The "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" sounds like the sequel to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, but there is papyrus that suggests it is ancient and not a fake.

Karen L. King, the historian at Harvard Divinity School who gave the papyrus the name and fame, has stated all along that the papyrus should not be regarded as evidence that Jesus was married, "but that only early Christians were actively discussing celibacy, sex, marriage and discipleship."

King had presented her findings in September 2012 at a symposium in Rome, and now she has gone a step further into the study. The study then was also met with skepticism. The publication of her analysis was held up for more than a year when questions were raised about the text's authenticity.

Now in 2014, the findings were released on Thursday this week from The Harvard Theological Review. The fact that the papyrus suggests that Jesus had a wife has caused skeptics, scholars, experts and professional bloggers to either denounce the evidence as fake, or are intrigued.   

The papyrus stip, which is no bigger than a business card, has been analyzed by professors, scientists and electrical engineers, and those with expertise in Chemistry and Biology from Columbia University, Harvard University, and MIT, The New York Times reported. They determined that the papyrus was from the fourth and eighth centuries. The MIT's science division stated that there was no evidence that anyone had doctored it. And if so, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

What has also intrigued people is the supposed writings that have been made by "Jesus" that reference a wife. They include phrases such as, "She will be able to be my disciple," "I am with her," as in "I will dwell with her," NBC News reported.

Some scholars even suggest that it is a copy of a copy, etc. The Washington Post reported that Hal Taussig, a New Testament Professor who worked with King, found the words on the fragment as "breathtaking," and he supports the idea that Mary Magdalene "was a major leader in the early Jesus movement."  

But the Vatican is perhaps not convinced; in an Editorial in the Vatican's newspaper, they denounce the papyrus as a fake. And some scholars say the work is a sloppy forgery, but that it will influence contemporary debates, The New York Times reported.

One of King's biggest opponents is Dr. Leo Depuydt, a Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. Depuydt calls the fragment "so potentially fake that it seems ripe for a Monty Python sketch." Depuydt also stated that the testing of the fragment was irrelevant, and he saw no need to inspect it; he says there are even gross grammatical errors.   

In any case, "historically women were among the strongest early supporters of Christianity when it was gaining converts in an often hostile Roman Empire," the National Geographic reported. King hypothesizes that "Christian writers were almost secretive about Jesus's marital status, which suggests that he was unmarried starting only in the late second century. If the papyrus fragment reflects religious writings copied from earlier texts, perhaps it dates back to the fourth century, then it would speak to early Christian concerns about the role of the family in the early Church, which famously called upon its adherents to put aside family and civic loyalties."

King is adamant this is not evidence that Jesus was married, "We don't know," King emphasized. "But early Christians were extremely interested in questions about whether they should be married or be celibate."

The papyrus fragment's origin were reportedly "acquired by an East German collector in the 1960s, then sold to its current owner in 1999, and then it was made available to King for study in 2011. The owner has remained anonymous, adding to the mystery surrounding the papyrus' origins," NBC News reported.