Having explored the theological implications of the marriage of Jesus to Mary the Magdalene, let us now return to the text and see what other historical facts we can glean from the material. In Joseph and Aseneth, Aseneth is a non-Jew. While she is transformed, she is not converted to Judaism. Dispensing with her worship of many gods and goddesses, she does come to believe in one God and so becomes a monotheist. And she does marry a Jew. But that’s all. There’s no indication that Aseneth takes upon herself any of the practices of Judaism—nor is there any evidence that Joseph insists on her doing so. She doesn’t undergo any rite of becoming Jewish. We don’t see her immersing in a mikvah (a Jewish Baptismal pool), preparing for the Sabbath, following kosher dietary laws, or observing Jewish festivals. She remains a non-Jew.
This suggests that Mary the Magdalene—like Aseneth—was a non-Jew and, more importantly, stayed a non-Jew. This piece of information is very surprising, since it implies that Jesus—a 1st-century Jewish rabbi (remember, he is called rabbi in the Gospels1)—married a Gentile. Does this make sense in light of any of the known historical sources concerning Jesus?
God-Fearers
Scholars have long known that in the 1st century, many Gentiles were attracted to and converted to Judaism. In the 1st century, according to Josephus, there was not a town in the Roman Empire where some Gentiles did not observe the Sabbath, along with other Jewish practices such as lighting lamps and fasting.2 Onkelos, for example, one of the greatest Torah scholars of all time (c. 35 C.E.–120 C.E.), is reported to have been a nephew of the Roman emperor Titus.3 Beside the converts—and this may come as a surprise to most people—many Gentiles participated in synagogue activities. These non-Jews were called “God-fearers” or “Fearers of Heaven.”4 God-fearers were non-Jews who found some aspects of Judaism appealing. Remember, up to the late 1st century there was no Christianity, and until the 7th century there was no Islam. In other words, for centuries, if you rejected paganism, Judaism was the only monotheistic game in town. And many Gentiles were attracted by Judaism’s uncompromising monotheism. Yet, while these people were attracted to the ethical provisions of Torah, many of them were not interested in adopting the dietary laws or Sabbath observances that went with them. Put differently, while many non-Jews accepted the norms of ethical monotheism—e.g., all humans are created in God’s image—they shied away from becoming full converts to Judaism.5 For adult Gentile males, one major impediment to full conversion was circumcision. Understandably for adults, this option is never an appealing procedure, but it was especially unappealing given 1st-century medical practices. Also, circumcision was totally inconsistent with the Hellenistic view of the human body as a temple.
For the Jews, the God-fearers were useful allies during difficult times—a group that could be counted on to help mitigate non-Jewish anger and hostility. According to Bernard Green, these people were like “a buttress from the outside rather than like a pillar from within.”6 Synagogue inscriptions refer to God-fearers as major donors to various building projects. For example, inscriptions in the Jewish synagogue at Aphrodisias, Turkey, reveal that the contributors to the synagogue in ancient times were 55% Jews, 2% converts and 43% theosebeis (God-fearers).7 In the port of Ostia, north of Rome, a synagogue was excavated that reveals that there were almost as many God-fearers attending that synagogue as Jews.8 Recently, Mark Fairchild identified what could be the earliest known synagogue at Çatiören, Turkey, ancient Cilicia—Paul country. Besides drawings of a menorah and a lulav (palm branch), he found an inscription that seems to be referring to Gentiles or God-fearers who were “Sabbath keepers” and obeyed “the Sabbath God.”9 The historian Josephus states that Jews around the world donated to the upkeep of the Temple in Jerusalem. Significantly, he adds that God-fearers contributed as well.10 Put simply, Gentile God-fearers were an important constituency at the time of Jesus, his brother James, and, later, Paul.11 In fact, after his vision of the risen Christ, it seems Paul targeted these God-fearers when setting up Christian congregations throughout the Jewish Diaspora. Paul’s first stop in any new community was always the synagogues.12 It is doubtful that he was trying to recruit Jews to his brand of Christianity. It is more likely that he was targeting these God-fearers, those Gentiles who had already bought into monotheism but not into Judaism’s 613 Commandments. It would have been an easy sell. Basically, what Paul was saying to them was: if you are attracted to the God of Israel but not the Laws of Israel, why be second-class citizens in the synagogue when, in my church, you can be the “New Israel”? Selling monotheism without circumcision, kosher laws, and Sabbath observance worked. In Ostia, for example, we find the remains of an early church just a few yards from the synagogue. It seems that many God-fearers here preferred the New Testament to the Old, so they left the synagogue and established their own house of worship. Not unnaturally, Paul aroused the ire of synagogue officials when he detached this important constituency from their membership. In effect, Paul was not only poaching members but also removing a valued buffer—Gentiles who were sympathetic to Judaism in the midst of a predominantly anti-Jewish world.
Given the role of God-fearers in Jewish life at the time of Jesus and prior to Paul, can it be that Jesus married one of these Gentiles? Can it be that Mary the Magdalene was one of these God-fearers? This would explain a lot. In fact, it would explain the unique theology of Joseph and Aseneth, arising out of a Jewish/God-fearing Gentile context. Kraemer speculates that the text may have been written by a God-fearer and that “[t]his theory has the advantage of accounting for Aseneth’s affinities with numerous ancient traditions and for some of its peculiar, almost chameleon-like, qualities.”13 If this is the case, what does it tell us about early Christianity? And what does it tell us about the historical Jesus?
To answer these questions, we need to investigate the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.
The Virgin Birth
In Judaism, marriage is restrained by birth status. For example, to this day, a Cohen—that is, a priest—cannot marry a convert or a widow. What was Jesus’ birth status? And what does this convey about his marriage possibilities? The fact is that, since antiquity, questions have been raised about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.
The Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel, doesn’t say anything about Jesus’ birth, preferring to start his account with John the Baptizer and Jesus beginning their missions. Having said this, there is a curious incident in Mark. At one point, some townspeople refer to Jesus as “the son of Mary” (6:3). In Morton Smith’s words, “In Semitic usage, to refer to a man as the son of his mother was to indicate that his father’s identity was uncertain.”14 Paul only says that Jesus was “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). For his part, Matthew 1:1 begins with an odd genealogy listing four women in Jesus’ family tree. They are Tamar, Rachab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. All four women were involved in what appeared to be un-kosher relationships.15 Tamar pretended to be a Canaanite prostitute priestess (kedesha) so as to seduce her father-in-law Judah (Genesis 38:1–30). She lived prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai; before there was Judaism as such. At the time of the Biblical Exodus, Rachab ran some kind of inn or cultic Canaanite prostitution house in Jericho (Joshua 2:3). Ruth was a Moabite (Ruth 1:4), technically forbidden to Jews (Deuteronomy 23:3).16 More than this, according to Talmudic tradition, she was a princess (Ruth R. ii.9), which automatically would have made her a pagan priestess. After she was widowed, she followed her mother-in-law, Naomi, to the land of Israel and seduced Naomi’s kinsman Boaz (Ruth 3:14). Although we don’t know Bathsheba’s ethnic origins, we suspect she is not an Israelite. She was married to a Hittite general in King David’s army and, after the King famously saw her bathing on a rooftop, she ended up married to David. Since her first husband was not a Jew and her name can be read as daughter of the oath, Bathsheba may very well have been a convert (2 Samuel 11:3). Notice all four women were not Jewish, and all of them were involved in some kind of sexual affair, often in a cultic context. Most importantly, the messianic line was established out of all four. Clearly, in writing this genealogy, Matthew is providing us with an apologetic for Jesus’ birth. Namely, the messianic line is shrouded in mystery. Out of seemingly illicit sexual relationships comes the Savior of the world. In other words, the long historical march to the final apocalypse and the Kingdom of God is sometimes strewn with some less-than-kosher sex.
But this is not all.
The Gospels depict Joseph—the Virgin Mary’s husband—as not believing Mary’s virgin birth story until he receives divine revelation himself (Matthew 1:1–22). Presumably, the other people in the village who did not receive divine revelation continued to think that Mary was with child from a man to whom she was not betrothed. The point being that if we take the Gospel of Matthew at face value, he’s telling us four things concerning Jesus’ birth: first, his mother was impregnated by the Holy Spirit; second, everyone including her husband thought that she had been impregnated by another man; third, her husband was eventually convinced otherwise by divine revelation; fourth, though it didn’t look good to anyone else, the Messiah’s birth had been heralded by four relationships that were, on the surface, improper.
From the point of view of Christian theology, all this is irrelevant since, at the end of the day, Jesus’ birth was miraculous. Meaning, Joseph’s suspicions, Jesus’ strange pedigree, et cetera are all irrelevant since Jesus’ birth was the result of a virginal conception and a virgin birth. These doctrines, first put forward by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and then elaborated upon in the later Infancy Gospel of James, assert that Mary, mother of Jesus, who was a teenage girl at the time, became pregnant through the activity of God’s Holy Spirit.
More than this, according to some forms of Christian theology, there were no obvious signs of pregnancy when it came to Jesus: no distension of Mary’s uterus and no disruption to her hymen. Rarely in Christian art do we encounter a depiction of a pregnant Madonna, and for good reason: according to some ancient sources, she did not “show.” The rather lurid Infancy Gospel of James goes so far as to depict a midwife reaching into Mary’s vagina to check the status of her hymen . . . such was the thoroughness of the ancient church fathers and writers to make sure that Mary was perceived as a virgin, before and after Jesus’ birth. Incidentally, this particular text was enormously popular and could have easily become part of the New Testament scripture.17
Furthermore, as the theology developed, Mary herself was said to have had a special birth. After all, she was the carrier of God’s humanity. Remember, in ancient times, women were viewed as vessels. They contributed nothing to the human being that they gave birth to, other than being the “container,” so to speak, for the germination of the male seed. DNA and ova had not yet been discovered. To become a holy “vessel,” Mary herself had to be holy. So, for some Christians whose faith includes the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Mary’s own birth by her mother Anna is depicted as taking place without the assistance of Mary’s father, Joachim. Presumably, Anna was also impregnated with divine seed.18
Shielding Jesus and his mother, Mary, from anything sexual seems to have been a special preoccupation with early church writers, as if virginity, asceticism, and avoidance of anything sexual were vitally important for purity. When it came to the orthodox Christian view of Jesus’ birth, there was a virtual obsession with sexual purity and the avoidance of contamination brought about as a result of sexual intercourse. This culminated in the view of the philosopher Augustine (end of 4th century, beginning of 5th) that the fault/sin of Adam—that is, the whole reason why human beings are mortal—is transmitted biologically in the male sperm.
Many Christians have—and still do—interpret these birth doctrines of Jesus and his mother Mary as biological and historical. Put simply, Mary and Jesus were literally the product of virgin births. Most scholars, however, hold that these birth narratives represent, at best, a way of speaking, not a historical record.
As it turns out, Roman emperors such as Augustus and founders of competing religions such as Dionysus and Mithras also had virgin births. Proclaiming that Jesus had a virginal birth was a way of saying that Jesus was a celebrity, a god, and on the same plane as these illustrious figures. Furthermore, in the transformation of the Jesus of history into the Christ of Pauline Christianity, Jesus was distanced from his Judaism, taking on more and more pagan traits. In this light, he could not be anything less than the Roman–Persian man–god Mithras, for example. But virgin birth in this sense was more of a literary device, not a report concerning an actual historical occurrence.
Even as a literary conceit, the idea of an actual virgin birth has always posed problems for many readers of the New Testament. For one thing, there are differences in the birth narratives in the Gospels and, for that matter, in the Infancy Gospel of James. The latter states that the birth occurred in a cave in Bethlehem—and that’s what the historic Church of the Nativity seems to be saying: that he was not born in a manger or a stable as in the earlier writings but, rather, in a cave under the church. The Gospel of Luke has Jesus’ family traveling from Bethlehem to Jerusalem for Jesus’ circumcision, as per tradition, on the 8th day following his birth. The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, has the family fleeing to Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod the Great. There are wise men—Magi or astrologers—in Matthew’s account; there are shepherds in Luke’s version. Furthermore, the dating of Jesus’ birth also differs from source to source: prior to the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C.E. (Gospel of Matthew) or during a census almost a decade later (Gospel of Luke).
Most problematic for the virgin-birth theory—besides the fact that normally virgins don’t give birth—is the well-recognized problem that the Gospel of Matthew misapplies a passage from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah concerning a “young” woman giving birth. Searching for a Biblical passage that could be interpreted as being “fulfilled” in the birth of Jesus, the author of the Gospel of Matthew quotes from the Greek version of Isaiah. That version wrongly translates the original Hebrew word alma as virgin. This is the only instance of alma being translated as “virgin.” In all other instances, alma is translated as “young woman.” The original Hebrew line in Isaiah states that a young woman, not a virgin, will give birth to the redeemer (7:14). In other words, the entire virgin-birth narrative may be the result of a mistranslation from Hebrew to Greek.
Problems about the Jesus birth narratives multiply. This story undercuts the whole point of the genealogies relating to Jesus, which trace his ancestry back through his father Joseph to King David, to Abraham (Matthew) and to Adam (Luke). All those genealogies attempt to show that Jesus was a descendant of King David. After all, that was a precondition for the Jewish Messiah. He had to be a descendant of David. But a virgin birth cuts the bond between Jesus and his ancestors by removing Joseph—the genealogical link—from the scene. Simply put, the virgin birth story renders the genealogies pointless and undermines the claim that Jesus is a biological descendant of King David.
A virgin birth, moreover, makes Jesus a divine-human, a hybrid of sorts, and this then poses all sorts of complex theological problems. For instance, Jesus was baptized by his cousin John the Baptizer. But John’s baptizing water ritual was for the express purpose of attaining forgiveness of sins. Was the divine-human Jesus in need of such forgiveness? If so, what was his sin? If he didn’t need forgiveness, then what was the point of this procedure?
Also, the virgin birth poses problems for understanding Jesus’ death: did Jesus actually die? Did only part of him die, the human part, leaving the divine portion intact (since, by definition, God cannot die)? Did all of Jesus suffer, or only his human part? These questions are not academic, at least not for the early church.
Most people today prefer to skip over the story of the virgin birth, even though it is mentioned in the Nicene Creed as part of official Christian theology. Probably, in the West at least, many prefer to think of Jesus as the child of Mary and Joseph, born of a normal human birth. They think of the virgin birth as representing some kind of Christmas-type spin on Jesus’ importance. This idea accords with recent scholarship. According to many scholars, Jesus’ virgin birth is a fiction far removed from the historical Jesus—a story designed to convey the message that Jesus was exceptionally important on the world’s stage.
In light of our findings that Jesus was modeled on Helios, we should note that what the virgin-birth narrative does demonstrate is that very early on, within fifty or sixty years of his death, Jesus was already being imaged by his followers in ways that Gentiles around the Mediterranean world would easily have understood. A virgin birth was not part of Jewish culture but very much an element of Roman civic and religious mythology. The depiction of Jesus as Helios and Mary the Magdalene as Artemis is consistent with this early trend to move Jesus out of his Jewish matrix into mainstream Roman culture.
But what of the Jewish context that Jesus was born into? The reason we dwell on the problems surrounding his birth is that if Jesus was perceived as having been born of an adulterous relationship, his status under Jewish law would have been as a mamzer (one born of an illicit relationship) and he would not have been allowed to marry a fellow Jew.
It’s important to remember what mamzer means under Jewish law. It does not mean bastard, a child born outside of wedlock. A mamzer in Jewish law refers to a child born as a result of an illicit sexual union. As Bruce Chilton clearly puts it in Rabbi Jesus, “the fundamental issue [in Jewish law] was not sex before marriage (which was broadly tolerated) but sex with a wrong person, someone other than your husband.”19 According to this criterion, even if we accept the Christian tradition that God the Father miraculously impregnated Mary, practically speaking, the outcome for Jesus would have been the same. Since you cannot prove a virginal conception, Mary’s child would have been regarded as a mamzer—even if God were the father. Put simply, if Jesus’ father was not Mary’s husband, Jesus would have been treated as a mamzer.
Jesus as Mamzer
As it turns out, a virgin birth is not the only ancient account of how Jesus came to be born. There are several other versions.
Above, we saw that an analysis of the Gospels—e.g., Matthew’s genealogy—leads to the conclusion that Jesus’ birth may have been suspect. This idea is bolstered by sources outside of the Gospels. For example, there is an ancient tradition preserved in the Talmud—the 2nd-century rabbinic code—hinting that Jesus was a mamzer. In one place in the Talmud the text refers to a young woman named Mary who engaged in an adulterous union with a person called Pantera. It does not say, however, that this liaison resulted in the birth of Jesus, just that Mary and Pantera had an affair.20 Elsewhere in the Talmud, it explicitly relates this affair to the birth of a child. There, Jesus is called ben Pantera, that is, son of Pantera.21
In the late 2nd century, a Greek philosopher by the name of Celsus also attacked what he regarded as the foundations of Christianity.22 Celsus contended that a man named Panthera made Mary pregnant. Celsus specifies that this individual was a Roman soldier. This charge is specific with respect to the name of Jesus’ father and his occupation.23 In the final analysis, what the Talmudic and pagan sources point to represents an alternate explanation for Jesus’ birth, namely, that he was the result of an illicit union between Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera or Pantera. Amazingly, in 1859 in Germany, archaeologists found a tombstone of a Roman soldier who had served in the Holy Land around the time of Jesus’ birth. His name was Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera.24
As shocking as this story might be to modern Christian sensibility, the idea that Jesus could have been born as a result of a union between Mary and a soldier named Pantera is not unlikely. Although neither the Gospels nor the Talmud nor Celsus suggest this, Mary’s pregnancy might have been the result of a rape. In 1st-century Galilee, this would not have been unusual. At the time of Jesus’ birth (and Herod’s death), there was a massive revolt in the land of Israel led by three messianic figures who were—like Jesus—called “good shepherds” by their followers.25 Josephus tells us the names of all three leaders: Simon in Peraea, an area in modern Jordan where John the Baptizer met his end; Athronges in the Jerusalem area; and, finally, Judah, close to Jesus’ home in the Galilee.26 When the revolt was put down, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children were born as a result of the violence of the Roman victory. In other words, Jesus was not born into a pastoral setting populated by wise men and shepherds. He was born in the midst of revolution where death, crucifixion, and rape were commonplace.
Jesus could also have been born as a result of a love match between a Roman soldier and a very young innocent, naïve Jewish girl. The fact is that many Roman soldiers serving in the area were not Roman. While most officers were indeed Roman, many soldiers were Phoenician (Semitic Canaanites) or even Jews. Interestingly, the Pantera tombstone in Germany calls him Abdes or slave in Hebrew/Phoenician.27 This clue allows us to recreate his biography. The tombstone tells us that he died in 40 C.E., after forty years of service. Meaning, he entered the Roman army around the time that Jesus was born.
If Pantera started his military career as a slave, he would have been freed, as was the custom, after twenty-five years of service. His adopted name Tiberius tells us that he became a free man during the reign of Emperor Tiberius. It was in the early 30s, during the reign of this same emperor, that Jesus was crucified—approximately seven years after Pantera’s status had changed from captive to free man. Is it possible that Pantera was a Jewish revolutionary enslaved as a result of the revolt that took place at the same time as Jesus’ birth? Is it possible that he was transferred from the area of Judaea to Germany just prior to being granted freedom? Of course it is. When Roman soldiers were freed, they were given land, but it was Roman policy to free them far away from their homeland so that they wouldn’t become powerful among their own people. Is it possible, therefore, that while Pantera was serving Rome in Germany, the Roman army was crucifying his son in Jerusalem? The chronology makes sense.
Whatever the historical reconstruction, what is certain is that there’s a certain ambiguity in the sources about Jesus’ birth status. To comprehend why, we have to understand what exactly constitutes an adulterous relationship in Jesus’ world. As stated, under rabbinic law, if a betrothed or married Jewish woman becomes pregnant from a Jew other than her husband, then the child is considered a mamzer. Surprisingly, if the father is a non-Jew, there is no negative social impact on the child’s status. For instance, if a Gentile Roman soldier raped a married Jewish woman, the resulting child would not have been considered a mamzer. On the other hand, if the same woman had a consentual sexual relationship with a Roman soldier who happened to be Jewish, the child would have been considered a mamzer.28 Put simply, adultery with a fellow Jew has a far greater negative impact on the child than adultery with a non-Jew.
Perhaps the rabbinic view concerning adultery results from the fact that a Jewish woman was not supposed to be sleeping with a Gentile under any circumstances. As a result, there are no laws governing what, in effect, should not have happened in the first place. In any event, it is better for a child resulting from an adulterous relationship if the father is a non-Jew. This way, he is not considered a mamzer and he can marry anyone he wants to when he reaches adulthood. On the other hand, if his community considers him a mamzer, he may not marry a Jewish woman under any circumstances.
If Jesus’ biological father was both Jewish and a Roman soldier, that would have resulted in a confusing view of his birth status. Rumors would have surrounded him from birth and, practically speaking, no Jewish woman would have been available to him for marriage.
We can now get back to Joseph and Aseneth. When Aseneth is first smitten by Joseph, she states, “Is he not the son of a shepherd from Canaan?” (4:11). It’s odd that she would be referring to Joseph’s father as a Canaanite shepherd, or even as a shepherd from Canaan. The story doesn’t require a reference to the Biblical Jacob at this point. And when he does appear, Jacob is referred to as being “like a god,” not a shepherd (22:3).
But if Aseneth is Mary the Magdalene, perhaps the reference is serving another purpose. Perhaps she’s talking about Jesus. In this case, what she’s telling us can provide a tremendous insight into Jesus’ psyche. Why? Because if his father was not Joseph—and that’s what the canonical Gospels tell us—but a Roman soldier as reported by Celsus and the Talmud, then the only way Jesus could have defended himself from the charge of being a mamzer was to prove the non-Jewishness of his Roman father. It’s hard for a modern audience to appreciate the social impact of the situation—the only way for Jesus to prove that he wasn’t a mamzer was to publicly admit that his mother was guilty of adultery, with a non-Jew no less. That would have been tantamount to accusing her of being a prostitute. But his wife could defend him. In this light, it seems that Aseneth’s casual remark about Jesus’ Canaanite pedigree is a polemic against the rumor that Pantera was a Roman soldier of Jewish ethnicity.
If Jesus didn’t publicly defend himself, however, that would have created a permanent ambiguity around him. This ambiguity is reflected, for example, in the Talmud where it hints at but never explicitly states that Jesus is a mamzer, while authoritative commentaries on the Talmud like Rashi and Maimonides say that he was. It’s even reflected in the Gospels themselves, where Jesus is referred to by the unlikely reference to his mother and not his father: “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” (Mark 6:3).
Being regarded as a mamzer would have had serious implications for Jesus’ life. In the first instance, he would have had to live with constant aspersions. This may account for his interest in those who had been marginalized by society: tax collectors, people who were possessed, the sick, and women. Most importantly, it would have limited his marriage options. Deuteronomy makes clear the dire consequences of being a mamzer—“those born of an illicit union shall not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:2).
There was, however, one way that a mamzer could get around the mamzer marriage prohibitions and have children that were “admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” In Jewish law, religious affiliation is passed down through the woman, so a mamzer like Jesus (who could not marry a Jewess) could marry a Gentile woman and have their Gentile children converted to Judaism. In other words, if Jesus was regarded as a mamzer and he still wanted a kosher Jewish family, he would have had to marry a non-Jew and convert their children to Judaism. Incredibly, the only metaphor for this type of situation is the honeybee. Because bees were considered virginal, their bodies were regarded as mere vessels for their offspring. As a result, in Judaism, honey is the only kosher food that is the product of an un-kosher animal. Put differently, Jesus’ marriage to a Gentile makes sense if he were a mamzer, or perceived to be a mamzer. His wife would have been, so to speak, his queen bee. Although his fellow Jews would have regarded his wife with suspicion, their converted children would have been regarded as kosher. This situation is exactly what we find in Joseph and Aseneth.29
In this light, Joseph and Aseneth’s insistence that Mary the Magdalene was a non-Jew fits with the tradition that Jesus was suspected of being born of an illegitimate relationship. Further, its association of Mary the Magdalene with the queen bee Artemis is a fitting apologetic for why a Galilean rabbi would have had children with a priestess of Artemis. More than this, the portrayal of Aseneth/Mary the Magdalene as a pagan priestess fits the Gospel of Matthew’s apologetic concerning women in Jesus’ genealogy who, on the surface, appeared as pagan priestesses involved in illicit sex. In fact, Joseph and Aseneth seems to be telling us that Jesus’ marriage to Mary the Magdalene is part of a divine plan: precisely because she was a Phoenician/Canaanite priestess, Mary the Magdalene’s transformation could bring the non-Jewish world into the process of redemption and salvation. According to our text, when Mary the Magdalene turned her back on her pagan past, like the Biblical Ruth, she initiated a process whereby the Gentile world could be brought into the Kingdom of God.
But is this history, or is it theology? Is Mary the Magdalene a literary figure, or an actual historical person? Does the story of Joseph and Aseneth fit with what we know of 1st-century Galilee? Did Jesus even know Gentiles, never mind marry one of them?
First of all, despite quaint Hollywood images that, at the time of Jesus, the land of Israel was populated by Jews in sandals and bed sheets, there were tens of thousands of non-Jews living in the Galilee. The Galilee was a melting pot of Jews, Gentiles, and God-fearers as well as worshippers of Zeus, Artemis, Dionysus, and many other deities. Recall that Sepphoris, the luxurious Roman city that has been excavated and archaeologically restored with its opulent buildings and beautiful mosaics, was located right on the doorstep of Nazareth. But that wasn’t the only Hellenistic or Gentile center. At the time of Jesus’ birth, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Herod Antipas—Herod the Great’s son—erected a gleaming new Hellenistic city in honor of his patron, the Roman emperor, Tiberius. Of course, he called it Tiberias. In fact, to totally ingratiate himself with the emperor, Herod Antipas also founded a Galilean city in honor of Tiberius’ mother, Livias. But these were not Gentile exceptions in the Galilee area. Just across the small freshwater lake called the Sea of Galilee, there was a confederation of ten—count them, ten—Gentile cities called the Decapolis. And to the north of the Galilee (modern-day Lebanon), the land was populated by coastal Canaanites more commonly called “Phoenicians.” In other words, to live in the Galilee was to live in a Gentile-Jewish context, not a Jewish backwater.
Most interestingly, Magdala, the town usually connected to Mary the Magdalene, was in many ways a Gentile city, specifically Phoenician, and primarily engaged in the production of salted fish. Much of Magdala’s products were sent to Tiberias just a few miles south, to Damascus to the northeast, and to Tyre and Sidon up the coast in Phoenician territory. From these commercial hubs and Mediterranean port cities, Magdala’s salted fish would have made their way throughout the empire.
As a result of all this, many of Magdala’s inhabitants were Gentiles. The proof is in the material culture found in Magdala and in Bethsaida, a related Galilean town engaged in the fishing industry. Specifically, the archaeology reveals coins, statues, altars, and so forth. that attest to the fact that the residents of these towns were both Jewish and Gentile. Magdala also had many links to Phoenicia just a few miles to the northwest, outside Jewish territory. Even Jesus visited Phoenicia—the regions of Tyre and Sidon—on a mysterious trip to a specific house that is never identified by the Gospel writers. Curiously, this was a visit he wanted no one to know about, and no explanation for this silence is ever given in Christian tradition (Mark 7:24). Was he meeting his in-laws there? Or possibly his biological father, Pantera, who may have been stationed there? After all, Pantera’s tombstone in Germany says that he was “from Sidon.”
No matter how we answer these questions, Jesus clearly would have been aware of Gentiles. Even if his father was not a Gentile, he would have encountered non-Jews wherever he went and, very likely, there were even Gentile God-fearers in the synagogue in Capernaeum, his main headquarters. So perhaps a suspected mamzer living in the Jerusalem area would have resigned himself to his fate and remained unmarried his entire life. In Judaism’s heartland, there were fewer Gentiles around and, since they came as occupiers, the interface with them was often hostile. But in the Galilee, the situation was different. The opportunities to do business with Gentiles, develop similar religious ideas, and even marry them were everywhere. Based on the evidence, the suggestion in Joseph and Aseneth that Jesus’ wife was a Gentile makes sense.
In sum, we didn’t expect to find a text that describes Mary the Magdalene as Jesus’ wife. Nor did we expect that she would turn out to be a reformed Canaanite/Phoenician priestess. But when we evaluated the startling information conveyed in Joseph and Aseneth and compared it to the Gospels, the Talmud, pagan/Greco-Roman texts, and the archaeological and historical data, we found a perfect fit. The new information gleaned from Joseph and Aseneth about Mary the Magdalene allows us to bring this woman out of the historical shadows and to discover the human being behind the myth.
What Do We Know about Mary the Magdalene?
From the canonical Gospels, we don’t know how and when Jesus and Mary the Magdalene met. In the Gospels, we are simply told that she accompanied Jesus wherever he went and that she was wealthy, helping to underwrite the considerable costs of his activities. Maybe she had investments in some of the fish-processing plants in Magdala. Maybe her father was a salted-fish baron. Perhaps she had inherited money. Whatever the case, as the Gospels and Joseph and Aseneth illustrate, she was drawn to Jesus.
Mary the Magdalene was with Jesus when he died. She witnessed his suffering upon the cross, and she was the one who went to claim his body on that fateful Sunday morning, so as to prepare it for proper burial.30 Deep in mourning and stunned by the empty tomb, she is called the first witness to the resurrection, as it states in Mark: “He first appeared to Mary the Magdalene” (16:9). Take note, according to the canonical Gospels, it is the Magdalene—not Jesus’ mother, nor his siblings, nor his disciples—who is “the first witness.” Mary the Magdalene was, in every sense, Jesus’ closest companion. As the Gnostic Gospels tell us, she was the first apostle. A later Christian tradition says that after Jesus’ death, she went to Ephesus. But Joseph and Aseneth seems to suggest otherwise. It seems to be telling us that she stayed in the Jerusalem area to the end.
Someone might ask: if, as you say, Mary the Magdalene was so important to Jesus and to the evolving Christian theology, why doesn’t the New Testament tell us more about her? Why are we only now hearing about her? Why has the Roman Catholic Church only recently reversed its age-old position that she was a reformed prostitute?31
In answer to these questions, we suggest that Mary the Magdalene was intentionally written out of the New Testament. In the words of Margaret Starbird, “I believe that the earliest Christian heresy was the denial of the bride.”32 Understanding Joseph and Aseneth as a lost gospel of the early Jesus movement allows us to revisit another early Christian text, The Acts of Thomas, and finally see it for what it is—a transition document between Jesus and Mary the Magdalene’s theology of the bride and her chamber, and Paul’s theology of Christian asceticism.
The Acts of Thomas tells the story of Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus (i.e., a Jesus look-alike), who goes to India as a slave and ends up attending the wedding of the King’s only daughter. At the wedding, Thomas sings a strange hymn in his native Hebrew. In Joseph and Aseneth fashion, the hymn describes the bride, focusing on her garments, her head, her feet, her tongue, her neck, her fingers, her bridal chamber, her gaits, and her bridesmaids. In other words, like the Syriac version of Aseneth, The Acts of Thomas draws from the Biblical Song of Songs to describe the would-be bride in overtly erotic terms. But it does so only to subvert the eros. In The Acts of Thomas, the bride is quickly transformed into a metaphor for the church. Here we have a veritable snapshot of the moment when a real-life woman is transformed into a church and a real-life wedding is transformed into a theology of abstinence. In other words, you marry the church, not each other.
In The Acts of Thomas, Jesus appears in the bridal chamber in the form of Thomas and persuades the bride and groom not to consummate their marriage. The day after the wedding night, the would-be lover–bride sits unveiled and announces that she has no need for the veil because she has given up on sex: “I’m no longer ashamed or abashed since the work of shame and bashfulness has been removed from me.”33 Commenting on this, Kraemer states, “Here, as in Aseneth 15.1, where the angelic figure instructs Aseneth to remove her head covering, sexuality and covering are clearly linked.”34 But there is a difference. As Kraemer notes, in The Acts of Thomas, “the unveiled woman is ‘asexual’.”35 Meaning, The Acts of Thomas subverts the theology of Joseph and Aseneth. Whereas in Joseph and Aseneth the Jesus look-alike angel sits on Aseneth’s bed and prepares her for marriage and intercourse with Joseph, in The Acts of Thomas the Jesus look-alike, Thomas, sits on the bridal bed and persuades the newlyweds to abstain from sex. Kraemer is intrigued by the fact that in The Acts of Thomas the newly converted couple express their devotion to Jesus “by sexual abstinence,” and in Joseph and Aseneth the convert to monotheism expresses her devotion to Joseph “through sexual love, fidelity and childbearing.” She concludes by stating that, in contrast to The Acts of Thomas, “Aseneth’s message is clearly that sexuality and marriage are good and divinely ordained.”36
But how do the two contradictory messages relate to each other? We have seen that Joseph and Aseneth is preserving a real-life relationship between Jesus and Mary the Magdalene. We now see that The Acts of Thomas records the moment that real history was transformed into a new theology. Put differently, Jesus is transformed from a husband and a lover into a ghost that visits bridal chambers so as to persuade newlyweds not to consummate their vows.
How did the original theology get forgotten?
First, we need to recall that the documents that make up the New Testament weren’t decided upon until the late 4th century and that they represent a very careful culling of early Christian writings. The simple fact is that only those texts that supported the theological position of the faction favored by the Roman emperors were selected for inclusion. The writings used by all other Christian groups—the Gnostic Christians and the Ebionites, for instance—were omitted. Within Gnostic Christianity, as already mentioned, Mary the Magdalene was accorded a preeminent role. Yet those writings were deliberately excluded.
Second, sexual activity was threatening to the early church fathers who interpreted the new religion as demanding an ascetic mode of life. Virginity and the renunciation of sexuality were prized. Paul had only allowed marriage for those who had lost all self-control (1 Corinthians 7:9). Moreover, the writings that eventually wound their way into the New Testament said nothing about Jesus being married. Oddly enough, there is no clear-cut support for marriage and family life in the New Testament. No “family values.” Nor is there any healthy role model for marriage. It is always second best to celibacy and sexual abstinence—second best to becoming a eunuch for the Kingdom of God.37
A third reason has to do with power struggles within the early church, specifically the success of Paul’s version of Christianity over the beliefs held by Jesus’ first followers. Paul’s Christ-centered, non-Torah-observant, pro-Roman movement garnered huge support from Gentiles eager for a faith-based—not Torah-based—salvation. Paul’s religion met their needs. It didn’t involve Torah laws. It simply required faith in the Christ figure; a dying–rising god–human savior similar to Dionysus and Mithras. For Paul, salvation did not involve mitzvoth, the Torah-commanded “good works.” In fact, Paul shied away from any suggestion that one could earn eternal life through good deeds. According to Paul, faith would ideally manifest itself in good works, but this was not essential. Everything was placed on faith . . . and faith alone.
Paul had help on his way to theological victory. Basically, the Romans took out his opponents. Paul’s success and those of his followers in the 1st and 2nd centuries occurred at a time when Judaea was racked by wars against Rome—the Great Revolt from 66 to 70 C.E., and then the Bar Kochba revolt of 132 to 135 C.E. During these times, the leadership of all Jewish movements was vastly compromised and their people were dispersed. This dramatically affected Jesus’ first followers because, in essence, with the destruction of Jerusalem, their power base was lost and their Jesus-inspired ideas were marginalized. In other words, history, politics, and theology all conspired to diminish the original followers of Jesus and their ideas. Paul’s Christ eclipsed their Jesus, and they got written out of the narrative. For example, what do we know about Jesus’ twelve disciples? Pretty much nothing. And if it was important to write Jesus’ disciples out of history, it was even more important to diminish Mary the Magdalene. Why? Because Paul was reaching out to Gentiles and, as we now know, she was a Gentile. Not only that, she had been regarded by Jesus’ earliest followers as the co-redemptrix of humanity, the Bride of God.
Based on the new evidence, let’s try to understand what the Church of the Gentiles looked like before Paul got involved.
The Church of the Gentiles
After the crucifixion, Jesus’ brother James led the Jesus Movement, the first Jewish followers of Jesus. According to Josephus, James was killed in a political struggle in the year 62 C.E. By this point, the original group was seriously compromised, losing first Jesus and then James. Four years later, the great Jewish Revolt began and four years after that, Jerusalem—headquarters for the Jesus Movement—was reduced to a smoldering heap of ash. Thousands were crucified, tens of thousands were taken into slavery, and, according to Josephus, hundreds of thousands died from starvation.
According to Christian tradition,38 the early followers didn’t just disappear. They regrouped under the leadership of another brother of Jesus, Simon (or Simeon), who, according to Christian tradition, was also crucified. The church father Eusebius records the names of fifteen leaders of the Jesus Movement down to the time of the Bar Kochba revolt in 132 C.E.: James, Simeon, Justus, Zaccheus, Tobias, Benjamin, John, Matthew, Philip, Seneca, Justus, Levi, Ephres, Joseph, and Judas. Eusebius says that they were all Jews—many of them must have been related to Jesus—and he adds that they “received the knowledge of Christ pure and unadulterated.”39 After the destruction of Judaea, Jesus’ birthplace, the original followers lost their cohesiveness and were scattered to the ends of the earth. In time, we learn of a group called Ebionites and another called Nazarenes who appear to trace their lineage back to the early Jesus Movement in Jerusalem.
It may be a hard concept for someone raised in the Christian tradition to understand, but the original followers of Jesus were not Christians, at least not in the way that we understand Christianity today. Though the Roman Catholic Church argues that there is an unbroken tradition from Jesus to Peter to the present-day Pope, historically speaking it seems clear that the early followers of Jesus had no inkling of the Christianity that caught on in the Roman Empire. Rather, they looked upon Jesus as a special human and as a teacher—a rabbi who had announced the Kingdom of God for which they had been patiently waiting.40
The early followers observed Torah, as Jesus himself seems to have done. They probably read a version of the Gospel of Matthew that did not include the virgin-birth narrative, and they rejected the letters of Paul. For them, Paul was a false teacher. According to Robert Eisenman, the two-thousand-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947 preserve their view of Paul in documents referring to a “spouter of lies.”41 Even if these documents refer to someone other than Paul, it’s clear that the early followers of Jesus hated Paul. After all, by his own admission (Acts 26:4), Paul was a persecutor of Jesus’ followers.42 More than this, when he arrives in Jerusalem, after his vision of Christ, there is an attempt to lynch him. Only the timely intervention of the Roman army saves Paul from his fellow Jews (Acts 21:30–33). It’s clear that the only ones who would have been aware of, or cared about, Paul’s activities were the original Jesus followers.43 It was they who wanted him dead.
In time, the churches that followed Paul would denounce these early Jesus groups as heretical. By the time of Constantine and the victory of this form of Christianity over all others, Eusebius has nothing but nasty words for the so-called Ebionites. He dismissed them with contempt, saying that the reason that they are called the “poor ones” is because they are feebleminded.44 This represents an ironic twist of history. Simply put, the theology espoused by Jesus, his brother James, his brother Simon—all martyred at the hands of the Roman authorities or their lackeys—and the theology of their first followers was utterly rejected by the evolving church. The headquarters of the new Christ-centered religion moved from Jerusalem to Rome. Ironically, Paul’s Church did not succeed among the people who knew Jesus, but among the very people who crucified him.
We are left with a question that the victorious Pauline church would have preferred that no one ever ask: what happened to the pre-Paul Church of the Gentiles? Meaning, what happened to the original followers of Jesus who were not Jewish? These people were unlike the first Jewish followers. For Jesus’ later Gentile followers, they would have been a theologically threatening group—a group to be written out of history. For the longest time, the cover-up worked. But given recent discoveries, we can try to reconnect with this long-forgotten movement. We can finally ask: What were their beliefs and practices? How significant were they numerically? Did Mary the Magdalene lead them after Jesus’ execution? And what did they make of the religion developed in the 40s and 50s by Paul? We can’t provide answers for all these questions, but our decoded gospel may finally provide some of the answers we are looking for.
Like Aseneth—that is, Mary the Magdalene—the original Church of the Gentiles probably did not follow all the laws of Torah. After all, they were Gentile God-fearers and not converts to Judaism. They likely followed the so-called Noahide laws. According to Judaism, these laws are incumbent upon all humanity, not just Jews. When Paul and James met in Jerusalem around the year 50 C.E., Paul was being criticized for allegedly encouraging Jews to abandon Torah law. Paul denied these charges and argued that he was just interested in bringing non-Jews to the movement. At this point, James insisted that individuals who wanted to follow Jesus and not convert to Judaism had to, nonetheless, keep the Torah’s Noahide laws that included prohibitions against drinking blood, eating meat containing blood, and eating meat of animals not properly slain. James also insisted on respecting laws against fornication and idolatry.45 In other words, the original Church of the Gentiles was asked by James, the brother of Jesus, to follow Torah law as it applies to non-Jews.46 Paul later outmaneuvered James and created a Church of the Gentiles that followed none of the Torah laws and none of the laws prescribed by James.
But what happened to the Gentiles who wanted to follow Jesus in a non-Pauline manner? Did their movement survive the various wars between the Jewish people and Rome? Was it dispersed like James’ Jewish Jesus movement? Again, we do not know the answers to these questions but we can now establish a textual connection between the original Gentile Church of Mary the Magdalene and Christian Gnosticism. Meaning, the pre-Paul Gentile church of Mary the Magdalene may not have disappeared. It may have simply morphed into what we now call Gnosticism.
One of the mysteries of early Christianity has to do with the rise of Christian Gnosticism. Until now, it seemed that this form of Christianity came out of nowhere. It suddenly pops up—fully realized—in Egypt, in the early 2nd century. But, clearly, Gnosticism didn’t originate as a fully developed theology at the time of Valentinus, its greatest proponent.47 The movement started earlier, in the 1st century.
The New Testament may be preserving a letter written to this Gentile Jesus movement by Jamesians who were critical of the path it was taking. It’s called Second John. A John who is also called the “Elder” writes it. It is addressed to “the lady chosen by God and to her children” (emphasis added). After acknowledging that they share a common truth, John asks “the lady” (the Mara) to stay on message and to not drift from Jesus’ original commands. He then calls someone the “antichrist.” He calls this man’s followers “deceivers.” Second John may be speaking about Paul and his disciples who, he says, “have gone into the world” preaching a Christ which is different from the Jesus who had come “in the flesh”—different from the flesh-and-blood Jesus that the Mara and his earliest apostles knew.
Like so many touching on these secret teachings, the Elder is circumspect and cautious about committing too much to paper—“I do not want to use paper and ink”—and he tells “the lady” that he will visit so as to talk with her “face to face” (2 John 1–13).48 Here we seem to have an inside look at the earliest days of the post-crucifixion Church of the Gentiles, led by Mary the Magdalene. Already, we see tension with both the Jamesians and with the followers of Paul. Clearly, with the destruction of Jerusalem, these followers of the lady developed their own texts and their own gospels, writings that would later be called Gnostic. What happened to these writings?
Some of the earliest texts of the Mary the Magdalene movement survived the fires of Christian orthodoxy and are now being unearthed. For example, parts of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas appear to many scholars to have originated as early as the canonical Gospel of Mark, around 70 C.E. In other words, this Gnostic Gospel is as early as the earliest church-sanctioned Gospels or even earlier.49 The Gospel of Thomas is a list of the sayings of Jesus, in seemingly random order. Some of the sayings are familiar to us from the canonical Gospels, but others are not.
The Gospel of Thomas contains no miracles, no indication of Jesus’ movements from here to there, no Lord’s Prayer, no Sermon on the Mount and—significantly—no birth stories and no account of his death. Jesus’ birth and death are of no importance for the group for whom The Gospel of Thomas was Holy Scripture. All that matters to the author of this early Gospel were the teachings of Jesus—what he said and what he wanted people to internalize: namely, how humans were to mature and become fully realized beings. But where did this Gospel come from? And who were the Gnostics who cherished the theology represented by it? Since Egypt borders Israel and since only seventy or so years separate the crucifixion and the birth of Valentinus, the father of early Gnosticism for which The Gospel of Thomas was sacred text, it is safe to say that there must have been a direct link between at least some of the followers of Jesus and the earliest Gnostics.
It now seems that Mary the Magdalene’s Church of the Gentiles is the missing link. It seems that what we know as Gnostic Christianity originated with the followers of the Mara, the lady—Mary the Magdalene.
Like the Jewish Jesus Movement in Jerusalem under James, the original Church of the Gentiles waited for the Kingdom of God to be made manifest upon earth, just as Jesus had promised. These Gentiles also expected to be part of the messianic kingdom, just as Jews would be. They further believed that Gentiles could become heirs to the promises of God to Abraham through membership in the Jesus movement. In their view, the movement was founded both spiritually and physically through the sacred union of the Jewish Jesus and the Gentile Mary the Magdalene. They were the ones chosen by God to undo the flaw that had bedeviled humanity. They were the ones who had restored wholeness, integrity, and harmony to the universe. As the Gospel of Joseph and Aseneth and the texts of the Valentinian Gnostics make clear, the Gentile followers of Mary the Magdalene believed that they would be saved through the actions of Jesus and Mary the Magdalene. Thus, according to the earliest Church of the Gentiles, redemption takes place not by participating in Jesus’ death on the cross but by emulating his life in the matrimonial bed.
The people who regarded Joseph and Aseneth as Holy Scripture believed that flesh could become spirit, and that the disharmony of the universe—following the sin of Adam and Eve—could be overcome by a new Adam and a new Eve physically cleaving to each other and then, once again, becoming the primordial and androgynous “Son of Man.” The Church of the Gentiles was a religion of life that celebrated vitality and encouraged its members to emulate Jesus not through celibacy but through Holy Communion understood as sacred sex. Harvard’s Karen King recently stated that in contrast to Pauline Christians who celebrated celibacy, “there were early Christians . . . who could understand indeed that sexual union in marriage could be an imitation of God’s creativity and generativity.”50 Clearly, the people who preserved Joseph and Aseneth were just such early Christians.
All this presents us with an alternative non-Pauline scenario of how Gentiles were incorporated into the promise of Abraham, namely, that through his seed all the families of the world would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). The contrast between Mary the Magdalene’s Church of the Gentiles and Paul’s Christ movement is stark. Early church fathers called the Gnostics lewd and accused them of engaging in abhorrent sex. Early Gnostics must have regarded those same church fathers as morbid and engaging in a cult of death.
In light of the evidence, we think it would be very hard for anyone to now argue that Joseph and Aseneth is not about Jesus and Mary the Magdalene. Also, in light of the total synchronicity between Joseph and Aseneth and Gnostic Christianity—especially as it was taught by Valentinians—we think there is no doubt that we are dealing with an early Gnostic text, or what some scholars might call a proto-Gnostic text. But is it history? Well, the fact is that unlike other Gnostic texts, Joseph and Aseneth is a narrative. Also, given its antiquity, it’s at least as historical as the Gospels. More to the point is the last section of Joseph and Aseneth. While the first sections conform to Valentinian theology—the veil, the angel, the bridal chamber, and so forth—the last section seems to have no theological significance whatsoever. While the first sections are coded theology, the last section seems to be coded history.
But what long-forgotten episode in Jesus’ career is it recounting? Incredibly, Joseph and Aseneth seems to be reporting that there was a plot hatched at the highest levels of Roman power to kill both Jesus and Mary the Magdalene.