Thursday, September 27, 2012

Jesus Had a Wife

On September 18, Professor Karen L. King announced at a conference in Rome that she had come into the possession of a papyrus fragment that included the shocking words "Jesus said to them, 'My wife.'"  Dr. Karen King is Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She says she obtained the fragment from an anonymous source who in turn acquired it from a German artifact dealer.  The New York Times gives this description of the fragment:
"The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple."*
This controversial discovery has been the source of a lot of talk recently.    The Telegraph reports, "Ancient papyrus could be evidence that Jesus had a wife"*  The Title of a Huffington Post article declares, "'The Gospel Of Jesus' Wife,' New Early Christian Text Indicates Jesus May Have Been Married."*  And apparently the Smithsonian magazine declares the discovery to be “apt to send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship — and beyond.”* 

So what are we to make of this great revolutionary discovery?  Absolutely nothing. For one, the fragment is thought to date to the fourth century, about three hundred years after the life of Christ.  Two, it contains only fragmented sentences consisting of eight separated lines and totaling thirty words with no surrounding paragraphs or context. Three, it is the only surviving text that suggests that Jesus was married which means that it was not a believable idea to those closest to the historical Jesus. Moreover, it is written in Coptic (an Egyptian language) which means the most that this fragment can prove is that a small sect of Egyptian Christians made it a part of their religion to believe that Jesus had a wife.  

This is why Dr. King herself admits that the fragment says nothing about whether or not the actual historical Jesus had a wife.  According to her,
"This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century."*

This is coming from Dr. King who is not a conservative by a long shot.  There are other problems too.  Like whether the fragment is even genuine to begin with. Even the Huffington Post has recently speculated on a forgery.*     

So what about all this media hype about Jesus' wife?  William Lane Craig calls it - "lazy and reckless reportage," and Al Mohler says it is "sensationalism masquerading as scholarship," but I think my favorite response was from New Zealand philosopher Glenn Peoples:
"So is there anything shocking here? No. Does this change anything in regard to what the overall body of evidence on the life of Jesus has to show us? Not in the least. Will it get people excited, bloggers blogging about the orthodox Christian cover-up of the real Jesus and the suppression of the truth? No doubt. Prepare yourself. Suddenly, people are going to read a sensational article about a tiny scrap of parchment and become experts on early church history."*

-LittleGoose
P.S. leave a comment



* http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9553178/Ancient-papyrus-could-be-evidence-that-Jesus-had-a-wife.html

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/the-gospel-of-jesus-wife-_n_1891325.html

*http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/20/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-when-sensationalism-masquerades-as-scholarship/

*http://news.hds.harvard.edu/files/King_JesusSaidToThem_draft_0917.pdf

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120921/us-scholar-jesus-s-wife/

*http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/2012/the-gospel-of-jesus-wife/

Friday, September 7, 2012

Classical Argument # 4 - The Ontological Argument


The last major classical argument that I'm going to look at is the Ontological Argument.  The word ontology refers to the study of being or existence.  This argument was first proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in 1078 in a written prayer called "Proslogion."  Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." The argument goes if God did not exist then it would be possible to conceive of something greater which is a contradiction and therefore God must exist.  Most people think this is some sort of trick with word play, but interestingly almost every major thinker in the history of philosophy has dealt with this argument.  While Anselm's version has largely been abandoned, some modern versions have resurrected the argument and today it is not only alive but surprisingly flourishing. 
For this argument, we are defining God as the "greatest possible being."  As the greatest possible being, God is by definition a necessary being.  A necessary being is by definition a being that must exists if its existence is possible.

#1 If it is possible that God exists, then God exists
#2 It is possible that God exists
#3 Therefore, God exists

Yet again, the argument is valid, meaning the conclusion follows from the premises.  The only way to argue against the conclusion is to challenge the premises.  Almost everyone, including most atheists, would agree with premise #2 (at least initially).  So the whole argument falls on premise #1.  But as stated above, if God did exist He would be the greatest possible being, and the greatest possible being would have the attribute of necessity, and something that is necessary exists if it's existence is possible.  "Yah right!" is what you are probably thinking, but it is interesting that this is relatively uncontroversial because one definition simply leads to the next.  But if premise #1 is true, then the only way to deny the argument is to go back and deny premise #2.  An opponent of the argument must show that the concept of God is incoherent or otherwise impossible. Otherwise, the argument is sound and the conclusion is true. 

Strengths:
  • Most skeptics would say that God probably does not exist.  But to say that God probably does not exist is just to say that God possibly exists and therefore concedes premise #2.
  • The argument makes the issue black or white - God's existence is either true or impossible. 
  • If successful, the argument poses a few interesting situations.  For instance every agnostic alive would have to believe that God exists in order to be consistent with agnosticism, thereby contradicting himself.
Weaknesses:
  • The argument is very abstract (and silly to some) and consequently hard to take seriously.
  • It is easy to deny premise #2, which is what most opponents of the argument do.
  • The argument does not argue for Christianity (as revealed by Jesus), but only for the greatest possible being.
Bible References:
  • Psalm 14:1, 53:1, 145:3
If successful this argument leaves you with the greatest possible being.  This greatest possible being would have every great-making property.