text from the fourth century, though two of three authorities
originally consulted by the editors of the *Harvard Theological
Review*expressed doubts. Such a find would be interesting, to be sure,
but hardly
worthy of the international headlines.

The little piece of ancient papyrus with its fragmentary lines of text is
now, in the hands of the media, transformed into proof that Jesus had a
wife, and that she was most likely Mary Magdalene. Professor King will bear
personal responsibility for most of this over-reaching. She has called the
fragment nothing less than “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” — a title *The
Boston Globe* rightly deemed “provocative.” That same paper reported that
Professor King decided to publicize her findings before additional tests
could verify the fragment’s authenticity because she “feared word could
leak out about its existence in a way that sensationalized its meaning.”
Seriously? King was so concerned about avoiding sensationalism that she
titled the fragment “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife?”

This is sensationalism masquerading as scholarship. One British newspaper
notes that the claims about a married Jesus seem more worthy of fans of Dan
Brown’s fictional work, *The Da Vinci Code,* than “real-life Harvard
professors.” If the fragment is authenticated, the existence of this little
document will be of interest to historians of the era, but it is insanity
to make the claims now running through the media.

Professor King claims that these few words and phrases should be understood
as presenting a different story of Jesus, a different gospel. She then
argues that the words should be read as claiming that Jesus was married,
that Mary Magdalene was likely his wife. She argues further that, while
this document provides evidence of Jesus’ marital status, the phrases do
not necessarily mean he was married. More than anything else, she argues
against the claim that Christianity is a unified body of commonly-held
truths.

Those familiar with Karen King’s research and writings will recognize the
argument. Her 2003 book,* The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the
First Woman Apostle*, argued that another text from the era presented Mary
Magdalene as the very model for apostleship.

*A Preference for Heterodoxy*

The thread that ties all these texts and arguments together is the 1945
discovery of some 52 ancient texts near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt.
These texts are known to scholars as Gnostic literature. The texts present
heretical narratives and claims about Jesus and his message, and they have
been a treasure trove for those seeking to replace orthodox Christianity
with something different.

Several ambitions drive this effort. Feminists have sought to use the Nag
Hammadi texts to argue that women have been sidelined by the orthodox
tradition, and that these Gnostic texts prove that women were central to
the leadership of the early church, perhaps even superior to the men.
Others have used the Nag Hammadi texts to argue that Christianity was
diverse movement marked by few doctrinal concerns until it was hijacked by
political and ecclesiastical leaders, who constructed theological orthodoxy
as a way of establishing churchly power in the Roman Empire and then
stifling dissent. Still others argue that Christianity’s moral prohibitions
concerning sexuality, and especially homosexuality, were part of this
forced orthodoxy which, they argue, was not the essence of true
Christianity. More than anything else, many have used the Nag Hammadi texts
as leverage for their argument that Christianity was originally a way of
spirituality centered in the teachings of a merely human Christ — not a
message of salvation through faith in a divine Jesus who saves sinners
through the atonement he accomplished in his death and resurrection.

Professor King, along with Princeton’s Elaine Pagels, has argued that the
politically powerful leaders who established what became orthodox
Christianity silenced other voices, but that these voices now speak through
the Nag Hammadi texts and other Gnostic writings. Writing together, King
and Pagels argue that “the traditional history of Christianity is written
almost solely from the viewpoint of the side that won, which was remarkably
successful in silencing or distorting other voices, destroying their
writings, and suppressing any who disagreed with them as dangerous and
obstinate ‘heretics.’”

King and Pagels both reject traditional Christianity, and they clearly
prefer the voices of the heretics. They argue for the superiority of
heterodoxy over orthodoxy. In the *Smithsonian* article, King’s scholarship
is described as “a kind of sustained critique of what she called the
‘master story’ of Christianity: a narrative that casts the canonical texts
of the New Testament as a divine revelation that passed through Jesus in
‘an unbroken chain’ to the apostles and their successors — church fathers,
ministers, priests and bishops who carried  these truths into the present
day.”

King actually argues against the use of terms like “heresy” and even
“Gnostic,” claiming that the very use of these terms gives power to the
forces of orthodoxy and normative Christianity. Nevertheless, she cannot
avoid using the terms herself (even in the titles of her own books). She
told Ariel Sabar of* Smithsonian*, “You’re talking to someone who’s trying
to integrate a whole set of ‘heretical’ literature into the standard
history.”

*Orthodoxy and Heresy: The Continual Struggle*

Those who use Gnostic texts like those found at Nag Hammadi attempt to
redefine Christianity so that classic, biblical, orthodox Christianity is
replaced with a very different religion. The Gnostic texts reduce Jesus to
the status of a worldly teacher who instructs his followers to look within
themselves for the truth. These texts promise salvation through
enlightenment, not through faith and repentance. Their Jesus is not the
fully human and fully divine Savior and there is no bodily resurrection of
Christ from the dead.

Were these writings found at Nag Hammadi evidence of the fact that the
early church opposed and attempted to eliminate what it understood to be
false teachings? Of course. That is what the church said it was doing and
what the Apostles called upon the church to do. The believing church did
not see heresy as an irritation — it saw heterodoxy as spiritual death.
Those arguing for the superiority of the Gnostic texts deny the divine
inspiration of the New Testament and prefer the heterodox teachings of the
Gnostic heretics. Hauntingly, the worldview of the ancient Gnostics is very
similar, in many respects, to various worldviews and spiritualities around
us today.

The energy behind all this is directed to the replacement of orthodox
Christianity, its truth claims, its doctrines, its moral convictions, and
its vision of both history and eternity with a secularized — indeed,
Gnositicized — new version.

Just look at the attention this tiny fragment of papyrus has garnered. Its
few words and broken phrases are supposed to cast doubt on the New
Testament and the doctrines of orthodox Christianity. A tiny little
fragment which, even if authentically from the fourth century, is placed
over against the four New Testament Gospels, all written within decades of
Jesus’ earthy ministry.

“The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife?” Not hardly. This is sensationalism
masquerading as scholarship. Nevertheless, do not miss what all this really
represents — an effort to replace biblical Christianity with an entirely
new faith

*
*

*NOTE**: * Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. serves as President of The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary - the flagship school of the Southern Baptist
Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world. See

*<AlbertMohler.com> *for other postings of like value as the above. *
*



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