Three Cheers For Karen King For Having The Courage To Say She Was Duped

Four years ago there was a huge splash made in the media about an alleged fragment of papyrus that "revealed that Jesus was married" in it he is alleged to have talked about "my wife", at least that's how it got played.  In the huge industry in debunking Christianity, it got a lot of play, even though the Harvard scholar who was promoting it never claimed that it was evidence that Jesus had been married instead of being celibate, Karen King said that it was, "at most" an alternative tradition about Jesus and whether or not Christians should marry.

Now after the publication of an article in the Atlantic tracks down what is almost certainly a forgery and a fraud to a shady failed Coptic scholar and a seedy, rather drearily amazing conman and pornographer named Walter Fritz Karen King has admitted that it is just about certainly a forgery and that her scholarship based on it is useless.

It takes real character to admit your greatest claim to fame is a fraud and that you were conned, especially in academic circles.  The viciousness of academic life is a good reason for scholars to be afraid of that, though it is a lot more common than most of them like to admit.  So I think it's important to acknowledge when a scholar admits that they were suckered by con men.

I do think that when serious academic study around subjects subject to enormous ideological pressure it's especially important to be careful in exactly the way that most alleged journalism and most online chatter isn't.  Entire fields of study are covered by that description.   I will note that I doubt most of those who spewed columnage about the original story are, so far as I can tell, silent on the exposure of the fraud and the retraction.  Ker-splash!  Such is the quality of that "new journalism" we were all sold on in the past decade and a half.

Let's  give Karen King the last word on this because she has had the most to lose and she got it right, in the end.

She said she is “not happy” about being lied to, but felt “oddly relieved” after reading the Atlantic article.

“I think having the truth is always kind of centering,” she said.

Hate Update:  I'm not responsible for what you don't remember.  I've got a fairly good memory and I know how to check on it when I want to make sure.  It's not my fault you're too lazy to remember things.