TM Gallery info The Gospel of Jesus' Wife (TM 641967) is a small, allegedly fourth century Coptic papyrus fragment which caused quite a stir in 2012. Because it contains a quote of Jezus in which he refers to 'my wife', it was considered to be proof that at least some early Christians believed that he was married.
Although grammatical errors caused some scholars to doubt the authenticity of the piece, the documentation about its provenance convinced others that it was genuine. Only in 2016 a marvelous piece of investigative journalism in the magazine The Atlantic made clear that the papyrus was definitely a forgery. Or as the article's subtitle puts it: 'A hotly contested, supposedly ancient manuscript suggests Christ was married. But believing its origin story—a real-life Da Vinci Code, involving a Harvard professor, a onetime Florida pornographer, and an escape from East Germany—requires a big leap of faith.'