Is it possible that Jesus was married? And that he could have fathered a child? These ideas so directly contradict our received tradition that they are hard to believe. Furthermore, there have been such sensational claims in the past, particularly in The Da Vinci Code, that it is important to be skeptical and to base any conclusions on solid evidence. It is for this reason that in his book The Jesus Dynasty, James said that he did not believe there was sufficient evidence to argue that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had had a child. But to be a scholar is to remain open to new data and new interpretations and to be always willing to change one’s position. Based on new evidence, James now believes that his earlier position was wrong.
The New Testament says nothing directly about Jesus being married or having a child. If Jesus had been married with a child would there not be some record, some hint somewhere in the gospels? There are times when the silence of a text speaks volumes. We are now convinced that the authors of the New Testament, written many decades after Jesus’ life, were either unaware of Jesus’ wife and child, or more likely, for theological reasons, decided to suppress this information. The Jesus of these gospels was the divine Son of God, ascended to heaven, and any “earthly,” or sexual, ties to a mortal woman may well have been deemed inconceivable. His exalted heavenly status as the Son of God surely precluded him “leaving behind” such mortal remains. The New Testament gospels are male-dominated accounts in which the few women who do play a role in Jesus’ life are marginalized and subordinated. They purportedly did not hold leadership roles equivalent to the male disciples. But the gospels are not devoid of references to Mary Magdalene’s singular importance in Jesus’ life. To the contrary, Mary Magdalene, along with Jesus’ mother and his sister, prepared Jesus’ naked corpse for burial, and she was the first witness to his resurrection from the dead. These stories show how central she must have been in his life. It is as though she could not be written out of the story—but her relatively isolated inclusion in such intimate and important ways hints at a larger role.
This silence, as we will see, is in sharp contrast to half a dozen other ancient texts that have been discovered in the last hundred years, including several “lost” gospels that are not included in the New Testament. In these texts, Mary Magdalene is mentioned very prominently, given a role superior to that of the twelve apostles, and presented as Jesus’ intimate companion. These texts were written later than the New Testament gospels—most of them dating to the 2nd century CE—yet they bear witness nonetheless to an alternative role of Mary Magdalene in Jesus’ life. As such they give voice to a suppressed history and a muted memory that correlates strongly with the evidence in the Talpiot tombs.
As mentioned earlier, the fact that the Talpiot tomb contains two ossuaries inscribed with names of women—Maria on one and Mariamene Mara on the second—plus a third ossuary Judah son of Jesus, strongly suggests that one of these two Marys is most likely the mother of the son, and thus the wife of the Jesus buried in this tomb. The DNA evidence, as we will see in chapter seven, shows that Mariamene Mara is not Jesus’ mother and most likely is the mother of the son.
Jesus of Nazareth had a mother named Mary, and apparently one of his sisters was also named Mary.1 If Jesus’ sister Mary were married, which seems likely given the norms of the culture, she would not be in his tomb but in the tomb of her husband. If the Talpiot tomb is that of Jesus and his family, the second Mary—Maria—is most likely his mother, unless she lived past 70 CE, which is very unlikely. Alternatively, the second Mary could perhaps be a wife of one of his brothers. That leaves Mariamene Mara as the most likely candidate to be the mother of his child. Based on the history that we can reconstruct as well as the linguistic fit of the name, Mary Magdalene is really the only viable candidate for that inscription in this tomb.
There is the related issue of the status of Mary Magdalene. The Mariamene buried in the Jesus family tomb is also known as Mara—the Lady, as we have seen. This title can potentially refer to her place of leadership and authority in the emerging Christian movement, a role that is hinted at by the evidence in the Talpiot tomb but never explicitly indicated in any of our sparse New Testament texts mentioning Mary Magdalene.
When we consider all the relevant ancient textual evidence regarding Mary Magdalene, both inside and outside the New Testament, with the new archaeological evidence from the Talpiot tombs, we find that there is an impressive correlation between much of this textual material and what we observe in the tombs.
We begin with our earliest source on Mary Magdalene—the gospel of Mark, which, as we have said, most scholars consider to have been written before Matthew, Luke, or John. According to the gospels, Mary Magdalene is undoubtedly the most mysterious and intriguing woman in Jesus’ life. She appears for the first time out of nowhere, without any introduction, watching the crucifixion of Jesus from afar. She is named first, surely giving her special priority, and she is associated with an entire group—one might even say, an entourage of women who had followed Jesus down from Galilee to Jerusalem just before the Passover festival began:
There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. (Mark 15:40–41).
Luke supplements this tradition of Mark, also emphasizing the many women from Galilee who were followers of Jesus. He names Mary Magdalene first, implying she has some kind of leadership role, but then identifies two others: a certain Joanna, who is the wife of Chuza, a household administrator in the court of Herod Antipas, king of Galilee; and Susanna, otherwise unknown. The implication is that these women are of high standing with financial means. Luke specifies that they provided for the Jesus movement (Luke 8:2–3).
In Mark’s gospel it is Mary Magdalene, along with the other Mary, the mother of Joses, and presumably, although not mentioned, the mother of Jesus, who observes Joseph of Arimathea taking down the bloodied body from the cross, placing him temporarily in a nearby tomb, and sealing the entrance with a heavy stone, until the Passover was over (Mark 15:47).2 As soon as the Sabbath day was over Mary Magdalene, accompanied by the other Mary and an unidentified woman named Salome, possibly Jesus’ sister, bought spices so they might return to the tomb early Sunday morning to wash the corpse and complete the rites of burial. Mark relates that early on Sunday morning, the three women go to the tomb before the sun is risen, and find the stone rolled away and the body removed. Inside the tomb is a young man dressed in a white linen garment who informs the women that Jesus has been “raised up,” that they are to go and tell his male disciples, and that he is going to meet them in Galilee (Mark 16:1–7).3 According to Mark they flee from the tomb in fear and astonishment, saying nothing to anyone. In our oldest copies of Mark that is how the story ends—abruptly and mysteriously, with the promise to the women that Jesus will appear in Galilee in the future. The oldest copies of Mark have this abrupt ending with no “sightings” or appearances of Jesus to anyone. Later manuscripts or copies of Mark add one of three different alternative endings, composed by scribes to try to blunt the abruptness of Mark’s original ending. They feared that Mark’s account, if left as is, might leave doubt as to Jesus’ resurrection.4
Washing and anointing a corpse for Jewish burial was an honored and intimate task. The body was stripped naked and washed from head to toe. This ritual was performed by the immediate family or those closely related. Although these narratives from Mark do not identify Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus, they cast her taking the lead in carrying out the burial rites for Jesus—an intimate task for a wife, mother, or sister. Matthew and Luke have Mark as their source, and although they relate the story of Jesus’ burial slightly differently, they seem not to have independent information. It is also entirely possible, writing so many decades after the events, when all of the original witnesses were dead, that they know the tradition of Mary Magdalene’s involvement in Jesus’ burial and thus find it essential to include her, but have no idea who she was or why she was so prominent in the story they had been told.
In the gospel of John we seem to get an alternative narrative tradition, independent of Mark. John writes that Mary Magdalene comes alone to the tomb very early Sunday morning, while it is still dark. She sees the stone rolled away from the tomb and the body removed and she runs in panic to tell Peter and an unnamed disciple, otherwise identified as the “one whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). What she exclaims to the men is most revealing: “They have taken the Master out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:2).5 In this account Mary Magdalene’s logical assumption is that the body has been removed from the temporary tomb, which John has already emphasized was a tomb of convenience in an emergency, not a permanent burial cave (John 19:41–42). “They” refers to Joseph of Arimathea, assisted by another Sanhedrin member, Nicodemus, who John says assisted in the initial removal of the body from the cross.
What happens next is a story unique to John. Mary Magdalene returns to the empty tomb, weeping outside, then enters the tomb for the first time to look inside. She sees two angels dressed in white sitting inside. The Greek word translated “angel” (aggelos) can refer to a “messenger” and does not necessarily mean a nonterrestrial being. These two ask her why she is weeping. She repeats her take of the situation—“Because they have taken away my Master, and I do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:13). Just as she replies she turns and sees a man outside the tomb that she takes to be the gardener. He asks her the same question: “Woman, why are you weeping, whom do you seek?” She replies, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have taken him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15). The man then addresses her by name—calling her Miriam, in the original Greek text, using the Hebrew form of her name. She apparently recognizes the voice and turns to face him, crying out in Hebrew, Rabboni—a diminutive term of endearment meaning “my dear Master.” She recognizes it is Jesus but he tells her not to touch him, adding that he is ascending to heaven (John 20:16–17). For a woman to touch a man in this culture further implies a familial connection. Mary Magdalene returns to the male disciples and tells them what she has seen.
This remarkable story presents Mary Magdalene as the first witness to Jesus’ resurrection. Unlike Mark, who has no appearances of Jesus following the empty tomb, or Matthew, who has Jesus encountering the eleven remaining apostles on a misty mountain in Galilee much later, or Luke, who relates that Jesus appeared physically to the disciples in a closed room, showing his wounds and eating a meal in front of them, John’s story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter stands in sharp contrast. John includes in his gospel additional appearances of Jesus to groups of men, but he alone preserves this Magdalene tradition.
Professor Jane Schaberg and others have interpreted this singular experience of Mary Magdalene as forming the core of the resurrection faith of Jesus’ first followers.6 It is a personal encounter prompted by an exchange of greetings—Miriam and Rabboni—as if those words signaled a flash of recognition based on personal intimacy. If one asks who can lay claim to the first appearance of Jesus after his death, John’s story offers a clear answer—it was Mary Magdalene. Matthew knows a garbled version of the story in which the group of women encounter Jesus as they flee from the tomb, but without John’s personal exchange between Mary and Jesus (Matthew 28:9–10). In Matthew’s story the women are mere vehicles who carry the news to the male disciples, not independent witnesses whose testimony is valued. Jesus commissions the eleven remaining apostles, and the women are nowhere to be seen (Matthew 28:16–20).
Paul, who wrote in the 50s CE, just twenty years removed from the crucifixion, says explicitly that Jesus appeared first to Peter, then to the twelve apostles, then to James, and finally to five hundred brothers en mass (1 Corinthians 15:5). He either knows nothing of the Magdalene tradition, or given his view of women, considers it without merit. This was after all a time in ancient history when a woman’s testimony in court did not carry the same weight as that of a man. Even in Luke the initial testimony of the women who first visited the tomb is dismissed as an “idle tale” (Luke 24:11). In a male-dominated movement how could a hysterical woman, weeping at a tomb, provide any kind of credible testimony?
There is evidence of criticism leveled against the developing Christian movement from the late 2nd century CE because of the involvement of women. Celsus, a pagan philosopher who wrote an attack of the Christians called True Doctrine around 178 CE, says:
Jesus went about with his disciples collecting their livelihood in a shameful and importunate way . . . For in the gospels certain women who had been healed from their ailments, among whom was Suzanna, provided the disciples with meals out of their own substance.7
Celsus does not specifically name Mary Magdalene but seems to have her in mind:
While he was alive he did not help himself, but after death he rose again and showed the marks of his punishment and how his hands had been pierced. But who saw this? A hysterical female, as you say, and perhaps some other one of those (women) who were deluded by the same sorcery, who either dreamt in a certain state of mind and through wishful thinking had a hallucination due to some mistaken notion (an experience which has happened to thousands), or, which is more likely, wanted to impress others by telling this fantastic tale, and so by this cock-and-bull story to provide a change for other beggars.”8
Further on in the same narrative Celsus charges that Jesus “appeared secretly to just one woman and to those of his own confraternity.”9 This is without a doubt an accusation based on his reading of the account in the gospel of John. There is evidence that a number of other pagan writers were critical of the female initiative that apparently was central to Christianity’s development.10
Is there any likely historical truth to the notion that the faith in Jesus’ resurrection began with this entourage of women led by Mary Magdalene? Schaberg has argued that this singular account in John 20:1–18, where Mary Magdalene encounters and speaks to Jesus in the garden tomb, preserves fragments of a tradition of Mary Magdalene as successor to Jesus—and thus “first founder” of Christianity, in the sense of authoritative witness to resurrection faith. Schaberg shows that the narrative structure of John 20 reflects an imaginative reuse of 2 Kings 2:1–18, where Elijah the prophet ascends to heaven, leaving his disciple Elisha as his designated witness and successor. This intimate personal appearance to Mary Magdalene, which focuses on an ascent to heaven rather than resurrection of the dead per se, stands in sharp contrast to the other formulations in the gospels that present indirect angelic encounters to a group of women. Upon this foundation Schaberg offers a preliminary sketch of what she rather boldly labels “Magdalene Christianity,” both suppressed and lost in the New Testament gospel tradition, and particularly in Acts, much as the history of James the brother of Jesus and the Jerusalem community from 30 to 50 CE has been suppressed.
The notion of apostolic authority in early Christianity depended most of all on one’s being a witness to Jesus’ resurrection and receiving a commission.11 Paul, for example, bases his own late addition to the apostolic roster upon his visionary experience of Jesus several years after he had been crucified: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:8–9). One should not take this modesty on the part of Paul as any indication that he thought he was in the least bit inferior to the apostles who were before him. He says of the other apostles: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God, which is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Apparently Paul did receive challenges to his rights to be called an apostle. Against such charges he adamantly defended himself, insisting that his apostleship was based squarely on his experience of having “seen Jesus our Lord” (1 Corinthians 9:1). Apostleship was not, in his view, something that was passed on from men, but was given by a “revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12, 16). But according to the book of Acts the main criterion in deciding who would replace Judas Iscariot as the twelfth apostle after he had betrayed Jesus and then killed himself was that the one chosen had been with Jesus in his lifetime and was a “witness to his resurrection” (Acts 1:21–22).
Not only did Mary Magdalene meet these criteria, but she had the additional status of being the first witness to Jesus’ resurrection—even before Peter. The gospel of Luke explicitly rejects her status in this regard, characterizing the report of Mary and her entourage of women from Galilee and their claim to have “seen Jesus” as an “idle tale,” using language that in the culture of that time was particularly associated with the testimony of women. Mary Magdalene’s disqualification was based on her gender. Paul, for example, insists to his congregations:
The women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Corinthians 14:34–35)
This silencing and subordination of women was carried into the next generation, long after Paul was dead. One of his successors paraphrased Paul’s position with even stronger language:
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:11–13)12
The remedy for this Adamic curse upon women was that they “be saved through bearing children” (1 Timothy 2:15).
Mary Magdalene is referred to by name only twelve times in the New Testament gospels and never again in any of the other New Testament writings. As we have seen, she appears at the death scene of Jesus, his burial, and the empty tomb, and then disappears from the record. If the New Testament writings were all we had, we would be hard-pressed to say anything more about her. Before we move to an alternative world of early Christian texts outside the New Testament that present an entirely different picture of her status and relationship to Jesus and the twelve apostles, we want to briefly examine why she might be called Magdalene, distinguishing her from the other Marys in the gospel narratives—including Jesus’ mother and particularly, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, with whom she has often been identified.
In the Greek texts of the gospels she is known by three slightly differing descriptions: Maria the Magdalene, Miriam the Magdalene, and Maria the one called Magdalene.13 The majority of scholars understand the designation “Magdalene” to refer to the city of Magdala (or Migdal in Hebrew) located on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee about seven miles north of Tiberius. The Greeks called the city Taricheia, referring to the pickling of salted fish from the Sea of Galilee, exported throughout the Roman Empire. According to Josephus, the 1st century Jewish historian, Migdal was walled on the west side and had a large aqueduct system, a theater, hippodrome, and a market. Josephus describes it in some detail.14
Josephus fortified the city as his headquarters when he became commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee in the 1st Jewish revolt against Rome (66–73 CE). It was culturally and commercially diverse, opulent, and fully exposed to Greco-Roman culture. Shortly after the first Jewish revolt against Rome broke out in 66 CE, the Roman military commander Vespasian, who was later to become emperor, surrounded the city with three Roman legions and laid siege. He stationed 2,000 archers on the mountain to the west overlooking the city. There was a great naval battle at its port and thousands of Jews, defenseless in small boats, were slaughtered. Josephus, an eyewitness, reports that the Sea of Galilee was red with blood, with stinking corpses filling its shoreline for days to follow. The city finally surrendered and opened its gates while thousands of inhabitants who had fled south toward Tiberius were slaughtered or exiled.15 1,200 older people were executed, 6,000 of the strongest sent as a gift to the emperor Nero, and 34,400 were sent off as slaves.
The city was apparently more Romanized than the nearby Jewish cities of Capernaum or Chorazin with a cosmopolitan Greek atmosphere.16 Ongoing excavations at Migdal, including the 2009 discovery of an ancient 1st century CE synagogue, will likely reveal much more as to what this important city was like.17 If Mary’s designation as “Magdalene” refers to her city of origin, placing her in that context gives us a glimpse into her possible background.
The Mariamene Mara ossuary in the Talpiot tomb, as well as that of Judah, the son of Jesus, are elaborately ornamented and the inscriptions are elegant and more formal in appearance than the graffiti-like name tags that many ossuaries exhibit. One is tempted to take Luke’s tradition at face value and imagine her as a cosmopolitan woman of independent means who was able, with her connections reaching even into Herod Antipas’s household, to head a sizable entourage of women who followed Jesus in Galilee and thus to wield considerable influence in the Jesus movement (Luke 8:1–3).
Even though the identification of Mary’s name with the city of Magdala seems to carry the most weight there are two alternative interpretations of “Magdalene.”
It is possible that “Magdalene” is a nickname, perhaps even given to Mary by Jesus. We know in the gospels that Jesus often gave his closest followers descriptive nicknames to characterize either their role in his movement or in some cases their personalities. For example, Simon son of Jonah, whom most people know as “Peter,” was given the nickname Cephas or Petros (Peter) in Aramaic and Greek respectively—“the Rock” or “Rocky” (Matthew 16:18). The two fisherman brothers James and John, sons of Zebedee, were nicknamed Boanerges, meaning “sons of Thunder,” apparently based on their aggressive personalities (Mark 3:17; 10:35–41; Luke 9:54). The apostle James was nicknamed “James the Less,” or “James the Younger,” either referring to his shortness of stature or his young age, and distinguishing him from the other James, son of Zebedee (Mark 15:40). Simon, another of the twelve apostles, was called “Simon the Zealot,” either referring to his militant bent or to his zeal for a cause (Luke 16:15). Since the name Magdalene comes from the Hebrew or Aramaic word migdal, meaning tower, perhaps she was given this name “Mary the Tower” as a description of her status or her strong personality.
Finally, there is a third option, less well known but interesting to consider in the light of the Talpiot tombs. It is found tucked away in the Talmud, the ancient written collection of rabbinic oral tradition that was put together between the 5th and 6th centuries CE. There is a strange story about two women named Miriam: one is a hairdresser, presumably referring to Jesus’ mother; the other is called Miriam the Megadla, meaning the “baby tender,” or the one who “grows” the child.18 We are convinced that these are cryptic references to Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
One of the most fruitful new aspects of the study of the early development of Judaism and Christianity is the realization that Jews and Christians were living side by side both in the land of Israel and in the major urban centers of the Roman world between the 2nd century CE and the early Byzantine period (4th century CE). Both religions were thriving and both were seen by the dominant culture as strange and foreign due to their adherance to monotheism and their refusal to worship the emperor and participate in mainstream Greco-Roman religious and civic rites. Jews and Christians lived side by side and were in dialogue and debate with one another. For that reason there are many cryptic passages in the rabbinic literature of this period that refer to Jesus, his disputed paternity, his mother, his disciples, his teachings, and even his execution. These sharply polemical passages can seldom be taken as history per se, but they do reflect genuine debates and polemics between Jews and Christian in this time.19 This material has often been dismissed or ignored because of its complexity. It is also very difficult to date. But it should not be overlooked, because most of the other sources we have on Christianity come from its adherents, written for the purpose of promoting the Christian faith. For example, the late 2nd century philosopher Celsus, mentioned above, says that he based his primary knowledge of the Christians on listening to a Jew who knew the “inside” story that the Christians were trying to repress. What we can begin to construct from the rabbinic materials is an alternative history by those who rubbed shoulders with Christians daily but strongly disputed their claims.
For this reason we believe that an interpretation of a more cryptic, coded meaning of Magdalene should be considered. Based on this tradition there were two Marys in Jesus’ life—his mother and the one who “grew” the baby. Since this appears to be what we might have in our 1st century Jewish tomb, it may be the best explanation for the name.
Finally, as with the possibility that the surname means “the Tower,” all three could be true. Nicknames often can have variant meanings and that is one reason they are so popular.
Even though there is no explicit reference to Jesus being married in any of the four gospels or other New Testament writings, the silence might turn out to be less deafening than one would suppose. There are several factors one must consider in making the judgment that he lived a celibate single life.20
First, it is important to realize that we know very little about the historical Jesus. What historians are absolutely sure about could be written down on a single piece of paper. What we have in the gospels are not biographies of Jesus—far from it. They are theological presentations regarding his preaching, healing, and in particular the significance of his death and resurrection. They contain almost no personal information. The gospel of Mark, for example, never names or mentions Jesus’ father, while the gospel of John never names his mother. We have one childhood story, when he was twelve years old, and most scholars consider it a standard literary motif, not a historical account (Luke 2:41–52).21 We know nothing of his life beyond that point, including his teens and twenties, when most Jewish males were expected to marry.
Second, in regards to the twelve apostles, no wife is named for any of them. None of their children is mentioned or named—how many, what they did, or any personal details about them. Most of the twelve, with the exception of Peter, hardly speak at all in our gospel accounts—a few lines at most.
This silence hardly means that none of them was married. In fact, there is a reference to Peter’s mother-in-law, whom Jesus healed of a fever in Mark 1:30–31, but her name is never given. Paul refers to the wives of the other apostles and the brothers of Jesus, but again, no names are given (1 Corinthians 9:5). He even mentions that these women accompanied their husbands on their missionary travels. This is a culture in which countless women are largely forgotten and unknown, their voices muted by the dominant paternalism.22
Third, celibacy was not considered an ideal or valued lifestyle among Jews in the Greco-Roman period. Even though it is mistakenly believed that the Essenes, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, valued and practiced celibacy, this notion is likely an invention. The Essenes were one of the three major Jewish groups of this period, along with Pharisees and Sadducees. This misunderstanding stems from the reports of Josephus the Jewish historian (37–100 CE); Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish Hellenistic philosopher (20 BCE–50 CE); and Pliny the Elder, a Roman official (23–79 CE) about the Essenes. Each of these writers projected his own admiration of celibate idealism onto the Essenes, though each of them was married. Josephus, for example, makes the following observation about women and marriage: “They [the Essenes] do not absolutely deny the value of marriage, and the succession of the human race is thereby continued; but they guard against the lascivious behavior of women, and are persuaded that none of them preserve their fidelity to one man.”23
Such a negative attitude toward women by Josephus, who was married three times, has no basis in history. Philo writes: “[the Essenes] repudiate marriage; and at the same time they practice self-control to a remarkable degree; for no one of the Essenes ever marries a wife, because a wife is a selfish creature, addicted to jealousy and skilled at beguiling the morals of her husband and seducing him by her continued deceptions.”24 Pliny the Elder says that the Essenes “have no women and have renounced all sexual desire.”25 The Dead Sea Scrolls themselves tell a different story, and scholars give their testimony priority as primary sources.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, representing over six hundred texts of the period before and after the time of Jesus, were discovered hidden in caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. They never hint at celibacy; quite the opposite is true. Like other pious Jews of the time, they strictly adhered to the first commandment in the Torah: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). The Scrolls are full of instructions about marriage, divorce, and avoiding fornication, or sex outside of marriage.26
Jesus and John the Baptizer have been rightly connected to the apocalyptic and messianic ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though neither was likely a formal member of the Dead Sea community, they shared these common ideas. Since the Dead Sea community is most often identified as Essenes, and it is mistakenly assumed that the Essenes practiced celibacy, the argument is often made that Jesus’ own celibacy arises out of this context.
It is the same with the rabbis that we know from this period. There are few explicit statements about rabbis being married in the rabbinic sources, but we can be sure that marriage was the norm and celibacy an anomaly. Entire tractates of Jewish law deal with marriage, divorce, and what is forbidden and allowed in terms of sexual behavior. We should assume that as a Jew of his time Jesus was married unless we have some evidence to the contrary.
Finally, the apostle Paul is the major Jewish figure of the time who does in fact commend, but not require, celibacy, based primarily on his notion that the end of the age has drawn very near (1 Corinthians 7:26, 29, 31). His was a “situational” celibacy, a practical choice one might make in view of the stressful times that he believed were imminent. Paul recommends celibacy for those who can handle a nonsexual life, but he knows most cannot and end up committing fornication (1 Corinthians 7:2).
It is entirely possible, even likely, that Paul had been married earlier in his life.27 He says that he “advanced in Judaism beyond many of his own age,” indicating that he had formal training as a Pharisee, presumably in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:14). Since for Paul the end of the age was at hand, he thought it inopportune to invest one’s life in a gendered humanity that was soon to be transformed into a state where there would be “neither male nor female.” Paul expected to live to see a cosmic transformation—a new creation in which birth and death, and mortal states of life in general would pass away.
One of the strongest indicators that Jesus was married comes from Paul directly. He quotes Jesus freely on the prohibition against divorce, but fails to use a celibate Jesus as his major model to support his position on celibacy (1 Corinthians 7:25). In fact he says quite the opposite, that when it comes to celibacy: “I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy” (1 Corinthians 7:25). Had Jesus been unmarried Paul would have undoubtedly said that all men should live like Jesus, following the celibate ideal espoused by the Lord, but he says nothing of the kind. In this case Paul’s silence strongly implies that he did not think Jesus was unmarried. Given these considerations one can conclude that there are reasons to believe that Jesus was married. And married people at that time usually had children, as the First Commandment required.
The reason it is so difficult for people today to think of Jesus as a normally married Jew of his time and culture has little to do with the fact that his wife and child are not mentioned in our meager sources. This belief is based instead on an ideal of Christian asceticism that began to develop among the church fathers and mothers early in the 2nd century CE. This asceticism was not based on any historical memory of an unmarried Jesus but rather upon Paul’s commendation of celibacy—now removed from its apocalyptic context. The celibacy these Christian leaders embraced was based on an aversion to the material world and the body, regarded as inferior to the unseen spiritual realities of the heavenly realms. Christians rejected the material world, even hated it with all its imperfections. They turned their attention wholly toward the heavenly, nonmaterial world. This dualistic view of the cosmos owes little to the historical Jesus the Jew and everything to Hellenistic philosophy and its ascetic ideal.28 The negative view of women already so rife in the dominant cultural norms of the time was radically advanced by the Christian philosophers and theologians because women, and the sexual temptations they represented for men, were shunned as the ultimate obstacle to a higher spirituality. Tertullian, often called the “father of Latin Christianity,” best represents this radically misogynistic trend that remains deeply ingrained in Western Christian culture to this day. Although he believed that even women could be saved by God’s grace, he warned them that the whole responsibility for the human condition lay with Eve and her successors:
You are the gateway of the devil; you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree, and you are the first one to turn your back on the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting; you easily destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because of what you deserve, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.29
The brilliant 4th century church father Augustine of Hippo carried forward Paul’s perspectives and pressed their implications to the limit. He faced sexual temptations his entire life, even fathering a child with his lover, but he sought to suppress his lust by choosing a rigorously ascetic life. His famous dictim inter faeces et uriname nascimur—“We are born between feces and urine”—yet with an immortal soul, lay at the root of his attraction and aversion to women. Perhaps the most notorious example of this unfortunate development in Christianity was the 5th century Latin theologian Jerome, the most learned of the church fathers. His savage condemnation of women and human sexuality was matched only by his disparagement of the “Old Testament” law and those Jews who did not respond to Jesus. He connected the two by arguing that the Old Testament was “carnal,” of the flesh, whereas Christ was spiritual and pure, from above. The virginal Christ, removed from the filth of sex, showed humankind the way to escape their fleshly bonds and achieve heavenly perfection. He even went so far as to state that a husband can best show his love of his wife by abstaining from sexual intercourse. He opposed bathing, makeup, and female adornment, and saw sex, symbolized by the female temptress, as fit for pigs and dogs. Jerome wrote openly about his bouts with sexual temptations.30
Given this dualistic orientation toward the heavenly world and denigration of sex and birth—and therefore women as the vehicle of both—one can readily see how Mary Magdalene, Jesus, Mary the mother of Jesus, and even Joseph her husband had to be cast as living nonsexual lives. This obsession with virginity is firmly grounded in 2nd and 3rd century CE asceticism, not in Jesus’ own life and times.
It is an easy step from this stream of dualistic misogynist thinking, the core of emerging 4th and 5th century Christianity, to recasting the New Testament figure of Mary Magdalene as a sinner and even a whore. None of eleven New Testament texts that mention her presents her in any negative light. On the contrary, as we have seen, she seems to be the leader of the band of faithful Galilean women who stand by Jesus at the cross. Even when the men have fled in fear, she prepares spices and perfumed oils in order to complete the Jewish rites of burial, and she becomes a first witness to the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection. She enters and exits the scene in the space of a few pages of our texts—never to appear again in any New Testament text.
There are three scenes in Mark, Luke, and John respectively that recount how Jesus was anointed with a flask of costly scented oil by a woman. As they now stand in our texts they are not the same narrative, yet their core elements are so similar that they appear to be three versions of the “same” story, a woman anointing Jesus.
In the gospel of Mark the scene takes place in Bethany, a small village on the Mount of Olives just east of the city of Jerusalem, two days before Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion (Mark 14:3–9).31 Jesus is dining as a guest in the house of one called Simon the leper, otherwise unknown. A woman arrives with a flask of pure nard ointment, breaks it, and pours it over Jesus’ head. Some at the dinner protest that such a costly ointment has been wasted and could have been sold and given to the poor for three hundred denarii—which would be a year’s wages for a day laborer. Jesus defends the unnamed woman’s action, saying, “You always have the poor with you. She has done a beautiful thing.” He then declares: “She has done what she could. She has anointed my body for burying. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (Mark 14:8–9).
The gospel of John seems to know a very similar story (John 12:1–8; 11:1–3). Again the scene is in Bethany, but six days before the crucifixion, and at dinner in the house of the two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Martha is serving but Mary took costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair. Judas Iscariot, who was to betray Jesus, objected that the ointment could have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor. The text points out that he did this out of greed, not care for the poor, for he served as bursar of the group and used to pilfer the funds. Jesus replied: “Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (John 12:7–8).
In both texts the woman has a prophetic role—anointing Jesus’ body beforehand as if he were already dead; she is commended for her actions, as if she somehow “knows” more than the others, perhaps without even realizing it herself, while the others miss the point of her actions entirely. In John the woman is named—Mary of Bethany, and her family has already been introduced (John 11). In Mark she is unidentified, with the irony that her story will be told perpetually “in memory of her.” John’s account is more shocking, since the anointing of the feet, and especially the wiping of the feet with her hair, either implies a shockingly inappropriate intimacy or a familial bond, since men and women who are not married would never touch in this way. The hair of a woman was considered sexually provocative and was to be covered, as in conservative Middle Eastern societies today, both Jewish and Muslim.32 In that sense the story is scandalous, foreshadowing the attempt of Mary Magdalene to prepare spices and anoint the corpse of Jesus when he is dead. The problem is, Mary of Bethany is not Mary Magdalene—or is she? Mark had emphasized that Mary Magdalene and her entourage came from Galilee, whereas John introduces her at the crucifixion scene as an intimate family member, standing with Jesus’ mother.
It is impossible to reconcile these differences. Mark and John clearly have the same story, but their details are different. The strong implication in John is that Mary of Bethany is otherwise known as Mary Magdalene, and that she is either married to Jesus or otherwise considered like a sister, a part of the family. Mark knows nothing of this and never mentions Mary of Bethany.
Luke’s story recasts everything (Luke 7:36–50). The setting is Galilee, not Jerusalem, weeks if not months before Jesus’ death. Jesus is dining at the house of a man named Simon, though it is not said he is a leper. A woman comes in off the street, unnamed, uninvited, and unannounced, but known to the village as a “sinner,” which implies she was a whore. The diners are reclining, in Greco-Roman banquet style, and she stands behind Jesus at his feet and begins to weep, wetting his feet with her tears, kissing them, and anointing them with oil. Nothing is said about the cost of the oil and the objection is not the waste but that Jesus would permit himself to be touched by a sexually promiscuous woman and not realize, were he a prophet, her sinful status. Simon objects and Jesus rebukes him, commending the woman for her uninvited hospitality in welcoming him, washing his feet, and loving him. He declares: “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” He then turns to the woman and says to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The dinner guests were even more scandalized that he could claim the right to forgive sins.
Some have doubted that the parallel accounts in Mark and John are related to this one, but most scholars, knowing that Luke is using Mark as his narrative source, are convinced he is deliberately recasting the scene. He drops the anointing scene entirely from the last days of Jesus’ life, moves it to Galilee, and puts it much earlier. Why would he do this?
The answer is most likely that he wants to disparage Mary Magdalene. Immediately following his anointing story he introduces her by name but presents her as a terribly deranged woman, possessed of seven demons that Jesus had cast out! (Luke 8:2). Later, when he introduces the women from Galilee who stood by at Jesus’ crucifixion, he does not mention their names or put Mary Magdalene at their head. He records no appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, as do Matthew and John. Knowing how deeply embedded she is in early Christian tradition, Luke cannot write her out of the story completely, so he minimizes her role. Later in his narrative, as a further way of distancing himself from the anointing story in the gospel of John, he presents two sisters, Mary and Martha, but has them living far outside of Jerusalem, somewhere in Galilee to the north (Luke 13:22).
The Gospel of Peter, discovered in fragments in Egypt in the 1890s, adopts and further appropriates Luke’s marginalization of Mary Magdalene. In this text Peter is prominent, narrating the events surrounding Jesus’ empty tomb, but no women are mentioned at Jesus’ crucifixion scene, standing faithfully while the men fled. Although Mary Magdalene is mentioned, and even called a mathetria—a female disciple of Jesus, who comes early Sunday morning with her friends to mourn inside the tomb, most significantly Jesus never appears to the women and they receive no commission to go and spread the good news of the resurrection to the male disciples (Gospel of Peter 12:50).
Luke’s strategy had a lasting effect. Readers of the gospels later found it easy to conflate the stories. First, it became common and accepted to identify Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and brother of Lazarus. As early as the late 2nd century, Tertullian had already described Mary Magdalene as the “woman who was a sinner.”33 This salacious identification stuck. The image of Jesus as the all-forgiving one—the friend of prostitutes and sinners—was sexually provocative. The idea of the sinful woman, like Eve, seduced by the Devil, but now redeemed, could serve as the story of all women.34 It was Pope Gregory the Great (540–604 CE) who sealed her fate. He conflated John’s story of Mary of Bethany with the sinful woman who anoints Jesus in Luke, and declared both women were Mary Magdalene. He waxed on as to how Mary the whore, who once perfumed herself to seduce men, flirted with her eyes, arranged her hair, and made use of her lips, now turned all those elements in chaste service to the Lord—anointing him, weeping and wiping the tears with her hair, and kissing his feet.35
In the Middle Ages Mary Magdalene became wildly popular, with legends growing up regarding her missionary travels to Europe. She became the model of the hopeless sinner, transformed from a sexually fallen woman to a chaste and forgiven saint. All over Europe there are hundreds of shrines and churches dedicated to her with her supposed relics. Her feast days are among the most popular on the church calendar. It was not until the late 1970s that the Roman Catholic Church officially repudiated the connection between Luke’s sinful woman and Mary Magdalene. Ironically, on a more popular level, the myth continues and most people still think of Mary Magdalene as the deranged whore whom Jesus redeemed. This view has been spurred on by films, plays, and books such as Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel), and of course Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar. It’s an image too hard to resist—and yet if the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of the Jesus family and Mariamene can be identified with the historical Mary Magdalene, then the alternative, untold story is perhaps even more compelling.
We have seen how Mary Magdalene, and in some cases her female entourage, are portrayed as “first witness” to Jesus’ empty tomb and given the commission to tell the male disciples he is risen in the New Testament gospels. In Mark the women flee from the tomb and say nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). In Luke they report to the eleven remaining apostles but their testimony is considered an “idle tale” (Luke 24:11). In Matthew, as the women flee the tomb they meet Jesus, grab hold of his feet, and worship him, and he directs them to tell the male apostles he will meet them in Galilee (Matthew 28:9–10). Finally, in John, Mary Magdalene goes alone to the tomb and has her personal encounter and exchange with Jesus, thus becoming the first witness to Jesus raised from the dead and ascending to heaven (John 20:11–18).
In addition to the Gospel of Peter there are a dozen or so ancient texts, most of them discovered in the last hundred years, that present an alternative “lost” portrait of Mary Magdalene and her role as Jesus’ female apostle extraordinaire—quite literally the apostle of the apostles and the successor to Jesus. Five of them were discovered in Egypt in 1945, buried in a jar in a field outside a village called Nag Hammadi. These texts are The Gospel of Thomas, The Dialogue of the Savior, The First Apocalypse of James, The Gospel of Philip, and The Sophia of Jesus Christ. Others, including Pistis Sophia, The Gospel of Mary, and the Acts of Philip, have turned up in various places, whether on the antiquities market, an archaeological dig, or lost or forgotten in ancient libraries. In these texts Mary Magdalene is Jesus’ intimate confidante and companion, one who possesses unparalleled spiritual insights that she received directly from him. She is praised, but also at times opposed—especially by Peter, leader of the male apostles, who is threatened by her position and status based on her special relationship with Jesus. These texts originate outside the mainstream, that is, the male-dominated form of orthodox Christianity that began to take hold and triumph down to the time of Constantine, the first Christian emperor (circa 325 CE). The canonical New Testament, with its twenty-seven approved documents, was increasingly regarded as the only authorized text, inspired by God, while these other texts were marginalized, declared heretical, and eventually lost and forgotten. They are witness to the diverse mix of “Christianities” that were developing in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE before a more singular orthodoxy, backed by Christian councils and creeds, took center stage.
Jane Schaberg has constructed a working profile of Mary Magdalene from these texts, isolating the major elements. Mary Magdalene is prominent among the followers of Jesus, she speaks boldly and is often in open conflict with the male disciples, she is an intimate companion of Jesus, and he praises her for her superior spiritual understanding and defends her.36
Each of these texts contains an assortment of these elements but one in particular, The Gospel of Mary, has them all. This is an extraordinary text. This is the only gospel of a woman, and not just any woman, Mary Magdalene. A fragmentary copy of The Gospel of Mary was purchased in Cairo in 1896. It is written in Coptic but was likely translated from a Greek original. It dates to the early 2nd century.37 In this text Mary Magdalene is a beloved disciple of Jesus, taking center stage in leading the apostles and encouraging them. Peter is jealous of her, but admits her status as one closer to Jesus than anyone else, and more important, as one who received revelations that the male disciples were not privy to:
Peter said to Mary: “Sister we know the savior loved you more than any other woman. Tell us the words of the savior that you remember, which you know but we do not, because we have not heard them.” Mary answered and said, “What is hidden from you I shall reveal to you” (Gospel of Mary 10).38
As she begins to recount her visionary message both Peter and his brother Andrew express doubts about her veracity and question her authority. Peter objects: “Did he really speak with a woman in private without our knowledge? Should we all turn and listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” (Gospel of Mary 18). Levi, who is better known as Matthew in the New Testament, defends her and rebukes Peter: “If the savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the savior knows her well. That is why he has loved her more than us” (Gospel of Mary 18). The message Mary reveals, in this and many of these other texts, has been characterized as Gnostic, but most scholars consider the term to be problematic. It tends to lump them together as a monolithic whole.39 In our analysis of these texts we are not so much interested in the theological content as the framework of the profile of Mary Magdalene and her prominent status alongside Jesus.
The Gospel of Philip is a beautifully written “gnostic” sermon by the followers of the brilliant 2nd century early Christian mystic and teacher Valentinus. Some have even suggested he is the author of the text. It refers to Mary Magdalene only twice, but both passages are noteworthy:
Three women walked with the master: Mary his mother, [his] sister, and Mary Magdalene, who is called his companion. For “Mary” is the name of his sister, his mother, and his companion. (Gospel of Philip 59:6–10)
The companion of the [savior] is Mary Magdalene. The [savior loved] her more than [all] the disciples, [and he] kissed her often on her [mouth]. The other [disciples] said to him, Why do you love her more than all of us? (Gospel of Philip 63:32–64, 9)
Translated, the word “companion” means his partner or consort. There is a worm hole in the papyrus right at the point where it says Jesus used to kiss Mary often on the . . . ? Most scholars have restored this to “mouth.” Scholars have debated whether this relationship between the two involved sexual intimacy, but it most likely did. It was considered a “sacred union,” but it was nonetheless physical.40
Pistis Sophia contains a series of questions asked of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene has the most prominent role among the disciples. She asks thirty-nine of the forty-six questions and offers elegant teachings about the nature of life in the world. Jesus extravagantly praises her: “Blessed Mary, you whom I shall complete with all the mysteries on high, speak openly, for you are one whose heart is set on heaven’s kingdom more than all your brothers” (Pistis Sophia 18). Peter complains about her, telling Jesus “we cannot endure this woman,” but Jesus praises her pure spiritual insights and declares her the most blessed of all women.
Scholars of these texts generally do not view them as historical accounts. However, they do generally agree that because she is the vehicle for alternative forms of emerging Christianity, her special role in the life of the historical Jesus, more muted in the New Testament gospels, reflects real history. Many of these documents come from the 2nd century CE and are accordingly not so far removed from the earlier Christian oral tradition and the canonical gospels.
We live in an age of rediscovery of long-lost texts and ancient manuscripts that are adding immensely to our understanding of early Christianity. Along with archaeological discoveries of ancient Jerusalem, we have new sources with which to evaluate the evidence found in the Talpiot tombs, especially with regard to Mariamene Mara and her role in Jesus’ life and family.
Given the collective evidence, and particularly the unique tradition that the gospel of John adds to the core story of Mary Magdalene from Mark and Matthew, it seems plausible that the enigmatic figure of Mary Magdalene as first witness to Jesus’ resurrection can be seen alongside the tradition of “Mary of Bethany,” and the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus’ head as well as his feet and dries them with her hair. These acts of intimacy, as is the preparation of his body for burial, are appropriate only for a wife, mother, or a sister. The fact that Mary Magdalene’s first impulse, according to the gospel of John, on seeing Jesus resurrected was to touch him suggests further the intimate relationship between husband and wife. Taken together, these texts and the later 2nd century “gnostic” ones provide us with a broader context in which the evidence from the Talpiot tombs can be read in a new light. The archaeological evidence is clear—Jesus was married and had a son named Judah. To reject the finds of the Garden tomb on the grounds that he could not have been married is a traditional bias based on misguided criteria.
The position of Mary of Bethany in the gospel of John also offers a new interpretive possibility for the names in the Talpiot tomb. If the traditions about her and about Mary Magdalene are confused, as they seem to be in the New Testament gospels, then Mary Magdalene might well have had a sister named Martha. As mentioned earlier, some scholars have read the Mariamene Mara inscription as Mariam and Mara—referring to two women named Mary and Martha. We are convinced otherwise, namely that Mara is more likely a title of honor for Mariamene, but having these two sisters, “Mary and Martha,” buried together in a single ossuary, one the mother of Jesus’ son, the other her unmarried sister, makes for an even closer fit with the thesis that the Talpiot Jesus tomb is the family tomb of Jesus. Interestingly enough, DNA evidence supports either possibility, as we will see in the final chapter, since sisters share the same mitochondrial DNA profiles.
We now turn to a consideration of a seventh inscribed ossuary, besides the six recovered by the IAA in 1980—namely the one inscribed “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” There is compelling new evidence that it also originated in the Talpiot Jesus family tomb. If that is the case, the probabilities of this configuration of names being the tomb of Jesus evolve into a virtual certainty.