When it comes to conspiracy theories about Jesus, sometimes fiction really is stranger than truth.

Just ask Karen King, who allowed herself to be taken in by one of the most spectacular forgeries related to the academic study of Jesus and early Christianity. An unmasking of the fraud is recounted in Ariel Sabar’s article “The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife,” in the June 23 edition of The Atlantic.

King holds Harvard University’s 295-year-old Hollis Professorship of Divinity and is author of the 2003 book “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.” She sent shock waves through the academic and religious worlds nearly four years ago when presenting a 1,300-year-old papyrus fragment that she had dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” to a conference in Rome.

“Never before had an ancient manuscript alluded to Jesus’s being married,” Sabar says. “The papyrus’s lines were incomplete, but they seemed to describe a dialogue between Jesus and the apostles over whether his ‘wife’—possibly Mary Magdalene—was ‘worthy’ of discipleship. Its main point, King argued, was that ‘women who are wives and mothers can be Jesus’s disciples.’”

Luke’s Gospel depicts Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene, as part of a group of women of some means who traveled with Jesus and the disciples, underwriting the ministry, and who had been healed of demons and infirmities (Luke 8:2-3). All four Gospels place this Mary at the cross on Good Friday and at the tomb on Resurrection Sunday. Later Catholic teaching, however, conflated Mary Magdalene with the unnamed sinful woman of Luke 7:36-40, who wet Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

Fascination with Mary Magdalene has run rampant in recent years. Dan Brown’s sensational novel “The Da Vinci Code,” and the resulting movie starring Tom Hanks, alleged the following (as summarized by New Testament scholar Gary Burge):

1. Jesus had an intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene.
2. Jesus and Mary Magdalene were husband and wife.
3. Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children.
4. Church leaders (specifically, some mysterious Catholic order) hid this secret.
5. Long-suppressed Gospels—such as the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Philip—now are finally telling us the truth.

While scholars such as Burge dismiss “The Da Vinci Code” as “a blockbuster novel with absurd claims,” millions of non-scholars in America and around the world take these salacious speculations seriously. Even more unfortunately, scholars seeking validation for their own agendas in the guise of scholarship are just as gullible. Jesus-related scandals are nothing new in the academic world, which has a peculiar weakness for anything that purports to undermine the faith once delivered.

Exhibit A is King.

“The Jesus’s-wife fragment fit neatly with what has become her life’s work: resurrecting the diversity of voices in Christianity’s formative years,” Sabar writes. “King has been particularly interested in noncanonical, or Gnostic, texts that assign Mary Magdalene a prominent role as Jesus’s confidante and disciple. Proof that some early Christians also saw Mary Magdalene as Jesus’s wife would be a rebuke to Church patriarchs who had discounted her.”

King didn’t insist that the controversial “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” fragment was genuine and always admitted it might be a forgery, but she suggested it could have been a factor in ancient debates over whether “marriage or celibacy [was] the ideal mode of Christian life.”

Other scholars quickly uncovered a number of serious problems with the fragment itself, even though carbon dating showed it to be as old as advertised. Soon a wide range of scholars labeled it an elaborate hoax. One, Andrew Bernhard, says it is a cut-and-paste job made from sections of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

Despite her professed agnosticism over the authenticity of the fragment, King was strangely reluctant to uncover its provenance, or chain of ownership, which is vital in deciding whether a document is real or fake. Sagar spent months tracking down a previous owner and checking every detail of his story. It didn’t look good.

King at first dismissed Sagar’s request to share his findings about the dubious chain of ownership for “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” Didn’t she want the facts? King told him, “I haven’t engaged the provenance questions at all. . . . I don’t see the point of a conversation.”

Didn’t she want to know what he had discovered?

“Not particularly.”

Why would she, since proof that “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” was a fake would damage her career and hurt book sales? Never mind that Harvard’s motto is Veritas, Latin for Truth.

Yet King’s nonchalant tune changed as Sagar closed in. He notes:

When I called [King] in March while reporting my Atlantic story, she said she was not interested in commenting on — or even hearing about — my findings before publication. Thursday afternoon, however, she called me to say the story was “fascinating” and “very helpful.” . . .

I asked why she hadn’t undertaken an investigation of the papyrus’s origins and the owner’s background. “Your article has helped me see that provenance can be investigated,” she said.

At the GetReligion blog, Julia C. Duin writes, “King had said that any forgery would be ‘a career breaker’ for her. Sabar was kind to her in the piece but the truth is, King accepted the papyrus because its message was what she wanted to hear.”

Remember that the next time some scholar tries to sell you a conspiracy theory that undermines the truth of historic Christianity. It’s probably just a work of fiction.