The Ancient Pagan Origins of Easter

Ancient Origins

Easter Sunday is a festival and holiday celebrated by millions of people around the world who honour the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred three days after his crucifixion at Calvary. It is also the day that children excitedly wait for the Easter bunny to arrive and deliver their treats of chocolate eggs. Easter is a ‘movable feast’ which is chosen to correspond with the first Sunday following the full moon after the March equinox, and occurs on different dates around the world since western churches use the Gregorian calendar, while eastern churches use the Julian calendar. So where did this ‘movable feast’ begin, and what are the origins of the traditions and customs celebrated on this important day around the world?

Christian’s today celebrate Easter Sunday as the resurrection of Jesus. Image source.

Most historians, including Biblical scholars, agree that Easter was originally a pagan festival. According to the New Unger’s Bible Dictionary says: “The word Easter is of Saxon origin, Eastra, the goddess of spring, in whose honour sacrifices were offered about Passover time each year. By the eighth century Anglo–Saxons had adopted the name to designate the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.” However, even among those who maintain that Easter has pagan roots, there is some disagreement over which pagan tradition the festival emerged from. Here we will explore some of those perspectives.

Resurrection as a symbol of rebirth
One theory that has been put forward is that the Easter story of crucifixion and resurrection is symbolic of rebirth and renewal and retells the cycle of the seasons, the death and return of the sun.

According to some scholars, such as Dr. Tony Nugent, teacher of Theology and Religious Studies at Seattle University, and Presbyterian minister, the Easter story comes from the Sumerian legend of Damuzi (Tammuz) and his wife Inanna (Ishtar), an epic myth called “The Descent of Inanna” found inscribed on cuneiform clay tablets dating back to 2100 BC. When Tammuz dies, Ishtar is grief–stricken and follows him to the underworld. In the underworld, she enters through seven gates, and her worldly attire is removed. "Naked and bowed low" she is judged, killed, and then hung on display. In her absence, the earth loses its fertility, crops cease to grow and animals stop reproducing. Unless something is done, all life on earth will end.

After Inanna has been missing for three days her assistant goes to other gods for help. Finally one of them Enki, creates two creatures who carry the plant of life and water of life down to the Underworld, sprinkling them on Inanna and Damuzi, resurrecting them, and giving them the power to return to the earth as the light of the sun for six months. After the six months are up, Tammuz returns to the underworld of the dead, remaining there for another six months, and Ishtar pursues him, prompting the water god to rescue them both. Thus were the cycles of winter death and spring life.

The Descent of Inanna. Image source.

Dr Nugent is quick to point out that drawing parallels between the story of Jesus and the epic of Inanna “doesn't necessarily mean that there wasn't a real person, Jesus, who was crucified, but rather that, if there was, the story about it is structured and embellished in accordance with a pattern that was very ancient and widespread.”

The Sumerian goddess Inanna is known outside of Mesopotamia by her Babylonian name, "Ishtar". In ancient Canaan Ishtar is known as Astarte, and her counterparts in the Greek and Roman pantheons are known as Aphrodite and Venus. In the 4th Century, when Christians identified the exact site in Jerusalem where the empty tomb of Jesus had been located, they selected the spot where a temple of Aphrodite (Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna) stood. The temple was torn down and the So Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built, the holiest church in the Christian world.

Dr Nugent points out that the story of Inanna and Damuzi is just one of a number of accounts of dying and rising gods that represent the cycle of the seasons and the stars. For example, the resurrection of Egyptian Horus; the story of Mithras, who was worshipped at Springtime; and the tale of Dionysus, resurrected by his grandmother. Among these stories are prevailing themes of fertility, conception, renewal, descent into darkness, and the triumph of light over darkness or good over evil.

Easter as a celebration of the Goddess of Spring
A related perspective is that, rather than being a representation of the story of Ishtar, Easter was originally a celebration of Eostre, goddess of Spring, otherwise known as Ostara, Austra, and Eastre. One of the most revered aspects of Ostara for both ancient and modern observers is a spirit of renewal.

Celebrated at Spring Equinox on March 21, Ostara marks the day when light is equal to darkness, and will continue to grow. As the bringer of light after a long dark winter, the goddess was often depicted with the hare, an animal that represents the arrival of spring as well as the fertility of the season.

According to Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, the idea of resurrection was ingrained within the celebration of Ostara: “Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted by the resurrection-day of the christian’s God.”

Most analyses of the origin of the word ‘Easter’ maintain that it was named after a goddess mentioned by the 7th to 8th-century English monk Bede, who wrote that Ēosturmōnaþ (Old English 'Month of Ēostre', translated in Bede's time as "Paschal month") was an English month, corresponding to April, which he says "was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month".

The origins of Easter customs
The most widely-practiced customs on Easter Sunday relate to the symbol of the rabbit (‘Easter bunny’) and the egg. As outlined previously, the rabbit was a symbol associated with Eostre, representing the beginning of Springtime. Likewise, the egg has come to represent Spring, fertility and renewal. In Germanic mythology, it is said that Ostara healed a wounded bird she found in the woods by changing it into a hare. Still partially a bird, the hare showed its gratitude to the goddess by laying eggs as gifts.

The Encyclopedia Britannica clearly explains the pagan traditions associated with the egg: “The egg as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who had also the custom of colouring and eating eggs during their spring festival.” In ancient Egypt, an egg symbolised the sun, while for the Babylonians, the egg represents the hatching of the Venus Ishtar, who fell from heaven to the Euphrates.

Relief with Phanes, c. 2nd century A.D. Orphic god Phanes emerging from the cosmic egg, surrounded by the zodiac. Image source.

In many Christian traditions, the custom of giving eggs at Easter celebrates new life. Christians remember that Jesus, after dying on the cross, rose from the dead, showing that life could win over death. For Christians the egg is a symbol of Jesus' resurrection, as when they are cracked open, they stand for the empty tomb.

 Regardless of the very ancient origins of the symbol of the egg, most people agree that nothing symbolises renewal more perfectly than the egg – round, endless, and full of the promise of life.

While many of the pagan customs associated with the celebration of Spring were at one stage practised alongside Christian Easter traditions, they eventually came to be absorbed within Christianity, as symbols of the resurrection of Jesus. The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the March equinox.

Whether it is observed as a religious holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or a time for families in the northern hemisphere to enjoy the coming of Spring and celebrate with egg decorating and Easter bunnies, the celebration of Easter still retains the same spirit of rebirth and renewal, as it has for thousands of years.

 Featured image: Main: ‘A Hare in the Forest by Hans Hoffmann (public domain). Inset: Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts (public domain)

By April Holloway

What Exactly is the Holy Grail – And Why Has its Meaning Eluded us for Centuries?

Ancient Origins

Leah Tether / The Conversation

Leah Tether works at the University of Bristol. She received funding for this research from Anglia Ruskin University, Ghent University, Somerville College, Oxford and the Stationers' Foundation.

Type “Holy Grail” into Google and … well, you probably don’t need me to finish that sentence. The sheer multiplicity of what any search engine throws up demonstrates that there is no clear consensus as to what the Grail is or was. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people out there claiming to know its history, true meaning and even where to find it.

Modern authors, perhaps most (in)famously Dan Brown , offer new interpretations and, even when these are clearly and explicitly rooted in little more than imaginative fiction, they get picked up and bandied about as if a new scientific and irrefutable truth has been discovered. The Grail, though, will perhaps always eschew definition. But why?

The Damsel of the Sanct Grael’ (1874) Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ( Public Domain )

The first known mention of a Grail (“un graal”) is made in a narrative spun by a 12th century writer of French romance, Chrétien de Troyes, who might reasonably be referred to as the Dan Brown of his day – though some scholars would argue that the quality of Chrétien’s writing far exceeds anything Brown has so far produced.

Chrétien’s Grail is mystical indeed – it is a dish, big and wide enough to take a salmon, that seems capable to delivering food and sustenance. To obtain the Grail requires asking a particular question at the Grail Castle. Unfortunately, the exact question (“Whom does the Grail serve?”) is only revealed after the Grail quester, the hapless Perceval, has missed the opportunity to ask it. It seems he is not quite ready, not quite mature enough, for the Grail.

The Holy Grail depicted as a dish in which Christ’s blood is collected. ( British Library )

But if this dish is the “first” Grail, then why do we now have so many possible Grails? Indeed, it is, at turns, depicted as the chalice of the Last Supper or of the Crucifixion or both, or as a stone containing the elixir of life , or even as the bloodline of Christ . And this list is hardly exhaustive. The reason most likely has to do with the fact that Chrétien appears to have died before completing his story, leaving the crucial questions as to what the Grail is and means tantalisingly unanswered. And it did not take long for others to try to answer them for him.

Robert de Boron, a poet writing within 20 or so years of Chrétien (circa 1190-1200), seems to have been the first to have associated the Grail with the cup of the Last Supper. In Robert’s prehistory of the object, Joseph of Arimathea took the Grail to the Crucifixion and used it to catch Christ’s blood. In the years that followed (1200-1230), anonymous writers of prose romances fixated upon the Last Supper’s Holy Chalice and made the Grail the subject of a quest by various knights of King Arthur’s court. In Germany, by contrast, the knight and poet Wolfram von Eschenbach reimagined the Grail as “Lapsit exillis” – an item more commonly referred to these days as the “Philosopher’s Stone”.

The Holy Grail depicted as a ciborium. ( British Library )

None of these is anything like Chrétien’s Grail, of course, so we can fairly ask: did medieval audiences have any more of a clue about the nature of the Holy Grail than we do today?

Publishing the Grail
My recent book delves into the medieval publishing history of the French romances that contain references to the Grail legend, asking questions about the narratives’ compilation into manuscript books. Sometimes, a given text will be bound alongside other types of texts, some of which seemingly have nothing to do with the Grail whatsoever. So, what sorts of texts do we find accompanying Grail narratives in medieval books? Can this tell us anything about what medieval audiences knew or understood of the Grail?

Sangreal. ( Arthur Rackham )

The picture is varied, but a broad chronological trend is possible to spot. Some of the few earliest manuscript books we still have see Grail narratives compiled alone, but a pattern quickly appears for including them into collected volumes. In these cases, Grail narratives can be found alongside historical, religious or other narrative (or fictional) texts. A picture emerges, therefore, of a Grail just as lacking in clear definition as that of today.

Perhaps the Grail served as a useful tool that could be deployed in all manner of contexts to help communicate the required message, whatever that message may have been. We still see this today, of course, such as when we use the phrase “The Holy Grail of…” to describe the practically unobtainable, but highly desirable prize in just about any area you can think of. There is even a guitar effect-pedal named “holy grail”.

Once the prose romances of the 13th century started to appear, though, the Grail took on a proper life of its own. Like a modern soap opera, these romances comprised vast reams of narrative threads, riddled with independent episodes and inconsistencies. They occupied entire books, often enormous and lavishly illustrated, and today these offer evidence that literature about the Grail evaded straightforward understanding and needed to be set apart – physically and figuratively. In other words, Grail literature had a distinctive quality – it was, as we might call it today, a genre in its own right.

 In the absence of clear definition, it is human nature to impose meaning. This is what happens with the Grail today and, according to the evidence of medieval book compilation, it is almost certainly what happened in the Middle Ages, too. Just as modern guitarists use their “holy grail” to experiment with all kinds of sounds, so medieval writers and publishers of romance used the Grail as an adaptable and creative instrument for conveying a particular message to their audience, the nature of which could be very different from one book to the next.

Whether the audience always understood that message, of course, is another matter entirely.

Artist’s interpretation of the holy grail. ( CC BY 2.0 )

 Top Image: The Achievement of the Grail. Source: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

 The article‘ What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries? ’ by Leah Tether was originally published on The Conversation and has republished under a Creative Commons license.

Jesus Statue Found to Have Real Human Teeth

      by Tia Ghose

A Jesus statue that has lived an unassuming life in a small town in Mexico for the last 300 years has been hiding a strange secret: real human teeth.
Exactly how the statue of Jesus awaiting punishment prior to his crucifixion got its set of choppers is a mystery.
But the statue may be an example of a tradition in which human body parts were donated to churches for religious purposes, said Fanny Unikel Santoncini, a restorer at the Escuela Nacional de Restauración, Conservación y Museografía at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología E Historia (INAH) in Mexico, who first discovered the statue's teeth.

Why People Believe Jesus Had a Wife

An ancient text claims that Jesus had a wife. Ross Everett joins DNews to report on this new finding.

"We have to remember that these people were very, very religious. They believed absolutely that there was a life after death and this was important for them," Unikel told Live Science. [See Images of the Jesus Statue with Human Teeth]
Unassuming appearance
At first glance, the Christ of Patience — which depicts a seated, bloody Jesus gazing sadly off into the distance — doesn't look that different from statues found throughout the country. The painted wooden figure, which dates to the 17th or 18th century, wears human clothes and a wig, and was sculpted with a blend of European techniques and local materials, Unikel said.
"In Mexico, there are many statues like this — not only Christ, but Saints, the Virgin Mary," Unikel said.
Using human and animal body parts for statues isn't unusual either. People routinely donated hair to serve as wigs for statues, and artists often used nails fashioned from the shaved horns of bulls, she said.
Statues in Mexico are known to include false teeth made from animal bone — either with all the teeth carved from one solid piece of bone, or with individual, square-shaped teeth. A statue of the devil may be given a set of dog's teeth, and the team has even restored a baby Jesus statue with two baby rabbit teeth sprouting from its gums, Unikel said. But though there were rumors about a few statues containing human teeth, Unikel had never seen one.
God's teeth
The discovery happened by accident, when the Christ of Patience was taken, along with several other statues, to be restored by the INAH researchers.
As part of their restoration work, Unikel and her colleagues took X-rays of the statues. The anthropologist on the team noticed something unusual: real human teeth.
"We said 'Ah, it's not possible!'" Unikel told Live Science. "She said, 'I am absolutely sure about this.'"
The pearly whites seemed to be in good condition, with even the roots present. The finding is even stranger in that someone would donate such healthy teeth for the statue given that the statue's mouth is barely open, and the teeth aren't even visible unless someone peers inside, Unikel said.
Finding the owner
The teeth could have come from living or dead people, but with no available documents describing the statue, scientists and restorers will have a tough time tracking down the original owner. One possibility is that a particularly devout parishioner, or even many different people, donated the teeth. Another possibility is that someone extracted the teeth from an unwilling victim, but if so, the sculptor would never have revealed that fact, Unikel said. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]
Donating body parts to a church or religious cause was common practice during the late 17th and 18th centuries. For instance, the Bishop of Guadalajara, Obispo Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, donated his heart to the nuns of Convento de Santa Mónica de Puebla after he died in 1699. The heart was visible in a monstrance that only the nuns could see, Unikel said. And a Spanish government minister, Viceroy Baltazar de Zúñiga, Marquez de Valero also donated his heart to a convent of nuns, she said.
"For us, it seems mad," Unikel said, referring to people in modern times. But "the way they thought about the body was different from ours."
Now the researchers would like to find out more about the mysterious person or people who donated these teeth. Though they can't remove the teeth from the religious statue, the researchers hope to study them more carefully to figure out the age and sex of the teeth's owners, she said.
http://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/jesus-statue-found-to-have-real-human-teeth-140818.htm

Jesus Married? New Documentary Highlights Controversial Gospel

By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer  

This papyrus, said to be from ancient times, says that Jesus had a wife. Its discovery was announced in 2012 and new information uncovered by Live Science casts doubt on its origins. Credit: Karen L. King, 2012 View full size image

A controversial scrap of parchment no bigger than a business card seems to suggest that Jesus Christ was married. A new documentary gives the full story of this so-called "Gospel of Jesus's Wife."
Revealed in 2012, the papyrus, written in the ancient Egpytian language Coptic, includes a line that says, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" Karen King, a professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School, made the announcement; the owner of the papyrus remains anonymous.
However, a recent Live Science investigation traces the papyrus to its previous owner, a man named Hans-Ulrich Laukamp who supposedly bought the scrap along with five others in 1963 in East Germany. René Ernest, representative of Laukamp's estate after his death in 2002, told Live Science that Laukamp was not a collector of antiquities and that he lived in West Berlin in 1963, separated from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. Another acquaintance of Laukamp's confirmed that he was not an antiquities collector or dealer. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Forged fragment?
The authenticity of the scrap remains in dispute. Test results released in April 2014 suggest that the papyrus is not a recent forgery, but those tests have not convinced all critics. One cause for skepticism is the style of the message: There are mistakes in the Coptic that seem very unlikely to have been made by a native scribe, according to a 2013 article in the journal Harvard Theological Review. The controversial phrase "my wife" is also written in heavier letters than the surrounding text, which strikes some as suspicious.
"If the forger had used italics in addition, one might be in danger of losing one's composure," Brown University Egyptologist Leo Depuydt wrote drily in the Harvard Theological Review.
The new documentary, which premiers on the Smithsonian Channel on Monday (May 8) at 8 p.m. ET/PT, follows the story from the first email King received from an anonymous collector asking her to look at the papyrus to the ensuing media storm, which included disavowals of the papyrus from the Vatican.
History and the gospels
The documentary is careful to explain that by calling the fragment a "gospel," King and her colleagues don't intend to say the contents are true. Even if the text is authentic and refers to Jesus's wife, that doesn't mean it is accurate; instead, the text might reflect debates in the early Christian church about the role of women. Another segment of the text refers to the possibility of a female disciple.
The text also refers to a woman named Mary, which could refer to Mary Magdalene, a woman mentioned in the Bible in the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, though King warns that Mary was a very common name at the time. The implications for the church could be far-reaching, said the Rev. Robin Griffiths-Jones, an Anglican priest and theologon from the Temple Church in London. [Read Translation of Papyrus]
"If evidence were to be taken seriously that Jesus was married, vast branches of Christian thought and discipline and life and observance would just evaporate," Griffiths-Jones said in the new documentary.
The documentary delves into church history in explaining the potential importance of the tiny papyrus scrap. Other fragments of the scrap are also translated: The phrase "my mother," and later, "deny Mary is worthy." King sees the scraps as part of a larger story in which Jesus might be defending his female follower — who is perhaps also his wife.
Other texts showing Jesus as a husband may have been destroyed as the early Christian church took on celibacy as a requirement for priesthood, King said.
Still, a single documentary can't resolve the real burning question: Is the papyrus fake or not? Given the focus on King and her colleagues, viewers might come away from the Smithsonian's documentary feeling more confident in the fragment than some researchers would prefer. For now, however, the question of whether Jesus really had a wife remains a mystery.
http://www.livescience.com/45325-gospel-jesus-wife-documentary.html

Early Image of Jesus Found in Egyptian Tomb

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/early-image-of-jesus-found-in-egyptian-tomb-140430.htm


by Rossella Lorenzi

 

Spanish archaeologists have discovered what may be one of the earliest depictions of Jesus in an ancient Egyptian tomb.
Painted on the walls of a mysterious underground stone structure in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, about 100 miles south of Cairo, the image shows a young man with curly hair and dressed in a short tunic.
“He raises his hand as if making a blessing,” said Egyptologist Josep Padró, who has spent over 20 years excavating sites in the area.
What Did Jesus Look Like?
In this expedition, he led a team of archaeologists from the University of Barcelona, the Catalan Egyptology Society and the University of Montpellier.
“We could be dealing with a very early image of Jesus Christ,” Padró added.
Oxyrhynchus is known for the worship of the Egyptian god of the afterlife Osiris: indeed the underground structure was located in the middle of a processional route that joins the Nile with the Osireion, the temple dedicated to Osiris.
But the painting is from much later, dating from between the sixth and seventh century A.D.
To get to the underground chamber, Padró’s team removed over 45 tons of stones.
Finally, the archaeologists reached a rectangular crypt measuring about 26 feet long and 12 feet deep. They are unsure what the function of the structure was originally, but believe it might have possibly been another temple dedicated to Osiris.
Fact-Checking the Bible
Once inside, the archaeologists found five or six coats of paint on the walls, the last of which was from the Coptic period of the first Christians.
In addition to the image of the curly man, the walls feature symbols and images of plants and inscriptions written in the Coptic language, which are currently being translated.
“In order to carry out future campaigns, it is necessary to excavate an attached structure. A flight of well worn stairs give access to it, but researchers do not know its content yet,” the University of Barcelona said in a statement.
Photo: The image, protected from the sun with a thin layer of material, shows a young man with curly hair and dressed in a short tunic, with a hand raised as if making a blessing. Credit: University of Barcelona

Tests Suggest 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife' Is Authentic

 

http://www.livescience.com/44748-gospel-of-jesus-wife-authentic.html

A newly discovered scrap of 4th-century papyrus containing a reference to Jesus' wife.
Credit: © Karen L. King 2012


A small scrap of brown papyrus paper, about the size of a business card, has ignited a red-hot argument that spans all of Christendom.
The papyrus document, known as the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife," was unveiled in 2012 and instantly set off a debate over its authenticity. Perhaps its most controversial elements are lines that suggest Jesus had a wife.
But a recent announcement from the Harvard Divinity School that the document is probably genuine has rekindled the disagreement over its provenance and meaning. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

In one segment of the papyrus's text, the words "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" appear in a crude, hand-lettered Coptic script. (Coptic is an ancient language used by Christians living in Egypt.)
In another segment, the words "she will be able to be my disciple" have led some to argue that Jesus was promoting a woman to hold a position in the early Christian church — a controversial position then as now.
The existence of the papyrus document was first announced in 2012 by Karen L. King, a historian of early Christianity and a professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School. King first examined the privately owned fragment in 2011, and has since been studying it with a group of biblical scholars.
But is it real?
Since its discovery, the document has been dismissed as a forgery by some historians. "It is very probable that it's a fake," Christian Askeland, a Coptic scholar based in Germany, said in a widely disseminated YouTube video.
First, the writing is sloppy, according to Askeland. Compared with authentic Coptic papyri, in which letters are written with varying thickness and subtle curves and details, the letters in the Gospel of Jesus' Wife are formed by rigid, straight strokes of equal thickness.
Some experts have also noted that the scribe does not seem to have used either of the writing instruments common to the time period: a stylus (Roman metal pen) or a calamus (Egyptian reed pen). Additionally, the textual content raises questions, because even though much of the manuscript's text is cut off, its meaning is "too easy" to decipher, Askeland said.
No evidence of fraud
Further testing of the papyrus, the ink, the handwriting and the grammar, however, all point to the document's authenticity, according to a recent statement from the Harvard Divinity School.
A technique called micro-Raman spectroscopy, which measures the scattering of light from a sample, revealed that the carbon in the ink matched samples of other papyrus documents that date from the first to eighth centuries A.D.
"The main thing was to see, did somebody doctor this up?" Timothy M. Swager, a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times. "And there is absolutely no evidence for that. It would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible."
Swager used infrared spectroscopy, which analyzes the low-frequency light from an object, to see if the ink showed any inconsistencies or variations that would suggest it was a recent forgery. None were found.
A "Monty Python" sketch?
Not all skeptics, however, are dissuaded by these recent findings. Leo Depuydt, a professor of Egyptology at Brown University, said in a statement in the Harvard Theological Review that the fragment is so obviously fake that it "seems ripe for a 'Monty Python' sketch."
The papyrus also contains "gross grammatical errors," Depuydt said, adding that "an undergraduate student with one semester of Coptic can make a reed pen and start drawing lines."
Nonetheless, the document has renewed questions about the role of women and married men in the church — in both ancient and modern times.
"This gospel fragment provides a reason to reconsider what we thought we knew by asking what the role claims of Jesus' marital status played historically in early Christian controversies over marriage, celibacy and family," King said in a statement.