The Most Interesting Gospel about Jesus’ Wife in the World?

Steve Douglas kindly made and shared this image:

The words are something I said in my previous blog post, in response to Francis Watson’s claim that various phrases show dependence on other Gospels. There are a great many phrases one will encounter in a language which will only seem derivative of a specific other text to someone who is not a native speaker – to a native speaker, they will more likely seem to be common language that it would be impossible to associate with a single text, the language being too widely used in too many different ways.

Of course, I must admit that the phrasing I used in that post did remind me at the time of the “Most Interesting Man in the World” meme. Some phrases do have specific resonances, and sometimes even a very vague structure can remind us of a familiar phrase – although the more familiar the phrasing or wording, the less necessary it will be to posit direct dependence on a literary text.

So the relevant question is whether those found in “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” are in the former or the latter category.