Outside the Bible

Via Unsettled Christianity:

Prof. Lawrence Schiffman talks with Rabbi Barry Schwartz, JPS Director, about his role as Editor of Outside the Bible, a groundbreaking JPS anthology of second temple literature to be released in 2013.

You can find Dr. Schiffman’s site (and blog) here. The publishers have a blog as well, which can be found – and watched for news – here.

Outside the Bible is the most comprehensive collection of texts comprising ancient Israel’s excluded scriptures and earliest biblical commentary, accompanied by modern commentary that places them in context and explains their significance for Jews and Christians alike.

Funds are needed to complete this groundbreaking project, destined to become a classic. This remarkable three-volume anthology is projected for late fall 2013 publication. For more information, please download the Outside the Bible Brochure. [PDF 2.45MB]

I cannot wait for such an anthology, which promises to fulfill a much needed voided in the area.

 

Jesus’ Wife is Dead

The Biblical World has the latest:

The story about the Jesus’ wife papyri seems to have run its course. The biggest news to come out in the last  few weeks is that it looks like the script on the fragment may have been copied from a Gospel of Thomas website. The reason this has been suggested is that the version of Thomas on the website has a typo, the scholar transcribing the text left out the direct object marker. When the papyri is compared to the website it has the same typo. It looks like someone may have forged the fragment from the website, but didn’t know Coptic or Thomas well enough to realize the problem.

For more on the story see:
Mark Goodacre  and James McGrath. Also, a nice overview of the story and how it has played out can be found in the Guardian, the NYPOST and Tech News.

 

Vatican Paper Says ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Scrap Is Fake

The Huffington Post reports:

Vatican City – The Vatican newspaper has added to the doubts surrounding Harvard University’s claim that a 4th century Coptic papyrus fragment showed that some early Christians believed that Jesus was married, declaring it a “fake.”

The newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published an article Thursday by leading Coptic scholar Alberto Camplani and an accompanying editorial by the newspaper’s editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, an expert in early Christianity. They both cited concerns expressed by other scholars about the fragment’s authenticity and the fact that it was purchased on the market without a known archaeological provenance.

“At any rate, a fake,” Vian entitled his editorial, which criticized Harvard for creating a “clamorous” media frenzy over the fragment by handing the scoop to two U.S. newspapers only to see “specialists immediately question it.”

Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the finding last week at an international congress on Coptic studies in Rome. The text, written in Coptic and probably translated from a 2nd century Greek text, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to “my wife,” whom he identifies as Mary.

The issue has had resonance since Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried, and any evidence to the contrary would fuel current debates about celibacy for priests and the role of women in the church.

As such, it’s not surprising that the Vatican would challenge the claim.

King has said the fragment doesn’t prove Jesus was married, only that some early Christians thought he was. She has acknowledged the doubts raised by her colleagues and says the fragment’s ink will be tested to help determine when it was written.

Some scholars attending the conference questioned the authenticity of the fragment, noting its form and grammar looked unconvincing and suspicious. Others said it was impossible to deduce the meaning of it given the fragmented nature of the script.

Camplani, a professor at Rome’s La Sapienza university who helped organize the conference, cited those concerns and added his own, specifically over King’s interpretation of the text – assuming it is real.

Rather than taking the reference to a wife literally, he wrote, scholars routinely take such references in primitive Christian and biblical literature metaphorically, to symbolize the spiritual union between Jesus and his disciples.

The absence of any reference to Jesus being married in historic documents “seems more significant than the literal interpretation of a few expressions from the new text, which by my reading should be understood purely in a symbolic sense,” he wrote.

Camplani nevertheless praised King’s academic paper on the subject as scientific and objective…

Read on here.

 

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: How a Fake Gospel-Fragment was Composed

Well researched and very revealing… As posted by Dr Mark Goodacre on his NT Blog:

I would like to thank Francis Watson, Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University for the opportunity to publish the following short article:

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: How a fake Gospel-Fragment was composed

A New Early Christian Text, Indicates Jesus May Have Been Married?

No, it proves nothing (!) and mostly (but not exclusively though) because it has no provenance. For any given antiquity, provenance is essential for credibility and historicity. That of this ancient manuscript is as yet undetermined.

[Emphasis mine.]

A discovery by a Harvard researcher may shed light on a controversial aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King says she has found an ancient papyrus fragment from the second century that, when translated, appears to indicate that Jesus was married.

The text from the New Testament is being dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” The part of it that’s drawing attention says, “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife’” in the Coptic language. The text, which is printed on papyrus the size of a business card, has not been chemically tested to verify its dating, but King and other scholars have said they are confident it is a genuine artifact.

“Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim,” King said at a conference in Rome on Tuesday. “This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’s death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions.”

King, who focuses on Coptic literature, Gnosticism and women in the Bible, has published on the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary of Magdala. She presented her research Tuesday evening in Rome, where scholars are gathered for the International Congress of Coptic Studies…

Further,

The fragment has eight incomplete lines of writing on one side and is badly damaged on the other side, with only three faded words and a few letters of ink that are visible, even with the use of infrared photography and computer-aided enhancement.

The private owner of the papyrus first approached King in 2010. King said she didn’t believe the document was authentic, but the owner persisted. She then asked the owner to bring the papyrus to Harvard, where she became convinced it was a genuine early Christian text fragment. Along with Princeton University professor Anne Marie Luijendijk and Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, King claims to have confirmed the document is real. The document’s owner has not been named and King said he does not want to be identified.

It’s unclear when the text was initially discovered…

There is more here.

Watch as ignorant, dilettantish, sensationalist media mongers run riot with the above story and the unsubstantiated claims made in it over the next couple of days… And when you do, please remember it is an undated, incomplete, unprovenanced, fragmentary document that can be saying and meaning anything (most likely, that someone centuries after the time of Jesus was of the opinion that he may have been married). Archaeologically speaking, there is simply far too much being read into this not-so-new discovery. Moreover, it is a well-known fact that the Coptic and Gnostic writings of that period are particularly notorious for being spurious and palpably fake.

Now all that said, Dr King is a fine scholar with a good reputation. Her forthcoming journal article for the Harvard Theological Review can be read here.

See also Bible Places:

The problem with today’s headline story is not the discovery of an ancient document that suggests that someone once believed that Jesus had a wife. There were many false and unbiblical teachings in ancient times, just as there are today. The problem is the media can very easily make a minor story into something sensational that appears to threaten historic Christianity…

 

Are the Four Gospels Historically Verifiable? (Arguments in Favor).

Dr Taylor Marshall was an Episcopal priest who is now a member of the Catholic Church. He blogs at Canterbury Tales and I find myself linking to his site often. Today, he asks: Are the Four Gospels Historically Verifiable? (Arguments in Favor):

Some claim that the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are not historical or are later documents not actually written by St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke, and St John.

Here are some quick facts demonstrating the historicity of the Four Gospels:

1. The Didache (written between AD 70 and 100 quotes the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It also refers to the “gospels” (plural) revealing that there already more than one.
2. Saint Clement (the fourth pope circa AD 96) in his epistle to the Corinthians contains ten quotations from both Matthew and Mark.
3. The Epistle of St Barnabas (circa 90-130) quotes Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
4. St Ignatius of Antioch (d. AD 108) quotes Matthew, Luke, and John.
5. Papias (circa AD 120) spoke of all four Gospels and said that Matthew first wrote the words and acts of Christ in the Hebrew language which was later translated into Greek.
6. St Justin Martyr knew all four Gospels and refers frequently to Luke.
7. Tertullian (ca. AD 200) spoke of the Gospels “of Matthew and John the Apostles and Mark and Luke the disciples of Apostles.”

There is literally no other literary work that has this much early testimony to support it. The writings of Cicero and Caesar do not even come close – to say nothing of Plato and especially Homer. The Gospels are the best attested historical documents known to mankind. The Gospels have more historical witness than even the Old Testament, which is rather amazing when you think of it.

Israeli Software Aims to Shed Light on the Bible

Ha’aretz reports:

A team of scholars and scientists are hoping the algorithm they developed will give intriguing new insights about what researchers believe to be the multiple hands that wrote the Bible.

Software developed by an Israeli team is giving intriguing new hints about what researchers believe to be the multiple hands that wrote the Bible.

The new software analyzes style and word choices to distinguish parts of a single text written by different authors, and when applied to the Bible its algorithm teased out distinct writerly voices in the holy book.

The program, part of a sub-field of artificial intelligence studies known as authorship attribution, has a range of potential application – from helping law enforcement to developing new computer programs for writers. But the Bible provided a tempting test case for the algorithm’s creators.

For millions of Jews and Christians, it’s a tenet of their faith that God is the author of the core text of the Hebrew Bible – the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses. But since the advent of modern biblical scholarship, academic researchers have believed the text was written by a number of different authors whose work could be identified by seemingly different ideological agendas and linguistic styles and the different names they used for God…

There’s more here.

Fascinating stuff!

HT:   eChurch Blog

NABRE: A NAB Version Revision

This was predicted. The USCCB has announced a revision to the New American Bible:

WASHINGTON (January 6, 2011)—The New American Bible, revised edition (NABRE), the first major update to the New American Bible (NAB) translation in 20 years, has been approved for publication. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, then president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), signed the canonical rescript approving publication on September 30, 2010. The NABRE will be available in a variety of print, audio and electronic formats on March 9, Ash Wednesday.

The new translation takes into account advances in linguistics of the biblical languages, as well as changes in vocabulary and the cultural background of English, in order to ensure a more accurate translation. This issue is addressed in the apostolic exhortation of Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, in which the pope says, “The inculturation of God’s word is an integral part of the Church’s mission in the world, and a decisive moment in this process is the diffusion of the Bible through the precious work of translation into different languages.”

The new translation also takes into account the discovery of new and better ancient manuscripts so that the best possible textual tradition is followed.

The NABRE includes the first revised translation of the Old Testament since 1970 and a complete revision of the Psalter. It retains the 1986 edition of the New Testament. Work on most books of the Old Testament began in 1994 and was completed in 2001. The 1991 revision of the Psalter was further revised between 2009 and 2010.

The revision aimed at making use of the best manuscript traditions available, translating as accurately as possible, and rendering the result in good contemporary English. In many ways it is a more literal translation than the original New American Bible and has attempted to be more consistent in rendering Hebrew (or Greek) words and idioms, especially in technical contexts, such as regulations for sacrifices. In translating the Psalter special effort was made to provide a smooth, rhythmic translation for easy singing or recitation and to retain the concrete imagery of the Hebrew.

The NABRE is approved for private use and study. It will not be used for the Mass, which uses an earlier, modified version of the NAB translation.

The last paragraph is telling and one can only assume that the cost implications of changing Missals, Liturgical Texts, the Lectionary, Prayerbooks, The Catechism and Large-Print Bibles etc. is a weighing factor. The NABRE is effectively the fourth edition of the NAB. 

There is even a Facebook site for the NABRE here.

Aurelius Leonides, a Flax Merchant from Egypt and the New Testament

Unreported Heritage News has:

A flax merchant from Egypt! Owner of 4th century New Testament papyrus identified.

 

A Princeton University researcher has identified the owner of a New Testament papyrus that dates to the time of Constantine the Great.

Constantine was the Roman emperor who allowed Christians to practice freely, ending hundreds of years of persecution. His decision led people throughout the empire to convert and disseminate the New Testament.

Now, thanks to this new discovery, we know the story of one of these Christians. 

“It is the first and only ancient instance where we know the owner of a Greek New Testament papyrus,” writes Professor AnneMarie Luijendijk in an article recently published in the Journal of Biblical Literature. “For most early New Testament manuscripts, we do not know where they were found, let alone who had owned them.”

The papyrus was discovered in the late 19th century at the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, located roughly 160 kilometres south of Cairo. The document contains the first seven verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

“There are several mistakes in spelling and part of verse 6 is omitted” wrote site excavators Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in 1899. They concluded that the papyrus was “no doubt a schoolboy’s exercise.”  

Who owned it?

To find the ancient owner of this papyrus Professor Luijendijk engaged in some archaeological detective work. Grenfell and Hunt mentioned in 1899 that “the papyrus was found tied up with a contract dating to 316 AD.” Unfortunately they did not specify which document this is.

“They were not particularly interested in the social context of the texts they had unearthed, or perhaps they were too busy editing their enormous find,” writes Luijendijk.

To find this missing document Luijendijk turned to a modern day papyrus database called the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis or HGV. She searched for examples from Oxyrhynchus that date to AD 316. She found 13 examples but only two of them were contracts. One discussed a “lease of a plot of land” while the other was “a contract for the sale of a donkey.”

Luijendijk determined that the donkey sale could not be the missing contract. “Grenfell and Hunt cannot have referred to the latter papyrus, for it did not come from their excavations.”

This left only the land lease document. Further investigation revealed that it was excavated during the same field season as the New Testament papyrus. This meant that it had to be the one.

From there the discovery got even more interesting.

The land lease contract had a name on it – that of a man named Aurelius Leonides, a flax merchant from Egypt. He must have owned both the contract and the New Testament papyrus.

Further research revealed that there are more than a dozen papyri from Oxyrhynchus that belonged to Leonides. This gave Luijendijk the opportunity to reconstruct this man’s past – and give some clues as to how Christianity may have spread in his community…

More on this interesting research here.