Friday, September 21, 2012

Theological Dung & Integrity

Everybody that can spell Bible is talking the opportunity to comment on a cellphone-size scrap of paper written in a language (Coptic) that about 17 people in the U.S. can translate. Yes, this cynical entry is referring to the “Jesus – Wife” thing.
 
Let’s just get this straight from the start, “It is dung.” It might be theological dung or scholarly dung, but it’s still the same stuff.  We really shouldn’t be wasting our time with this trying to explain why it is dung. All of our scholars in the Ivory Towers should know this.

The bad part about all of this is that when you start playing with this stuff, you get it all over you and it’s hard to get off. Now I’m not saying it should be left alone. It certainly needs to be identified for what it is, however, the religious world is all atwitter (sorry for that) over this controversy.

So, not wanting to be left out of this flap, I’ll sum it up for you in a big nutshell.

Some professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School (same university that gave us our current President) translated a 4th century papyrus that says something about Jesus and wife on it. The problem is even the professor says there are questions about the papyrus. The bigger problem is Harvard Divinity School says it will still publish the prof’s paper in January in the Harvard Theological Review.

Talk about a lack of integrity.

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