Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Jesus? 9-24-12
September 24, 2012
By now, no doubt, many of you have read or heard the news about an ancient papyrus fragment (pictured here) that seems to refer to Jesus having a wife.
It's intriguing, and it looks as if the scholars who have been evaluating this tiny old scrap of a document are doing due diligence to make sure of its age and place of origin -- in other words, to make sure it is what it seems to be.
But, of course, because it's smaller than a standard business card and torn from a piece of a larger, now-missing whole, it is not yet clear (and may never be) what it is telling us.
But the words that have captured everyone's attention say: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'”
Then it's cut off and we don't know how the sentence (if, in fact, it refers to Jesus of Nazareth) ends. Perhaps it ends something like ". . .if I had one, wouldn't say that." Or ". . .would love God first if I ever decide to get married."
We simply don't know. What we do know is that news of this finding has caused renewed defensiveness among Christians who would identify themselves as fundamentalist or theologically conservative. For instance, Baptist Press put out this column giving advice to pastors on how to deal with this "Jesus wife" story. Among the advice is to warn followers of a "feminist agenda" among scholars such as the one who released the information about the "Jesus wife" fragment.
So here's my thought, especially for Christians: Why don't we spend our time thinking about what the Bible says Jesus did do and did say (even if scholars sometimes question whether some of the biblical quotes are accurate)?
Such an approach would have us remembering, for instance, that he said that all of the law hangs on the admonition to love God and love neighbor. Pretty simple, whether he was married or single. Well, simple to recite but hard to live out.
I suspect that if Jesus had a wife, he'd ask her to focus on those two types of love and not worry so much about where he left his sandals lying around.
(The photo here today is from the same New York Times site as the story and is an NTY picture.)
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A HELL OF A DEBATE
I recently read and reviewed here a book by a disaffected Catholic priest, but in my review I didn't have time to get into the priest's dismissal of the idea of Satan and hell. It's a long-running argument in religion, especially in Christianity. And so CNN's Belief blog recently offered these two pieces about this -- by Christians who disagree about hell. I think if you're Christian, as I am, you have to take the idea of hell seriously because it's mentioned so often in the Bible. But I think you have to take even more seriously the idea that God is love, God is sovereign and wants an eternal relationship with everyone. In my limited earthly experiences, what sovereigns want sovereigns usually get.
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