The endless quest for the origins of the Bible

1896 The Gospel according to Mary

2nd century. Department of Egyptology at the Berlin Museum.

Did Tutankhamun's curse weigh on this Coptic manuscript? We would be inclined to believe it. In 1896, the German philologist Karl Reinhardt acquired from an antiques dealer in Cairo an unpublished 2nd century work, exhumed from a Christian cemetery in the region of Akhmîm, in Upper Egypt. Its promising title, “The Gospel According to Mary”, immediately excited the scientific community. Weary! For decades, its publication encountered an incredible series of obstacles: from a printing accident to the “competitive” discovery of Nag Hammadi, including the two world wars and the death of the translator. It was not until the 1970s that the only apocryphon attributed to a woman finally emerged from the shadows. In this Gospel, Christ transmits an occult teaching to the one whom the Gnostics designate as his “spiritual companion”: Mary Magdalene. Even today, this supposed proximity continues to ignite imaginations.

[1945TheGospelAccordingtoThomas

4th century. Coptic Museum in Cairo.

This story begins as a tale of Arabian Nights. In 1945, in Nag Hamadi, Upper Egypt, farmers dug up a jar more than a meter high. Rather than gold coins, bundles of paper escaped: 1,156 pages in total, some of which they used as fuel. Identified as Coptic treatises from the 4th century, the surviving manuscripts were published in the late 1950s. Among them was the Gospel of Thomas. Sometimes referred to as the “fifth Gospel”, this hermetic collection, devoid of narrative framework, is made up of 114 “logia” or “sayings of Jesus”. It represents to date the largest collection of words attributed to Christ. The attribution of this text to Thomas comes from the Gnostic tradition which saw in this apostle the secret “twin” of Christ. The tantalizing preamble says in essence: “He who finds the interpretation of these words will not taste death.” Enough to excite esotericists of all stripes.

1947 Qumran or the Dead Sea Scrolls

From the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. National Museum of Israel.

For more than half a century, the most famous biblical manuscripts of the 20th century were at the heart of an extraordinary political, scientific and theological saga. It all began in 1947, on the eve of the creation of Israel, when a shepherd discovered rolls of leather in a cave in what is now the West Bank. Immediately alerted, French, British and American archaeologists engaged in merciless competition with the Bedouins, treasure hunters. From 1947 to 1955, thousands of fragments belonging to 850 writings in Hebrew and Aramaic were exhumed from the site. The vast majority of these texts have been dated between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD. The discovery was dizzying: before Qumran, the oldest known manuscript of the Bible dates back to the Middle Ages. Held in suspense for decades, the general public had to wait until 2008 to see the full documents published. It was soon rumored that this delay was due to a Vatican plot. Because certain texts evoked an enigmatic “master of Justice” condemned to be “put to death” with “wounds and piercings”. Did Jesus of Nazareth have a precursor? The answer is undoubtedly simpler: well before the birth of Christianity, the notion of a sacrificial figure was already common to several Jewish spiritual movements.

1978 The Gospel of Judas

4th century. Preserved at the Martin-Bodmer Foundation, in Geneva.

Few texts underwent as many vicissitudes as this Coptic apocryphon from the 4th century discovered in Middle Egypt. Exhumed in 1978 by grave robbers, the manuscript passed through a jeweler in Cairo, before passing into the hands of American scholars, then falling into the possession of the Swiss antiquarian Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos. In 2001, after vain transactions to sell it at a high price, the antique dealer handed it over to the Maecenas Foundation, located in Basel. When it was finally handed over to the restorers, the manuscript was in pieces. After repair work, National Geographic magazine published it in 2006. Judas appears in the text as Jesus' favorite apostle. It was on the latter's orders – with the aim of fulfilling divine will – that the greatest traitor in history would have agreed to commit his crime. A bold reversal that many exegetes greeted with skepticism.

1980 The tomb of Jesus

Hypothetical location.

In February 2007, James Cameron, the director of Titanicproduced The Lost Tomb of Jesusa documentary TV film with a shattering message. According to him, a tomb discovered in Talpiot, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, in 1980, could have housed not only the bones of Christ, but also those of his mother, Mary, his brother Joseph, his presumed wife Mary Magdalene and the the child they would have conceived together. In less than two hours, the film shook two pillars of Christianity: the celibacy of the Messiah and his resurrection from the dead. Faced with the technological arsenal deployed in the documentary – DNA research, electronic probes and statistical calculations – critical minds have opposed this simple common sense reflection: the very high frequency of the first names Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the Palestine of the I century makes any attempt at cross-checking hazardous.

2012 The Gospel of Jesus' Wife

4th century, currently being authenticated.

“Jesus said to them, my wife…”: in September 2012, these five words, inscribed on a fragment of papyrus as large as a business card, set fire to the powder in the Pontifical Lateran University, in Rome. This truncated text is the only one to date which openly mentions a possible marriage of Christ. How did it get into the hands of Karen K. Ling, a historian at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, United States? No one knows. The only certainty: the document, written in a Coptic dialect from the 4th century, belongs to an anonymous collector residing on American soil. The latter would have acquired it in a batch of parchments bought from a German. Faced with such opacity, the Holy See immediately cried foul. In fact, until the analysis of the composition of the ink has delivered its conclusions, the authenticity of the text remains uncertain. Prudently, the Harvard Theological Review has postponed the commented publication of this document, initially planned for January 2013. The announced “bomb” – the putative wife of Christ – therefore remains unresolved. Perhaps it is even already defused because the Gnostic current, to which the text is undoubtedly attached, frequently gives the term wife the meaning of a spiritual alter ego.

2021 Biblical fragments in Greek

1st century, Israel Antiquities Authority.

They are believed to be 2,000 years old and were found in the Judean Desert (West Bank) – which extends over 1,500 square kilometers – during excavations carried out by the State of Israel. They had been sheltered at the bottom of caves called the “caverns of horrors”, given the number of skeletons found. According to experts, these cavities served as a refuge for Jews during the Great Revolt against the Roman Empire and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 which followed. Between various objects, coins and a mummified child, these fragments of the books of Zechariah and Nahum from the Book of the Prophets will enrich and expand our knowledge of the Bible and its history. With each discovery, in fact, we understand better that the holy work was developed gradually, by layers, by additions, over several centuries, and under various influences. Thus, this find was written in Greek and certain verses (notably verse 16, chapter 8 of the Book of Zacariah) differ in some details with the previous known versions.

This article is taken from GEO History Special Edition n°14, “Jesus and the birth of Christianity” from December 2021-January 2022

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