Abstract

At the International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome on 18 September
2012, Professor Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity from
Harvard Divinity School, presented a papyrus fragment with Coptic text,
known as The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. This document includes very problematic
sentence: „Jesus said to them: My wife…”. Prof. King maintains in
her article that the papyrus comes from the 4th century and contains Coptic
translation of a gospel, possibly written in Greek in the second century,
although there is no consensus among the experts on this matter.
This article engages in the debate on The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and first
includes the description of the manuscript and its datation, then provides the
Coptic text with its translation and in finally the comparison is made of the
Gospel with the selected verses from another Coptic document: The Gospel
of Thomas. The article shows, that The Gospel of Jesus’Wife is a modern
forgery, written on a scrap of ancient papyrus and that most of words and
expressions, used in this document, comes from The Gospel of Thomas.