This is a good book: _Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife_
by Ariel Sabar

The "hanging by a thread" thread made me think of papyrus (thread --> reed - welcome to my mind), and it's about Jesus, so yay! This post is 100% OT!

No spoilers.

I haven't had the 'privilege' of sitting in on one of the Mormon deep doctrine discussions in a long time but I thought that Jesus having a wife (or wives) was one of those things that Mormons "know" that "the world" doesn't have a clue about.

I agree. The real question was, how many wives did he have?



I love this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM3dYCp-op8

Was it the simple melody? The plaintive quality of her voice?

Whatever it was, I would stand in the bathroom, looking at myself, slyly, out of the corner of my eye, and sing it to myself...

I didn't know that movie was about you, Jesus!

Yeah - we were all about No Sex Jesus.

...and his grape juice that never fermented.

Right?!

"Well, wine wasn't very strong back in those days."

Man, if I were making wine back in those days, it would be *mighty* strong. For medicinal reasons, of course.

In Brighams time it was taught Jesus was a polygamist.

In my neck of the woods this was taught right up until the 70s.

My question is.....

Who is Mary the Mother of Jesus sealed to?

Joseph or her Dad AKA Heavenly Father?

Have Jesus' wives temple work been done? If they've not been given new names, how can he call them forth from the grave?

that Mary was sealed to Adam (according to Brigham Young the father of Jesus) for eternity and to Joseph for time only. The sealing was thought to have been performed by the Angel Gabriel somewhere in the hill country of Judea.

Exactly right! Mary was on her way to visit her cousin, who was pregnant with John the Baptist.

Gabriel and ghawd waylaid her, they did the marriage and then ghawd way laid her!!



That's mormon history.

But what mormon history doesn't discuss is ghawd climaxing. What do you think that was like? Did his eyes cross? Did he get a real doofus look on his face?

Remember when teenage males would discuss the likelihood that Superman climaxing would blow the top of Lois Lane's head off? Obviously that didn't happen with ghawd and Mary...

Or maybe it did and ghawd then healed her, and Gabriel said, "Oy vey! That was awesome! Do her again!"

Ya gotta think these things through!

Supposedly Mary was sealed to her husband Joseph but was only the vessel (or mortal birth conduit) for Jesus.

This is also probably the thinking that made it okay for the doctrine of marrying other sealed men's wives such as Orson Hyde to Joseph Smith, etc, etc.

BY taught that Mary was one of Adam/God's temple-married wives in another creation. They were man and wife. Joseph was not temple-married because there was no priesthood authority extant at the time of Jesus's birth.

“Jesus said to them, ‘Take my wife please …’”

My Lord and Savior, even Henny Youngman.

Hokay, so JuHEEsus was a cuck.

Don't knock the way another cat swings.

Nuthin's too wild for the Celestial Kink-Dom.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2020 05:29PM by Timothy.

When gawd climaxed did he yell " Oh God"?

He yelled "Oh Me!"

I'm a nevermo. Married to a TBM.

The problem of the virgin birth used to bother me, until, several years ago I saw a photo in the newspaper.

It seems a horse had just given birth to a baby zebra via embryo transplant. The mare thought it was her baby.

In a lightbulb moment, I realized the virgin birth was probably the method used.

Suppose for an instant, that God Himself put heaven in charge of some high-powered angels and said, "Here's the rules. I'll be back in 33 earth years," and shrunk Himself down to the size of a zygote and transported Himself inside Mary's womb.

Among other things, it solves the puzzle of how the Father could be the son, etc.

This is purely my working concept, but it works for me.

Whatever works for you. That's what great about this place. You can work out your theories, and yes, people will debate them. But, in the end, you can decide what works for you.

Personally, I'm Pagan. But, almost everyone here knows that. And, respects it.

There are Christians, Jews, (I don't think we have any Muslims), Buddhists, (I don't think we have any Hindus), Pagans, Atheists, Agnostics, and maybe even a couple of Mormons. For the most part, we play well together.

The "Jesus' Wife" fraud was mentioned in a Sat/Sun WSJ article, "The Age-Old Secrets of Modern Scams," by Ariel Sabar. The relevant part:

"Perhaps the most spectacular forgery of the 21st century is the so-called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, a Coptic papyrus fragment that made international headlines in 2012. In its bombshell line, Jesus speaks to his followers about a woman who appears to be Mary Magdalene, calling her “my wife” and saying, “She is able to be my disciple.” A Harvard Divinity School professor named Karen King announced the discovery at a scholarly conference in Rome, arguing that Christians might have composed the text in the second century.

"Like many forged historical manuscripts, the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife spoke less to the past than to the present. The idea that Christian authorities had conspired for centuries to bury evidence of a married Jesus echoed the plot of the bestselling novel “The Da Vinci Code.” The papyrus lent a patina of antiquity to modern values, from egalitarianism in places of worship to fresh calls to end mandatory celibacy for priests.

"It was no accident that the private collector who owned the papyrus chose to bring it to Dr. King, who had devoted her career to challenging what she calls the “master story” of early Christianity.

Four years later, Dr. King acknowledged that she’d been duped. Scholarly consensus is that a modern forger obtained a blank scrap of genuine papyrus, then wrote on it with soot-based ink, which is as easy to make today as it was in antiquity. The forger appears to have cherry-picked phrases from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and cleverly rearranged them, making a new message sound ancient. Scholars say the forger used an online transcript of the Gospel of Thomas whose modern typographical errors are replicated in the 'ancient handwriting' of the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife."

To avoid excerpting too much, I'll offer this summary of the article: Most frauds and forgeries appeal to what we want to believe, oftentimes financial advantage, but other times ideological reinforcement. The "Hitler Diary" fraud of 1983 offered Germans something which would obviate their collective national guilt for the Holocaust. The "Jesus' Wife" fraud offered modernists a Jesus more liberal and appealing to modern (in?)sensibilities. And the Jesus forger picked his target shrewdly: a "higher-criticism" professor at Harvard "Divinity." To her credit, she did repudiate her validation of it.

Yeah. I’m reading his book that was published this year.

See the “no spoilers” part above?

notwithstanding caffiend’s spoilers, ahem, I’m still reading it.

I think it could be a bit shorter, but if you like investigating reporting, you’ll love Sabar’s attention to detail.

I don’t want to give anything away. There are two huge payoffs unrelated to what caffiened wrote, so he didn’t completely spoil it.

This book isn’t a slog. I’m reading it on my tablet, and I’m not checking my progress/what page I’m on, so I have a “but there’s more?!?” reaction when I start a new chapter. If I were holding a physical book, I’d know how close to the end I am. I don’t buy books anymore. Three cheers for public libraries! My eyesight, never good, is also failing, so ebooks are a godsend.

Sabar is good at reminding the reader who the numerous players are, and there are many. Oof! I’m enjoying reading about his thought process.

Right now I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars.

I'm an insensitive lout, but you knew that. Now you have proof. As penance, I offer you the following:

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8da3a521ea77960248fb62eaf1e744b5bb9e3898a6d0fa48a929575be79dd41.jpg

Sorry, I don't know how to put a Tchaikovsky sound track to that image.

Okay. You’re almost forgiven.

Yeah, I read a book review a couple weeks ago and put this on hold with the local library.

My point about spoilers is that *if* someone wants to spoil it for themselves, fine. Plus it’s not really spoiling if someone goes out to look for themselves to see if they want to read it.

Here’s why I like it:

The subject matter itself is interesting.
The insight into investigative journalism and the sheer amount of research that Sabar conducted is mind blowing to me. I keep wondering about his budget. It seems limitless. He put in the work. That’s where my quibble is - does he really need to go into so much detail about his process? My answer is yeah. If you’re writing about a forgery from Day One, your case better be airtight.
There’s an unexpected and important Cold War aspect to it
I’m learning a lot about asceticism
I’m learning a lot about HDS and Harvard Yard
I’m learning a lot about ancient languages

So yeah, the forgery aspect is no big surprise. The backstories are like wow! The sheer number of people he interviewed and that they almost universally went on the record is amazing. His reasoning is outstanding. I might become a Sabar groupie.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2020 12:38AM by Beth.

Beth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Okay. You’re almost forgiven.

Not that I deserve it.

> There’s an unexpected and important Cold War
> aspect to it

You're begging Lot's Wife to get into this thread, you know!

> I’m learning a lot about asceticism

"Acidic" I know. "Aesthetic," also. Even, "Acerbic." What's this "ascetic?"

> I’m learning a lot about HDS and Harvard Yard

Come to New England and I'll show you around. I graduated from a rival school, "The Institute of Higher Humility," where I got my masters (Summa cum Laude, you know!). Did you note my putting "Divinity" in parentheses?

> I’m learning a lot about ancient languages

But not Reformed Egyptian, I presume?
>
> So yeah, the forgery aspect is no big surprise.


My knee-jerk assumption was that the "Jesus' Wife" forgery was common knowledge.

Beth uses the term Cold War accurately. I should take a photo.

"Ascetic" is living like a monk, without creature comforts and with strict discipline. If someone breaks the rules, the response is likely to be acidulous.

Thank ya!

Yeah - The HDS seems to be Harvard Yard's red-headed step-sibling despite Harvard starting out as a divinity school. I didn't know that. That relationship figures in the narrative.

Yeah - Gnostics. Ascetics? Yeah, but maybe not! But really, yeah.

And blah blah not giving any more away. There's a quote from _The Spy Who Came In from the Cold_ at the beginning of a chapter. :)

ETA: Re: Harvard - "School of the Prophets"? Is that right? (Just got back from getting a breathing treatment at the ER (no COVID), so I'm too twitchy to lookk anything up or sit still for long. But I can breathe.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2020 11:02AM by Beth.

Christian Science borrows some concepts from Gnosticism, also Spiritism. Mary Baker Eddy's exposure to Spiritism was direct--she was moving and residing among Spiritist practitioners at the time she received "revelation" and wrote "Science & Health." My take is that she absorbed Gnosticism indirectly through Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists.

You know, Beth, I'm so old I can remember when there were Christians at Harvard "Divinity" School!

Perhaps it was his accent and he really said life.

You and DtA win for the worst groaners. :-)

Finished!

100% worth it.

Truth, history, theology, money, fame, interdisciplinary beefs and flattery, human frailties both acknowledged and ignored, and boom!

Well done. It's almost Long List season. I hope this book makes some.



Palate cleansers:


Ursla K. le Guin. Anything. But maybe not "The Lathe of Heaven" - it's good, but it's heavy.

"On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong

"Margaret Fuller: An New American Life" by Megan Marshal

"The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes

"The Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Richard Flanagan (Shout out the the Aussies!)

*******"Record of A Night Too Brief" by Hiromi Kawakami

"The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder

"The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell

"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

"Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets" by Svetlana Alexievich

"The Romanovs: The Final Chapter" by Robert K. Massie - this isn't a sexy book. It's kind of funny in a way. People fighting over bones and who gets to test them and Oy vey is mir!

"The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between" by Hisham Matar

"The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt (I haven't seen the movie, and from what I've read, that's a good thing.)

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro (If you aren't touched, you have no heart.)

"Sargent's Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas" by Donna M. Lucey

"Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America" by Annie Jacobsen (This book will PISS YOU OFF.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2020 12:47AM by Beth.