Did Jesus Have a Wife? Gnosticism & the New Testament Understanding of Jesus

There has been a lot of media attention regarding a fourth century Coptic papyrus that Harvard Divinity School professor, Karen L. King claims is evidence that Jesus had a wife.  Click on this article to read more about this discovery.

At the center of this debate is the question about the prevalence of gnosticism in early Christian thought.  Most mainline bible scholars agree that ancient documents related to gnosticism such as the Gospel of Judas which offers a distinctively different view of the life of Jesus came much later after our present New Testament canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John. In my readings of gnostic literature, this understanding seeks to remove Jesus from his Jewish context and instead place him in an "enlightened" context.  For a good summary of gnostic theology and thought, this link is helpful.

Dr. Ben Withingerton, New Testament professor at Asbury Seminary is quoted in the article link above and he offers this countering information about the fourth century gnostic Coptic papyrus discovery:

"The unclear origins of the document should encourage people to be cautious, said Bible scholar Ben Witherington III, a professor and author who teaches at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. He said the document follows the pattern of Gnostic texts of the second, third and fourth centuries, using “the language of intimacy to talk about spiritual relationships.”

“What we hear from the Gnostic is this practice called the sister-wife texts, where they carried around a female believer with them who cooks for them and cleans for them and does the usual domestic chores, but they have no sexual relationship whatsoever” during the strong monastic periods of the third and fourth centuries, Witherington said. “In other words, this is no confirmation of the Da Vinci Code or even of the idea that the Gnostics thought Jesus was married in the normal sense of the word.”