Jesus had a wife?

Papyrus test results: Papyrus Referring to Jesus’ Wife Is More Likely Ancient Than Fake, Scientists Say--Percy

As one commentator (blogger) has suggested, this may merely mean that the paprus was an ancient forgery, rather than a modern forgery.

In fact I read one piece that says the promoter of the fragment, Karen King, isn't even arguing that Jesus was actually married.

I was always taught that the church was His wife....and am predisposed to believe the symbolism to be true. Jesus would never settle for a mere human woman....He wants all of us in communion.

That's like saying that He would never settle for mere loaves and fishes. You have to separate the physical from the symbolic. If He ate physical food, why wouldn't He have a physical wife?

I think that the "ancient forgery" is reaching a bit. Indeed, it looks to me like trying to cling to the idea of forgery despite the evidence.Which is odd, since a heterodox manuscript, even from the 5th Century AD, is hardly a big threat to Christian ideas about Jesus.

From my understanding of the article, while this artifact was originally dated by the University of Arizona as being from around the time of Jesus, this date was updated with more recent tests to about 700-800CE in Egypt. I agree that I am not sure a document, even an authentic one, from this time period will create too much unrest without the corroborating evidence to go along with it. I am sure you will get some of the vocal fundamentalists out screaming about it, but for a majority of Christians, they will eitherA: Deny the accuracy of the information, claiming that one note from 800 years after the fact is not enough to overturn current academic thoughts on whether Jesus was married.B: Claim that married or not, Jesus is still the Son of God and that this does not affect their belief in anyway. In fact, after all the Dan Brown hysteria from fundamentalists, many people have opened up to the possibility that Jesus was married.An interesting point: The discoverer is not claiming that this artifact even for sure means that Jesus was married, but that it could come from warring factions within the church during its beginning phases about whether or not women could become disciples of Christ. This could have an effect on the clergy in some churches that have until this time refused women in higher authority positions. Source: TIME Magazine

The original U of Arizona dating was several centuries before Jesus, which could not be accurate, then in one part of the article it says the fragment is similar to others from 400-800 CE and then in another the ink is consistent with those from 400 BCE to 800 CE.I do not know of this Laurie Goodstein but she is an american reporter for an american news corporation so chances are she has no friggin clue what the hell she is reporting. Without having read the actual dating study being reported here I'm not so sure we can say what age range was actually determined.Then, again, I'm not sure it matters. The fragment is, apparently, way way old. That's the actual scientific jargon of papyrologists. I guess you can make an ologist from just about anything these days.In the deeper sense, does it really matter to any but the most misogynistic cults of religious zealots? Like the catholics and the protestants?I read somewhere once, maybe someone here can confirm this, but as I recall, in that culture at that time, any male in an honored profession such as carpenter would have been married by arrangement before his mid-twenties whether he want to or not. It was just their way. Since there is a total lack of any myths about Jesus's earlier life, if he really existed in that culture at that time, he most probably was married. Even as "god", or some close relation, there is the valid assumption that he would have fit in with the going culture just as did everyone else.Whether the papyrologists and the ancientinkyologists declare this fragment to be way way old instead of just way old won't really make any difference in this world anyway. Now, if the fragment spoke of Jesus's two older brothers, well then, that would have been something. Edited by AZPaul3, : title

Content removed. --AdminEdited by Admin, : Possibly inappropriate.

Sure it does, because everyone has a personal vision of Jesus and that's how he is in real life they can see the image in their head so it must be true, and no old document is gonna tell them otherwise, next their going to claim he was not a blue eyed blonde.

But His wife was - you know how those Jewish boys love the shiksas.