In the Roman Catholic Church in particular, the New Testament is seen as divine revelation handed down through a long line of men-Jesus, the 12 apostles, the Church fathers, the popes, and finally the priests who bring God’s word to the parish pews today. Centuries of Christian tradition are bound up in whether the scrap is authentic or, as a growing group of scholars contends, an outrageous modern fake: Jesus’s bachelorhood helps form the basis for priestly celibacy, and his all-male cast of apostles has long been cited to justify limits on women’s religious leadership.
King called the business-card-size papyrus “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” But even without that provocative title, it would have shaken the world of biblical scholarship.
