A Harvard Professor, A Con Man…

17 Replies to “A Harvard Professor, A Con Man…”

1. Dang paywalls. Not a paywall in the true sense of the word…but you get where I’m comin’ from.

   1. I read the book review…no paywall.

      Might read the book for this reason:
      …this fiasco, is for enthusiasts of ancient Christianity, as well as anyone who likes watching snooty academics brought low and readers of idea-driven capers, whether by Daniel Silva or Janet Malcolm. It’s a barely believable tale, crazier than a tweed-sniffer in the faculty lounge.

      1. That heresy’s been trotted out every 10 or 20 years, maybe simply to stir things up.

         1. Well, here all this time I though Jesus was gay and had a thing going with Judas, whom he later dumped. This led to Judas selling out him out.

            It was a liberal who told me this.

2. I’m sorry I clicked on the “old, dead, grey lady.” Another reason nyc is over.

3. I was blocked from the article so found this: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/ariel-sabar-what-happened-to-the-gospel-of-jesus-wife/615160/

4. “A Harvard professor…”

   One needs to read no further.

5. I might have to read the book just to see how the lady who claimed the scrap was authentic squares the idea that a scrap of paper having Jesus speak of His wife proves the misogyny of the patriarchy with the idea that Jesus didn’t exist at all but was merely a creation of the misogynist patriarchy. Other than the normal study involving that time-honored creed of the true believer – “I Want To Believe.”

6. I bet she made out like a bandit.

7. Considering current events, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a bombshell papyrus proving that Jesus was trans.

   What’s the over/under on linguists admitting that “amen” has been mistranslated for centuries? Recent research shows that it really should have been “Yaaaaassssss! You slay, kween!” all along.

8. “King was mum on who the stranger from Florida was who had given her the fragment, but the writer Ariel Sabar, using sophisticated tools like Google, uncovered that it was one Walter Fritz, a former director of the Stasi Museum in East Germany with a fake Egyptology degree”

   A Communist lied. Who would’ve thunk that?

   1. A former Stasi agent who kept body and soul together pimping out his wife.

      The GDR, by all accounts, was a sewer of sexual promiscuity, in part because it was one of the few ways to ensure one temporarily forgot the misery of communism that wasn’t illegal or in chronic short supply (the other being alcohol). Abortion was freely available on demand. East Germans are renowned for their promiscuity to this day.

      Scratch a communist hard enough and you’ll find a pervert. Every time.

      1. The GDR, by all accounts, was a sewer of sexual promiscuity

         Nobody was exempt from being observed by the Stasi. One story I heard about figure skater Katrina Witt was that her bedroom athletics were frequently monitored. I’ll leave it to one’s imagination what the agents found out.

9. Questionable Scripture’s been around from the very beginning of the church, partly because numerous sects, with their own interpretations and doctrines, were formed.

   It took nearly 400 years before an official canon was accepted. Great care was taken to determine the spiritual relevancy of those writings as well as their authenticity.

   1. “In God We Trust. All others we audit.”
      Arthur Andersen, LLC.

   2. As you note, the official canon of scripture was determined by Catholic bishops at the Church councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A.D. 397). I would further note that the bible remained intact for all Christians for the next millennium until Martin Luther, a rogue Augustinian friar, removed whole books and altered language in others in his rebellion against the Church.

      1. Translating the Bible from Latin into the language of the parishioners isn’t altering it. It made God’s Word available to everyone who was literate to read at their own convenience and to share it as well.

         As I recall, the books that were removed became the Aprocrypha. They’re not considered part of the Protestant canon because they were not considered to be theologically important or their actual authenticity could not be clearly established. In all of this, Luther, a reformer, referred to the original texts to ensure that his work was correct.

         The Aprocypha has not been discarded, however. There is provision in the Lutheran lectionary for passages from it to be read as alternate texts.