Jesus Married Already Yesterday's News

(Getty/AFP photo / September 20, 2012) 

Yesterday's news of the finding and translation of some "ancient papyrus" supposedly transcribed to read that Jesus was married is already being classified a dupe. I have to wonder if any of that will matter to historian Karen King who got her five minutes of fame yesterday.

Oh the secular press had their field day reporting this, among them Reuters who quotes King as saying;

"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim." 

Ah yes, because there is such a need to prove what does not exist rather than what does.

And I had plans to discuss this in great detail with references to just a few popular Catholic blog posts like Fr. Z's "A note about the Mrs. Christ papyrus fragment", and Jimmy Akin's "Does New Document Prove That Jesus Had a Wife?", which took on the issue in completely different ways.

But alas, my plan was foiled! While going through this morning's reading list, I saw Susan Brinkmann's post on Women of Grace "Ancient Papyrus Proving Jesus was Married Declared a Fake".

Well, I guess we Christians don't have to go out burning buildings down in protest after all.

On another positive note though, the local news interviewed several non-Catholic Christians last night. A couple of them actually refereed to:

"Scripture and Church history" and what has been "handed down to us".

How about that? Scripture and Tradition and a vague reference to the Magisterium!