• uniquely-ironic said on May 28, 2009....

  It's an age old debate and I'm pretty sure no one has definitive proof one way or another.  It is an interesting thought though.  It certainly would "humanize" Jesus if it were true.

• moonriver said on May 28, 2009....

  im not sure about their having gotten married.
  like, i don't see jesus and mary magdalene wearing wedding rings in old paintings.
  but they were sure a hot couple, and knew how to have a good time with perfumed oils and feet fetishes... :-)
  
  

• curmudgeon said on May 28, 2009....

  Actually, the woman with the hair-oils feet thing is not named, nor is the adultress Jesus saves from stoning. In all four gospels, Mary Magdalene shows up at Jesus' crucifixion and at his tomb. To read Mary Magdalene into any of the other scenes is plainly not adhering to what the text actually says.
  
  And the Catholic Church isn't "debating" this issue at all. They're pretty much chalking this ridiculous exercise in isigesis (reading meaning into the text rather than drawing meaning from the text) for what it is - unsupported hogwash.
  
  Yes, there is the fragment from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Thomas which appear to portray her as a stronger figure in the early Christian movement than the canons suggest, but to go from this to a bloodline is conjecture of the thinnest kind.
  
  You don't need a wife or kids to "humanize" Jesus. All you have to do is reject His divinity as many early Christians did. Some contemporary theologians prefer to see him as a precursor to the Marxist revolutionaries, a biblical Che Guevarra, so to speak.
  
  To them I say hogwash as well.
  

• dreamloser said on May 28, 2009....

  Wow. Well your just the kind of closed minded person I didn't want to attract. I liked what the History Channel and the book has to say about it. Plus, there are parts of the book that are being said were changed and not included.

  Obviously everyone has their own belief and that's how it is suppose to be!

   

• gingersoul said on May 28, 2009....

  Dream.....Jesus was only a man....nothing divine in him....not even a shred of that..
  Man likes woman, woman likes man....
  The fact that Mary has been a strict follower of Jesus is well documented in the famous Scrolls of the Dead Sea that include the vangelo (gospel) she wrote.....called the Gospel of Maria...
  Actually, if you read the other gospel its voiced out the envy that the disciples were feeling toward Maria because she has had the opportunity to spend so much more time with Jesus than they did...
  
  So i can easily believe Jesus and Maria might have had some steamy sex encounter during one of those nigths in the desert..
  Mmmm....only thinking about it makes me feel divine....lol....
  
  The historical existence of Jesus is one thing, the interpetation given to his life and teachings is a completely different story.
  
  Curm....you mean Eisigesis, not isigesis, right?.
  
  And as you say.......it means interpretation.........exactly what the Bible is ....a book open to endless interpretations each of them forced and shaped in order to fit and support this or that theory during the centuries..... surely nothing carved in stone by a God...
  The Church has built her power from these interpretations.

• curmudgeon said on May 29, 2009....

  ginger - actually it seems the word is spelled "eisegesis." But thanks for the correction.
  
  However, it is NOT correct to interpret the text any old way you want, and then conjure historical facts from that unsupported interpretation. Personally, do what you wish, if it helps you spiritually, but if you wish to persuade others to your line of thinking, eisegesis is a pretty irresponsible method.
  
  We don't know, for example, who wrote the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. As the vast majority of women were illiterate in Jesus' day - especially those who were in Jesus' socioeconomic class - chances are it was not Mary Magdalene herself. And if Jesus and MM were married and had a child, wouldn't the very Gospel attributed to her mention it?
  
  Quite frankly it's unimportant to me what Jesus' personal life circumstances were or were not. The point is he challenged everyone to think of life with God and with each other in a different way and paid the ultimate price for it. Until concrete evidence about his personal life actually surfaces, what we have to go on is that Jesus wasn't necessarily married. He could have been married, or he might never have married. Based on the track his life takes, I would tend to think he wasn't.
  
  Seriously - if we assume as Brown does that the wedding at Cana was Jesus' own wedding, in the very next passage Jesus' family sees him off as he embarks on his ministry. Why would Mary Magdalene's family have married her off to an itinerant prophet with little means of supporting her, providing food and shelter and so on? Remember, Jesus is not an ordained priest, just the son of an ordinary carpenter who is defying social convention. It makes not one lick of sense that MM's family would agree to her marrying this guy. More to the point - if Jesus knows the track his life is going to take - to defy the powers that be - surely he understands that he will leave behind a widow and orphan with little to no means of support. What does that say about Jesus as a family man?
  
  All of this is empty conjecture.
  

• travelr712 said on May 29, 2009....

  the idea that there was a devine child comes from the reign of the merovingian kings in what is now northern france. they proported that their bloodline went back to christ. but since it was the middle 400's before christianity was introduced to that area, it makes their claims dubious at best. these stories are the source dan brown incorporated in his book. you have to understand that the da vinci code is a work of fiction in which some factual, some anecdotal, some historical and some fabricated information was used to make a good story, but it is fiction nonetheless, not fact.

Comment on "Was Jesus married? History channel debate"

Currently tagged	Jesus blood-lines marriage History Channel (Click to add tags below)
Tag this post	(Separate tags using commas, for example: New York, dating, vegetarian)
Your comment