Dear Sharon,

The short answer is, “Nothing.”

True, the historical and anthropological evidence suggests that people got married at younger ages back in the day. But outside the brief stories describing how each of them dealt with Mary’s unexpected pregnancy (Luke for Mary and Matthew for Joseph), the Gospels just don’t say much about Joseph and Mary’s everyday lives. But just because there’s nothing in the Bible about their ages hasn’t stopped theologians from speculating on the matter – especially when there are wobbly early church doctrines in need of shoring up.

As early as the 2nd century CE, a developing reverence for the figure of Mary led to the creation of the doctrine of her “perpetual virginity,” the idea that Mary was always a virgin, before, during and after the birth of Jesus. This may seem all fine and good, but there’s a fly in that ointment. In Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55–56 (along with Galatians and 1 Corinthians), there are clear references to “Jesus’ brothers and sisters.”

So, if the church was going to defend the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, they had a problem. Where did Jesus’ brothers and sisters come from? Easy. Make Joseph an older man who had children from a previous marriage! Voila!

These notions were bolstered by various non-canonical gospels written in the early centuries of the Church. The Protoevangelium of James, probably written around the end of the 2nd century, is one source of the stories suggesting that Joseph was older. At first, Joseph refuses to marry the girl, saying, “I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl. It also makes mention of Joseph’s sons: “And [Joseph] found a cave there, and led [Mary] into it; and leaving his two sons beside her, he went out to seek a midwife in the district of Bethlehem."

Add to that the Gospel of Peter and other sources referring to an older, previously married Joseph and whew, Mary’s perpetual virginity is preserved. This narrative not only designates Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” as step-kin, but in a pre-Viagra age, also suggests that a decrepit old Joseph would have been unlikely to even have the capacity to compromise Mary’s virginal state.

And that’s the mindset of many conventional Christians to this day.

Ironically, most Conservative Christians would condemn the Protoevangelium of James and The Gospel of Peter as illegitimate non-canonical writings, not to be trusted. And yet the only mention of Joseph being an older guy with kids from a previous marriage is from these texts, NOT the New Testament. Oops.

But none of this matters for pious blowhards who pronounce pompous claims about the Bible with the expectation that their political power naturally extends to grant them exalted theological credibility, as well.

As you’ve mentioned, the latest example of pious blowhardery is one of Judge Roy Moore’s compatriots, Alabama State Auditor, Jim Zeigler. Yes, it’s true. He defended Moore by comparing the beleaguered candidate to Joseph, who he believes was a noble older man who took unto himself the teenaged Mary. So, says he, there’s no problem with Moore’s actions, claiming that it’s all “much ado about nothing,” even if the accusations are true. (?!?)

So, despite what appears to be Moore’s increasingly obvious guilt, Zeigler and his ilk leave me asking a question that frequently comes to mind: just how gullible are self-proclaimed Conservative Christians? At the very least, how gullible do the people who claim to represent Conservative Christians think their constituents are? This is not a prejudiced generalization. According to the Tuscaloosa News, Zeigler was the former Chair of both the Conservative Christians of Alabama AND the conservative League of Christian Voters. He has officially, publicly, and without question, been an official spokesperson for Conservative Christians.

So let me ask one more question. How many of these conservative, Bible-believing Christians in Alabama are going to call out Jim Zeigler for misquoting the Bible for his own political gain? I reckon not many. Why? Because, although they claim to revere the Bible and follow its “inerrant truth,” they clearly don’t read it. Well, maybe Revelation. Daniel and John, too. OK, and parts of Genesis – and the juicy bits they claim are about how bad homosexuals are. But the rest? Not so much.

The bottom line is that they don’t know enough about the Bible or history or theology to correct Jim Zeigler in his blatant, ignorant, child-molestation-supporting pomposity. He’s a white Republican male in a position of power. In Alabama, it’s clear that they can say or do whatever they want without consequences – even if what they say or do is demonstrably contrary to the very faith they claim to embrace (cf additional scandals involving the Governor and Speaker of the House).

And while it now appears that Roy Moore’s wife faked continued support from 50 Alabama pastors, the silence from hapless Conservative Christians and their leaders is deafening.

Suffice it to say that Jim Zeigler has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Is he just another callous politician making a “hail Mary” reference to what he thinks is in the Bible in order to appeal to his low-information Conservative Christian base? After all, this guy’s stock-in-trade has been, in large part, his Christian bona fides. Unfortunately, whatever he thinks Christianity is about seems a far cry from what Jesus demonstrated in his teaching and actions. When it comes to the alleged molestation of teen girls, Zeigler can’t even seem to muster the empathy inherent in the Golden Rule, let alone a grasp of what the Bible actually says about Joseph and Mary.

So here we have yet another cautionary tale supporting my conviction that if you don’t know what’s in your Bible, people like Jim Zeigler can (and will!) take advantage of you. They will make up anything they want about “what’s in the Bible” to support their own narrow political and cultural prejudices. And with no help from their totally compromised and culturally-accommodated pastors, people simply don’t know enough to call #BS or #fakenews.

In situations like these, my dream is that some earnest reporter would know enough to ask a follow-up question like, “Mr Ziegler. Your statement claims to suggest that Joseph was an older man in a relationship with a teenage girl. That’s actually nowhere in the Bible. As a Conservative Christian, would you like to comment on why it’s OK to perpetuate something that’s not in the Bible for your own political gain?”

Ahh, to dream.

Ziegler says of Moore’s situation, “There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.” That’s right, just another example of the unusual dynamics of pious Conservative Christians misrepresenting the Bible and defending the authority of older white men to do whatever they want without consequence.

I can only hope that Judge Roy Moore’s run for Senate is doomed. Even before the latest revelations of alleged molestation and sexual assault, Moore’s record is a debris-field of oppression, exclusion, and prejudice that lays bare his reactionary, theocratic, and hateful agenda. I suspect that someone like Alabama State Auditor, Jim Zeigler, is too far down the rabbit hole to ever be anything but what he is.

But the people of Alabama – especially the Conservative Christians of Alabama – still have a voice. Rejecting such obvious unchristian behavior and hypocrisy seems like a no-brainer. But it will take courage from pastors and others to rise above partisan politics and take a stand for basic human dignity.

Thanks for your question – and don’t forget to vote (early and often!) on December 12th!

~ Rev. David Felten

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Were there twelve disciples? – Was Mary Magdalene one of them?

Dear Friends,

Sometimes I receive a question that requires a whole column to answer. Such was the case with a question received late this summer. I am happy to devote this column to the answer and hope that you find it worthwhile. ~ John Shelby Spong

John Schwally, a journalist film maker in New York City, currently doing research for a film on the future of Christianity writes:

“In my research, I have come across some pretty wild propositions regarding Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife and apostle. Some of them are quite convincing. Your June 9 column entitled “The Ultimate Source of Anti-Semitism,” seems to have solved a mystery of sorts for me. The Church does not recognize Mary Magdalene as part of the “original 12″ apostles. Well, I have been trying to reconcile the claims that Mary Magdalene was in fact an apostle but how does that work when the number 12 has been consistent in all the writings through the centuries. The answer: Judas is a fiction! By writing Judas into the scenario, the early Jewish Christians were able to separate themselves from the Orthodox Jews under attack from the Romans. At the same time, they were able to relieve themselves of the embarrassment of having a woman, Mary Magdalene, as a leader in their community, all the while keeping with the number of 12 Apostles of Jesus! I was wondering if you thought this theory has any validity.”

Dear John,

Your theory makes so many assumptions that I need to separate them out and deal with them one by one.

First, Mary Magdalene is clearly a significant figure in the Jesus movement. Without doubt she was the leader of the women disciples. The women disciples were not visible in the New Testament until the story of the crucifixion and resurrection scenes where they suddenly emerge, perhaps because we are told that all “the (male) disciples have forsaken him and fled.” However, the texts of Mark (15:41), Matthew (27:55) and Luke (23:49) all attest that these women have followed Jesus ‘all the way from Galilee.’ That is, they have always been part of his movement, but, as was the fate of women in that patriarchal society, they were not thought worthy of mention until they became unavoidable.

The second thing needing to be examined is what kind of women are these that they were following an itinerant band of men led by an itinerant teacher. Under the prevailing social norms of that place and time, these women could be only one of two things: the wives of the men or prostitutes.

Third, Mary Magdalene is certainly portrayed in the gospels, written between 70 and 100 C. E., as a major force in the Jesus Movement. She is the only person that all four gospels agree was at the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. The Fourth Gospel, which is the only gospel that claims to be based on a first hand eye witness account, says that she was the only mourner at the tomb. This gospel also portrays her as having immediate access to Peter and the other disciples, who were presumably hiding for their own safety after the crucifixion. She knows where they are, goes immediately to them and is granted entrance.

Fourth, in this Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is said to have referred to Jesus with two rather familiar forms of address. To the angels she was said to have answered their question of why she was weeping with the words, “They have taken away ‘my Lord’ and I do not know where they have laid him.” ‘My Lord’ was the title of respect a rabbinic student might use for a revered rabbi. It is also a common title a Jewish woman might use in reference to her husband. Later, when she believed herself to be confronting the Risen Christ, she is said to have responded to him with the title ‘Rabboni’ which is once again the kind of intimate respectful title a woman might use for her revered husband.

Fifth, also in John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as demanding from the person she thinks to be the gardener, not just access but ownership of the body of the deceased Jesus. “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will go and take him away.” Once again, in Jewish society of the first century, for a woman to demand access to the deceased body of a Jewish male would be quite out of bounds unless she was the nearest of kin.

When I put these things together, I think they point to a strong possibility that Mary Magdalene might have been the wife of Jesus, an idea that I published in a book entitled Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Place of Women in a Male Dominated Church. This book came out ten years before the Da Vinci Code! There is also some reason for thinking that such an idea would be increasingly uncomfortable when the Church began to move into the dualistic world of Greek thinking that regarded bodies and flesh as something generally evil, and the body and flesh of a woman particularly evil. From the earliest days there was increasing theological pressure on Christian thinkers to see Jesus as the sinless one who, like the sacrificed lamb in the ritual of the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would be the perfect sacrifice to God. That is Jesus, like the sacrificial lamb, had to be physically perfect with none of his bones broken and morally perfect or, as it would be written about him in the Epistle to the Hebrews, he was “tempted in all things and yet without sin.” Perhaps this assumption is what helped to create the story from the cross, which states that Jesus’ legs were not broken because he had already died. These same expectations would also lead to the suppression of any knowledge about his marriage to Mary Magdalene should they have been married. I think a strong case can be made for the fact that Mary Magdalene’s authority came from her relationship with Jesus as his wife and that is why she was close to his disciples.

The next assumption that I think needs to be challenged is that there were ever twelve apostles. That number is certainly present in the tradition and is reflected in the gospels, but as we shall see it was always a rather unstable tradition. Was that an historic memory or was it an apologetic attempt to portray Jesus as the founder of a new Israel, a title by which many in the early church began to call the Jesus Movement? The old Israel had twelve tribes who were said to have been formed by the twelve sons of Jacob, whose name had been changed to Israel after he wrestled with an angel by the river Jabbok. So the New Israel must also have twelve patriarchs who were the disciples of their founder, Jesus. There are many other traditions in the ancient world where religious leaders had twelve disciples who may have been likened to the twelve signs of the zodiac. I am therefore suspicious of the historicity of the number twelve.

Even in the New Testament there is confusion about that number for two primary reasons. First the gospels do not agree on who the twelve were. Mark (3:13 -19) and Matthew (10: 1-4) have one list while Luke (6:12-16) and Acts (1:12-14) have another. John never says who the twelve were but has names like Nathaniel who was closely identified with the Jesus movement but who was not on anybody else’s list. In John’s last resurrection story (Chapter 21) he lists only seven disciples. Both Luke and John make reference to a disciple named Judas who was ‘not Iscariot.’ Matthew and Mark seem to know of no such person. If the earliest records we have do not agree on who constituted the twelve apostles, one is forced to wonder about the historicity of the number itself. If the number twelve was added to the tradition after the fact then confusion as to who constituted the twelve would be understandable. John may well have been leaning on an earlier tradition when he used the number seven instead of twelve.

My second reason for being suspicious of this number is that even when we have a list of twelve, at least half of them are included by name only. The only apostolic details that we have that would give us any biographical data would be on Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew and Thomas. All of the rest are faceless names, necessary to round out the number twelve but not essential to any gospel story line.

So I would feel no need to count Magdalene as a disciple in order to restore the number to twelve after the defection of Judas, as if that number had some real meaning. It is worth noting that Luke, writing in the Book of Acts, does say that Judas had to be replaced and that was done by the choice of Matthias, but we need to keep in mind that the Book of Acts was not written until the 10th decade at the very earliest.

Given the social norms and the way women were defined in first century Jewish society, it is hard to see how a woman might become part of a male group of disciples. Recall that Mark in chapter six, refers to Jesus’ brothers by name but only says he also had ‘sisters.’ That plural word means more than one but the sisters were deemed not important enough to have their names recorded.

Thank you for your question and your interest. I hope you will find these comments helpful in your pursuit of a new understanding of this woman whom the Church has tended to trash throughout history. There is no biblical evidence that Mary Magdalene was ever a prostitute unless you assume that all of these camp following women were prostitutes. I don’t think that case can be made historically.

~ John Shelby Spong
Originally posted September 22, 2004