Jesus was probably married to Mary

It’s known to all that nothing can be known about Jesus-who his parents were, when he was born or what he did or said in his life. The gospels which speak about him were written in Greek (which neither Jesus nor any of his disciples knew) much after he died in faraway lands like Rome, Antioch and others by unknown people taking a lot form the mystery religions and to suite the Pauline theology. It is also known to all that the Church canonized the 4 of them which suited their official line and burned or destroyed all the others which spoke quite differently about Jesus.       

Over the years ‘new’ gospels have been discovered and allegations about a romantic relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene have persisted for centuries. They have been explored by various writers and scholars. In the Fifties, the book, The Last Temptation of Christ suggested that the pair married.

                                                                                                                                                                 Did Jesus have children with Mary Magdalene? The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s 2003 best-selling thriller, was hinged on this premise. It said Jesus and Mary were married. The authors of another book, “The Lost Gospel”, claim to have unearthed evidence of a manuscript which tells the story of Jesus, his two sons and his marriage to Mary, one of his closest followers, who was at his crucifixion, burial and at his empty tomb. The last Gospel is based on a manuscript written (570AD) on Vellum–treated animal skin-in Syriac, a language closely linked to Aramaic (spoken by Jesus) found in the British Library.  Professor Barrie Wilson -a professor of religious studies in Toronto- and writer Simcha Jacobovici  an Israeli-Canadian film-maker-translated the text. They studied the document for six years and are convinced they have uncovered a missing fifth gospel. Jacobovici claims the manuscript, which is 29 chapters long, is a 6th century copy of another 1st-century gospel and casts parts of the Bible in a very different light. The document is in code and according to Jacobovici and Wilson, it tells of Jesus’s marriage through the story of the Old Testament character Joseph and his wife Aseneth. The document is also preceded by a covering letter, written in the 6th century by the man who translated the document from its original Greek into Syriac. They believe that this gospel and the ‘encrypted’ story of Jesus’s marriage disappeared from public view around 325 AD when the four gospels were accepted as canonical by the Trend Council. 

‘Many such gospels were there and they all got destroyed as they did not conform to the teachings of the Church. People have found bits and pieces of those destroyed gospels,’ says Jacobovici. ‘They usually come up through the antiquities’ market and they’re attacked as forgeries. But the British Library manuscript, he says, ‘is a full-blown gospel. While some academics agree it is possible that other gospels -recounting Jesus’s marriage-may have existed but got subsequently destroyed. In 1213, for example, a chronicle recorded that the inhabitants of Béziers, in southern France, had been burned alive four years earlier for ‘their scandalous assertion that Mary Magdalene and Christ were lovers.

Just two years ago, Harvard professor Karen L. King declared that she’d found a papyrus fragment — thought to be from Egypt — called The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife. In it, there were four words, written in Coptic (an Egyptian language), saying: ‘Jesus said to them, “My wife ..”  Jacobovici believes that his ‘lost gospel’ supports Professor King’s studies. He is also convinced the story of Jesus’s marriage is already incorporated into the four gospels of the New Testament. ‘Jesus is called a “rabbi” in some places in the gospels. And a rabbi, to this day, in order to have a congregation and a ministry, has to be married. If he’s going to lead a congregation, he’s got to be a model for that congregation. In the first century, you reach manhood when you get married. And therefore, he insists, there can be ‘no question’ that, even in the established gospels, Jesus must have had a wife.

 

To emphasize his belief that Mary of Magdalene was Jesus’s wife, he describes her decision to visit his body on the Sunday after the Crucifixion. ‘The gospels tell us why she went there — to wash and anoint his body. She’s just a follower and yet she’s going to unwrap his naked body? Women do not wash rabbis or male bodies. Only males do it — unless you are the man’s wife.’ Equally intriguing is what Jacobovici and Wilson claim about a plot to kill Jesus by a love rival 13 years before the Crucifixion.