Veritas

A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife

By: Ariel Sabar

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author comes the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the scandal that shook Harvard.

In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star religion professor at Harvard, announced a breathtaking discovery just steps from the Vatican: she’d found an ancient scrap of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene “my wife.” The mysterious manuscript, which King provocatively titled “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” had the power to topple the Roman Catholic Church. It threatened not just the all-male priesthood, but centuries of sacred teachings on marriage, sex, and women’s leadership, much of it premised on the hallowed tradition of a celibate Jesus.

Award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar covered King’s announcement in Rome but left with a question that no one seemed able to answer: Where in the world did this history-making papyrus come from? Sabar’s dogged sleuthing led from the halls of Harvard Divinity School to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before landing on the trail of a Florida man with an unbelievable past. Could a motorcycle-riding pornographer with a fake Egyptology degree and a prophetess wife have set in motion one of the greatest hoaxes of the century? A propulsive tale laced with twists and trapdoors, Veritas is an exhilarating, globe-straddling detective story about an Ivy League historian and a college dropout—and how they worked together to pass off an audacious forgery as a long-lost piece of the Bible.

Journalism at its best!

Unfortunately, journalism has lost its virtues.
When you see pitiful work by CNN journalist for example, just to gain ratings, Mr. Sabar’s commendable work is just exhilarating !!
Ben Kermani, MD

I'll be thinking about this one -

- for some time.
At 5 or 6 chapters in, I was getting so indignant. Why is the author throwing so much shade on King and her associates? it seemed so heavy-handed!
I kept reading, though, and the author provided a mountain of data - fascinating, nauseating, and disturbing - and it became clear.
Amazing book.

A tour de force. Brilliant.

It’s hard to describe excellence of this book without giving away parts of the story. All I can say is that it raises questions of interest to anyone who cares about the ethics of cultural heritage work, the difficulties inherent in religious inquiry in an academic environment, and the power of institutions like Harvard. Despite its high level of detail at times, it is easy to follow the narrative on audiobook, which says a lot for the author’s control over the material and ability to make it comprehensible to a listening audience. Exciting and thought provoking—my dream audiobook.

Superb

This story is fascinating. The issue of the scripture is dealt with fully but the astounding story that surrounds it unfolds as an unexpected maze of surprises that is solved by investigative journalism and fidelity to fact finding. I did some googling while listening and thought based on that the story would fizzle out. It did not. Journalism still exists. Here is a sterling example.

Deep Investigation

Good story about motivations and subtle dishonesty in high level academia in the liberal arts.