Afterword

In September 2012, church historian and Harvard professor Karen L. King rocked the scholarly world—and communities of faith—when she revealed the so-called Jesus Fragment at a Coptic studies conference in Rome. Identified as evidence of a previously unknown Christian gospel, this business-card-size, fourth-century papyrus quickly captured international attention because its laconic text introduced the doubly transgressive notion that Jesus had been married and that he had had at least one female disciple. ¹ King’s announcement sparked a firestorm of commentary in which everyone from the Vatican to Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert held forth on the Fragment’s authenticity and theological significance. Although that authenticity would soon be called into question, and the article by King planned for Harvard Theological Review announcing its discovery withdrawn, the very idea of Jesus’ conjugal attachment and transmission of spiritual authority to a woman nonetheless captivated the imaginations of scholars and persons of faith eager to extend the theological and social possibilities implied by the putative gospel fragment. It did not take long for these same scholars and believers—and opportunistic skeptics—to run with King’s discovery and suggest a candidate for the dubious roles of spouse and female disciple: Mary Magdalene. ² The famous and sometimes infamous biblical woman doubtlessly emerged as the most likely suspect because Dan Brown’s 2003 blockbuster novel had already secured that identity for her. According to The Da Vinci Code’s continuation of the biblical story, Jesus and Mary Magdalene do indeed marry; she bears his child, establishing through her person the so-called “blood line of the Holy Grail.” ³ In Brown’s narrative, the early church suppresses news of the marriage and the of spring—and what these might say about women’s roles in the Jesus cult and feminine-inflected expressions of spirituality and divinity.