A small papyrus fragment, preserved in the sands of Egypt for nearly two millennia, contains words referring to Jesus’ wife, and the whole world is agog with a sense of scandal. It’s a bit like the pictures of Kate Middleton topless, we are seeing something titillating from a great distance, and even scholars have no idea what to do with it — even though that won’t stop them, as the Royals unerringly did, from making fools of themselves. Tom Holland has probably taken the most politic and reasonable line when he says, in his Guardian article about the fragment:
What the fragment does not do is shed any light on the marital status of the historical Jesus – let alone whether he truly had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene. … What it does give us, though, is a glimpse into an otherwise occluded moment in the evolution of Christianity, and a reminder of how effectively religions have been able to manufacture for themselves, in defiance of messy reality, a streamlined and authorised past.
This is important. When we look at Christianity or Islam we see them as somehow “ready-made” religions, but it took centuries before they took their present form, centuries of sifting and sorting, writing and rewriting, until they had attained an authorised form and had an authority that could authorise them. It helped that the Emperor was onside. Had he not been, I doubt that Christianity would have reached us in anything like its present form. It might not have reached us at all. The New Testament, for example, was not gathered together as an authoritative text until after Christianity had been made, by Constantine’s acceptance, the religion in waiting of an empire.
So, was Jesus married? Probably, and if he was, given the early history of the formation of classical Christianity, this is something that it would have been in the interests of those who had already accepted of the body as somehow unholy to suppress – as Jesus himself effectively does in the canonical gospels when he remarks that some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs by others, and some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God (Matthew 19.12), and that his message about sex was hard for men to accept (for it is quite explicitly directed, as most religious messages are, to men) — to conceal the fact that Jesus was a man like other men, and that, like every faithful Jew, he had married. The story of Jesus told in the gospels is almost entirely mythological. If Jesus existed, he was not like this — which is why I am convinced that, even if Jesus was a real figure in history, the Jesus of the gospels is almost entirely an imaginative fiction. Whether there was a real, historical person at the centre of the story is largely irrelevant to the Jesus of Christianity.
What bemuses me is why anyone should think this fragment of a piece of papyrus religiously important. It cannot really tell us whether or not Jesus was married. It cannot plausibly be thought to confirm or disconfirm anything about the historical figure who has already been raised to the nth power and made to seem like a god once walked the earth. We can be assured that he was not like that, and since he was not like that, the likelihood of his having been married (or failing that, as some have suggested, following the hints about “the beloved disciple”, his having been gay) is, I should have thought, fairly high. Why should this surprise anyone? If Jesus was a man — and if he was an historical figure, what else could he reasonably be taken to have been — then he was like other men, and probably had a sexual relationship with someone. The only people who should be bothered by this are those, like the pope, who at least pretends to have been always celibate, and who still thinks that marriage is, somehow, not quite up to spiritual snuff, and such people we can safely ignore.
One of the ways to appreciate the Bible for the great literature it is, is to select the “good bits”, the extraordinary passages that have been fundamental in shaping Western civilization and take enough time to ponder and understand them well.
One of those remarkable bits is the “Wisdom literature” of the OT, especially those books that present the practical and theological ethics of the ancient Hebrews : Proverbs, Wisdom of Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon.
As Arthur Drews demonstrated in his important book “The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus” (1912), (a book that most mythicists systematically raid and plagiarize without ever giving Drews any acknowledgment, shamelessly presenting his ideas as their own), Hebrew ethics became the source and foundation of most subsequent Christian ethics.
It is fashionable to lament ancient Hebrews’ famous misogyny. But the ancient Hebrews spent more time berating and vilipending men than they did women. And the same basic distrust of women was true of all cultures around the Mediterranean and in North Africa. For men in the ancient patriarchal society the No. 1 problem of life was the existence of women, and how to deal with it.
But the assistance of a wife was also the No. 1 necessity and her company the No. 1 blessing. The key was to find the right one.
Proverbs (3d century BC and earlier) already commented:
“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth” (5:18). “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband” (12:4).
And, remarkably, Proverbs end with ch. 31 describing the search for the perfect wife as more important than any other goal.
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (31:10). Her utilitarian value and serviceability are unique: “Her husband will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life” (31:11-12). “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all’ ” (31:28-29).
Sirach (circa 180 BC), in the only signed book of the OT, amplifies the same theme, with additional pointers. “A loyal wife brings joy to her husband, and he will complete his years in peace…A wife’s charm delights her husband, and her skill puts flesh on his bones” (26:2 and 13).
In his ch. 40, Sirach makes a list of the “better things” of life.
“Cattle and orchards make one prosperous; but a blameless wife is accounted better than either” (40:19); “A friend or companion is always welcome, but a sensible wife is better than either” (40:23).
In the extraordinary ch. 36, Sirach glorifies only two things:
* first, the blessed survival of the people of Israel and of Jerusalem thanks to the mercy and the powerful protection of God (in the remarkable “Prayer for God’s people);
* and, second, the unique importance and exceptional merits of a wife. ”
Amazingly enough, this is what Mark selected to describe the lifestyle of Jesus in his Gospel — the vagabond bachelor healer and miracle worker. Jesus’s exceptional character is enhanced by choosing the marginal lifestyle that befalls too many unlucky Jewish men — roving drifters without money, without baggage, without a change of clothing, without a home. “Who will trust a nimble robber that skips from city to city?… a man that has no nest, but lodges wherever night overtakes him?”
This is where his disciples, all men of course, take on their part in this theatrical script. Nonetheless women keep appearing and re-appearing in this fantastic story at most critical moments of Jesus’s life. They are more compassionate and trustworthy than his disciples, and more helpful. Most of his woes are due to men, but also — Sirach would have pointed out — more fundamentally, to the absence of a helpful wife.
Still, Jesus often showed that he had a special sympathy and compassion for women.
For centuries, rewriting, embellishing, and amplifying the story of Jesus, became a favorite activity of gifted writers — the only game in town for those with the time, imagination and skills to produce new books on expensive velum or fragile papyrus.
Showing Jesus answering the call of traditional patriarchal wisdom and benefiting from the company of a wife must have been one variation on the basic plot.
What is surprising, is that a trace of it survived and escaped the destructive fury of the established Christian priesthood.
This papyrus is regarded by many as completely inauthentic – a forgery.
I’m actually surprised more stuff like this hasn’t popped up out of those big piles of papyrus that archaeologists have sorting through in Egypt. Given how weird some of the later gnostic Gospels were, it wouldn’t shock me that there would be somewhere, out there, a married Jesus, since even today we have Loving Jesus, Hateful Jesus, Hippy Jesus, and Warrior Jesus without anyone even having to write a new book.
Course, Roger has a point too… if there is one thing that attracts forgeries like a lightening rod, its things related to the Bible. But even if its true, no one religion would allow its story to be dictated by archaeology… since its just as likely that tomorrow a papyrus will show up with fragments from Celsus’s book against Christianity that had some really impressive refutations of early Christian stories.
Roger, of course it may be a forgery. However, I have always thought it very likely that, if Jesus was recognised as a rabbi, he would have been married. In other words, forgery or not, I think Jesus (supposing there to have been a real historical figure at the centre of the Christian myth) was probably married. I do not base this on the supposed find of a papyrus fragment.
We don’t know that for certain. The papyrus is unprovenanced, and there are concerns about its authenticity.
-We’d still have Papyrus 45. Also, the Canon was formed independently of the Roman Empire-see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX4LvKvIWJw#t=47m27s
I agree that the Gospels are primarily fiction.
Well, you are talking to wrong person, then, Erik!
The more I look into the historicity question, the more preposterous do I find the claims that Jesus Christ is based on a historical person. For me, whether he was a rabbi, or married, is in the same category of fiction as whether Zeus was more likely raised by a goat or a nymph.
And, until there is some hard evidence of the historicity of JC, I think intellectual diversions like this speculation of whether he was married or not – while perhaps interesting – are, to me – just another example of the continuing confirmation by society at large of the tacit assumption that there was – indeed had to be – a man behind the myth.
It’s a bugaboo of mine – it drives me a little crazy. Sort of like seriously debating whether Batman could take Spider-Man. Except that an enormous percentage of people on the planet base their worldview and voting habits on this assumption.
The story is all over the place in the US. Last night it was mentioned on Letterman, and just now it was covered on The News Hour, in which professor King was interviewed. The silliness is never ending. It would never be mentioned on a program like The News Hour that Jesus is hardly mentioned outside of the New Testament, which means that there is no way to substantiate that Jesus ever existed. And Hermann Detering says essentially the same thing about Paul in the ebook titled The Fabricated Paul: Early Chritianity in the Twilight.
I appreciate the point, Roger. However, it is important in one sense, for, if the story itself is to be plausibly historical, Jesus should have been married. That he is usually thought not to be is already a point against historicity. That is my point. Of course, if there were some reliable information to the contrary, then of course he existed!
Nevertheless, the point is important for the Christian myth, because Christianity has a seriously distorted idea of human sexuality, and it in turn distorts the lives of many who are affected by the story. It is a myth that Jesus was a god, so it would be best, even in a fairy tale, to believe that he was human like the rest of us, and was not somehow a god dressed up in a human skin. That would at least go some way towards humanising the religion, and perhaps it would do less damage, especially to young people in their adolescent years.
I suspect that there was a man at the centre of the myth, but that is only a surmise. I don’t see that much advantage is gained by supposing that there wasn’t. It’s still a myth.
For anyone interested, Dr. Robert M. Price has recorded his take on this MS fragment at the beginning of the 9/20/12 Bible Geek Show:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/TheBibleGeek/
Later in the podcast he also deals with King’s assertionl that the term Gnosticism has no historical value and is a purely modern conception imposed on the data of early Christianity.
The podcast is not part of the normal RSS feed yet, but if you have a Facebook account, you can also listen from there by going to:
http://www.facebook.com/thebiblegeekshow
Then click the Ustream Live button.
-John Felix
Pithom, of course the question of the authenticity of the fragment is still undecided. Most of these things take a lot time to settle definitively. As to Papyrus 45 or any other collections of NT documents. Of course collections were being made, but if you follow the later development of the Christian tradition, it wasn’t until Athanasius, well after Nicea, that the NT canon was listed in the form now accepted by most Christian churches — though I think the Eastern churches, like the Copts and certainly the Ethiopians, accept a larger collection. So the definitive formation of the canon took place only after Constantine had begun to use Christianity as a way of cementing the unity of the empire.
The new fragment GJW, grandly called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife by Karen King is a fake. So says expert Francis Watson in a text published on Mark Goodacre site.
http://markgoodacre.org/Watson.pdf
In a letter by letter analysis, Francis Watson concludes:
This text has been transmitted on Sept. 21, 2012 to the JesusMysteries discussion group by Michael Turton, well known for his analysis of Mark Gospel.
This would certainly jibe with the anonymity and obscurity of provenance of the fragment. All aimed at creating a buzz to increase potential selling price to an academic buyer.
I assume you intended comment #8 for me rather than Roger. In any case, your compatriot, Earl Doherty, has written books cogently arguing that Jesus was originally conceived as a sky guy, with that myth evolving (devolving?) into a myth of an earthly Jesus as Christianity developed. The sky guy thing, in part, rests upon the accepted priority of Paul’s letters relative to the writing of the Gospels. Detering argues against that priority, but even if the letters attributed to Paul weren’t written before the Gospels, I don’t see that it would necessarily destroy the sky guy argument.
But, I would agree that if there was an earthly Jesus, it would be more probable than not that he was married.