Alex Hwang

COVER SHEET

An Analysis of Arguments Against the

Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’s Authenticity
Alex Hwang
Professor Grant Adamson, FWIS 183

What I’ve Revised: The first thing I did to address your feedback was to change my high-level organization
from [internal evidence => external evidence] to [strongest => weakest arguments against authenticity]. I
also added subheadings for each of these pieces of types of arguments to make the organization more clear,
as you suggested. Per your suggestion, I tried to insert my opinions more often into the paper, stating why I
believe a certain argument by a scholar is valid or invalid and inserting more of my own commentary. I
included all the small suggestions you made about some of the specific arguments I make. I set aside the
discussion of motives and personal attacks on King, but included a tiny bit of the latter in my conclusion. I
didn’t talk about motives in my conclusion because I thought it would feel a little disjointed, but I talk about
other relevant points.
In response to Isaac’s feedback, I tried to make my introduction much more clear in terms of stating
my argument. In response to Emily’s feedback, I tried to expand my conclusion to make it more than just
reiteration and discuss relevant issues to the paper. In response to Emily’s question, I tried to clarify some of
the points in the “intangible feelings” section by introducing my own opinon more. In response to James’
feedback in his question in the Q/A section, I didn’t add sections specifically for counterarguments, but I
tried to make the counterarguments I acknowledge more clearly counterarguments and not evidence in favor
of my arguments.
Finally, I tried to utilize my writing tip by making my writing a little more elegant. In particular, one
of the strategies Williams offers is to use metaphor, which I do in my intro, with a “hurricane” and “storm”
to refer to attacks against GJW’s authenticity.
 Alex Hwang

An Analysis of Arguments Against the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’s Authenticity

At 1.6 inches tall and 3.2 inches wide (HDS 2014/2015, Q&A page), the Gospel of Jesus’s

Wife (GJW) is likely smaller than your cell phone (my average-sized iPhone is around 6 inches tall

and 3 inches wide). Despite its diminutive size, this gospel has received a hurricane’s worth of

abuse — in the form of attacks against its authenticity, that is. In this paper, I attempt to sift through

this storm of criticism and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different types of arguments

against the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’s authenticity. In particular, I try to assert which types of

arguments are relatively strong and which are relatively weak. I rank the arguments against

authenticity as follows (with (1) being the strongest argument against authenticity): (1) those based

on a relationship with the Gospel of John, (2), those based on internal evidence, and (3) those based

on more intangible feelings.

Relationship with the Gospel of John Fragment

First, I contend that the strongest evidence against the authenticity of GJW relates to its ties

to the Gospel of John fragment. The Gospel of John fragment discovered with GJW is, almost

indisputably, a fake. Baden and Moss (2014b) argue that mismatches between the radiocarbon

dating of the Gospel of John fragment and its dialect employed, Lycopolitan, highlight the

fragment’s inauthenticity. This is a fair argument, but certainly not an overwhelmingly convincing

one, as many texts have copied older texts word-for-word, even in extinct dialects (Baden-Moss

2014b). This argument becomes stronger, however, when considering that the Gospel of John

fragment has an exact “one-to-two” line correspondence with the “best-known” manuscript of the

Gospel of John, requiring that “the width of every single word written...indeed of every single letter

—was the same” (Baden-Moss 2014b). Such similarities have convinced scholars that mere

coincidence between the two texts has “bordered on the impossible” (Baden-Moss 2014b). In
 Alex Hwang

addition, both visual inspection and scholarly analysis indicate that “the fragment of John and the

Jesus’ wife papyrus are written in the same hand, using the same ink and even the same writing

instrument,” even having “the same oddly formed letters” (Baden-Moss 2014b). Remembering that

the Gospel of John fragment was found in the same collection of documents as the GJW fragment,

it is plain that if the Gospel of John fragment is a fake, so is the GJW fragment. This finding was the

“straw that broke the camel’s back” in the debate over King’s gospel’s authenticity, and rightly so.

Common typographical errors (to be discussed next) are one thing, but sharing exact spacing in a

language without spaces between words is another. Considering the Gospel of John fragment, in a

nearly bulletproof fashion, undermines the authenticity of the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.

Arguments from Internal Evidence

Next, I contend that the numerous arguments against authenticity based on internal evidence

from the text and comparisons of this internal evidence to an online version of the Gospel of

Thomas are also very strong, but can be qualified somewhat, especially considering how small the

sample size of the text is. These arguments are less strong than those I mention in the first section.

The first class of these errors have to do with direct internal evidence — grammar mistakes,

sloppy handwriting, etc. — that scholars point to. Indeed, much internal evidence suggests that the

gospel is a forgery: “Virtually all ancient papyrus texts were written with a reed pen, but the letters

on this fragment, blunt and thick, appeared to have been made by a brush. Not only that, they were

ill-formed… [It had] a handful of apparent grammatical errors...the kind of mistake[s]...difficult to

imagine coming from an adult native speaker” (Baden-Moss 2014b). But, as Baden and Moss

(2014a) note, “other scholars noted that just because a scribe has poor handwriting… does not make

it a forgery.” In addition, in regards to the anachronistic usage of the brush, “one can observe

analogous phenomena in later texts that are … [not] suspected of being forgeries,” (161) according
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to Choat (2014). Indeed, these grammatical mistakes, even labeled grammatical “blunders” (176) by

Depuydt (2014), could be “the result of incorrect analysis or can be accounted for as examples of

known, if relatively rare, native Coptic usage,” (191) says Karen King (2014). Another piece of

internal evidence commonly cited is that two letters from “the fragment’s most provocative

statement… [are] darker than the letters around them, as if the scribe were writing in boldface”

(Baden-Moss 2014b). This is an unconvincing argument. Consider the tiny sample size of this

gospel of only eight lines (HDS 2014/2015, Q&A page) — there are not many other letters to

compare with it. In addition, how could a writer with such demonstrated sloppiness pull off this

“bolding” of the word? Finally, King notes that this ignores the fact that the word directly under the

letters in question are even more bold (King’s Response to Depuydt).

These errors I have mentioned become more significant when considering their similarities

in an online version of the Gospel of Thomas. Francis Watson has “argued that all of the

fragmentary sentences preserved on the papyrus are also found in the Gospel of Thomas” (Moss

2014). Some scholars, like Dupuydt (2014), consider the parallels between words in the GJW and

the Gospel of Thomas to have a “statistically...zero” (176) chance of coincidence. Dupuydt presents

a sturdy argument — he offers a lengthy, convincing analysis showing that the probabilities of these

errors occurring simultaneously are very low. Yet, again, there is the issue of small sample size.

King also points out that this analysis focuses on the similarities while relying on an “inadequate

dismissal” (192) of the differences between the two works (King 2014). Further, ancient texts were

often copied verbatim from other ancient sources (HDS 2014/2015, Q&A page).

To conclude, the internal evidence from the gospel is convincing, but not unassailable. But

there is strength in numbers. Although each individual piece of internal evidence can be refuted

somewhat, their combined effect creates a strong, but not bulletproof, case against authenticity.
 Alex Hwang

These arguments are weaker than those presented in the previous section.

Arguments Based on Intangible Feelings

Finally, I argue that arguments based on intangible suspicions from anonymity and a dead-

ended paper trail constitute the weakest arguments against the gospel’s authenticity. More

specifically, I refer to statements such as these: “It didn’t help that GJW emerged mysteriously,

almost out of nowhere. The donor who brought the fragment to King insisted on anonymity. While

some details of the origins of the papyrus have been published, others have not, and the reluctance

of the donor to come forward only casts more doubt over it” (Moss 2014). However, it is not too

difficult to suppose that the donor has valid reasons for maintaining his/her secrecy. Perhaps the

donor understood that, if the text was shown to be inauthentic, he would receive public shame and

ridicule. Even Morton Smith’s discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark, not an agreed-upon forgery,

brought forth dozens of bitter attacks against himself, a respected member of the religious academy.

Further, the paper trail of the GJW, which suspiciously consists of deceased people, is suspicious,

but is inherently not as convincing as other evidence cited previously. Yes, Laukamp, one of the

indicated previous owners of GJW, supposedly “‘had no interest in old things,’” (Baden-Moss

2014b) but can we really claim GJW is a forgery based on one man’s testimony for a man he may

not even have known well? Without the real, tangible similarities to forgeries and typographical

blunders discussed in the previous sections, people would not be raising questions about

authenticity based on the story of the gospel’s discovery. Finally, a third class of arguments based

on intangible feelings center around how the gospel is “improbably easy to read and understand”

and that “we don’t have any trouble recognizing that we’re reading a dialogue,” so it must be a

forgery (Baden-Moss 2014b). But, again, coincidence should not have great power to incriminate.

Moreover, these arguments rely too heavily on subjective feelings — is there a limit to how well
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modern scholars can label a passage as an “easy” read that is written in a translated, extinct

language? Grammatical errors or line-spacing similarities discussed earlier are much easier to

quantify than “easiness,” so they should have more argumentative weight. For this reason,

arguments from intangible feelings are the weakest of the three types of argument I present.

Conclusion

Of the three classes of arguments I discussed, arguments based on the fragment’s

relationship to the Gospel of John fragment are the most convincing, with arguments based on

internal evidence close behind. The weakest arguments of the three types are those based on

intangible feelings. My paper’s discussion of the relative strengths of these classes of arguments

requires an acknowledgement that it is the combination of all the arguments I’ve discussed, strong

or weak, is more commanding than any individual argument. Strong or weak, all the arguments I’ve

presented above are, in fact, valid arguments against authenticity, as opposed to resorts to things

like petty, personal attacks. Scholars should continue to develop respectful arguments to determine

the authenticity of texts; it was the combination of these arguments that demonstrated the

inauthenticity of GJW. But what is next now that we know it is a forgery? Should academic

institutions continue to buy texts with suspicious backgrounds, likely to be forgeries? Should these

same institutions invest more in dating technologies so that the “science of detection” does not fall

too far behind the “science of deception” (Baden-Moss 2014b)? The GJW, such a tiny document,

has raised these questions any many more. Now it is the academic community’s time to address

them.
 Alex Hwang

Bibliography

Baden, Joel S., and Candida R. Moss. 2014a. “New Clues Cast Doubt on Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.”

CNN Belief Blog, April 29. Accessed November 15, 2015.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04 /29/new-evidence-casts-doubt-on-gospel-of-jesus-

wife/

Baden, Joel, and Candida Moss. 2014b. “The Curious Case of Jesus’s Wife.” The Atlantic,

December. Accessed November 15, 2015.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/thecurious-case-of-jesuss-

wife/382227/

Choat, Malcolm. 2014. “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: A Preliminary Paleographical Assessment.” In

Harvard Theological Review 107, 160-162.

Depuydt, Leo. 2014. “The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of

Authenticity.” In Harvard Theological Review 107, 172-189.

Harvard Divinity School. 2014/2015. The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife website. Accessed November 15,

2015. http://gospelofjesusswife.hds.harvard.edu/

King, Karen L. 2014. “Response to Leo Depuydt, ‘The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment

and Evaluation of Authenticity.” In Harvard Theological Review 107, 190-193.

Moss, Candida. 2014. “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife Is Still as Big a Mystery as Ever.” The Daily

Beast, April 13. Accessed November 15, 2015.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/13/the-gospel-of-jesus-s-wife-is-still-as-big-

as-mystery-as-ever.html