Veritas

From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Ariel Sabar, comes the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the 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 tattered manuscript made international headlines. If early Christians believed Jesus was married, it would upend the 2,000-year history of the world's predominant faith, threatening not just the celibate, all-male priesthood but sacred 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 the lost Christian texts from Egypt known as the Gnostic gospels. The Gospel of Jesus's Wife—as she provocatively titled her discovery—was both a crowning career achievement and powerful proof for her arguments that Christianity from its start embraced alternative, and far more inclusive, voices.

As debates over the manuscript's authenticity raged, award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar set out to investigate a baffling mystery—where did this tiny scrap of papyrus come from? His search for answers is an international detective story—leading 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 tale of fierce intellectual rivalries at the highest levels of academia, a piercing psychological portrait of a disillusioned college dropout whose life had reached a breaking point, and a tragedy about a brilliant scholar handed an 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.

"Ariel Sabar is an excellent investigative journalist explaining in detail a con that could have changed all of Christianity. Whatever the scam, the con artist and the victim both have an agenda." -Frank Abagnale, author of Catch Me If You Can

"Sabar's meticulous reporting shows how quickly the first victims of a forgery turn into con men themselves, desperately manipulating the evidence to keep plugging holes in a forger's fragile story. A masterful portrait of desire and a gripping analysis of a scandal that reveals the blurred lines between scholarship, faith, and lies. An unprecedented contribution to the study of forgery." -Dr Erin Thompson, art crime professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of Possession: the curious history of private collectors from antiquity to the present

"This astonishing book—part detective story, part exercise in reporting conducted at its highest level—reaches hold of you by the shirt collar and doesn't let go. ... Exciting on every level, it poses the deepest question of faith—does it depend on the scholarly verification of ancient fragments or on what Heaney called a journey 'into the marvellous'? I was bowled over by it." -Caitlin Flanagan, author of Girl Land