The Jesus’s Wife Fragment: The Scientific Evidence
Because the text concerning Jesus’s wife is written in Sahidic, a language of ancient Egypt, it may be a transcription of an earlier Coptic text that was based on a Greek copy, as many early Christian gospels are. Given similarities in wording and subject to the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip, the text of the GJW may originate in a time as early as the second half of the second century C.E.
The discovery of previously unknown ancient Christian texts is not unprecedented: a book called the Berlin Codex was discovered at the end of the nineteenth century; a significant collection of Coptic writings was discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945; and the Tachos Codex was published in the early 1990s. According to an online Q and A at the Harvard Divinity School website, “These works are valuable in providing evidence for a fuller and more accurate history of the diverse forms, practices, and ideas held by Christians in the earliest centuries after the death of Jesus.”
- “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’”: A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment Karen L. King
- The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: A Preliminary Paleographical Assessment Malcolm Choat
- Characterization of the Chemical Nature of the Black Ink in the Manuscript of The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife through Micro-Raman Spectroscopy James T. Yardley and Alexis Hagadorn
- Study of Two Papyrus Fragments with Fourier Transform Infrared Microspectroscopy Joseph M. Azzarelli, John B. Goods, and Timothy M. Swager
- Accelerated Mass Spectrometry Radiocarbon Determination of Papyrus Samples Gregory Hodgins
- Accelerated Mass Spectrometry Radiocarbon Determination of Papyrus Samples Noreen Tuross
- The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of Authenticity Leo Depuydt
- Reponse to Leo Depuydt, “The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of Authenticity” Karen L. King