FOR A MOMENT BACK IN 2012, READERS AROUND the world might have thought that Jesus had had a wife. Karen King, an esteemed professor at Harvard Universityâs Divinity School, made headlines when she revealed what she named âThe Gospel of Jesusâ Wife,â a small fragment of papyrus with eight cryptic, incomplete lines in Coptic, including: âJesus said to them, My wife âŠâ The journalist Ariel Sabar was on hand in Rome for her attention-grabbing announcement, which seized the mediaâs attention (including this magazineâs), thanks to the tantalizing possibility of an entirely different Christian historyâone in which Mary Magdalene, the possible wife in question, was even more central to Jesusâ story. Kingâs discovery had the potential to upend a millennia-old, male-centric history.
King said at the time, âMy own faith,âŠ
