Jesus’ wife? Questions about a Coptic fragment

In an announcement from Rome that seemed scripted by The Da Vinci Code novelist Dan Brown, a Harvard professor stated that an ancient scrap of papyrus mentions Jesus’ wife. The fourth-century fragment written in Coptic contains part of a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, said Karen King, a historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School.

According to King, one broken-off sentence says, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’” Also in the fragment, Jesus refers to “my mother [who] gave me life” and to a “Mary” who is called either “worthy” or “not worthy” by the disciples (the translation is uncertain). King said it’s possible that Jesus cites his wife to confirm that Mary “is able to be my disciple.”

King made the September 18 announcement in Rome and on the same day presented a paper on the find at the tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, which meets every four years and was hosted this year by a Vatican academic institution. King and collaborator AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton University named the text that contained the fragment the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, for reference purposes.