What’s so shocking about saying that Jesus has a wife?
Have we not read Eph 5:22-33, Rev 21:9-14, et al?
Hurtado on the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”.
…It’s going waaay beyond the text to read into it uncritically some sort of romantic relationship between Jesus and a “wife/woman” in any real sense. Maybe . . . maybe not. It is entirely possible that the fragment is part of a writing of a more esoteric nature (other examples include texts often referred to as “gnostic”, such as Gospel of Philip), and in these texts words often don’t carry their usual meaning. That’s a large part of being esoteric!
So, let’s (1) be grateful for what looks like a fragment of some hitherto unknown early Christian text, and (2) hope that scholarly analysis will continue on all relevant questions, and (3) take along generous quantities of salt as we read the over-excited (and somewhat tendentious) reporting about the fragment in the news media.
[link: Larry Hurtado’s Blog]