[posted to GThomas Yahoogroup June 28, 2015]

My posting of my previous note on this subject to the SBL Christian
Apocrypha Section of Facebook has drawn some likes, including a
"Very good!" from Alin Suciu, which is much appreciated. But I did
want to add a few thoughts here. First, I have assumed that Ariel
Sabar, the reporter, didn't himself put the word 'this' into the line
he quoted. If anything, it seems likely that a reporter would simplify
the line by quoting it as "Jesus said to them..." rather than the more
indirect "Jesus said this to them...", since the latter tends to detract
from the reportorial focus on the phrase 'my wife' which follows it.
So I believe that Sabar was scrupulously reporting what he saw -
or (less likely?) what King told him. And as I indicated earlier,
this line could not have come from a competent Coptic scholar
looking at the fragment, as one might otherwise assume.
 
Which brings us to the tantalizing question - what else, if anything, 
was in the supposed "translation" of the fragment passed on by the
collector to King via email? If, as I now believe, this "translation"
wasn't that at all, but rather a statement of what the forger thought he
had inscribed, the rest of it could be quite revealing. But how do we
get at it? I've written to Sabar, but even if he responds, I don't hold
out much hope that we'll ever see what could be a crucial piece of
information.
 
Mike Grondin