Now Albert Mohler, the Very Mightiest theologian of them all, pronounces infamy on the discoverer of that text fragment which suggests Jesus may have had a wife.
The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife?
When Sensationalism Masquerades as Scholarship
That’s more than enough to tip off Mohler’s thoughts — if it were permissible for Southern Baptists to go around having thoughts, I mean.
Karen King, the Harvard historian who discovered and translated the text, was in fact scrupulously careful to circumscribe what might be legitimately inferred from the papyrus scrap, which she rightly said was — not much. The angst and overreaction of Mohler, Donohue, et. al., is an expression of the discomfiture caused them by exposure of how little is actually known about Jesus, rather than anything done by King.
As in the case of disputes about whether or not the man Jesus ever actually existed, the takeaway should be a recognition of how little is actually known about him; and that when pastors stand in their pulpits and bellow that they know this, and they know that — they are lying. They do not know. They know they do not know.
That’s why they freak out on stories like the discovery of that scrap of papyrus. The pews might see them for the frauds they actually are.
