Scholars are questioning the authenticity and significance of a much-publicized discovery by a Harvard scholar who reported that a 4th Century fragment of papyrus has provided the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus was married.
   
Karen King, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced the finding Tuesday at an international congress on Coptic studies in Rome.

Her paper, and the front-page attention it received in some U.S. newspapers, was very much a topic of conversation during the coffee breaks at the conference Wednesday.
   
Wolf-Peter Funk, a noted Coptic linguist and co-director of the francophone project editing the Nag Hammadi Coptic library at Laval University in Quebec, said there were ``thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things,'' and that many questions remain unanswered about the Harvard fragment.