Part XIII Matthew: "A Prophet like unto Moses" - Introducing the Sermon on the Mount

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 6 February 2014 2 Comments
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Question

I have often wondered why Jesus was supposed to have never married. A celibate tradition was nowhere to be found in the Hebrew religion except with the Essenes. As I understand the Jewish laws and duties in the first century, a father’s responsibility was to secure a wife for his teenage son. Yet Joseph did not (apparently). Why didn’t he? There could be several answers. The most obvious is that there was no father around at the proper time. If this was the case, why did Jesus not find a wife for himself or at the very least ask his mother find one? We must remember that this period is over ten years before his ministry. The other possibilities were that he was not inclined to marry, or he was gay and left the family so as not to be pressured. Another was that he was known in his neighborhood as illegitimate, that is, a bastard, and no decent woman would have him. In which case if he had wanted to marry, he could have gone somewhere where he was not known to find a wife. The logic of this exercise is that Jesus did not want a woman in his life and preferred the company of men; this is until he met Mary of Magdala whom he clearly liked or loved.

 

Answer

Dear Lee,

Thanks for your question. You certainly did roam over the range of possibilities in your letter. It seems to me you omitted only one, which I think trumps all of the other possibilities, namely that Jesus was in fact married.

I think we have been programmed through centuries of a church led by a “celibate priesthood” to portray Jesus as a role model for celibacy. Is his unmarried state accurate? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Jesus was not married, nor does it say that he was. We have made that assumption and then imposed that assumption on the text and on history. In the first century Jewish world, if Jesus was unmarried it might have been unusual enough for the gospel writers to comment on that fact. If he was married it would be so commonplace and expected that it might not have merited comment. So the absence of any biblical comment on this question may actually be said to give weight to the possibility that he was married.

I don’t think you can argue historically, from the duty of Joseph to his son. I am convinced and have documented in this column and in my books the reasons for my conviction that Joseph was not a person of history at all, but a literary character created by Matthew to play a crucial role in the story of Jesus’ supernatural birth, which Matthew introduced into the developing Christian tradition in the middle years of the 9th decade. Joseph had never been mentioned by any Christian writer prior to Matthew’s virgin birth story.

There are also many hints in the New Testament that suggest that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. I listed all of those hints in my book, Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Place of Women in a Male-Dominated Church. I do not think this is a proposition that can be proved, but it is one for which a strong case can be made.

What interests me most is that within the church, there is now, and has been for centuries, in official church circles, a strong negativity to the idea that Jesus was married. I think that is based on a negative definition of women that has always infected the patriarchal church. A woman was traditionally regarded by the church as the corrupter and polluter of “holy men.” Jesus might, therefore, have his divinity compromised if he were married. I think that is nothing but male sexism masquerading as “sacred tradition.”

Does a wife corrupt a husband? I don’t think so. The only chance I have to be whole (i.e. holy) is that I live inside the love of my wonderful wife. She makes me whole or holy; she does not corrupt my holiness.

The sexism of the church hides in all sorts of funny places.

My best,

John Shelby Spong

 

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