Was Jesus Married?
Was
Jesus married? Was Mary Magdalene his wife? Did they have children- a
“holy bloodline”?
The
theory that Jesus was married and had children gained popularity with
the publication of The
Da Vinci Code. The
Da Vinci Code
is
a 2003 mystery-detective
novel
by Dan
Brown.
It follows symbologist
Robert Langdon and
cryptologist Sophie
Neveu after
a murder in the Louvre
Museum in
Paris, when they become involved in a battle between the Priory
of Sion and
Opus
Dei over
the possibility of Jesus
Christ having
been married to Mary
Magdalene.
The title of the novel refers, among other things, to the finding of
the first murder victim in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, naked and
posed like Leonardo
da Vinci's
famous drawing, the Vitruvian
Man,
with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentagram
drawn
on his chest in his own blood.
The
novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot
point is that the Merovingian
kings of France were
descended from the
bloodline of Jesus Christ and
Mary Magdalene, ideas derived from Clive Prince's The
Templar Revelation (1997)
and books by Margaret Starbird. The book also refers to The
Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982),
a non-fiction occult oriented book that claims the same of Jesus. In
The
Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,1
the authors put forward a hypothesis, that the historical
Jesus married
Mary
Magdalene,
had one or more children, and that those
children or their descendants emigrated
to what is now southern
France.
Once there, they intermarried with the noble
families that
would eventually become the Merovingian
dynasty,
whose special claim to the throne of France is championed today by a
secret
society called
the Priory
of Sion.
They concluded that the legendary Holy
Grail is
simultaneously the womb of Mary Magdalene and the sacred royal
bloodline she
gave birth to. The Priory
of Sion,
which is supposed to have a long history starting in 1099 and had
illustrious Grand
Masters including
Leonardo
da Vinci and
Isaac
Newton.
According to the authors' claims, the Priory of Sion is devoted to
installing the Merovingian
dynasty,
which ruled the Franks
from
457 to 751, on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. It is
also said to have created the Knights
Templar as
its military arm and financial branch.2
Do
these claims hold up to scrutiny?
The
claims made in The
Holy Blood and the Holy Grail have
been the source of much investigation and criticism over the years,
with many independent investigators
such as 60
Minutes,
Discovery
Channel,
Time
Magazine,
and the BBC
concluding
that many of the book's claims are simply not credible.
Prominent
British historian Richard
Barber,
wrote:
“The
Templar-Grail myth… is at the heart of the most notorious of all
the Grail pseudo-histories, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which
is a classic example of the conspiracy theory of history… It is
essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable
scholarly debate… Essentially, the whole argument is an ingeniously
constructed series of suppositions combined with forced readings of
such tangible facts as are offered.”3
The
Priory
of Sion myth was
exhaustively debunked
by
journalists and scholars as one of the great hoaxes
of
the 20th century.4
Some
writers have expressed concern that the proliferation and popularity
of books, websites and films inspired by this hoax have contributed
to the problem of conspiracy
theories,
pseudo-history
and
other confusions becoming more mainstream.
Historian
Ken Mondschein5
ridiculed the idea of a Jesus bloodline, writing:
“The
idea of keeping the family tree pruned to bonsai-like proportions is
also completely fallacious. Infant mortality in pre-modern times was
ridiculously high, and you'd only need one childhood accident or
disease in 2000 years to wipe out the bloodline; if, however, even
one extra sibling per generation survived to reproduce, the numbers
of descendants would increase at an exponential rate; keep the
children of Christ marrying each other, on the other hand, and
eventually they'd be so inbred that the sons of God would have
flippers for feet.”
Robert
McCrum, literary editor of The
Observer newspaper
wrote:
“There
is something called historical evidence – there is something called
the historical
method–
and if you look around the shelves of bookshops there is a lot of
history being published, and people mistake this type of history for
the real thing. These kinds of books do appeal to an enormous
audience who believe them to be 'history', but actually they aren't
history, they are a kind of parody of history. Alas, though, I think
that one has to say that this is the direction that history is going
today…”6
We
are at yet another dead end. Still, fringe historians will maintain
this myth of the married Jesus is true, citing what they think is
evidence. The two most prominent "evidences" are:
- Jesus was a rabbi. In order to be a rabbi you have to be married.
- The Wedding Feast at Cana was Jesus' wedding.
Let's
look at these claims.
Being married was not an
absolute must. Take the case of Rabbi Ben 'Azzai. An
esteemed rabbi of his time, who preached marriage to others, but did
not practice it himself. He remained celibate.
"My
soul is fond of the Law,"
he is reported as having said; "the
world will be perpetuated by others" 7
Not to
mention the Essenes of Qumran, who were very much revered for their
holiness, and who practiced celibacy as a general rule. It is important that any reasoned, educated historian look at Judaism of the 1st century from the perspective of that time and place, and not as some homogeneous religion. Judaism had varying sects, each with its own rules and regulations. The Pharisees were the majority, and as their religion was centered on local synagogues, it survived the destruction of the temple and became the normative Judaism. Thus, the demand for marriage. Other "Judaisms" had differing rules, as I have pointed out, that do not at all demand celibacy as a condition of the rabbinate.
As for
the claim that the wedding feast at Cana was Jesus' wedding, there
are obvious problems with the theory:
- The Gospel of John tells us that, “Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding.” (John 2:2) A bridegroom would hardly be “invited” to his own wedding.
- The Gospel of John tells us Jesus' Mother asks him to help because the wine has run out. Jesus responds first by saying, “Woman, what does this have to do with you or me...?” (John 2:4) If Jesus were the bridegroom it would have everything to do with Him, as He would be responsible for the wine.
- And finally, John informs us, “After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.” (John 2:12) If Jesus had just been married, why no mention of his wife?
For those who would still cling to fringe theories, such as those basing their claims on the opinion of Dr. Karen King, perhaps her most recent statement regarding the legitimacy of the "Jesus' wife" fragment might help change such thinking. After all, she has deemed it a "probable fake".
All
the evidence points to the fact that Jesus was certainly not married,
and that the myth of the “married Jesus” is just that- myth. Fringe "historians" clad in their Indiana Jones gear, writing books and articles about Nephilim, Noah's "racial purity", and Jesus' "bloodline" may shout, pound their fists and throw rhetorical temper tantrums, but the facts are the facts, and they defy such myths.
1Holy
Blood, Holy Grail, M. Baigent, R. Leigh, H. Lincoln, 1983, Corgi
Books
2Thompson,
Damien, How Da Vinci Code Tapped Pseudo-fact Hunger, The
Daily Telegraph, London, July, 31, 2015
3Barber,
Richard, 2005, The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend,
Penguin Books Ltd.
4Ed
Bradley-Presenter, Jeanne Langley-Producer, April 30, 2006, The
Secret of the Priory of Sion, 60 Minutes, CBS News
5Scholar,
Professor of History, www.kenmondschein.com
6The
History of a Mystery, Timewatch, BBC 2, Sept. 17, 1996
7Jewish
Encylcopedia, entry on Celibacy
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