Jesus' Wife and Finding the Truth

A few weeks back, when I saw the headlines that an ancient manuscript had been found that seemed to indicate Jesus had a wife, my reaction was to mutter, “It’s a fake.”

But that’s not fair. It’s not enough to just write it off because, as Christians, we should be truth lovers, not quick-drawing skeptics who’s rejections are little more than emotional twitches.

Scholarship is not about becoming better geeks, it’s about becoming better truth-tellers. But that only happens if we know where to go and if we’re willing to go there. The problem is that most of us just don’t know where to go.

When it comes to Christian manuscripts, the two best places are Daniel Wallace’s blog (click here) and the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog (click here).

Wallace is really easy to understand and he’s sort of the Indian Jones of biblical scholarship. He’s routinely traveling the world and photographing manuscripts. Here is his take on the manuscript: Reality Check: The “Jesus’ Wife” Coptic Fragment

Evangelical Textual Criticism is highly technical, but it’s maintained by a crew of scholars who really get up to their elbows in this stuff. Plus, they can crank out some cool titles like “Was Mrs Jesus Pimped?”

The bottom line is that, if you’re going to watch a story unfold, make sure you watching it unfold from reliable, on-the-ground sources.