Sabar, Ariel. Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife. New
York: Doubleday, 2020. ISBN: 9780385542586
On September 18, 2012, in Rome near the Vatican, Prof. Karen King of the Harvard University Divinity School proclaimed the finding of a scrap of parchment that she dubbed, just for "reference purposes," the Gospel of Jesus's Wife. Veritas explores what led up to this presentation and the fallout afterwards.
Ariel Sabar covered the Rome conference for Smithsonian Magazine in 2012. He later wrote an article on the results of physical examination of the parchment in The Atlantic in 2016. He has continued to dig into this story resulting in Veritas which walks the reader though the story in five acts. Act I is Discovery with the presentation and early reception of the parchment. Act II is Doubt where people outside Karen King's group raise questions on the dating of the manuscript and what she claims it means. Act III is Proofs, proof of forgery in regard to an accompanying parchment and then proof in regard to the Gospel of Jesus's Wife. Act IV is The Stranger, an investigation into Walter Fritz who provided Prof. King the parchment. Sabar investigates Fritz's background, history, and possible motives for the forgery. Act V is The Downturned Book of Revelations which is an inquiry into why Prof. King was so eager to proclaim the forgery as genuine.
In Veritas, Ariel Sabar provides a detailed investigation of the whole Gospel of Jesus's Wife controversy from the beginning until now. If you have an interest in early Biblical texts, forgery, and/or academic dishonesty, Veritas would be a good read for you.
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