Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife

This is a remarkable book by a remarkable and authentic journalist. Ariel Sabar’s first book won the National Book Critics Circle Award and this is destined for similar plaudits. It has, e.g., been nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime (i.e. ‘True Crime’) book of 2020. If it does not win I will be very surprised.The story concerns a forged document—a piece of papyrus with several lines in Coptic, one of which refers to Jesus’ wife. The document was offered to a Harvard professor who went for it like a hungry trout, principally, one assumes, because it affirmed something that she very much wanted to believe. When the document’s veracity is called into question, along with her own actions, she retreats into postmodern obscurantism. This reminds me of some of the excuses made by Paul de Man’s defenders when he was exposed as a writer of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. If you don’t have the facts on your side you can always argue that ‘your facts’ are on your side or that there are really no such things as facts. The bottom line is that the Harvard professor did not cover herself in glory by her public responses to the realities exposed by the author (nor by her decision to not respond to his personal inquiries).The professor is an expert on Gnosticism and would like to contrast the evidentiary material in the noncanonical Christian writings with those in the New Testament. She was, for a time, a member of a splinter group which, e.g., dismissed the gospel of John. She would like to see the patriarchal patristic and papal groups taken down several notches and she would like to give greater voice and prominence to the women in the early Church. I have no quarrel with these intentions and believe, with many, that the Church’s appeal to ‘tradition’ along with facts is sometimes dubious. Augustine’s personal struggles with sexuality and the manner in which they have colored the Church’s responses to it are a clear example. I would be happy to learn that Jesus was married, if the facts so demonstrated, and I am pleased by efforts to position Mary Magdalene at the center of Jesus’ followers and remove the false accusations lodged against her.The key is the facts and Professor Karen King sought factual verification in the document offered to her by what turned out to be a Florida pornographer. Her later, expressed surprise at the ability to investigate provenance was patently duplicitous and her postmodern posturing over facts, evidence and historicity makes for a quintessential cautionary tale about the modern academy.Ariel Sabar’s investigation of all of these matters was nothing short of masterful. His journalistic honesty, tenacity and dedication should provide lessons to all of his fellow professionals. Most of all, he knew how to find a great story, one worthy of his untiring efforts. What began as pieces for the Smithsonian and The Atlantic developed into a very special book requiring years of research, some knowledge of Coptic (and its dialects), of Gnosticism, document verification technology and—perhaps most recondite and fascinating of all—Harvard academic politics.The 300+ pp. of text is anchored by another 40+ pp. of supporting material. This is a substantial work of scholarship as well as a fascinating ‘great read’ for a wide audience. I cannot recommend it too highly. It is the best true crime book I have read since Sidney Kirkpatrick’s book on the William Desmond Taylor murder, A CAST OF KILLERS (1986). This is as riveting as Joseph Wambaugh at the top of his game. A must read.

August 19, 2020Sabar, Ariel (2020). Veritas. A Harvard Professor, a conman, and the Gospel of Jesus’s wife. New York Doubleday.An award-winning investigative reporter shows that a supposedly lost “Gospel,” purporting to show that Jesus had a wife, is a forgery created by a con man.This is an excellent book, in which an investigative reporter examines Harvard Divinity School Professor Karen King’s presentation of a supposedly ancient papyrus fragment which language which she introduced as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” Supposedly, this fragment, which contained (in Coptic) the words of Jesus “My wife,” proved that Jesus had a wife, and that this was suppressed by the Early Church.Sabar proved a superb investigative reporter, tracking down sources in the US and Germany, to identify the source of the document, and to construct a biography of its provider, finally eliciting a confession he was the source.King, on the other hand, occupying a prestigious chair in the Harvard Divinity School, comes across as to ideological, that she was too easily persuaded both that the document was real, and that her interpretation of it was correct, that it was a “Gospel” (although it was but a fragment) and meant that Jesus was married, approved of women disciples and sex, and that the Early Church must have suppressed, for patriarchal reasons, all such evidence. To her, the lack of evidence was additional proof of how successful such suppression had been. King had earlier been part of the “Jesus Seminar,” whose participants sought to undermine the Catholic Church and its dogmas, and to welcome alternative “Gospels” which the Early Church had rejected as inauthentic and/or heretical.King presented the object and her conclusions to the Smithsonian Institute, and to Harvard’s own Journal of Theology, and presented it to a Conference in Rome near the Vatican, all the while asserting that it proved her feminist ideas about the suppression of the role of women in the early Church. From the very beginning, however, there were doubts, by experts, about whether it was a fake/forgery, and about its provenance. King published before the item could be tested, and declined, claiming promised secrecy, to reveal from whom she had obtain it (and thus is provenance, or history). King also concealed that “her” experts had personal connections to her.Scholars discovered several errors, in grammar and language, which showed it was forged. Eventually, King agreed that it was “probably forged.” She refused to cooperate with independent investigators, or with the reporter’s search into the document’s origins. King appeared to believe that the document was “true,” whether or not it was forged, because it initiated necessary conversations about the early church and the Gospels. To her, “truth” and “dates” were not values, but only narratives controlled by those in power. The book, in passing, eviscerates such “post-modern” scholarship, with its lack of respect for truth. Thus, the great irony of the book’s title, VERITAS, which means “Truth,” and is Harvard’s Motto.Sabar’s investigations disclosed the source, who eventually confessed he was the source, who had the ability to forge the document, though he denied he did so. This person, Walter Fritz, was a German, who had studied Egyptology and Coptic writing, later worked for the Stasi in East Berlin, ran a pornography business with his wife in Florida, and had the means and motive. Although he lied and lied to the reported, the reporter persisted and, when Fritz was confronted with evidence, Fritz changed his stories and confirmed the reporter’s findings.The book is an excellent account of how even the most learned and most prestigious, scholars and institutions, can be fooled, especially when they are predisposed to be fooled. It shows, in this and other examples, how con men take advantage even of the elite, by giving them what they want to be true. That articles are published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, by the most reputable and titled scholars, is no guarantee of authenticity or correct interpretation, especially by scholars with pre-determined conclusions and a disdain for traditional standards of truth and provenance.

Meticulously researched and easy to follow. The dedication to every detail has unveiled a bizarre but fascinating story from every angle.Makes you consider so much in academic research as much as any religious reason or angle.

This was a well-paced, carefully researched expose of an amazing tale of politically-motivated deceit by a leading academic at Harvard School of Divinity. The book is well written and follows through the story with exacting detail and reference to many of the characters involved. In essence, a leading historian with a feminist gender is deceived into promoting a fake manuscript fragment as a New Age gospel of Mary Magdalen. This feeds into her deeply held feminist ideology and she continues to promote her ''find" even after it is clear it is fake. The book examines the New Age trend to redefine concepts that were once taken for granted - for instance, the concept of history. Historians today are increasingly inclined to re-write history to suit their political beliefs, never mind the lack of facts. In this case, even when she finally concedes her fragment is a scrap, the academic refuses to recant her promotion of it - after all, what is history? If becomes whatever you say it is, or should be. If a modern man reimagined himself to be Mary Magdalen and wrote a fake script then why is that any less legitimate a historical view of how Mary Magdalen saw Jesus Christ than if the script was in fact the words of Mary Magdalen herself? After all, what is history but an interpretation of the facts, eg 'as told to' or the common 'based on events'. When leading historians have fallen this far through the Looking Glass that History is no longer a recounting of actual events but a reimagining clouded by modern socio-political theory, you can see how easy it is to fool them. And this book ably displays the consequences. Well worth the read.

This book is a timely read when debates over truth, fact, and methods of discernment are raging more than ever before. The author masterfully dives into a recent scholarly controversy and finds layers beneath the controversy that go to the heart of the question of what is truth and how we know things. There are many cautions here for how a series of small compromises in pursuit of a goal can lead us down an abyss, and how narratives about history change even over the course of a mere 20 year span.