More on the Gospel of the Wife of Jesus

A few years ago I linked (here) to a fascinating article in The Atlantic about the so-called Gospel of the Wife of Jesus; the article explains how the forgery was uncovered largely through a close study of its recent provenance.

I now learn that Ariel Sabar, author of the article, has a new book on the same subject (shown above), published yesterday.

According to this review, the book adds considerable new detail to the previously published account, including a damning account of the peer-review process that enabled the fake papyrus fragment to be published, as genuine, in a reputable academic journal. This does not surprise me; both in my personal experience, and from anecdotes related to me by friends and colleagues, the peer-review system does not work: it allows bad articles to be published and worthy ones to be rejected, and creates a false sense of the legitimacy of those (usually politically-motivated) decisions.