捏造された「パピルス」 - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

AP “Jesus's wife papyrus probably fake, say experts” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/20/jesuss-wife-papyrus-probably-fake-say-experts

2012年羅馬にて、ハーヴァード神学院のKaren King 教授*1は或るパピルスの断片の存在を明らかにした。そこにはコプト語で「耶蘇は彼らにおっしゃった、我が妻と（Jesus said to them, My wife.）」というような意味のことが書かれていた*2。それ以来、耶蘇結婚説の証拠として注目を浴びるととみに、その文書の真正性に対する疑念が提起され、論争の対象ともなってきた。しかし、最近になって、発見者たるキング先生本人がその文書は「近代の偽造物（a modern forgery）」である可能性が高いという発言をしている。この文章に対する疑惑を調査したThe Atlanticの記事に応答する仕方で*3。

King said it is more likely than not that the fragment is a modern forgery. She cited an investigative article published last week on the website of the Atlantic magazine that raised questions about the owner of the papyrus, Florida businessman Walter Fritz. The Atlantic also was the first to report her concession that the papyrus is likely to be a fake.
“If you ask me today which direction am I leaning more toward – ancient text or a modern forgery – based on this new evidence, I’m leaning toward modern forgery,” King told Associated Press.
The Atlantic found inconsistencies in Fritz’s story about how he came to acquire the papyrus and in a document he gave to King purporting to authenticate it.
“This evidence does make a difference in judging whether it was a forgery or not, and it pushes the evidence toward it being a forgery,” King said.
A valid telephone number could not be found for Fritz. In an email sent to the AP on Monday, Fritz included a letter he sent to the Atlantic in which he denied forging, altering or manipulating the papyrus or its inscription.

新約学者Mark Goodacre氏*4のコメント；

Mark Goodacre, a professor of religious studies at Duke University in North Carolina, said doubts about the fragment were raised within hours of King exhibiting the text at a conference in Rome.
“When you show something like that to people who spend their entire lives staring at these things, a lot of them could straightaway tell there was something fishy about it,” Goodacre said.
He said he credits King with having “a lot of guts” to acknowledge that she could have been duped.

因みに、キング教授は耶蘇結婚説に与しているわけではない。
See also

Andrew Brown*5 “The gospel of Jesus's wife: a very modern fake” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/oct/16/gospel-jesus-wife-modern-fake-typo

*1:See eg. http://hds.harvard.edu/people/karen-l-king https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Leigh_King

*2:See Stephen Bates “Did Jesus Christ really have a wife?” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/19/jesus-christ-really-have-wife http://gospelofjesusswife.hds.harvard.edu/

*3:See Ariel Sabar “The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife” http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/485573/ Ariel Sabar “Karen King Responds to ‘The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife’” http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/karen-king-responds-to-the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/487484/

*4:http://markgoodacre.org/ See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Goodacre