The Wife of Jesus: Ancient Texts and Modern Scandals

AVERAGE JOE

Concerning a man who loves his wife as himself, who honors her more than himself, who guides his sons and daughters in the right path and arranges for them to be married near the period of their puberty, Scripture says: And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace.

– TALMUD, YEBAMOTH 62B

We can say with a high degree of confidence that many of Jesus’ disciples were married. We can also say that at least some of Jesus’ brothers were married. We think that Paul was not married (at least during his missionary career) because he thinks that this is worth mentioning. This confirms what historians know of marriage in Jewish antiquity. Marriage was the rule – indeed, it was so common that one might not ever find reference to a religious leader’s wife. This “detail” was simply not considered noteworthy. Paul is an outlier to this cultural norm, and so his choice not to marry is noteworthy. Really, it is quite possible that Paul had been married at some point. It was not uncommon for women to marry directly after puberty and die before they reached twenty-five years of age.¹

In the previous chapter, I suggested that marriage in Jesus’ culture would not have been the result of two people falling in love. I also suggested that the decision to marry would have been made for the good of the clan, not merely for the two people concerned. That said, the burden of finding the right match would have been primarily in the hands of two people: the fathers of the groom and bride. It is also important to recognize that the benefits of a good marriage would be enjoyed by two primary people: father and son. In Jesus’ culture, as with many ancient societies, the most important relationship in the clan was that of the father and son. With this in mind, I will focus here on the kinds of motives and considerations that Jesus’ father might have had. I will also discuss matters related to the average age of marriage in Jewish antiquity and the average life expectancy. These will be important considerations if we assume that Jesus was about thirty years of age when he began his public career as a preacher.² I will also suggest that Joseph probably lived to see his son reach puberty – that is, he lived long enough to be burdened with the responsibility of finding Jesus a wife.

I consider the sociological evidence put forth in this chapter to be the best argument for a historical wife of Jesus. This chapter will not offer the final word, but I think it does offer a few reasons to take the possibility seriously.

JESUS, SON OF JESUS

In the centuries after Judaism and Christianity parted ways, the Jewish rabbis evolved in a few different directions. Amid this diversity of Jewish thought, we have records of rabbinic conversations that took written form in at least two distinct times and places. These are commonly referred to as the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds. Both these conversational threads discuss marriage at length.

The Babylonian Talmud, taking final written form in Babylon (modern-day Iraq, around 600 C.E., but also stemming from earlier times), tells us that the ideal age for men to marry was quite young by modern standards. Consider this conversation:

Rabbi Huna was behaving according to his own saying when he said: “A man of twenty who has not married spends all his days in sin” … So too it is taught by the school of Rabbi Yishmael: “Up to twenty years, the Holy One – blessed be He – sits and watches for a man, when he should marry a wife. When his twentieth year arrives and he has still not married, He says, ‘May his bones blow away.’” … Rabbi Ḥisda said, “I desired more than my colleagues to marry at sixteen. Had I married at fourteen I could have said to Satan, ‘An arrow in your eye!’”³

For the Babylonian rabbis, marriage was the only acceptable outlet for sexual desire. Developing a sexual identity outside of marriage was dangerously close to sin. For this reason, marrying young was virtuous. Here we see that the age of twenty was the upper limit for marriage. In such conversations, we hear the ages eighteen and twenty repeated often. Singleness beyond the early twenties was seen as a pressing problem.

It should also be noted that the standards for rabbis and regular people might have been different. This Babylonian Jewish conversation reflects a deep concern for focus on religious study without sexual distractions. Marriage directly after puberty, some thought, would tame a young man’s sex drive. Conversely, some Babylonian rabbis believed in celibacy, arguing that a wife might distract them from religious study. In general, though, common men were closer to the ideal when they married young.

In many cases, the Babylonian rabbis are too far removed from first-century Judea to represent the values of Jesus’ contemporaries. But, in this case, the value placed on early marriage may well represent a longstanding ideal. From before the Babylonian exile (c. 600 B.C.E.) to the writings of the Babylonian rabbis (c. 600 C.E.) there were those within Judaism who thought that marriage directly after puberty was ideal.⁴ But, as I will discuss below, we must remain very cautious when applying rabbinic ideals to first-century life.⁵

The ideal of early marriage is probably directly related to life expectancy. Measuring life expectancy in the ancient world is a tricky business, but a few general claims can be made. Judging from over three hundred census returns from Roman-occupied Egypt, we estimate that the average life expectancy was between twenty and thirty years. This number is skewed, however, by high infant-mortality rates. One in three babies died within the first year of life. One in two children did not live past ten years. If a child was fortunate enough to live to age ten, her/his chances of living to forty were roughly 60 percent. She or he would have a 50 percent chance of seeing the age of forty-five.⁶

These statistics, of course, cannot speak to individual lives. They can, however, suggest a general outlook – and such expectations would have impacted marriage customs. Marriage customs and progeny would have been an absolute must for the survival of the collective. If a father could not assume that his fifteen-year-old son would live past forty, early marriage would have the virtue of better ensuring children.

But not every period in the history of Judaism reflects this ideal. The Jerusalem Talmud, generally thought to have taken written form one hundred to two hundred years earlier than the Babylonian Talmud, complicates this generalization of early marriage. While the ideal ages of eighteen and twenty are commonly mentioned among the Jerusalem rabbis, it was not uncommon for men to marry closer to thirty. One rabbi suggests a range that caps at forty.⁷ So the Jerusalem and Babylonian rabbis seem to differ on the ideal age of marriage.

Another difference between the two schools of rabbis is that the earlier rabbis seem to have no prominent supporters for celibacy. These rabbis viewed marriage as a way to become a civic contributor, and that this was good for the society at large. Financial and social well-being flowed from the marriage union. As we saw in the last chapter, the centrality of family for financial and social well-being was a value inherited from early Judaism. It is worth reiterating Carol Meyers’ succinct assessment that “family was inextricably connected with its landholdings.”⁸ With respect to the motivation for marriage, the Jerusalem rabbis probably reflect a longstanding ideology. Securing a match for one’s son (especially one’s eldest son) was tied to economic security and the hope for continued security. One can see why a father might seek a match for his son sooner rather than later.

But do these conversations tell us anything about marriage ideals or practices during Jesus’ time? In order to answer this, we will need examples closer to the first century. One example comes to us from the Dead Sea Scrolls. This library of texts represents religious conversations (and sometimes practices) of a Jewish group that existed prior to, contemporary to, and shortly after the time of Jesus. So the Dead Sea Scrolls provide a window into some Jewish beliefs and practices during the time of Jesus.

One of the fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls tells us that a young man who wants to join the group “must not approach a woman for sex before he is fully twenty years old, when he knows right from wrong.” The text continues to describe the membership of a young man’s potential wife: “With the marriage act she, for her part, is received into adult membership.”⁹ Again we see the age of twenty connected with marriage, but this time twenty seems to be on the lower end of the ideal.

It is also worth noting that this, again, shows only an ideal. This scroll is interesting nonetheless because it confirms that the ideal age held by the Jerusalem rabbis was known during the time of Jesus. More importantly, the age of twenty is explicitly given as the minimum. The group that collected (and authored) the Dead Sea Scrolls is generally thought to be very suspicious of gentile culture. In this case, however, the group seems to reflect the common Roman practice of late marriage (mid-twenties to thirties). This fragment confirms what many scholars say of first-century Jewish culture: “men married for the first time in their mid-to late twenties.”¹⁰

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of fragments and documents that were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many of these texts were early versions of the Hebrew Bible and visions of a coming apocalypse. Other texts discuss rules for living in a religious sect called the “Yahad.” This group seems to have gathered documents from all over Judea (and perhaps beyond) and kept them in clay jars. They also authored many of the documents themselves. The geographical area where the scroll were found is called Khirbet Qumran, not far from the Dead Sea.

Scholars debate how common marriage was practiced in this community. It was once thought that this group was celibate as a rule. Indeed there is some evidence that celibacy was practiced. However, the text mentioned in this chapter, and the bones of women and children found at the archeological site, caution against any definitive statements about their marriage practices.

A more concrete example of marriage practices for the upper class comes to us from an archeological discovery in 1960. Archeologist Yigael Yadin unearthed a leather bag in a cave near the Dead Sea that contained personal and legal documents belonging to a wealthy woman named Babatha. One of these documents is a marriage contract between Babatha and her first husband. His name was “Jesus, son of Jesus.”¹¹ This Jesus, it seems, was about twenty years of age when he married Babatha.

These documents also confirm that many people during this period died between ages twenty and thirty. Death at around age thirty created greater chances for remarriage, polygamy, child-custody complications, and estate disputes for widows. Jesus, son of Jesus, seems to have died less than five years after his marriage, leaving Babatha one son (also named Jesus). This example simultaneously demonstrates the problems associated with later marriage and the reality that many Jews of upper-class status did not adhere to the ideal of teenage marriage. The legal documents of Babatha also show that many wealthy Jews of this period were beholden to Roman law. Babatha kept these documents (written in Greek) in order to appeal to the Roman authorities in matters of property and familial dispute. With this in mind, it is necessary to say a brief word about Roman society and law.

Jews during the time of Jesus lived within the social matrix of the Roman Empire. Many Jews struggled to maintain a distinct society within this matrix, but all Jews lived in relationship or reaction to Rome. During Jesus’ time, many Romans lamented the rise of singleness and childlessness among their citizens. There was a move by some Roman officials to return to the “good old days” of traditional marriage and family. In response to the increased popularity of singleness and/or childlessness, Augustus (63 B.C.E.–14 C.E.) introduced laws that penalized celibacy and encouraged progeny.¹² It is probable that these laws were targeted at social elites, but they would have influenced the lives of all classes. Men between the ages of twenty-five and sixty were expected to sire children. Women were expected to produce children between the ages of twenty and fifty. These age ranges provide further evidence of a social norm in the first century. Young adults were expected to marry and produce children in their early twenties and these pressures increased (to the point of legal obligation) in their late twenties.¹³

It could very well be that poor Jewish families did not need legal pressures and incentives to encourage marriage and family. Perhaps many poor Jews practiced teenage marriage and prolific child production, as was the ideal from early Israel to the medieval rabbis. But whether or not Jesus’ family was poor and traditional or wealthy and economically tied to Rome, there would have been strong social expectations for marriage and family.

WHAT’S IN A NUMBER?

Amid a wide variety of eras, places, ideologies, and classes, most Jews of the post-biblical period held the age of twenty as important. Why?

Many rabbis used the age of twenty to measure the upper limit of puberty. If a boy does not produce two pubic hairs by the age of twenty, he can be declared a “eunuch.” If a girl does not produce two pubic hairs by this age, she can be declared “sterile.” One rabbinic text claims, “All the same is a boy nine years and one day old and one who is twenty years old but has not produced two pubic hairs.”¹⁴ The point of agreement in these Jewish texts is that the age of twenty (most commonly) is when a man is mature enough for marriage. Most males would have reached marriage readiness long before twenty; twenty years probably represents the upper limit of marriage readiness.

Before returning this discussion to Jesus, one last point is crucial. Michael Satlow writes: “For Galilean Jews, according to the Palestinian Talmud, honor was more important than money. Few events held more potential for the transfer of honor than marriage.”¹⁵ The pressure on a father to find the proper match for his children must have been enormous. The pressure to find a match for his eldest son, the one who would eventually provide spiritual guidance and financial security for the entire family, might have no parallel in Western culture. If this marriage contract fails in a way that brings shame to the family, it might have long-term consequences for one’s family in the community at large. With this in mind, it is easy to see the benefits for securing a match for one’s children early. In Jesus’ culture, “early” was probably close to twenty years old.

JESUS, SON OF JOSEPH

Jesus’ first thirty years will always be a source of curiosity. Aside from brief details of Jesus’ family, and that he is a craftsman from Galilee, we have very little to go on. Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems to be an important character in the story of Jesus’ public career. We also, as seen above, hear mention of Jesus’ siblings. But what of Joseph?

Matthew, Luke, and John all mention Joseph, but Mark (the earliest of the four biblical Gospels) never refers to him. Perhaps the fact that Jesus’ brother is named “Joses” (a short form of the name Joseph) suggests that Joseph was a family name, but why is Joseph not listed alongside his mother and brothers in Mark? Most historians have speculated that Joseph died before Jesus began his public career (thus, before Jesus was about thirty). But is this argument well based?

It seems that some people claimed that Jesus was born out of wedlock or was foreign born. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ adversaries imply that Jesus’ father is unknown.¹⁶ This claim paints a picture of a Jesus who is not fully Jewish. Matthew’s Gospel seems to be pushing back against similar accusations. Perhaps this debate about Jesus’ legitimacy was due to Joseph’s absence. But this will have to remain speculative. What we can say is that Jesus was considered by some to be illegitimate. There might be several reasons for this; the absence of Joseph being only one of them.¹⁷

There have been traditional debates about the family of Jesus. Some of these debates, emerging from the fourth century C.E., focus on the perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Those arguing for Mary’s lifelong abstinence claimed that Jesus’ “brothers” were half-brothers or cousins. But the view held by most scholars is that Jesus had at least four brothers and at least two sisters. Unless one is committed to the doctrine of Mary’s lifelong virginity, there is no reason to think that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were anything other than the biological children of Mary and Joseph.

It is possible that Joseph died when Jesus was under the age of ten, but the most likely guess is that he lived at least long enough to see Jesus reach puberty. While Luke’s story about the Jerusalem rabbis teaching the twelve-year-old Jesus is generally taken as legend, this story corroborates the claim that Joseph was alive long enough to see Jesus approach maturity. Luke writes that Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.”¹⁸ This suggests that Jesus was approaching maturity before Joseph’s departure from the story. Taken by itself, Luke’s statement is inconclusive. But taken alongside the fact that Joseph had at least seven children, it is reasonable to assume that Joseph was present for most (if not all) of Jesus’ childhood.

If so – if Joseph lived to see his eldest son approach maturity, he would have probably sought to arrange a match. This does not mean that Jesus was married, but given what we know of the standard ages for marriage (twenty to thirty), it would have been a pressing concern. Moreover, because Jesus was the eldest, it would have been a pressing concern for the whole family. It is also worth noting that mothers might have been more active in the matchmaking process than our records show. Mary herself could have pursued a match for Jesus, if Joseph had already died. This is not to say that either Mary or Joseph took steps in this direction, but they would have certainly felt societal pressure to do so.

CHALLENGES

The New Testament does not tell us that Jesus was married. But it also does not tell us if he ever skipped a stone, or laughed, or learned to dance, or countless other things that would have been common to the human experience. Are we to conclude that Jesus never whistled a tune just because the Gospels do not say so?

It is entirely possible that Jesus married during his twenties and that the Gospels just do not provide this information. Perhaps it simply wasn’t relevant for their portraits of Jesus. Perhaps he married and his wife died before Jesus became a public figure. Getting married was just a natural stage of life – it would have been remarkable if Jesus never experienced this stage. So, I would argue that our default position should be that he did skip stones, and whistle tunes, and that he did get married − unless we have good reason to think otherwise.

It just so happens that we might have a few good reasons to think otherwise. These will be addressed in the next chapter.