THEORIES

New York Monthly Herald. July 2006 Issue P. 28

Theories. Conspiracies

It was defended by Arthur, and almost brought by him on to the stage of European history at just that juncture when the politics of the Empire would have allowed a completely new direction, a completely new version based on the inner teaching of the Christian mysteries. By the eighth century, the time of Charles the Great, Rome had established her death grip on the religious community, and Charles, out of guilt, or through the trickery of the Pope, allowed himself to accept the Imperial Throne from the hands of the Patriarch of Rome. The fraudulent Donation of Constantine, which supported the temporal power of the Church, clinched the situation. From that point on, Rome was locked in a desperate struggle against the various Gnostic survivals, some of whose claim to be the real "Church" was considerably better than Rome's. To admit any other claim was to lose the position of defender of orthodoxy; for if there were many churches, than Rome was not THE church, catholic and universal. This power struggle would color the next seven hundred years, ending finally with Luthor's thesis nailed to the door of the seminary. That rupture could not be healed, even by the sword. In the Grail, we see, even at this late date, the radiant quality of that early church. The importance of the Grail, for us now, as we plunge into the next cycle of spiritual evolution, lies in its symbolic nature. Within the Grail can be found a synthesis of all western mystical and magical traditions. It is the source of that underground stream of meaning that flows through the occult and esoteric teachings of the last two thousand years. The Grail is all things to all people, and to all it is The Mystery. Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.

Was Jesus Married? A Careful Look at the Real Evidence

By Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts

Part 1: These days, one of the questions I often receive about Jesus has to do with his marital status. This question didn't just drop out of heaven, however. It was born of the popularity of Dan Brown's controversial novel, The Da Vinci Code. This novel advocates the thesis that Jesus was in fact married to the woman we know as Mary Magdalene, that they had a child together, and that this "truth" was covered up by the church for self-serving reasons. Many readers of The Da Vinci Code, believing the fictional history of the novel to be true, have been buzzing about the possibility of Jesus' having been married. In a recent survey conducted by the online religious website beliefnet, 19% of respondents said they believe that Mary Magdalene was in fact Jesus' wife. In this article I will examine the historical evidence for and against Jesus' purported marriage. Whether we'd like to think of him as married or not is not particularly relevant here. What matters is historical evidence. We don't need more ranting and raving about this issue, no matter what the position of the ranters and ravers. Rather, in the mythical words of Joe Friday, we need "Just the facts, ma'am." Finding the facts isn't easy, however, because we have very little overt historical evidence for or against the marriage of Jesus. The earliest and most reliable records of his life - the New Testament gospels - do not tell us explicitly whether Jesus was married or not. They don't mention his having a wife. Nor do they state that he was unmarried. The silence of the New Testament gospels has given rise to a cacophony of conflicting voices. Some see in these writings a plot to cover up the truth about Jesus. Others see the silence of the gospels as proof that Jesus could not have been married. It does seem rather fantastic to imagine that if Jesus had been married to Miriam of Magdala, whom we know as Mary Magdalene, or to any other woman for that matter, this fact would have been completely omitted from all of the earliest records of Jesus' life. Those who claim that the earliest Christians conspired to hide this information because it confirmed the fact that Jesus wasn't divine forget that the supposed conspirators often gave their lives because they believed Jesus to have been divine. Would they have died for something they knew to be a lie? I rather doubt it. Nevertheless, there are some who argue that the silence of the New Testament gospels should be taken as strong evidence for the marriage of Jesus. Let us turn to this argument.

Part 2: New Testament Evidence for the Married Jesus

The New Testament contains no explicit answer to the question of Jesus' marital state. It never mentions his wife, nor that he was unmarried. In fact, whenever the New Testament gospels refer to Jesus' natural relatives, they speak only of his father, mother, and siblings, but never of a wife. Although almost all scholars of all religious persuasions take this as strong evidence of the singleness of Jesus, a few have proposed that, in fact, Jesus was married. In 1970, for example, William E. Phipps published Was Jesus Married? The Distortion of Sexuality in the Christian Tradition. In this book Phipps argued that the silence of the New Testament about the marital status of Jesus indicates that Jesus was in fact married. Why? Because virtually every Jewish man in Jesus' day did marry, especially those who were considered to be Rabbis. One major problem with this argument, among several, is that it makes no room for an exception. Jesus was not required by law - either governmental or religious - to marry. And, though he was in many ways a normal Jewish man (see Chapter 2 of my book Jesus Revealed), in others ways he was utterly unusual. If, when he reached the age at which young men in his day married, Jesus and his family realized that he had a special calling which would make marriage quite difficult, then he could surely have remained single. Yes, this would have been perceived as an unusual, even a counter-cultural choice. CONTINUES ON P29