Was Jesus Christ Married?

Ijaz-gul:

Thanks for your feedback. I do not claim any authoritative status in as much as Christology is concerned. I believe religion was created by man (humans) for a mundane purpose. Man needed a superpower(s) to invoke in time of need because he found himself so insecure. Different groups of people created their gods and supernatural deities according to their imagination and customs. They gave names to their deities in their own languages. In the Abrahmic religions, God is the God of Jews because they claimed to be the chosen people of God. I personally believe that we, the humans, should try to understand how these religions began and evolved over a period of time. In this way, the religious tension that exists these days may be alleviated. I may be wrong but if nothing else, trying to find the truth is not an unworthy undertaking.

I confess that I had a slight bias against tradition. Tradition has suppressed all other dissident historical literature. The statements that I made in my essay were supported by genuine (and not contrived) references. I also highlighted the speculative aspects of the possibility of Jesus` marriage in the essay. Let me reproduce the following extract:

``In view of her important visibility in the Christ saga, many did believe she was indeed the wife of Jesus Christ. BLL however only hypothesized as follows: “Perhaps the Magdalene – that elusive woman in the Gospels – was in fact Jesus’ wife. Perhaps their union produced offspring. After the crucifixion perhaps the Magdalene, with at least one child, was smuggled to Gaul – where established Jewish communities already existed and where, in consequence, she might have found a refuge. Perhaps there was, in short, hereditary bloodline descended directly from Jesus. Perhaps the bloodline, supreme sang real, then perpetuated itself, intact and incognito, for some hundred years…”

This hypothesis was given a more concrete and positive form by Brown in his novel. According to his narration effectively, “The Holy Grail is not a physical chalice as is commonly believed; it is a woman named Mary Magdalene who was Christ’s wife…At the time of crucifixion, she was pregnant with Christ’s baby daughter. After the crucifixion, she fled to Gaul where she was sheltered by the Jews of Marseilles. Her daughter after birth was named Sarah,” (4).``

My bias toward the possibility of Jesus` marriage arose from the fact that marriage is more natural than celibacy. In the prevailing practices of Judaism at the time of Christ, marriage was the usual practice. Celibacy is so much venerated in Christianity which seems unrealistic. Marriage is needed if for no other purpose than propagation of the human race.

It would have been very beneficial if other interactors, like you and ana, had discussed the issue in its true perspective. I want to assure the readers that the essay was not written out of malice and disregard. Be well,

Mohammad Gill

Dillidost #56 and earlier #37 {``What would be your reaction if Dan Brown wrote a book about his marriage to Ayesha? Salman Rusheed was almost killed for merely writing about Prophet.
No disrespect, but dont think that Muslims have concepts of rationale thought and inquisitiveness as Westerners do or for that matter Indians. ``}

and {``By the same logic, people can question if Prophet Mohmamad received his voices from Allah or not?????? ``}


Dillidost,
People HAVE written books claiming much more and casting even more sinister allegations concerning the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Dante in his ``Inferno`` placed Mohammed (PBUH) in the deepest part of hell along with Hazrat Imam Ali. Washington Irving wrote several insulting accounts of his life. They are all gone, but his name lives on. Those who get emotional and violent over such stupidities are themselves stupid. Salman Rushdie, Dante, Washington Irving, and others can write what they want and we should read and refute or simply ignore their biased views - but they have every right to write what they like and we have every right to disagree or ignore. Violence and anger just gives them more credibility and exposure.

As for questioning the validity of the Holy Prophet`s (PBUH) messages from Allah, you have every right to be dubious. In fact, his messages/visions from God, delivered through the Angel Gabriel that constitute the Holy Koran, are the most convincing aspects of his truthfulness, veracity, and honesty. The man was illiterate and came up with this very sophisticated and literary revelation. Anybody else, insecure his own shortcoming, would have claimed ownership of this scripture. Also, considering the primitive society of Arabia, anyone else with such a gift would have used it for personal gain and advantage. Claiming to be a ``messenger`` of Allah, a servant of Allah - a mere errand boy or chaprasi, is certainly not gaining any advantage, wealth, or power. The Holy Prophet`s life is there as an example of selflessness, sacrifice, and commitment to uniting mankind under one God. Of course, people are welcome to disagree. Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), when his mission was in its infancy and he was politically, economically, and militarily weak, faced more disagreement from his own family, his own tribe, his own city, and his own society - far more than he faces today. His name and his mission live on. I thank God for giving us this wonderful man as an example for mankind. Thanks.

Re: # 62
Mohammad Saab Jee,
Tussey mere sawal da jawaab nahee ditta, khallee mainu gaala kudd dittiya.

Khair Chuddo, I thought that you were a sport, but it seems that you are not interesting in having a free-thinking post. Maybe you are a wanna-be ``freethinker``. All you care about it what you think on the subject matter.

My previous apology was something that I offerred to you genuinely, regarding some Hindu woman whom you were friendly with.

Please explain and show me what you meant by Trash(Kachra). Can you please help me to understand? Maybe there is something that I can learn and improve today. I am always open for positive criticism.

BTW, Salimdost, whom many regard as an authority on Islam on Chowk, has already answered my question humbly(partial it maybe).

I sincerely hope that you are a sport and not like that Mooch Marror DG-Police KPS Gill.

For all the lovely Hindus here you go ....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5058840.stm

gill sahib,

i don`t believe that you wrote this article out of malice. i do believe that you have provided chowk readers with a distortion of the facts, or if you will, an alternate story that is not grounded in extensive research.

celibacy is not just `venerated` in christianity alone. furthermore, celibacy is not for everyone, i believe christ thought the same way as well. his first miracle was performed at a wedding, the wedding of cana, which shows that he didn`t have an aversion towards the idea of marriage.

i was reading a church scholar`s writing the other day and was struck by what she said. that the church had no reason to hide the fact that jesus was married. there is no conspiracy here. jesus knew what he had to accomplish in human form, he knew what his purpose was, and marriage did not fit into `the plan`. celibacy was practiced by some jews, one of them being the prophet jeremiah. so it is not christianity alone in which celibacy is practised.

i don`t know what more can be said that would be beneficial from my part. i could provide you with articles which take the fiction of brown and contrast that with facts according to church historians, but it is these very `orthodox` historians that you seem to be contrary to in this article. to rely on teabing, to rely on the gnostics, to rely solely on apocrypha is to take an interest in christianity in terms of debunking it. you are not doing it maliciously, but unfortunately what you mean as no disrespect to the christian faith, may be seen as others precisely as disrespect. different perspectives.

if you haven`t already, and you are interested, bishop kallistos ware`s a history of the orthodox church is a very good study of the beginnings of the church. according to brown `the new vatican power base` dates as far back as the 4th century. if you read ware, you might discover that there was no such thing as a vatican power base in the 4th century. i would bring some documents here but i do not wish to do that without permission of those who wrote them.

as some have pointed out, the da vinci code is just a fiction, a fast-paced mystery, and controversy sells. but more than a few folks are taking this fiction to be fact, and believable, as you yourself have written. i know of orthodox families who are going to watch this film, but then they will also talk about it with their young ones which is a good thing. the da vinci code can hardly claim to be educational, about da vinci, or about jesus, but for some, this is as far as they`re willing to go in terms of their information. if this novel can bring about positive discussions that could only be good. the question remains, what is positive, and for whom?

i think i may have exhausted myself on this topic for now.

take good care, and salamat raheN
ana

p. s. to previous post.

greetings, ijaz gul and double cc. nice to `see` you here too. take good care.

#69, ana {_``celibacy is not just `venerated` in christianity alone``}

Celibacy should be mandatory for all religious fundos, including but not limited to the following:

RSS/BJP/VHP/JS/SP/BD/SS/HM LeT/AlKayda/JeI/JUI/MMA/SeS/LeJ/JeM/Wahabbis/ISNA/ICNA/CAIR
KKK/Knights Templars/SJ/SM/Dominicans/Franciscans/Maronites/JWs/CS/IRA/Orangemen
JDL/Likud/Hagana/Irgun/Stern Gang/Hadassa/Motza ballers

ana:

I do appreciate your fair criticism of my viewponit. It is not easy to discuss religion and religious matters; there is always a risk that some feelings might get hurt.
What I presented in the article was a different point of view than the traditional. You metioned a miracle in your post. In fact that is another topic on which I want to write First I have to take a breather and gather my senses together. I am presently reading about the miracles performed by Apostle Peter. They are amazing. Of course, miracles are common almost in all religions. Prophet Muahammad broke the moon yet it is still in one piece. But Apostle Peter raised so many deadbodies and gave them life that it really is amazing. Please understand, I respect your beliefs but that should not mean, I should not write on such topics from a rational viewpoint. I do not know whether you would agree with me, it is much more difficult to lose faith than to keep it.
I do appreciate you giving me a different perspective and I will try to get the book ``history of the orthodox church.`` I am currently reading 2-3 books on Christianity. I don`t know how long I will be able to keep my interest alive.

Mohammad Gill

Freethinker excuse me for asking -- what a decent scientist like you is doing in the red light district of world religions.......

Re: # 68

Mahamodda jee,

If India has ten such things of shame you have 100s. For example you call yourselves the land of Pure. Look at this.

http://dawn.com/2006/06/09/SlideShow/pic13.jpg.

Open sewarege on sadaks in the land of Pure. You see these sewerage photos everyday in your newspapers. So much Purity for the Land of Pure.

ana, Ijaz_Gul, and other readers:

There doesn`t seem to be any definitive historical evidence (in as much as I know) that Jesus was married or that he was not married. I give hereunder extensive quotations from two books.

From ``Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene,`` by Bart D. Ehrman, p. 248:

``So what does the historical evidence tell us about Mary and Jesus? As we have seen, it tells us almost nothing - certainly nothing to indicate that Jesus and Mary had a sexual relationship of any kind. When I tell this to an audience, I inevitably have one or two people raise their hands to ask, ``Isn`t it possible, though, that they were married?`` And I reply that of couse it`s possible - just as it`s possible that Jesus was married to Susanna, or to Mary of Bethany (who also gets mentioned several times in the Gospels - far more frequently, in more than one Gospel, during Jesus` ministry), or to her sister Martha, or to one of the other women mentioned in the New Testament. Or that he was married to someone who isn`t named at all. Or that he was gay. Why not? It`s possible. But historians have to deal not only with what`s possible but also what`s probable. Was Jesus probably intimate with Mary? Or Susanna? Or Peter? Well, how would we know? We need evidence.``

From ``Was Jesus Married?`` by William Phipps, pp. 68-69:

``How far have we progressed in answering the central question: Was Jesus married? The New Testament assumes that Jesus had normal sexuality and sexual desire, both of which are essential for humanness and prerequisite to marriage. Those biosocial qualities were indicated in the following ways: Jesus` male foreskin was cut; his general and individual relationships to the opposite sex display no sexual phobias; and his maturity was gained through exposure to the inevitable temptations of manhood. Jesus unreservedly approved of conviviality and connubiality and did not suggest that either was defiling per se. In view of no overt evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable that the silence of the New Testament should be interpreted to mean that Jesus internalized the Jewish mores pertaining to sex and marriage............

Unless other ancient texts are discovered that contain relevant information, it is unlikely that students of early Christianity will arrive at a general consensus on who Jesus married. While the question whom Jesus married is intriguing, it is not nearly as significant for the church as is an affirmative answer to the basic question of marriage. The positive arguments of this chapter coupled with the documented material in the next mean that Jesus most probably was married to a Galilean woman in the second decade of life.``

Magdala, a village to which Mary belonged, was in Galilee.

Mohammad Gill

History and Research are two different subjects. Whereas history can be biased and fabricated, research is objective. So to think that historians despite all the distortions they live in and the biases they carry can sift evidence and inductions framed by their kind as conclusive is bad research and nothing to do with explanations, theories or hypothesis as mentioned by you. These are mere conspiracy theories and a positivist scientist would never dare to speculate.

Its so easy to distort religious history. Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah to be born in the house of David and was therefore a born JEW. He had to follow all the Jewish Commandments and was thus circumcised. The only extent to which it refers to sexuality is male or female. Taking this incident to induce that Christ married is too far fetched. Few readings from biased historians will not help.

Maghas ko bagh mein janey na dijey
Ke na haq khoon parwanoan ka ho gha

Cheerios

I am eager to read what you write on miracles.

Ijaz_gul:

I enjoyed reading your post. The verse at the end of your post haunted me constantly in the past when I read the explanations of Virgin Birth, Immaculate Conception, Trinity, etc. They are so convoluted. It appears as if God created this world for stage-playing His various dramas.

I have been thinking about writing on ``Miracles`` for a long time. Long before I read The Da Vinci Code and thought of writing ``Was Jesus Married?`` Somehow, I couldn`t sit down and start writing in a coherent manner. Before, I start writing on any subject, I usually have a tentative outline in my mind. For writing on miracles, I haven`t developed any outline yet. When I started reading about Peter, I felt once again motivated to tackle this topic. Raising people from dead was ascribed to Jesus Christ and it didn`t tickle me even slightly because it is so widely believed (blindly?). There was nothing new in it. But Peter was quite another thing. So I thought I should tackle this topic. My initial enthusiasm has started wearing off again. I don`t really know if I will write on it any time soon although I think I have sufficient material for this project not only in the perspective of Christianity but Islam also. Ghazali fascinated me quite a bit and he had expressed strongly on miracles. Ibn Rushd had his own ideas on miracles which were not quite Ghazalian but opposed to what Ghazali had written. On the philosophical side, there were Hume and Russell. With regards,

Mohammad Gill

Please forget the ENLIGHTENMENT philosophers for explanations in metaphysics. Their paradigm will lead you nowhere. All the same , try to grasp the paradigm of Christianity and its relationships with the concept of forgiveness, eternal life, the christian concept of death as transition, the presence of Grace and the communion of Saints. Then you may understand why we think so differently and what is a Miracle.

To sum up, please read the Apostle`s Creed with all its references and foot notes from
``Cathechism of the Catholic Church``, Published by Theological Publications in India 1994. It may help you to rationalise our perspective and belief.

Cheerios

Gill saab,

Its just that you are a muslim and that is why when you write critical pieces about other religion characters, you are bound to get flak. Anyways look forward to your next article ``did radha and krishna consumate their relationship?``

cheers

jang:

I know that religion is a sensitive topic whether it`s your own (or the one in which you were born) or some other. I do not criticise any religion because I have an axe to grind. A time comes in one`s life (it came quite late in mine) when one starts looking objectively at the things one had been believing in uncritically and as a matter of blind faith. For instance, why did miracles occur so frequently and so regularly in the past? Why don`t they occur now? Why God revealed Himself regularly to the prophets and other people in the past and why is He so remote now? Why Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was the last prophet and no other prophet would come after him? So on and so forth.

Many of us who do not want to lose faith simply refuse to poder on such issues. I think it is wothwhile to think critically about them.

Mohammad Gill