Title: Veritas
Rating: 4 Stars
Karen King is one of the most respected religious historians. She is currently the Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. This is the oldest endowed chair in the US (it even comes with the right to graze a cow in Harvard Yard!). Her specialty is working with previously unknown Christian texts.
First a word about these texts. There are many people that think that the Bible represents the complete work of early Christianity. Many people believe that the books of the Bible are divinely inspired. In fact, there are many books from the early days of Christianity that didn’t make the cut. Most of this paring down took place as Christianity became the state religion of Rome. Because of that, the books that did make the cut are biased against female centered books. Therefore, we ended up with a version of Jesus that was celibate and had only male disciples.
Other Christian texts from that era have been unearthed. Many of them are the so-called Gnostic books, which are centered more upon acquiring faith through knowledge than mysticism.
This was King’s specialty. Specifically, in her career she was very focused on fleshing out Mary Magdalene. Far from the redeemed prostitute that is conventionally her role, King saw Mary in a more central role in the life of Jesus, even as perhaps an apostle.
One day she gets an e-mail from someone claiming ownership of a fragment of Coptic papyrus that she might find interesting. King ignores the e-mail. About a year later, she gets another message. This time she explicitly shuts down the sender, telling him that she’s not interested. However, four months later, out of the blue, she e-mails him back and says that she’d like to take a look at the papyrus.
Quickly, she gets some experts to examine the papyrus for authenticity. They take a quick look at it and agree that it looks good. After doing some analysis on the text, she’s ready to make an announcement. At a conference, across the street from the Vatican, she announces that the fragment is authentic, that it claims that Jesus had a wife, and that she was his disciple. Such a bombshell announcement gets world wide coverage. Weirdly, at this presentation, King only talked. She didn’t actually display any of her evidence (she claimed her laptop’s drive was corrupted).
Eventually the papyrus became public. All kinds of red flags started to go off. First of all, the script was horribly written, as if by an amateur. Some of the phrases that are in the papyrus are direct copies from other Gnostic gospels. The one phrase that does appear to be unique to it is full of Coptic grammatical errors. Even more bizarrely, the line breaks occur at the exact same place as other manuscripts. Since each manuscript is handwritten on different sized papyrus by a wide variety of writers, this is essentially an impossibility.
Sabar (the author) has been involved in the story from the beginning. Here he begins to deeply research the provenance of the papyrus. Two people that vouchsafed the papyrus decades ago are now dead, so their words cannot be verified. The previous owner of the papyrus is also now dead. As Sabar probed deeper, the previous owner raises even more questions. The owner was an East German that was a machine operator most of his life. He was known as a simple man with no intellectual interests, much less a collector of Coptic papyrus.
Out of all of this, the spotlight shines on a man named Walter Fritz. He had an education in ancient manuscripts, but was certainly no expert. He had access to ancient papyrus strips that he could have easily stolen and repurposed. He knew the two people that authenticated the papyrus decades ago and was in partnership with the former East German.
Eventually Sabar tracks him down and begins to talk to him. Sabar quickly realizes that he’s dealing with a consummate con man. Fritz quickly pivots on every lie that Sabar catches him on and spins another tale. Upon further digging, Sabar discovers that Fritz was also responsible for hosting several porn sites. He’s in deep financial trouble just at the time when the e-mail offer comes to Professor King. Ultimately, Fritz admits that he was the one that contacted King.
King couldn’t have been a better target for Fritz’s con. She was actively looking for evidence that could counter the current patriarchal view of the current set of gospels. She seemed perfectly positioned to be a target for Fritz’s approach. You begin to feel sorry for King. She was just a little too hungry for papyrus proof and so naively was the victim of the con.
But then you discover that, while all of this was going on, Harvard Divinity School was in trouble. Harvard was conducting a review that was going to be quite critical of the school. It was going to recommend that a separate religious studies department be set up independent of the school. This would have completely changed its charter.
If it seems strange that King e-mailed Fritz out of the blue after four months of radio silence, some of the mystery clears up when you learn that that e-mail was sent just two days after the commission began to investigate. King then rushed to judgement. Those experts that she consulted? Well, one of them was her mentor while the other was her protege. Of the people that did the scientific analysis, one was a childhood friend and the other was the brother in law of her mentor. She was able to use her senior position at the school to effectively quash the planned publish of a scathing rebuttal of the papyrus.
By announcing her news, making it a world wide event, and then going on a nation wide speaking tour, she brought the Harvard Divinity School a level of fame that it’d never had before. It had the effect of killing the commission’s recommendation.
She saved the school, but eventually the truth came out. The papyrus has been thoroughly discredited. Her motivations have been held up for scorn. She is embarking upon a ‘phased retirement’ from her position at the school.
In some ways, she has doubled down. She has publicly stated that the authenticity of the fragment is less important than its ‘operational effectiveness’. Somehow, the fact that she was able to promote her theory makes the truth of the fragment inconsequential.
So, here is where we are at. A famed historian is telling us that facts and truth don’t matter as long as it’s in the service of some larger belief.
This is coming from a Harvard history professor. Is there any wonder than that over half of all Republicans still think of Donald Trump as the true President?
If facts don’t matter, then you can believe anything.
dorkenstein 