It appears that the gospel of Jesus’ wife is probably a very modern forgery.
Forgery or not, the fact seems to be that young men in those times were expected to be married (not so different up till very recent times), and that an unmarried group consisting of 13 young, single males traipsing round the countryside together might have caused a certain amount of gossip. But does it matter? Jesus and all his disciples were married in their teens, for all we know.
So, some mischievous person has forged some ancient Coptic. This is very much in a fine tradition. Medieval monks and bishops shamelessly forged the true fingernails of the Virgin, and chopped logs that were to become splinters of the true cross. There is a market for fragments of ancient religious writings. The forger is part of a long tradition.
Epicureans can smile indulgently. We have no need of these money-making stunts. If the ancient creators of the Christian religion had not suppressed so many points of view there would be no market for pseudo bits of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Everything would have been published and be available for the public to make up their own minds. Now that would be Epicurean.
From Jane Forsyth:
Epicurus would, I am sure welcome other points of view, not only for the sake of balance, but also for the sake of rational thinking.
There is some evidence, though unproven, that Jesus could have been an Essene. The Essenes were members of a Jewish apocalyptic sect who took themselves out into the desert and lived a frugal and celibate lives. They believed that a ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ was to come who would herald the end of the world (the end of the Romans?) That Jesus was, at one time, a member of this community is hinted at by His teachings. One example is that which is known as “The Lord’s Prayer”. This has been found to have originated with the Essenes.
My point is that if Jesus had been an Essene He would not have been married because of the culture of celibacy practiced by the sect.
I will be able to elucidate more when I have finished listening to a course of lectures on this which is about the finding and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls which were hidden from the Romans by the Essenes in AD 70, and found 2000 later.