WSJ: How the ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Hoax Fell Apart. “It is perhaps understandable that Ms. King would have been taken in when an anonymous owner presented her with some papyrus fragments for research. What is harder to understand was the rush by the media and others to embrace the idea that Jesus had a wife and that Christian beliefs have been mistaken for centuries.” Why is that hard to understand? It’s not as if the media are friends to traditional Christianity.