The Relationship Between Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene

[SarahM32]

Last edited Fri Sep 28, 2012, 12:40 PM - Edit history (1)

As you know, Dan Brown’s work, the Da Vinci Code, caused a stir awhile back because it was based on the idea that Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. And more recently there was even more discussion of that issue due to the discovery of an ancient text fragment that reported Jesus as saying “My wife ...”

There has been a lot of discussion and speculation about it recently, and even though the fragment may be a fake, I found an article that makes a pretty good case that there was indeed a very special and intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

It makes a good case because it is supported not only by the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Gospels and the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, but also by the official church canon.

You can read about in the article, The Relationship Between Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene.
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[Ilsa]

1. Good article. Thank you. nt

[Mnemosyne]

2. Thanks Sarah. Interesting read! Welcome to

DU!

[SarahM32]

12. Thank you.

For the welcome, and for reading the article with interest.

[madrchsod]

3. i see no reason why he would`t be married.

or if not married at least he would have had a special relationship with a woman.

[On the Road]

4. Even if the Fragment is Genuine,

you can't really derive any useful historical information from a 3rd-century document like this.

Unlike a lot of people here, I absolutely think that Jesus existed. But the biographies in the Gospels are largely made up from existing stories. That's why people say Jesus was only a story based on Mithra, Dionysis, Appolinius, and other ancient religious figures. Even one of the eariest Church fathers, Justin Martyr, was shocked to learn of those parallels and opined that Satan must have inspired the earlier stories.

Jesus was seen mostly as a heavenly figure by Gnostics, who made up all kinds of stories about him. They were probably intended as symbolic. Even if they were intended as history, the writers would probably have had less material to work with than you and me.

The best indications that Jesus didn't have a wife are (1) that his brother James didn't and (2) that whenever the Gospels discuss Jesus and his relatives, every family member is mentioned except a wife. It is an argument from absence, but it is still striking.

[SarahM32]

9. The article is not about the fragment. See my OP. And, as for the myths ...

The virgin birth story was probably taken from existing stories like that of Mithra. And the author of the article cited in the OP also wrote an article on The Virgin Birth Story explaining that.

As he explains, the reference to a virgin birth in the book of Matthew 7:14 was written mainly because the early Christians studied the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which contains the world "virgin" in the book of Isaiah's story about the child Immanuel. However, the Hebrew text purposely does not use the word for virgin in 7:14, but the word for young woman. And Isaiah does use the word for virgin in Isaiah 23:12, 37:22, 47:1, and 62:5. And the article reveals that, in addition, the historical account the Isaiah reveals that the child Immanuel lived and died hundreds of years before Jesus was even born.

Many people throughout history have come to the same conclusion about such things, about what the birth, life, teachings and death of Jesus was really about. So in that respect, some of what is written here is really not new, especially about the myth of the virgin birth.

For example, even back in 1823 Thomas Jefferson (the author of the American Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. President) wrote: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

In more recent times, John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, wrote: "In time, the virgin birth account will join Adam and Eve and the story of the cosmic ascension as clearly recognized mythological elements in our faith tradition, whose purpose was not to describe a literal event but to capture the transcendent dimensions of God in the earthbound words and concepts of first-century human beings."

Many other eminent Christian scholars agree, because the "virgin" birth stories are found only in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Earlier writers like Mark made no mention of it, probably because the stories did not yet exist at the time they wrote their gospels. And James, who knew Jesus best, didn't mention it either knowing it wasn't true.

The authors of all the Christian texts -- both canonical and non-canonical -- fabricated some stories about him, and it's because the stories were told for 30 years by word of mouth before the first text was written by Paul, who influenced the later writers of the official canon.

If you're interested in the chronological order of when the gospels were written, read an article by a foremost scholar, Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar, at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcus-borg/a-chronological-new-testament_b_1823018.html

[On the Road]

15. Sorry to Miller Your Thread, Sarah,

I don't know what I was thinking in discussing the fragment.

I agree with you about how the virgin birth and similar stories developed. However, because so much of the material on Jesus' life comes from groups who simply made things up, it is usually difficult to know what traditions to give weight to. In particular, gnostic references to Mary Magdalene may be simply attempts to incorporate a wisdom figure into Christianity:

http://www.netplaces.com/gnostic-gospels/the-role-of-women-in-gnosticism/mary-magdalene-as-sophia.htm

The most interesting references are from the Gospel of Thomas. As you know, there is no consensus on whether Thomas is early and independent or 2nd-century and dependent on canonical material. If it's early and independent, that would give a lot of weight to the depiction of Mary Magdalene. If it's a late gnostic document, probably not so much.

Those strange variations of traditional gospel sayings and parables could be the original forms of those sayings. However, texual analysis suggests that when comparing two versions of a text, the stranger or more embarrasing one is usually preferred. This is based on the idea that it's more likely for a text to be made palatable to a mass audience ("So the last will be first, and the first will be last&quot rather than for a straightforward text to be made baffling ("For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one&quot . However, that principle may not hold if the provenance of Thomas was a gnostic group immersed in secrecy and symbolism -- they might have liked making things confusing to create a sense of mystery and give their own interpretation to intitiates.

Personally, I have gone both ways on this issue. While it's certainly intriguing to have a early document with a strikingly different depiction of Jesus, Thomas may turn out to not to as early as it might look. Furthermore, the existing text of Thomas might have been changed like the rest of the Bible, with some parts early and some parts late. It may not even have a consistent viewpoint.

The reference to James is especially intriguing, since James did become the leader of the movement after Jesus died:

Thomas 12. The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"
Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

On the other hand, James was a legal purist and the leader of what Paul called the circumcision party. If Thomas was written by a a follower of James, it's very odd that it also contains anti-circumcision sayings:

Thomas 53. His disciples said to him, "Is circumcision useful or not?"
He said to them, "If it were useful, their father would produce children already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become profitable in every respect."

So I think unfortunately that it's likely that Thomas is at least a heavily modified version of Jesus' sayings and may not represent a more original view of Jesus' words. That at least calls into question the material on Mary Magdalene.

[SarahM32]

16. Thanks for that thoughtful comment. And about Thomas and James ...

I think it's hard to come to really solid conclusions about issues like these because there is so much we don't know.

Just to speculate, though, I think it's possible that Thomas may have have been influenced by the gentle sage Hillel the Elder, who was liberal concerning circumcision (as opposed to the strict conservative Shammai).

The author of the message I'm promoting has suggested that Jesus too was influenced by Hillel, especially considering that Hillel taught a version of the golden rule before Jesus did and said it was a summation of Torah. Therefore, it's possible that Thomas was an early writer who was a follower of James (rather than Paul and Peter), but had some disagreements with James about certain things.

Perhaps we'll never know for sure. But I think what's important is that people know what we don't know and what we do know. And what we do know (or can know) is that the official Christian canon and the Nicene Creed is not literally "The Word of God," and we can revere Jesus of Nazareth as an enlightened spiritual master teacher and Christ-Avatar without having to believe that he was "born of a virgin" or worshiping him as an idol and "God Himself." That I do not believe.

I agree that the Gospel of Thomas may be questionable as to its absolute accuracy, but then, so are all of the Christian writings, both canonical and non-canonical. I think we have to be like Thomas Jefferson, who felt he should "separate the wheat from the chaff."
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[On the Road]

17. I Was Not Familiar With the Idea that Jesus Was Influenced by Hillel

I would think it comes from similarities between some of Hillel's writings and the Sermon on the Mount. (Unlike most people, I'm on the fence as to whether Jesus actually said the things in Matthew 4-6, since they resemble his later redactors more than the rest of the gospels and what we know of his life.)

The problem I have with seeing Hillel as an influence is social class and religious sect. As I understand it, Hillel was an upper-class liberal accomodationist with Rome. Not to criticize him -- a lot of the best Jewish thought has come out of similar backgrounds. But Jesus was on the lower level of society and the gospels contain a lot of veiled hatred of Rome delievered under the cover of criticism of the "Pharisees and Saducees." The high priest Ananus eventually had his brother James killed, so there was no love lost there at all.

At the same time, religious boundaries were sometimes permeable. Josephus, who was on the upper-class side of things and was eventually adopted by the Roman emperor Vespatian, writes about a purist teacher Banus (perhaps similar to John the Baptist) who he followed in his youth and retained a certain affection for. So perhaps it would work the other way as well. Religous tribes are strange things.

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I have to admit, though, I'm a little off center in historical Jesus studies. One of my big influences is Robert Eisenman, who is not well liked by the mainstream despite his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He understands Jesus in terms of James and his very purist Judaism. I also happen to think the Epistle of James is absolutely genuine, that scholars have very strange reasons for judging it a forgery and no real idea who else might have written it, and that James provides a tremendous amount of insight into the early Jesus movement. ("Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you....&quot

The other big influence is a Jewish gnostic group in Texas which is hilariously nonacademic but IMO has a very compelling view of the development of the New Testament and its relationship to gnosticism. They date the gospels extremely late and believe that Paul created his own spiritual version of Jesus, after which (this is key) spiritual or allegorical passages came to be viewed as physical history as they turned into orthodoxy.

[SarahM32]

18. Me neither, until I got the message. And I agree about James.

After I read the message I began to study a bit on the history because I didn't really know much about it (and still don't, really). Now I can see a Hillel influence not only in the golden rule, the sermon of the mount, and the courage to interpret the Torah and Tanakh in non-traditional ways, but in other respects as well.

I love the book of James. It is straight to the point without any supernatural stuff, and he understood the role of Jesus as a Mashiach, an anointed one (even though he broke tradition as a reformer).

I think it's possible that James even thought Jesus was a bit too liberal, like Hillel. But even though Hillel was a liberal Talmudic Jew, I wouldn't characterize him as an "accomodationist with Rome." I think that like Jesus, he felt they should "render unto Caesar what is Caesar, and unto God what is God's," and even "love your enemy."

I think the early Christians were split into different factions, liberal and conservative, just like the Jews were split between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. After Hillel died, I think one of the reasons for the Jewish-Roman War and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was due to Shammai's hot-headedness. And I think that certain Christians didn't help in that situation.

I too see the canonical and non-canonical texts as very much related, and I believe Paul did create "his own spiritual version of Jesus," and found ways to interpret the Torah and Tanakh in ways that supported his theology, which we now call Christian Apologetics.

I think the article About Christianity is a fairly useful view.
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[gopiscrap]

5. In 8th grade I asked the nun during religion class

if there was a thing between Jesus and Mary M, I didn't get answer to my question but I did get sent out to stand in the hall til class was over!

[gopiscrap]

6. Welcome to DU Sarah!

[SarahM32]

13. Thank you. (And I love your quote.)

So true.

[gopiscrap]

14. thanks

I head a peace and justice project in Tacoma and also work with a bunch of churches and am on the state board of the church council

[DreamGypsy]

7. Jesus loved me, this I know. Why on earth did I ever let him go ...

Richard Shindell wrote The Ballad of Mary Magdalene in 1994, well before The Da Vinci Code caused its stir.

It's a fun song. But, in some ways, a very serious song. What would that relationship have been? What would those two people have felt?

But I remember nights we spent
Whispering our creed
Our rituals, our sacraments
The stars our canopy
There beneath an olive tree
We'd offer up our plea
God's creation innocent
His arms surrounding me

This version of the song contains a long, slightly rambling, introduction...including an anecdote about the Da Vinci Code and $$$. If you want to skip that and cut to the music, that comes about 3:20 into the video.

I hope madrchsod likes this interpretation of that possible relationship...

[SarahM32]

8. Great song. Thanks.

Very appropriate.

[okasha]

10. I highly recommend

Elizabeth Cunningham's Magdalen novels. It's extremely improbable that MM was Celtic shiksa and met Jesus at Druid school, but they're some of the best reading I've encountered lately.

[cbayer]

11. I had not heard of these, but have been looking for a novel series.

Will check it out.

Thanks, okasha.