Researcher adds to evidence that ‘Jesus’s wife’ papyrus is a forgery
A fragmentary papyrus dubbed by Harvard scholar Karen King as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”—and declared in April after lengthy tests to be an authentic writing from centuries ago—has been challenged anew by some scholars as a forgery.
An American researcher, Christian Askeland, published findings in late April that some colleagues say provides convincing evidence that the tiny fragment was forged.
The Washington Post said on May 5 that suspicions arose regarding another Coptic language fragment purportedly from the Gospel of John that was part of King’s article in the Harvard Theological Review. Both fragments, said Askeland, were written in the same hand and inked in a dialect that scholars say did not exist at the time they were said to be written.
