Jesus had a wife

This is probably the most discussed Bible conspiracy theory ever, especially after the media made lots of money when Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' novel was made into a movie. Actually, this fits in the general theory that Christianity is a hoax and that Jesus was a myth.

Let's explore the general theory that Jesus was a myth. This is nonsense because many historians and biblical scholars have come to the conclusion that Jesus was a real person. However, scholars don't agree on the authenticity of some of the biblical accounts in the New Testament, but they all agree that Jesus was real.

This myth theory goes back to 18th century France. Two scholars--Conslantin Fraçois Chassebœuf de Volney and Charles-Fançois Duplus--claimed that Christianity was a mixture of ancient mythologies. They said that Christian concepts came from Egypt, Syria and Persia. Now it is true that many Christian biblical stories appear to be copies of these ancient myths, but the argument that they are not authentic is a stretch. Basically, you would have to dismiss a large volume of literature and testimony from thousands of disciples, scholars and historians to come to the conclusion that Christianity was a myth. These two scholars must have had burrs up their you know where.

Of course we've had Marxist like Lenin and philosophers like Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews promote the idea that Jesus never existed and that Christianity was a hoax. This was a popular idea in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.

In recent times we've heard that Jesus was a Sun God and that Mary Magdalene, his wife, was a Moon goddess. This is wild theory number one in my book.

Of course Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the New Testament. Her real moniker is Mary of Magdala. Many scholars believe that she was one of Christ's disciples, so it's easy to see why some people thought that Jesus and she got married. However, it seems as if her identity is confused because there are too many Mary's in the New Testament. The consensus is that she was the woman that Jesus cast out seven demons and healed her of mental and physical aliments as referenced in Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9. She was also at the crucifixion along with Mary, Jesus' mother as shown in Luke 23:55 and Mark 18:1. We should note here that these two women stayed with Jesus throughout his passion while the other apostles ran off. Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the resurrected Christ as referenced in Mathew 28:1, Mark 16:9, Luke 24 and John 20:1. That makes it unanimous. What's weird is that she isn't mentioned again and her presence with Christ during this time has been dismissed as unimportant. I believe that this is because a male-dominated clergy would never consider a woman to be an apostle.

The other problem with Mary Magdalene is that she is confused with the repentant sinner (prostitute) in Luke 7:30-50 who washes Jesus' feet with her tears and dries them with her hair.  This is a mistake. They're not the same person. This confusion was a deliberate attempt to taint Mary Magdalene's reputation and divert attention away from the fact that she was a disciple. Eventually, this mistake was rectified but the onus still remains.

Apocrypha texts, like the Gospel of Mary, supposedly written by Mary Magdalene, portray Mary as a disciple that Christ loved and that she was leader of the disciples. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue, but I think that we can conclude that Jesus certainly liked Mary Magdalene. Whether he fell in love with her is not revealed in any source, and this silence is hard to penetrate.

The New Testament doesn't mention that Jesus was married despite the fact that most Jewish males were expected to marry, especially if they were considered to be a Rabbi. However Essenes say that some Jewish males didn't marry by choice, so this is not a proof that Jesus was married.

The other problem is with the absence of information about Mary Magdalene, Jesus' possible wife. Although the Non-Canonical Gospels have more information, they are not considered to be true Christian documents, mostly because they were written long after Christ's death. St. Thomas's gospel speaks of Jesus making her a male because that's the way that women can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That's sounds sexist to me.

The other documents: The Gospel of Peter; The Dialogue of the Savior; The Sophia of Jesus Christ; The Pistis Sophia; and The Gospel of Mary do not definitely say that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. The only one that does hint of it is The Gospel of Philip, which calls Mary the companion of Jesus who he kisses a lot and that he loves more than anyone. Does that mean that they were married? The answer is that the author didn't say.

The 'Da Vinci Code' is fiction, not fact. The idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children has no factual validity. It's an interesting idea, but there's no way to verify it. The fact that one of the Non-Canonical gospels hints of it is worthless. It was written in the third century. By that time all sorts of heresies and crazy ideas were being circulated. First of all Jesus didn't need to be married to fulfill his mission of salvation. Marriage would have gotten in the way of his ultimate sacrifice of dying on the cross. It would have been a distraction.

On the other hand, I do believe that Mary Magdalene was an important part of early Christianity. The fact that she has been relegated to a secondary part of the Jesus story is a travesty. Women were part of the early church and they served as priests. Subsequent church leaders didn't like the idea of women being important in the church, so they wrote Mary Magdalene out of the equation, so to speak, in order to maintain male dominance. I remember a time when women that worshiped in a Catholic church had to wear a head covering because a woman's hair was a symbol of her sinfulness. No woman was allowed to act as a alter server, a lay minister or a scripture reader. That has changed in modern times (after Vatican II), but it's not enough in my opinion. Why are women considered sexual objects? That's the real issue, one that would require a book to explore completely.

Thanks for reading.