The Ex-Wife of Jesus

The manuscript fragment "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife" is again in the news. This time, another expert on ancient manuscripts is weighing in on its authenticity. Both the papyrus and the ink have been authenticated as ancient. This is physics and chemistry.

An American academic at a University Wuppertal has raised some doubts. I found interesting the New York Times description of Professor Askeland's background:

Dr. Askeland is an evangelical Christian who is also affiliated with Indiana Wesleyan University, an evangelical college in Marion, Ind., and the Green Scholars Initiative. That organization was founded by the Christian owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of arts and crafts stores

Given his background, the obvious question is whether the unorthodox nature of the document is the reason for his skepticism, but he notes that “there are many gospels, many texts, that say all kinds of things about Jesus.”

Dr. Askeland bases his theory on the apparent coincidence that the line breaks on a associated document in the same hand, a fragment of the Coptic version of the Gospel of John, match those in the Codex Qau. Dr. Askeland says that this "defied confidence."

I am not a papyrologist, however it seems to me that one other possible explanation is that the scribe who wrote these two documents was trying to make a fairly exact copy of the Codex Qau (as Dr. Askeland assumes) at a time when the codex was a fairly new document.

In other words, if it were made in the twentieth century, or even the fifteenth, it's fair to call it a forgery. But if it were made in the eighth century, it's not really a forgery, just a copy of an old text.

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For we were civil engineers in Egypt

Passover is just past us. One of the discussions at my table was the story told in the Torah that Hebrew slaves built the pyramids. It's a great story, and if it lead to a passion for social justice, I'm all for it. It just isn't true.

Big chunks of the Passover narrative contradict the archeological evidence. It's been known for a long time that they pyramids were built by contract labor, not slaves. We know this because the Egyptians kept records on how much they paid for the labor and that it was paid to the workmen themselves.

Now a group at the University of Amsterdam has published a paper showing how they did it. And the answer it, just the way the Egyptians documented it. They left a record.

How do you move a huge block of stone or a massive statue over the dry and shifting desert sands? By pouring water on the sand so it wasn't quite so shifting any more. The Washington Post quotes the lead researcher, Daniel Bonn:

I was very surprised by the amount the puling force could be reduced — by as much as 50 percent — meaning the Egyptians needed only half the men to pull over the wet sand as compared to dry.

The record in question, from the tomb of Djehutihotep, shows a worker pouring water on the sand, but Bonn notes that

Egyptologists had been interpreting the water as part of a purification ritual, and had never sought a scientific explanation.

While this is not proof, given the greater ease of wet sand, it would seem likely that if it happened once by accident, then it was soon happening on purpose.

It certainly does show how science can (among so many other things) help us illuminate the distant past.

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You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

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