Although nowhere in the Scripture does it say that "Jesus was not married," none of the Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – mentioned that Jesus had a wife.
This point was made clear by Answers in Genesis CEO and President Ken Ham as he weighed in on the controversy triggered by the claims made in 2012 about a tiny piece of papyrus that contains words written in the Coptic language that make reference to Jesus having a wife, possibly Mary Magdalene, who is said to be "worthy" of discipleship.
However, Ham said the claim is unbelievable since if that were true, the four evangelists would have known about it and included it in their Gospels. Ham noted that three of the four evangelists were eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry on earth while the fourth one, Luke, was a historian.
"Sceptics of the Bible used this tiny fragment of text to try to prove that the Gospels contained an inaccurate or fragmentary account of Jesus' life. But of course, the Bible was right all along," Ham, a Young Earth Creationist, wrote in an Answers in Genesis (AiG) blog on Monday.
Ham said one thing is clear: "Jesus' bride is the Church (Ephesians 5:23–32), not a woman here on Earth."
Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King originally presented the papyrus during the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome in September 2012. The fragment reads in Coptic: "Jesus said to them, 'My wife ..."
However in August 2015, King said that the papyrus, believed to be composed somewhere between the second and fourth centuries, is not "in any way" evidence that the historical Jesus was indeed married, according to The Christian Post.
"The main topic of the fragment is to affirm that women who are mothers and wives can be disciples of Jesus — a topic that was hotly debated in early Christianity as celibate virginity increasingly became highly valued," King said.
Last month, King revealed that the materials given to her by the owner of the papyrus fragment turned out to be "all fabrications."
Dallas Theological Seminary New Testament studies professor Darrell Bock also expressed serious doubts on the allegation, saying "that when a largely unvetted sensational discovery is announced, time should be given for the dust to settle around those claims."
"In this case, it looks like this 'ancient' papyrus is worth little more than that settled dust," Bock said.
Ham said the latest evidence shows the papyrus isn't authentic at all since it is a "modern forgery."
"As Romans 3:4 says, 'Let God be true but every man a liar.' We can always trust God's Word, from the very beginning," Ham said.
