Timing and Scandal - The Gospel of Jesus' Wife and the Presidential Campaign.

I "flagged" a post on the "Jesus had a wife gospel" story earlier this month with the tag "Seasonal Anti-Christian Story."

Except its the wrong season; these kinds of stories usually hit in December or around Easter where the media can give a shot to Christians from their secularist positions.

So, why did this story - one that the media would usually hold for Easter or Christmas - come out in September?

The Anchoress has a theory:

But there is another side to the story that is interesting to me. When the fancifully nicknamed “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” first hit the headlines, Mollie Z. Hemingway and I were thinking along similar lines: we “questioned the timing.”

These meant-to-be-earthshattering “deconstruct and revise Christianity” announcements are the staples of Lent and Christmas. Why was this thing floating in September, and not December, when believers could really get a kick in the pants?

I have an idea why the story came to us in September, and why it was given unusually early coverage by the New York Times. The papyrus and its supposed revelation was a hand-to-glove fit for the era, and for the feminist narratives currently in-play: the “war on women” narrative; the “church hates women” trope. As Mollie wrote:

The discovery of this lost fragment, if interpreted in just the right way, matches the views of the New York Times editorial page! It’s another early Christmas miracle!

Pure speculation on my part, perhaps there was a hedging of bets: suppose those supporting King’s theories suspected that her case was weak, and realized that if the Theological review rejected her paper, there was simply no discussion to be had on the papyrus, and no opportunity to insert a tantalizing corkscrew into church-bashing feminist rhetoric that has begun to grow stale. So, to the press it went.

The news that NatGeo has already filmed, edited and scheduled a documentary on the fragment — how quick was that? — only solidifies my suspicion that academic validation was less important to this story than getting the idea of “Jesus’ wife” out into the public, whether it is true or not.

So, is it possible that an uncorroborated story about a forgery went to the press in September to help out the Democrat's narrative about a "war on women"?

Just postulating the theory sounds like the height of conspiracy theories, but people with an axe to grind have the luxury and the motivation of looking at things from every angle. Nothing that the media has done in the last year, let alone the last decade, fills me with any reason to give the media the benefit of the doubt.