I would have to do some more care research to validate the age and to look at other attempts to translate, but please allow me to give my first quick impression.  I would say that with a quick glance, probably this is “legitimate” in that it is probably a fourth century Gnostic writing that might even be a claim that Jesus was married (although there may be other interpretations of the coptic wording).   There are many Gnostic documents that have come to light, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary and many others.  These documents have some really outrageous statements about what Jesus supposedly said and did.  They are all bogus attempts to push Gnostic ideas into the mouth of Jesus and should be seen as exactly that–blatant fictions created to support a non-Christian belief.  For example, the Gospel of Judas has Jesus telling Judas that he is the most spiritual of the apostles because he had the greatest access to the deep, hidden knowledge that Jesus did not share with the other apostles.  In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus tells Judas that he did him a favor by getting him killed so that he could abandon the body that he was trapped in.  In the Gospel of Judas the God of the Old Testament is an evil God.

So, it is not all that shocking to find another of these bogus Gnostic writings putting words in the mouth of Jesus which obviously were never uttered by him.  That some Gnostics made the bogus claim that Jesus was married is nothing new.  This was the premise of the Da Vinci Code–a populare book and movie which came out about ten years ago.  This document is not evidence that Jesus was married, obviously.  But it is evidence that certain heretical groups were making this claim.

Is what you found real?  It depends on what you mean by real.  If you mean is it “real” in the sense that there is a Coptic document from the fourth century which could be interpreted as claiming Jesus was married. My answer to that is yes, probably.   Is it “real” that the mainline church ever believed or even considered the possibility that this was actually true?  The answer to that is a resounding no.

This document is of intereset to students of the history of Christianity and the heretical groups which sprang from the church, but it is not of interest to those who want to know what Jesus said and did.

John Oakes