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.
