Part XXX Matthew - The Canaanite Woman: Matthew's Icon of Prejudice

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 2 October 2014 2 Comments
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Question

Though Mary Magdalene followed him around, I find no mention in the Bible that Jesus was married. Men of his age usually were. Further, he surrounded himself with a group of men; one of them particularly appeared to be his favorite. It is recorded that Jesus said repeatedly, “Do you love me?” Is it possible that Jesus was a homosexual? What do you think?

Also what about the apostle Paul?

Answer

Dear Warren,

You are not the first to make these speculations or to ask these questions. I do not know any way that one can speak definitively about the sexual orientation of figures of history. We can, however, look at the data available to us in the scriptures and seek to make sense of it. I have done that on both of the questions you raise.

In regard to Jesus and his relationship with Mary Magdalene, the literature of the ages is available so we can read the speculations of others. In the modern opera Jesus Christ Superstar there is a suggestion about their romantic involvement. Remember that Magdalene sings the song, “I don’t know how to love him,” about Jesus. The Middle Ages are replete with love letters supposedly shared between Jesus and Magdalene. No factual speculation can be based on any of these. What we know from the gospels is this. Mary Magdalene is portrayed as the head of the group of women that followed Jesus; her name is always listed first. She was thus thought of as the chief woman in the Jesus movement and is portrayed as the chief mourner at his tomb. Out of what historical data does that tradition flow? You are correct, it would be rare in Jewish society for a grown man not to be married, so rare indeed that it would probably merit comment. The fact that no text in the Bible claims either that Jesus was or was not married may be an argument that he was against an argument that he was not.

John’s gospel gives us some other hints. He suggests that Magdalene was not only the chief mourner, but the only mourner at his tomb. John has Mary Magdalene demand access to the deceased body of Jesus, something that would be appropriate only to the nearest of kin. He has Mary Magdalene address him as “Rabboni,” a title of great affection appropriate for a wife to use about her rabbi husband. There is also some question about the meaning of Magdalene. The popular explanation is that it comes from what is supposed to be her home, Magdala, a village on the Sea of Galilee. There is however, no historical or archeological data that validates that there was such a village at the time of Jesus. There is a village of that name there today, but it was built much later to catch the tourist trade, which indeed it does.

Another possibility is that Magdalene comes from the Hebrew word “migdal”, the consonants mgdl would be the same. Migdal originally meant a tower, but it came to mean large or great. If Mary’s name Magdalene meant Mary the Great or the Great Mary and if the other Mary was Jesus’ mother, could calling her Magdalene be a claim that she, as Jesus’ wife, had a greater position than that of his mother Mary?

I hope he was married. I hope he had the joy of sharing his life deeply and constantly with one who stood at the center of his affections. I hold married love to be the deepest and sweetest of human relationships. I spelled out my thinking on Jesus being married in my book, Born of a Woman: A Bishop Re-Thinks the Virgin Birth and the Place of Women in a Male- Dominated Church. For further clarification I refer you to the chapter in that book entitled, “Was Jesus Married?

I see little reason to think that Jesus was gay. The story of the “disciple whom Jesus loved” is told only in the Fourth Gospel written 65-70 years after the crucifixion and I believe that the “Beloved Disciple” is nothing more than a Johannine symbol for the ideal believer who would accompany Jesus not only to the cross, but also to an empty tomb where faith is born. I spell that out in detail in the 25th chapter of my book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. Jesus’ question three times to Peter: “Do you love me?” occurs only in the epilogue to John’s gospel and is generally regarded as a later addition to the Fourth gospel. It seems to me not to be history, but a response to the three times that Peter was said to have denied Jesus.

When it comes to Paul, there is much more data available since we have at least seven epistles which Paul himself wrote and there is much autobiographical material in these epistles. I believe Paul might well have been a deeply repressed, self-hating gay man. He describes the war that goes on between “the law of my body” and the “law of my mind.” He finds himself controlled by a passion from which he cannot free himself. He says things like, “sin dwells in my members.” He expresses self-loathing in the words, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?” He argues in Romans 1 that God will punish those who do not worship God properly by turning their affections toward people of their own gender. Paul then tells us about his frantic attempt to obey every requirement said to be in the law. I made a case for the possibility that Paul was gay in my book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and again in Jesus for the Non-Religious. I cannot prove it, but I can speculate on it and I do.

Thank you for writing,

John Shelby Spong

 

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