Ep. 69 - The Truth About the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, with Ariel Sabar

Book Dreams

What happens when a Harvard professor puts the weight of her reputation behind an alleged ancient gospel with monumental implications for the Roman Catholic Church, and the gospel turns out to be a fake? In 2012, Karen King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard’s Divinity School, announced the discovery of a gospel in which Jesus refers to “my wife.” Investigative reporter Ariel Sabar, author of Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, was present at the announcement and helped uncover the actuality of the gospel’s forgery.

This week on Book Dreams, Ariel talks with Eve and Julie about what it was like to be in the room, across the street from the Vatican itself, when Karen King unveiled the alleged gospel. He describes the steps taken to establish that the document was forged, and his own, successful efforts to identify the man who is almost certainly the mastermind behind the forgery. And he discusses what this saga illustrates about the nature of truth and the significance of authenticity, with a consideration of the influence of Karen King’s postmodernist thinking.

Ariel Sabar is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He's worked as a staff writer at the Providence Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and Christian Science Monitor. Ariel won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his first book, My Father's Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past. Veritas, his book about Karen King and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best true crime book of the year and for the investigative reporters and editors book award.

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