The sexuality and marital status of Jesus

This is a paper I wrote for my English class, where we were assigned to write about any historical controversy. Therefore, it is controversial. I ask that you judge it by the quality of the essay, and not by any opinion you have about the contents. I don't expect anyone to instantly agree or disagree, just to keep an open mind.

Today, most people have heard of the Holy Grail. However, precious few of them know what the Grail truly is. The typical response is the chalice that Jesus drank from during the Last Supper, or the cup that caught Jesus' blood as he was crucified. It is noble to quest to seek the Holy Grail, for the Grail is the most sacred artifact in Christianity. This idea comes to us from Arthurian legend. However, evidence has risen that shows the Holy Grail to be an allegory; mere symbolism for the largest cover-up in Christian history.

The Holy Grail is a metaphor for the wife of Jesus Christ. While this claim may sound far-fetched at first, there is a wealth of evidence that shows this to be the case. Furthermore, the true story of the Grail shows that Jesus had children. These facts were relatively well-known in the period immediately following the death of Jesus, where Jesus' bloodline was known as the "Blood Royal," or in French, "Sangreal". When this was translated to English, Sangreal became San Graal. It was then retranslated to mean Saint Grail. From here, it was only a small step to change the word "Saint" with "Holy." At this point, the legend of the "Holy Grail" was born.

Before this revelation can be explained, it is necessary to know of the early Church. It was the Roman emperor Constantine who brought Christianity to Rome. However, Constantine had ulterior motives for his "conversion." There were religious problems between Christians and pagans throughout the Roman Empire, so Constantine decided to force Rome into having one religion. Constantine chose Christianity. However, the pagans were not willing to give up their religion. So, Constantine created a hybrid of the two. In order to let everybody continue to celebrate their festivals, he placed Christian holidays near the old pagan holidays. The most notable example is Christmas, whose date was decided at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. Prior to the Christianization of Rome, the official religion of Rome was worship of the sun, and the largest festival was held on the winter solstice, when the days began to get longer. This represented the rebirth of the sun. The bishops at Nicea decided to keep the festival, but change its meaning. Thus, the birth of the sun god became the birth of the son OF God.

It was not only the birth and death of Jesus that were altered. The holy day of the early Christians was stolen as well. In the original Christian Church, the Sabbath was on Saturday. At the Council of Nicea, the Sabbath was moved to the next day: SUNday, which literally means "day of the sun." This day was the day the Romans started the week and proclaimed the glory of the sun god. In order to allow the pagans to continue worshipping on this day, Constantine changed church services to be on Sunday. It is this reason that today's Christians attend church on a day that was originally a pagan celebration.

Two more important events occurred at the Council of Nicea. First, rules were set in place establishing the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. This paved the way for the church to control all aspects of religious life. Second, it was at the Council of Nicea where Jesus was declared - by vote - to "be a god and not a mortal prophet." With the status of deity, the way was clear for the Church to declare itself the sole link between men and God.

The next major council was the Council of Carthage in 397. It was here that the Bible began to be assembled. This presents us with the first piece of evidence linking Jesus with a wife. The original plan for the New Testament was to have all of the Gospels that were written by the apostles of Jesus. Now, there is no argument that John and Matthew were apostles. However, why were the Gospels of Mark and Luke included? Luke was a gentile doctor who knew St. Paul. Mark's house was a meeting place for the early Christian Church, but Mark himself was not one of Christ's twelve disciples. On the other hand, Thomas and Philip both were members of the original twelve. Yet the Church declared both Gospels in their names to be heresy, and ordered them burned. Incidentally, the word heresy comes from the Latin root haeresis, meaning "choice," for the people who chose to believe the old Gospels were the first heretics.

Unfortunately, the reason that the writings of St. Philip and St. Thomas were banned was partially because of their view towards women. This started what is quite possibly the largest act of sexism in recorded history. The Catholic Church issued the Apostolic Constitutions in 1143, in which women were formally excluded from positions of power in the Church by the following statement.

"We do not permit our women to teach in the Church, only to pray and to hear those who teach. Our master, when he sent us the twelve, did nowhere send out a woman; for the head of the woman is the man, and it is not reasonable that the body should govern the head".

This statement by the Church is precisely why Thomas and Philip's Gospels were burned: They reveal that many women were active in the ministry of Christ. Philip makes it quite plain that "there were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary" (Philip 3.21).

How do scholars know this? Simply enough, copies of these "heretical" texts have been found. The most important discovery was found in Egypt in the December of 1945. Near the town of Nag Hammadi, a farming Arab found 13 leather-bound papyrus books in an earthenware jar. Upon examination, the codices were discovered to contain fifty-two sacred texts that were omitted from the Bible. The most notable were the Gospels of Thomas and Philip, but there were also several other books such as the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Truth, and The Sophia of Jesus Christ. The latter book, in its very first line, tells us that the Church was wrong when they declared that Jesus "did nowhere send a woman," for Sophia opens with the line "After he rose from the dead, his twelve disciples and seven women continued to be his followers..." (Soph. 1.1).

The most shocking, yet most important, Bible verse is found in Philip. It reads "And the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth" (Phillip 1.59). In those times, the word "companion" meant "spouse." It is no small wonder that the Book of Philip was burned by the early Church!

The very idea that Jesus could be married to a woman presented problems for the early Church. Because of the Council of Nicea, nothing could be placed in the Bible that depicted Jesus as an ordinary man. As long as Jesus was a man, people could follow the teachings of Jesus to find God. The instant Jesus was divine, the laity was forced to follow the teachings of the Church in order to find God and Jesus.

Obviously, a divine being cannot be married to a mortal woman. The great steps taken to prevent the knowledge of Mary Magdalene reflect the fear the Church had of losing its power.

The Catholic Church forbade all ministers and bishops to be married. The usual reason for this is to keep themselves "pure", like Jesus. However, this could not be further from the truth. The original intent behind the rule of celibacy was to dispel the idea that holy men could perpetuate their bloodlines. This decree was made a formal law in 1138, and persists to this day.

However, this is a prime example of Church law against Biblical law. Not only does the New Testament say nothing about priests remaining celibate, Paul actually says precisely the opposite! In the first epistle to Timothy, Paul states that a bishop must be married with children, for "if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?"(1.Tim. 3.5). However, the Church chose to ignore this passage.

Now we come to the symbolism of the Holy Grail. In ancient times, the symbol for maleness was a chevron pointing up. This was known as the "blade". Its counterpart, the symbol for femininity, was the exact opposite, a chevron pointing down. This symbol was known as the "chalice," with the word "chalice" referring to the womb. This being said, it becomes apparent what was meant when the chalice held Jesus' blood.

Despite the zeal of the early editors, there are several biblical passages that confirm the marriage of Jesus and Mary. There are several passages in the New Testament that list the women who regularly were with Jesus (Luke 24.10, Matt. 27.56, Mark 15.40, Mark 15.47, Mark 16.1, John 19.25). In every list except for the one in the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene heads the list. By preceding even Mary, Jesus' mother, the Bible certainly implies that Mary Magdalene had a special role of importance.

The wedding itself is described in the Gospels. Jesus, as the Bible periodically mentions, was a descendant of King David through his father Joseph. All Davidic kings were Messiahs, along with the most senior high priests, which means "anointed one". Therefore, Jesus had the power to become a Messiah, although he would not achieve that status until he had been anointed by a high priest or priestess.

The anointing of a Messiah was usually performed by men, and the oil they used was typically olive oil mixed with spices such as cinnamon. Spikenard, on the other hand, was never used in anointments unless the anointer was the bride of the Messiah who was also a member of a spiritual order.

Whenever a Messiah was married, the ceremony took place in two parts. The first was a formal betrothal. The second anointing was the actual wedding. The first wedding the New Testament mentions outside of parables is the wedding feast at Cana (John 2.1). This was, according to the Gospel of John, the site of Jesus' first miracle: the changing of water to wine. However, this miracle, which is supposed to be one of the most significant, is not mentioned in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. At betrothal weddings, wine was only served to celibate Jews and the clergy, but other guests drank water. Today's preachers tell their congregations that the party ran out of wine, but the Gospels make no such claim. The actual quote is, "When they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine." This clearly refers to the unsanctified guests. Jesus, who had not yet been appointed the status of Messiah, said to Mary, "Mine hour has not come." Mary forced the issue, and Jesus proceeded to give everybody wine (John 2.1-11). This was remarkable, not because of a supernatural miracle, but because for the first time, Jesus completely ignored conventions. The most important thing to note is that Jesus, although he did flout tradition, wielded power that would not be given to an ordinary guest. Therefore, it certainly can be inferred that this was Jesus' own betrothal feast.

At Bethany, the second part of the marriage occurred. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark mention Jesus being anointed with spikenard (Matt. 26, Mark 14). John also includes this event, but he names the woman who anoints Jesus as Mary Magdalene (John 12.3). As previously stated, spikenard was only used in anointments when the anointed was a Messiah and the anointer was his wife. Since Mary Magdalene is specifically mentioned as the anointer, Mary must have been both a high priestess and the bride of Jesus. Also, the Antiquities of the Jews reveal that Mary was three months pregnant. This becomes of importance later on.

Having established the marital status of Jesus, we can now demonstrate that Jesus and Mary had children. As every good Christian knows, Jesus was crucified and died on the cross. However, six hours later, a guard "with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water" (John 19.34). Here we encounter one of the Bible's many inaccuracies in translations. The original word used in the Hebrew Gospel literally translates to "scratched". This proves not that Jesus was dead; rather, it proves he was alive. According to the British Medical Journal, unless the wound was "large and gaping," a dead body would lack the vascular action to expel blood. It comes to follow that the death of Jesus, as described in the Bible, is spiritual (excommunication) rather than physical.

Jesus was, in legal terms, dead when he was placed on the cross, but this was not death of the body. According to traditions of the time, final "death" would come four days after the decree of excommunication. At this point, Jesus would be entombed alive. However, prior to this fourth day, Jesus could be "resurrected" by decree, which was exactly what happened. The only people who had the power to revoke an excommunication were the High Priest and the Father of the Community. The High Priest was Joseph Caiaphas, who was the man who excommunicated Jesus. This left the Father of the Community, Simon Zelotes. There are several biblical passages that show Jesus speaking with Zelotes. This makes clear the meaning of the quote, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 24.46). Jesus was appealing not to God, but to the only man with the power to restore his unexcommunicated status. Indeed, the resurrection of Jesus refers to Zelotes reversing the decree to excommunicate Jesus.

Bible chronology places the Ascension in September, the month of Atonement. Incidentally, this is the month that Mary Magdalene's child was due. According to the rules of dynastic marriages, the parents were physically separated at the child's birth. At this time, the mother and child would enter what was essentially a convent, and the father would go into a monastery, which was known as the "kingdom of Heaven". This separation lasted three years if the child was female, or six years if the child was male. The monastery Jesus entered was the high monastery at Mird. The Leader of the Pilgrims was known as the Cloud, after the cloud that led the Israelites out of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Now the Biblical account of the Ascension means that Jesus was taken up by the Cloud (the Leader of the Pilgrims) to the kingdom of heaven (the high monastery), where the man in white (a priest) said that Jesus would return at the time of restitution (when his earthly marriage was restored).

These are the hidden revelations of the Christian Bible. In it, we see how theology today is quite possibly distorted, corrupted by the pagan Constantine and his bishops. Almost from the start of the church, Christianity was stolen from the Christians to placate both a heathen population and a power-hungry body of clergymen. Although much of the proof lies in documents that are not accepted by most Christians, a great deal of evidence showing the trickery of Rome is in the Bible. All the reader has to do in order to find the church is to look.

Node your homework

Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln
http://www.karenlyster.com/body_bookish.html
The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett
The Messianic Legacy by Michael Baigent
The Bible, King James Version

This is a treatment of a sensitive subject which I feel strongly about. I've tried to distance myself from the emotional appeals of the various arguments, and I'm sorry if this means the text is a little dry. My own views on the subject appear at the end of the article. This write-up was originally triggered by an e2 article entitled 'Was Jesus Married?', but has expanded in response both to my research for other projects, and the popularity of a certain novel.

The possibility that Jesus was married, or had a sexual relationship, is one which has been debated from very early in church history. In discussing these issues, it is very important to bear in mind what the source of each claim is, and to recognise that conjecture will predominate over provable fact a lot of the time. As the canonical gospels do not speak explicitly about the issue, claims made on it are often couched in sensational language. Assertions are often made that because a given thing is possible, but the church does not teach or believe it, it has been covered up. The dictum that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, while not in fact a principle of formal logic, is often used to attack the church. In this case, it may reasonably be aimed at the church's critics when they say there has been, or is, a conspiracy of silence about these or other issues.

Before we address the question of Jesus' marriage, and his relations with women, we should first consider the alternatives. It is entirely consistent with the canonical gospels to believe that Jesus was celibate, and did not express his love for others in any sexual way whatever. This is the default assumption for most Christians, and will be taken as such in this discussion. A further alternative which occurs perennially, but never achieves widespread currency, is that Jesus had one or more homosexual partners. There is a limited amount of circumstantial evidence for this view. St John's Gospel refers several times to 'the disciple Jesus loved'. From the grammar, it is clear this disciple is male, and it is generally thought to be St John. The claim that this means John and Jesus were lovers has been made by, among others, King James I and the playwright Kit Marlowe. Both of them were gay, and Marlowe was also an atheist, so there may well be bias rather than serious criticism at work here. Jesus is always depicted by the evangelists as an observant Jew, and while his own brand of Pharisaism was radical and revolutionary, it is highly doubtful that he would have ignored the injunction against physical relations between men. A second claim of this nature is based on a late and unverified, but plausible copy of a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria in which reference is made to a Secret Gospel of Mark. Clement cites a passage from this book, in which Jesus spends a night initiating a young man (identified with Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha). According to Clement, Egyptian gnostics had been claiming that this showed Lazarus to have been Jesus' lover. Clement does not dispute the authenticity of the text, but rebuts the gnostics' interpretation of it. In each case, the documentary evidence, if believed, could be interpreted as presenting Jesus engaging in a special emotional relationship with another man, but neither contains anything to suggest a physical act.

The remaining claim, that Jesus was married, or had one or more female followers whose relationship with him was sexual, is the more popular of the two alternatives to the standard view. It could be expected that a budding rabbi from a middle-class family would be married at an early age. No such event is explicitly referred to in the Bible, and the fact that the leadership of the Christians at Jerusalem passed to Jesus' brother James suggests he did not leave any sons. The usual partner named in connection with Jesus' marriage is Mary Magdalene - not to be confused with Mary of Bethany (Lazarus' sister) or Mary the wife of Cleopas, the mother of James and Joses. Mary of Magdala is identified in Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:2 as having had seven devils cast out of her by Jesus, although there is no direct account of such an incident. She is mentioned in all four canonical gospels as a witness to the Resurrection, and Luke 8 mentions her among those who provided for Jesus (and according to some manuscripts, his disciples) out of their own resources. She is often identified as the sinful woman in Luke 7:36-50, but there is no scriptural evidence for this, nor for the frequent claim that she was a prostitute. It is her prominence in the resurrection narratives which lends to her appeal to later writers, although it should be noted that St Paul, in his list of Resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, does not mention her - perhaps due to lack of information, or even sexism. In any case, that is all that the Bible has to say about Mary Magadalene.

Those who wish to enlarge on the theory that Jesus and Mary were married therefore have recourse to the extensive apocryphal literature loosely associated with the New Testament. Two that have been cited are the gospels attributed to Thomas and Philip. It should be made clear that in both cases we mean the texts found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. A previously known Gospel of Thomas, with numerous fantastical childhood incidents, has never been seriously regarded by scholars. It is alleged that these works were excluded from the canon of scripture because of their more charitable attitude to women. This is certainly not the case with the Thomas Gospel, the more generally convincing of the two, which contains this as its 114th and last saying:

Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.'
Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.'

This is the only point in the text at which Jesus says anything about Mary (although he addresses her in an earlier saying), and from its uncharacteristically sexist content, we may deduce that this is in all likelihood a later, gnostic amendment of the earlier text. So much for Thomas. The book attributed to Philip is of a much more dubious provenance, seeming to be entirely gnostic sayings such as those about the 'light', and containing some extravagant and uncharacteristic miracle stories. It speaks of human sacrifice, and contains a specific identification of the Holy Spirit with Sophia, the spirit of Wisdom. It also talks about marriage more than the canonical gospels, but in highly esoteric terms, with extensive details on how to defeat incubi and succubi. It is from this work that the claim about Jesus and Mary's relationship comes. The following is the most plausible reconstruction of the damaged text:

The Lord loved Mary Magadalene more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples ... said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Saviour answered and said to them, 'Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.'(Philip 64: 2-9)

Given in its full form, this text clearly belongs with the rest of the gnostic sayings in the 'Philip' gospel. Given its complete lack of connection with the historical evidence for the life of Jesus, it is hardly surprising that this book is not part of the New Testament canon. Moreover, the text is not notably feminist, despite its enthusiasm for the female spirit Sophia, and for marriage. Another Nag Hammadi text, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, although couched in the form of a conversation between the resurrected Christ and his disciples, bears much closer resemblance to the viewpoint of the gnostic Hypostasis of Archons than to Jesus' established teaching. Its inclusion of seven women among the hearers is hardly remarkable when we have seen that all four canonical gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was closely involved in the events of the first Easter, along with other women.

We are now well into the realm of the improbable and obscure. The principal reason for the selection of the four canonical gospels by the early church was that they were the ones which were most complete and accorded most fully with the common understanding of Jesus' life. The picture they give of him is focussed on his ministry, in the last few years of his life. They make no statement one way or the other about his being married - a silence which is perhaps easier to take as a negative statement than a positive one. At this point our quest for truth begins to run into what we will see are outright lies. Two well-known sources of (dis)information on this topic are The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, and the works of 'Sir' Laurence Gardner (www.graal.co.uk), including Bloodline of the Holy Grail. I'll tackle a few specific points before discussing these authors' wider agenda.

• The claim that the Mary who anoints Jesus with spikenard in John 12:3 is Mary Magdalene is obviously untrue, as the event takes place at the house of Lazarus, in Bethany. The Mary referred to is Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.
• The claim that the wedding at Cana in Galilee in John 2 is Jesus' own wedding is not borne out by the text, which states at verse 2 that Jesus (and his disciples) were called to the wedding - which would hardly be necessary if it were his own! No other even slightly reliable source mentions the wedding, so we have no reason to doubt that the obvious meaning of John's text is the intended one. Also, the miracle at Cana is described as Jesus' first miracle - so he could not at that point have exorcised Mary Magdalene, if we are to believe the text. Gorgonzola informs me that Baigent and Leigh's collaborator Henry Lincoln developed this theory, mostly by self-persuasion.
• The word 'companion', used of Mary and others, does not mean 'spouse', or the translators would say so. In Latin at least the two concepts are distinct.
• The unlikely issue of blood and water from Jesus' spear wound is clearly seen as unusual, even miraculous, in the Gospel. It does not suggest that Jesus was alive. However, had he been, the blow, after which he is left bleeding on the cross, would have almost certainly have killed him. In any case, the blow is only struck once the decision has been taken not to break Jesus' legs, because he was already dead.
• Jesus' cry 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit' (Luke 23:46) is a quotation from Psalm 31:5, and is definitely addressed to God, and not to any bystander.
• The Ascension cannot plausibly be dated to September. Acts 1:3 states that Jesus was seen by his disciples for forty days, following his resurrection at Passover (as dated by John 13:1, for example). Passover could not fall later than late April, so that it would be a stretch even to place the Ascension in June. (Arieh suggested to me that if the first Palm Sunday were linked to the feast of Tabernacles, with which it shares some features, the Ascension could be pushed into late summer. However, the extensive specifics relating the Passover in the Gospels show that the authors mean the events to occur close to the Spring new moon.)
• The word 'grail' is probably derived from the medieval Latin gradalis, a dish, and not from Sang Real, which is apparently a folk etymology. It can be traced to two English writers, John Hardyng and Henry Lovelich, both writing in the late 15th century, and not having French as a first language. As for 'the Grail' to describe the cup or dish of the Last Supper, this comes from the writing of Chretien de Troyes' The Story of the Grail in the mid 12th century, with 'Holy Grail' appearing in related works shortly afterwards. In medieval Welsh the word is 'greal', and in the medieval Latin of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, it appears as 'gral' (and describes a stone, not a chalice).
• Although the date of Christmas was selected for pragmatic reasons relating to the timing of the Saturnalia and Natalis Solis Invicta, making Sunday the Christian sabbath was done because the Resurrection is recorded as occurring on a Sunday, and God is said to have begun his work of creation on that day also.
• Hairesis means 'choice' in Greek, not Latin. Although the condemnation of Arianism at Nicea is a famous example of an attack on heresy, such struggles long predate the Council.

So who are the people making these claims? Baigent and Leigh are well known to the world of biblical research and criticism. Another of their works, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, attracted harsh criticism from many scholars, most notably Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner, of the University of Tübingen, whose book Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican sold out twice in six months - an unusual feat for a work of serious scholarship. Baigent and Leigh were rather more successful: 'The fact that professional historians slated the book did not stop The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail from becoming a bestseller.' (Betz and Riesner, Ch. 1) Their research methods are, to say the least, unorthodox. The acknowledgements for Deception include a reference to a medium who introduced them to the spirit of an Old French poet. American thriller writer Dan Brown has latched onto their work for the substance of his hit novel The Da Vinci Code, as well as including The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail as a prop and immortalising its authors with a character called Leigh Teabing. Despite this tribute, they are reported to have sued Brown for plagiarism.

It is worth quoting two contemporary historians here. Richard Barber, in The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend (Chapter 19), describes The Holy Blood a