Copyright Maggy Whitehouse 2005.
Chapter One:
Background, legend, supposition and belief
The question
No one will ever know for certain whether or not Jesus of
Nazareth was married. Even if an intrepid archaeologist were to discover an
ancient jar containing a wedding contract between Yeshua son of Joseph of
Nazareth and his wife, Tamar (or Sarah, or Rebekah or Leah or Rachel), it would
only become a hotly-contested issue as to whether or not it was that
Jesus of Nazareth.
The assumption that he was not married has been implicit in
Christian belief for many centuries. The idea of Jesus as the only Son of God,
born to a virgin mother, sits uncomfortably with the notion that he could have
had sex, sons and daughters. After all, if he were divine, wouldn’t his
children be considered to be so also?
However,
there is no biblical evidence anywhere that he was unmarried. Certainly, there
is no mention of a wife in the Bible or in any historical texts, but that
proves nothing. Most of the women of those times are invisible in historical
documentation. We only know that the disciple Simon Peter had a wife because
Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law (Matthew 8:14); the Gospels do not mention
the wives of any the disciples. That is no reason to suppose that there were
none.
Indeed the reverse is the case. Jews
and Muslims assume Jesus would have been married. The issue is unimportant to
them but both groups deem it ridiculous to suppose either that Jesus was
celibate or that marriage could ever be a bar to spirituality. The Prophet
Muhammad was married and, what’s more, married to a wealthy and powerful woman.
His teaching states that marriage is a religious duty, a moral safeguard and
that an Imam (priest) should be married.
Most of the Hebrew Bible
prophets were married. Jeremiah wasn’t allowed a wife by God, and there’s no
sign of Mrs Elijah or Mrs John the Baptist, but Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon,
Ezekiel and Isaiah all had wives. Samuel certainly had sons, which implies a
wife. Given the importance of the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” to
the Jewish people, the most likely scenario is that Jesus was both part of an
extended family and had one of his own.
The New Testament itself
calls Jesus Mary’s first born and refers to his having both brothers and
sisters. James, who referred to by Paul in Galatians 1:19 as the Lord’s
brother, becomes leader of the apostles after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
When Jesus preaches in the synagogue in Nazareth and sets the town by the ears
with his words, the angry Nazarenes cry, “Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother
called Mary? And his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his
sisters, are they not all with us?” (Matt 13:55).
Even so, this has been discounted
for centuries with the Greek words adelphos and adelphe
translated as “cousin.” It can also mean countryman or fellow believer. It is
quite true that there is no exact ancient Greek word for “cousin” and it is
possible that, with the close bonds of families living together, relationships
could get confused but there is a word for “kin” or “related by blood”
and that word is sougenes. It is used to describe Elisabeth, mother of John the Baptist
and translated as “cousin” of Mary.
That Jesus had brothers and sisters who
were most probably married seems fairly certain, and generally accepted by
scholars. The case for his own marriage is still stronger. All orthodox Jewish
Rabbis from the first century to the present day have to be married to
even be considered as eligible to teach others. Interestingly, although Jesus
is frequently referred to as “Rabbi” in the Gospel of John and as “Rabboni” by
Mary Magdalene, these were relatively new titles 2000 years ago. The word “Rab” or “Rav” meaning Master or teacher was originally a
Babylonian title given to scholarly men who had received the laying-on of hands
in the rabbinic schools. It was developed into “Rabbi” approximately half
a century before Jesus lived and used for men who had had the title bestowed by
a laying-on of hands by the Sanhedrin, the priestly class of Israel. A Rabbi
was given a key and a scroll as a symbol of his authority to teach others and
he was expected to have disciples who, in turn would draw new disciples.
“Rabboni” or “My Great Master” was only used when the teacher had two
generations of disciples. Neither a Rabbi nor a Rabboni could have been an unmarried
man as marriage was a requirement of any man who wished to study Torah.
What
we do have is a tantalising gap in the information available about Jesus
between the ages of approximately 12 and 30. Interestingly, these are exactly
the years when a Jewish man in those times could expect to be married. Over the
last hundred years or so, many theories have sprung up as to what Jesus was
doing in those hidden years – did he go to India and study there? Was he in
Alexandria investigating the mystery schools? Where did he go and from whom did
he learn the mystical knowledge that he later displayed?
Interpretation
No
one will ever know the truth but, when it comes to Jesus’ knowledge of
spiritual matters, he didn’t need to go anywhere; all the sayings ascribed to
him are inherent in the Jewish traditions of his homeland. What he taught is
not necessarily clearly stated in the Old Testament (although several of Jesus’
teachings are re-iterations of words from the law-giving books of Leviticus and
Deuteronomy) but it is clear that the driving force behind Jesus’ belief is the
monotheistic background of the Israelites.
In
Jesus’ day the Hebrew Bible had only recently been compiled. The texts
themselves had existed for hundreds of years but they are first known to have
been pulled together as a complete entity in the first century BCE. Better
known, to most people, was an oral tradition which had been passed down by word
of mouth through generations. This was used by the Pharisees to interpret Torah
(the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) in Jesus’ day. Scholars and teachers
realised that writing down teachings crystallised them and made them inviolable
rather than adaptable. They believed though that, although the structure of the
teaching was always valid, the form of it needed interpretation
according to the times.
This
was particularly so after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, when the Jewish
people lost their homeland and spread far and wide. The commentary on Torah,
the Talmud, was then itself written down in an attempt to record the oral
interpretations of the Laws. This became crystallised in turn, and debate on
how to interpret it continues to this day. There is a Jewish joke that says
“two Jews, three opinions”, and another that says that if a Jew were to be
shipwrecked on a desert island he would have to build two synagogues: one he
went to and one that he didn’t
go to. This demonstrates the importance to the Jewish faith of the continuation
of debate over what is right and what is not.
An
example of this might be seen in a modern interpretation of the seventh
commandment “ thou shalt not commit adultery.” This is traditionally seen as referring to sexual
infidelity, but “to adulterate” has a much wider meaning, as in two different
things corrupting each other. In a particular case, it could equally be
interpreted that a husband and wife who remained together when their
relationship had fallen apart so seriously that they were affecting each
other’s emotional and spiritual growth could be committing adultery by staying
together.
Another
modern example of interpretation of the written law might be the way that
orthodox Jews nowadays adapt to the Sabbath law which says that no fire may be
lit in the home (Exodus 35:3). Igniting a cooker or flicking a light switch
counts as creating fire so, if Jewish people followed the Law exactly, they
would have to sit in the dark all evening. However, it is now regarded as quite
acceptable for electrical appliances such as ovens and lights to be put on
timers – because then the spark is not struck by a Jewish human hand. This law
was previously addressed by hiring non-Jews to do the work on the Sabbath day.
The command not to light a fire is therefore followed but in a different way
according to the times and social convention.
The
oral tradition of Jesus’ time has come down to us through the Talmud (Hebrew
for “Learning’) and the other Biblical commentaries but also through a mystical
system that was originally called Merkabah and is now known as Kabbalah.
What
is so useful about this ancient tradition is that for its structure it uses not
writing but an object – the seven branched candlestick known as the Menorah
which first appears in the book of Exodus.
Priests
and scholars were able to assess the essential balance of their spiritual
teaching by comparing it with the structure of the Menorah. Nowadays this is
known as the Tree of Life and Jewish mystics can, and do, still use it to
interpret the Great Laws of life.
It is
worth mentioning here that the best known form of Kabbalah in the modern age,
known as Lurianic Kabbalah is not essentially the same as the teaching in
Jesus’ time. The tradition was re-developed by a charismatic Jewish teacher in
Safed, Israel, in the sixteenth century and followed “the great heresy” that
when God created the world, he created it imperfect and that this caused an
external evil, which Christianity would call the devil.
In
Jesus’ day this belief did not exist; they followed the original teachings of
Genesis “And God saw every
thing that he had made, and, behold, it
was very good.” (Gen. 1:31).
So, if we are to refer to the oral traditions of 2000 years ago we must move
away from the Kabbalah
of most modern Jews – and of the Kabbalah Centre – to the older tradition. This still
exists. Nowadays, it is known as the Toledano Tradition after a time in the twelfth century
when the Spanish City of Toledo was a centre for interfaith and study. It is
not the perfect system for examining knowledge of the time of Jesus because it
was influenced by the Neo-Platonic schools of Alexandria, but it is still a
good tool worth using in exploring the teachings both of, and by, Jesus of
Nazareth, not least because some of its precepts can be seen quite clearly in
the Gospels (see Chapter Seven).
Different branches of Judaism have
different interpretations of both Torah and Talmud. But the one thing that all
the Jewish texts and teaching do agree on is the subject of marriage. It was
considered essential for men and for women. The commentaries on Torah state
clearly that an unmarried man was incomplete and, 2000 years ago, had Jesus of
Nazareth not been married by the age of 18 he would have been considered a very
odd fish indeed. Worse, he would not have been taken seriously as a teacher by
any other Jew.
But was he still married at
the time of his ministry? Probably not. There’s a simple reason for this. Two
thousand years ago the life expectancy of men and women in the Middle East was
very different from today. A woman who survived childbirth could live as long
as a man did – approximately 40 years. But two thirds of woman died in their
teens or 20s from complications in pregnancy or childbirth. Jesus as a widower
would have been nothing unusual.
There
are plenty of other theories of course. In the twenty first century we live in
a world of easily-accessible controversy where arguments proliferate for Jesus
as a celibate Essene to a light-being from another planet. The only thing that
we can be sure of is that old certainties are continually being questioned.
Although Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code was nowhere near the first book to
suppose that Jesus was married and had children, it was the one which caught
the attention of the wider public. The film of the book became the largest
grossing movie of all time on its first weekend of release and it is now a part
of popular culture. The idea of a bloodline of Jesus still existing somewhere
will now never leave the realm of possibility.
The Divine Feminine
Far-out ideas and conspiracy theories have of course always
been with us, often fuelled by a natural suspicion of overweening religious and
political authorities and their pronouncements. For Christians, and for
Catholics in particular, it is vitally important that Jesus was not married; if
he had a wife, not only would St Paul’s and the Early Church Fathers’ teaching
on celibacy as a preferred option for a religious life be open to question but
Christian doctrine down the centuries would be threatened.
But it’s also true that today’s heresy is tomorrow’s orthodoxy.
That stalwart of the Catholic faith, the thirteenth century St Thomas Aquinas,
was once condemned by the bishop of Paris for heresy because he took account of
new scientific knowledge coming from the East through the Crusades. Galileo was
condemned to house arrest for knowing that the Earth revolved around the sun
and Darwin was totally denounced for his theory of evolution (and, currently,
is being denounced again by Christian Creationists).
For the last 20 years a theory that Jesus was married to
Mary Magdalene has gained steady ground, even though this is just as
speculative as the view that he was celibate. The Gnostic gospels, discovered
at Nag Hammadi in 1945, do demonstrate that Mary may well have been a
much-loved follower of Jesus but they do not offer any convincing evidence that
she was his wife. Indignation is expressed at Jesus’ affection for Mary in the
Gospel of Philip and this would make no sense at all had they been married. The
disciples might not have liked it but they would not have expressed open
surprise that Jesus might kiss his wife, nor ask him why he loved her more than
he loved them.
In one
verse, in the Gospel of Philip we are told that Mary was Jesus' “companion”
which many people have taken to mean wife. The gospel is written in Coptic
rather than Aramaic (as incorrectly stated in The Da Vinci Code) but
uses Greek words including the Greek term koinonos in reference
to Mary as well as the Coptic term hotre (also meaning companion). Koinonos, means
associate, companion or someone with whom one spends time; the Greek for wife
is always gunay.
But if
Jesus of Nazareth did marry Mary Magdalene before the crucifixion, then she
could only ever have been his second wife. A Jewish man who was willing to
marry (and that would have been 99 per cent of them) would not have left it
until his late 20s or early 30s to tie the knot. If he had married Mary in his
youth, she would never have been known in the Gospels as ‘Magdalene.’ A woman,
in those days, was always identified by her father’s or her husband’s name or
town. She would have been ‘Mary, wife of Jesus’ or ‘Mary of Nazareth’ not Mary
of Magdala. To be referred to as “Magdalene” she must have lived in Magdala
recently or have been married to a Magdalan man. And, if Jesus left a
bloodline, it’s most likely that they came from the first wife; the younger;
the lost wife of the hidden years.
The possibility that Jesus could have been married is now
gaining general acceptance amongst scholars. Nowadays we live in a secular
world where interfaith options are normal. We have a wider knowledge of world
religions, including those with female deities. We have female Buddhist monks
and women vicars. The idea of celibacy as a religious norm is in retreat. We
realise that just because women did not officiate at Synagogue services in
Jesus’ day did not mean that they did not live holy lives of service. They just
lived different holy lives. There was an acknowledged Divine Feminine
aspect in their lives, known as Shekhinah.
This aspect lives on in the icon of the Virgin in the
Catholic Church. Roman Catholicism is seen as being anti-women in its stern
insistence that no woman may be a priest but, ironically, it is a faith that
venerates the feminine more than almost any other. It is as much the religion
of the Virgin Mary as it is of Christ. The Church itself is seen as being the
Bride of Christ. The veneration of the Virgin fulfils a deep human need for the
balancing of the Divine Masculine and Feminine. The Protestant Churches lost
that link with the feminine during the Reformation, and although it does have
some monastic communities for women and, nowadays, has female clergy, it does
not have a feminine focus for the Divine. The lack of this in the Protestant
tradition may be one reason why The Da Vinci Code and the idea that
Jesus married Mary Magdalene have become so very popular.
Paul
So when did the tradition of seeing Jesus as unmarried
begin? It is generally acknowledged that it was St. Paul who first implied that
Jesus was celibate – and that he, himself, followed his master in being so.
The early
followers of Jesus were working with an oral tradition. The Gospels were
written years later than Paul’s letters. And the New Testament, as a result,
mostly gives us the teaching of Paul and his followers, and his interpretation
of who Jesus was. The original leader of the early Christians, Jesus’ brother
James, gradually gets written out of the picture. By the end of the first
century, after the fall of Jerusalem, the death of a good proportion of the
Jewish people, the dispersal of most of the rest from Palestine, and the spread
of the Pauline version of the faith amongst the Gentiles, the original
Christian Jewish sect had turned into a different faith. The Church was now
taking Paul’s word as final on many subjects, although he never even met Jesus
in person.
We know
surprisingly little that is definite about Paul, considering the extent of his
writings. We do know that in the first years after the crucifixion he was an
active campaigner against the apostles and their messianic Judaism. Then, on
the road to Damascus, he was struck down by a powerful vision where Jesus asked
him why he was persecuting him. The conversion was swift and from then on, Paul
spoke with authority that came from this contact with Jesus’ spirit alone. This
is actually little different in substance from the New Age channeling which is
prevalent today. Teachings from ascended beings such as Seth, Lazaris and
Abraham are redolent with good sense and a great number of people have
benefited by them. But there is also much channeling which is unhelpful, to say
the least, and/or dubious in its origins. The information from any psychic or
spiritual source is, also, filtered through the personality of the person
channeling it. There are enough people still claiming to be exclusively
channeling the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene or Jesus himself to view them all
with a generous pinch of salt.
For Paul,
the fact that he had received inspiration directly from Jesus’ spirit was more
important than Jesus’ teachings on Earth. He claimed to be a student of a Rabbi
called Gamaliel, who
was himself a student of the famous teacher Rabbi Hillel – and both of those men were
conversant with the Merkabah/Kabbalistic oral tradition. It would have appeared logical
to Paul to update the form of Jesus’ teachings for the benefit of the Gentiles.
Though it is clear in Acts, from Paul’s encounters with the Apostles who had
known Jesus, that they were uncomfortable with his interpretation of their teacher’s
views from the higher worlds.
Even so, Paul is not very clear on the question of whether
Jesus was married or not. One of the best known is 1 Cor 7:3 7 where he writes: “For I would that all men
were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after
this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for
them if they abide even as I.” This definitely implies that Paul is not married
at the time of writing, but it’s just as likely that he was a widower as a
lifetime celibate.
Later, in
1Cor 7:27 he says, “Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou
loosed from a wife? seek not a wife” so we can get a clear feeling that he
didn’t think that marriage was a good idea for beginners or in the difficult
times that they anticipated (there was a strong implication that the world was
about to end); it’s not clear whether “loosed” means widowed or divorced but
Paul was preaching to Gentiles where divorce was common, so it could be either.
There are
even some who suggest that Paul was still married. In Philippians 4:3 he
writes, “And I entreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which
laboured with me in the
gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow labourers, whose names are in the book of life.” The trouble here is that the word for
“yokefellow” (which is not used anywhere else in the New Testament) is suzugos
which can equally mean wife, partner or comrade. It is typically irritating of
Paul that he couldn’t use a word less ambiguous such as sunergos or philos
which can only mean friend or companion.
Just to confuse us even more, in 1 Cor. 9:3, Paul writes, “Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other
apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” Now that’s also unclear
because of the nature of Koine (New Testament Greek). Given the language’s frequent and confusing
loopholes in the linking of words – not to mention lack of punctuation - it
could just as equally mean “a sister who is a wife” as not. Clement of
Alexandria, one of the early Church Fathers, who had access to much earlier
translations of the New Testament than we do, did take this passage to mean
that Paul had a wife.
Epiphanius, a Church Father from the fourth century, and a fervent investigator of heresy in the Christian Church wrote (Panarion 30,16) that the Ebionites (a group of early Christian heretics) claimed that St Paul was a Greek who had visited Jerusalem and wanted to marry a daughter of the high priest. He was circumcised as a Jew but the girl was not impressed and refused to marry him. He became angry, and wrote against circumcision, the Sabbath and Jewish law out of spite.
Maybe this rejection explains Paul’s
tendency to misogyny, but, again, it is only hearsay. He does say clearly in
Corinthians 7:25 that he has no
command from Jesus concerning celibacy but he goes on to give his own opinion –
which is the one that has been adopted by the Catholic Church: “Now concerning
virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that
hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.”
Later interpretation
When examining ancient
teachings, particularly commentaries on religious texts, it is vital to observe
them through the old journalistic practice of noting the six following facts.
Who wrote it? Where? When? Why? For whom? And finally, Who was listening? The
social, economic, religious and sexual views of the times are all relevant and
need to be peeled away from the actual evidence like rings of an onion.
Of the great “founding
fathers” of Christianity, Tertullian (d circa 220 CD), the originator of the
idea of the Christian Trinity, the first person to refer to the “Old Testament”
and the “New Testament” and the first great Christian writer in Latin, was the
only one who publicly stated that Mary would have had sex with her husband.
Perhaps that’s the reason why he never got his sainthood.
The view of sex as being
impure or distasteful gained ground in the early centuries of Christianity. It
was the first monks – men who lived celibate lives in the desert outside
Alexandria in Egypt – who were the important scribes. Their own views about
sexual behaviour would make a married Jesus intolerable. Worse, so distasteful
was the idea that Jesus' mother might have gone on to have a relationship with
her husband Joseph after the birth of her son, that she was declared to have
remained a virgin her entire life. This is a doctrinal truth of Catholic,
Eastern and Oriental Christian Churches and dates back to the third century.
The
idea that Jesus and Paul were celibate was taken up by St. Jerome (331-419) who
considered marriage an invention of the devil and encouraged married couples
who had converted to Christianity to renounce their marriage vows and separate.
St Augustine, (354-430), having had what’s politely called an active sexual
life in his early years, later became a strong supporter of celibacy, teaching
that sex was always tainted, even in a marriage, because it passed on the sin
of Adam. He came to believe that the only way to redeem humanity was through
abstinence, rather like the ex-smoker who is fanatical about banning
cigarettes. Jerome and Augustine were certain that the Virgin remained just
that, and the Council of Constantinople in the sixth century referred to Mary
as “ever Virgin.”
Later on, Martin Luther
and Calvin agreed. It does rather perpetrate the idea that the only good woman
is a dead virgin. No wonder feminists get so very angry about it.
The first documented official Christian Church discussion
about celibacy was at the Council of Elvira in 309 and it appears to have been
sparked by concerns about clergy having mistresses rather than a problem with
their wives. The councils of Neocaesarea in 314 and Laodicea 352 ruled that priests
must marry virgins, and get rid of unfaithful wives.
The fifth Council of Carthage Five in 401 was the first to
actually promote celibacy saying that it would be a good idea for priests to
separate from their wives and live as celibates. However, no penalties
were suggested if the priests didn’t take up this tempting offer and it was
ignored by the vast majority. Only 19 years later, the Pope, Honorius, went on
record to praise wives who supported their priest-husbands in their ministry.
The next 400 years were marked by several attempts to impose celibacy, all with
mixed results and the Church shot itself neatly in the foot with the election
of the married Pope Adrian the Second in 867 CE.
It wasn’t until the twelfth century when the Church won power
over the crowned heads of Europe that marriage itself came under its
jurisdiction. Until then civil marriages were common and divorce was also a
non-religious event. But, at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, Pope Innocent
the Second declared that all clerical marriages were invalid and any children
of such marriages illegitimate, and so the die was cast. If Jesus, whose
life-story is, allegedly, the basis behind this doctrine, turned out to have a
wife at home – and maybe children too – then the foundation of the Church’s
teaching on celibacy would be rocked.
All this anti-sex theological feeling and, eventually,
legislation certainly meant that the leadership activities of women in the
early Church began to tail off very early on. For them, Christianity had
started out brilliantly – allowing women far more freedom (whatever we may
think of St Paul) than most other religions of that time. But by the time a
priestly order had been established, women were pretty well sidelined.
Deaconesses did exist but they were not priestesses. Where women did shine in
the early years was as martyrs…so we are safely back with the dead virgins
again.
Today
The discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls brought Jesus’
marriage back into the realm of the possible and books of theories slowly began
to be published, the most famous before Da Vinci being Holy Blood,
Holy Grail by Michael Baigent,
Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. This introduced the popular world to the idea
that the Holy Grail was not a cup used at the Last Supper but the womb of Mary
Magdalene and the bloodline of Jesus.
In The Last Temptation of Christ, the controversial
novel by Nikos Kazantzakis
which was made into the even more controversial film by Martin Scorsese, Mary Magdalene arrives on the scene again.
Opposition to the film failed to notice that it never said that Jesus and Mary actually were married – only that this
was an option offered to him as a temptation as he was dying on the cross. If
he would give up his role as the Christ, the devil would save him and allow him
to live an ordinary life, including marriage and children. Jesus lives – or
more accurately - visualises the fantasy and then turns back from the world to
take up his cross again, having realised that the temptation is destroying both
him and all that he taught.
So how close can we get to the truth?
Ultimately, no one can determine whether the lost wife of
Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. But we can discover what is the most likely
scenario by cutting through the centuries of Christian interpretation and
grinding down what evidence there is into simple piles of possibility. What you
believe by the end of this book, is up to you.
The Marriage of Jesus, by Maggy Whitehouse is available for purchase in book and e-book here.
