According to Simcha Jacobovici, those suggesting the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" is a modern forgery are "vultures", "The sleeper agents of Christian orthodoxy", "C-list scholars" engaging in "libel" ("The Jesus Wife controversy – Claiming Forgery with No Proof"). But I wonder what the former "naked archaeologist" had in mind writing, of all things:
pretty soon you’ve got everyone ignoring the content of the new discovery and focusing on whether it’s real to begin with.What "context"? This fragment surfaced on the no-questions-asked market without any kind of context. Yes, the first step would indeed be to "focus on whether it's real to begin with". In any case, Mr J. utterly misrepresents (perhaps he misunderstands) the reasons why scholars whether a-grade of c-grade are advancing arguments for this being a modern concoction. Mr Jacobovichi has a vivid imagination if he thinks the reason why some of us see holes in the arguments for authenticity because:
1,600 years ago one group of Christians decided that theirs is the only legitimate version of Christianity. They impaled their opposition and they burned their texts. Thereafter, anything that contradicted the official version became first “heresy” and now “forgery”.I set out my reasons for why I think it's a fake, because that is how it looks to me, not because I fear "impalement". Of course the publicist of the Talpiot Tomb very much wants to see the document related to the 'Jesus Had a Wife' (conspiracy) theory as authentic and therefore upholding the theory.
