New research shows the ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’ is a fake

A papyrus unveiled in 2012 suggesting that Jesus Christ had been married is most likely fake, the Harvard University professor of divinity who first unveiled the manuscript and who defended the authenticity of the document for years conceded in an interview earlier this week.

According to LiveScience, the documents were given to Dr. Karen King, the first professor to be appointed as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard as well as the author of several books on Christianity and Gnosticism, but an unidentified source. The manuscript, which had been written in ancient Coptic script, contained a passage apparently referring to Jesus’ wife.

The papyrus almost immediately received much media attention and scrutiny from scholars and members of the religious laity alike, the latter of whom disputed its authenticity. In April 2014, a series of test results published in the Harvard Theological Review supported its authenticity, but later research published in 2015 in the Cambridge University journal New Testament Studies had concluded that had been partially copied from an online translation of the Gospel of Thomas.

Despite the dispute, King had long maintained that the document was authentic – until this week, when during an interview with The Atlantic, which had identified the source of the papyrus as an Egyptologist with a background in Coptic who also dabbled in the making of pornographic films starring his own wife, she admitted that the disclosure “tips the balance towards forgery.”

The long, strange story of the supposedly ancient papyrus

The so-called Gospel of Jesus’ wife was acquired by King from the man who has been identified as Walter Fritz, along with a photocopy of a signed sales contract, in December 2011. However, as the Harvard professor explained to reporters, she eventually realized that she knew little about the then-anonymous source, with whom she had exchanged email and met once.

Fritz, as it turned out, was a resident of North Port, Florida who studied at the Free University’s Egyptology institute and had formally studied the Coptic language. He told King that he was a devoted family man who was independently wealthy and enjoyed trips to Disney World, but he actually made pornographic films starring his own wife, a woman who according to The Atlantic had authored a book of “universal truths” and claimed to channel the voices of angels.

According to the Daily Mail, a note written and signed by Fritz has surfaced in which he said that he was “the sole owner of a papyrus fragment… which was named ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’” and that he guaranteed that neither he nor any third party had “forged, altered, or manipulated the fragment and/or its inscription in any way since it was acquired by me.”

Fritz claimed to have purchased the papyrus along with other documents from a man known as Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, the owner of ACMB-American Corporation for Milling and Boreworks in Venice, Florida, in 1999. While it is true that the two men were co-workers that the company, Laukamp’s stepson, René Ernest, was interviewed by LiveScience in 2014 and said that Laukamp did not sell the manuscript to Fritz and was not even interested in antiquities.

The website also said that it found evidence of forgery in a Greek text offered by an art company founded by Fritz in 1995, and a letter he provided to King claiming that the Gospel papyrus had been analyzed by Free University of Berlin professor Peter Munro and his colleagues was also a fake. In light of this and other evidence, King has admitted that Fritz lied to her, but said that she would not be convinced that the document itself is fake without additional testing.

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Image credit: Harvard Divinity School

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