The papyrus, the professor, and a scandal that ensnared Harvard Divinity School
The story made international headlines in 2012. During an academic conference on Egypt’s earliest Christians, a renowned feminist historian of Christianity announced a potentially momentous discovery: a second-century papyrus fragment, about the size of a business card, that suggested that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have been married.
The magnitude of such a discovery, if verified, would be hard to overstate. It had the potential to upend many fundamental precepts of Roman Catholic dogma, from priestly celibacy to the role of women in the Church and in marriage. What began as
