Gospel of Jesus' Wife in New Testament Studies

In April 2014, Harvard Theological Review devoted an issue to the discussion of The Gospel of Jesus' Wife, a fragmentary text thought by many to be a forgery. Regular readers of this blog will know that this fragment has been a hot topic of discussion since the first media reports of its existence in September 2012. (You can find the many NT Blog posts on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife here).

New Testament Studies has now devoted its latest issue to a critical discussion of the authenticity of the fragment. After an editorial by Francis Watson, the following articles expound different elements of the problem:

The Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Constructing a Context

Simon Gathercole

A Lycopolitan Forgery of John's Gospel

Christian Askeland

The Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery

Andrew Bernhard

Material Criteria and their Clues for Dating

Myriam Krutzsch and Ira Rabin

The Jesus' Wife Papyrus in the History of Forgery

Christopher Jones

How a Papyrus Fragment Became a Sensation

Gesine Schenke Robinson

Congratulations to the editor and the authors for their fine work on this volume, and thanks to Cambridge University Press for making it available free for all, just as they did just over a year ago with the HTR volume.

See also this video from Simon Gathercole, posted a couple of days ago by CUP in tandem with the release of this issue of the journal: