The Wife of Jesus?

All over the internet this week has been the story of a fragment of an ancient Egyptian document with the words "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" In all, the fragment contains just 33 words and incomplete sentences - an English teacher's worst nightmare! Karen King of Harvard University, one of the scholars charged with analyzing the fragment, stopped short of saying this proves Jesus was married, only to add that some ancient Christians thought Jesus was in fact married...to a woman...just to clarify...thought I'd throw that in for free!
Over the years, as these sorts of discoveries are unearthed and plastered all of the media, I've found these scholars (and there are more) to be level-headed, fair and accurate in their commentary. Check it out!
Darrell Bock
Craig A. Evans
UPDATE:
Larry Hurtado
Simon Gathercole

Jesus, Exile and the Old Testament

Jesus from the Deesis Mosaic (Photo credit: jakebouma)

Read through a paper last night by Doug McComiskey, "Exile and the Purpose of Jesus' Parables" - 29 pages of goodness! His basic thesis was that Jesus thought the Jews of his day were still in exile and his parabolic teaching was used in part to underscore that fact to his audience. McComiskey draws on the work of NT Wright, understandably so, but does his own heavy lifting in connecting Jesus' words/parables to the original Old Testament texts. In doing so, he makes two significant points: 1) The original context/meaning of the OT was broad enough to include the generation of Jesus (and beyond). Therefore Jesus did not have to pour some "new meaning" into the older text. 2) Jesus saw himself connected tightly to the OT story and didn't simply use the OT to "proof text" his point.

These two points run contrary to much of the scholarly discussion today which leans more heavily on finding a deeper meaning in the OT text, on the one hand, and reducing Jesus' appropriation of the OT to simply prooving theological points on the other (proof texting - having a point and attempting to find a verse for support, usually without respecting the context). For McComiskey meaning and context work together to form a narrative, organic whole with Jesus at the heart of the story.