TheBlaze.com Reports on Bock Blog

The post I wrote a few days ago on the Jesus wife text has been the most read post I have had since the DaVinci Code. It has led to a dozen interviews. One of the best public square presentations has come from the well known site TheBlaze.com. It has a full walk through the story, along with a segment from NBC Today that introduces the text. 

The post I wrote a few days ago on the Jesus wife text has been the most read post I have had since the DaVinci Code. It has led to a dozen interviews. One of the best public square presentations has come from the well known site TheBlaze.com. It has a full walk through the story, along with a segment from NBC Today that introduces the text. 

Here is that link, so you can follow their report, which included a long interview I did with them.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/5-key-facts-to-consider-while-pondering-whether-jesus-christ-was-married/

Francis Watson, a Professor of NT from the UK, makes the case that the text is a modern forgery made up of a modified patch of lines  from the Gospel of Thomas. So here is yet another option presented with some detail. His paper can be found on Mark Goodacre's blog. Mark teaches at Duke.

Here is that site:

http://markgoodacre.org/Watson.pdf

Finally, Dan Wallace has done his usual thorough work and presented a summary of his take on where things stand. That can be found here:

http://danielbwallace.com/2012/09/21/reality-check-the-jesus-wife-coptic-fragment/

I will be discussing this text with Richard Taylor, who teaches Coptic, at our DTS chapel next Friday. That session should be up on the web early the following week at the www.dts.edu site.

Everyone is agreed that this text tells us nothing about the real Jesus and contributes nothing to the historical Jesus debate. That discussion is not touched by a fourth century, likely Gnostic text (if it is even genuine). My recent book, Who Is Jesus: Linking the Historical Jesus with the Christ of Faith, goes into that discussion showing how historical Jesus discussion works while taking a close look at 12 key events from that perspective.