Veritas

From a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author, a mesmerizing true-crime story of a spectacular forgery, the Gospel of Jesus''s Wife, and the academic scandal that engulfed Harvard.
In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced a blockbuster discovery at a scholarly conference just steps from the Vatican: She had found an ancient fragment of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene "my wife." The discovery made front-page news across the world--if early Christians believed that Jesus was married, it would threaten not just the celibate, all-male priesthood, but the entire 2,000-year history of the world''s largest faith, along with central Church teachings on marriage, sex, and women''s leadership. Biblical scholars were in an uproar, but King had impeccable credentials as a world-renowned authority on female figures in lost Christian scripture from Egypt known as the Gnostic gospels. "The Gospel of Jesus''s Wife"-- as she provocatively titled the newfound manuscript--was both a crowning career achievement and powerful proof for her arguments that Christianity from its start embraced alternative, and far more inclusive, voices.
Award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar wrote a magazine feature about King''s find but was left with disquieting questions about the origins of the papyrus. His relentless search for answers led from the factory districts of Berlin to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before winding up in rural Florida, where he discovered an internet pornographer with a prophetess wife, a fascination with the Pharaohs, and a tortured relationship with the Catholic Church.
VERITAS is a riveting international detective story set amid the highest levels of biblical studies and Egyptology, a piercing portrait of a troubled con artist, and a tragedy about a brilliant scholar handed a piece of ancient papyrus that appealed to her greatest hopes for Christianity--but forced a reckoning with fundamental questions about the nature of truth and the line between faith and reason.