Antiquitopia

There has been a lot of recent buzz about the Jesus Wife Fragment again.  So much so that it is difficult to keep track - especially if you are busy teaching and researching other things.  But I think there are two recent thoughtful responses to read.  The first is Caroline Schroeder's interview with Anthony LeDonne ( here ), in which she discusses why she thinks it is a forgery in the aftermath of Christian Askeland's analysis of the companion fragment from the Lycopolitan Gospel of John.  The second post is one by April DeConick, who has - by and large - remained out of the free-for-all fray until now.  Her post , however, is a series of questions that gets at the methodological assumptions we are making in asserting the fragment a forgery or not.  There is so much out there at the moment that a roundup of posts would be ridiculously large, a catalogue of ships for the Jesus Wife Fragment.  I think, however, that if one reads these two posts and foll...

There may be more evidence pointing to the Coptic fragment concerning "Jesus' wife," that it is a forgery.  And what gave it away?  I rare transcription error found in the first line that otherwise only occurs in a modern interlinear edition of the Gospel of Thomas.  See discussion by Mark Goodacre here .

For full discussion, see here . Ancient Book of Mark Found Not So Ancient After All ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2009) — A biblical expert at the University of Chicago, Margaret M. Mitchell, together with experts in micro-chemical analysis and medieval bookmaking, has concluded that one of the University Library's most enigmatic possessions is a forgery. The book, a copy of the Gospel of Mark, will remain in the collection as a study document for scholars studying the authenticity of ancient books. Scholars have argued for nearly 70 years over the provenance of what's called the Archaic Mark, a 44-page miniature book, known as a "codex," which contains the complete 16-chapter text of the Gospel of Mark in minuscule handwritten text. The manuscript, which also includes 16 colorful illustrations, has long been believed to be either an important witness to the early text of the gospel or a modern forgery, said Mitchell, Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature...

I can imagine a forger clever enough to imitate another's signature so exactly that a handwriting expert would swear in court that it was genuine, but I cannot imagine a forger so clever that he could imitate his own signature inexactly enough to make a handwriting expert swear that it was a forgery. (Or is it only that I cannot imagine the circumstances in which anyone could want to do such a thing?) (W.H. Auden, Dichtung and Wahrheit X) It is almost like taking Polonius' advice to Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet as inevitable: not only "to thine own self be true" but one cannot but be true to oneself. Although one's signature is duplicable, one can only falsify others and not oneself. It is an interesting idea to express in handwriting. Although I am not sure it is true, and, in fact, Auden himself expresses parenthetical doubts that not being able to think of one who could falsify oneself is due to a lack of imagination.