“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
– GEORGE (MARY ANNE EVANS) ELIOT
I am well aware that many of my readers will have picked up this book to see what I have to say about a literal wife of Jesus. While the topics covered in these pages have been much broader in scope, I have tried to offer my best arguments for and against the possibility of a married Jesus. This chapter will offer a summary of these arguments and tie together several threads that have run throughout. My hope is that I can provide a clearer picture of my answer to the question “Was Jesus married?”.
If you skipped ahead to read this chapter first, shame on you and bless you! Shame on you for your impatience, and bless you for skipping all of the sordid and scandalous stories revealed over the course of this book. You’ve missed my reading of the pillow talk between Jesus and Salome. You’ve missed my discussion of ritual kissing between Jesus and Mary. You’ve missed my take on the recently publicized Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. You’ve missed my analysis of Jesus the polygamist and the gay Jesus. Shamefully and happily, you’ve missed my argument that Jesus offered a subversive alternative to “civic masculinity.” This book, in large part, has been about ancient and modern attempts to project sexual identities onto Jesus.
Much of what follows in this chapter will rely on the research put forth in chapters 6 through 9 of this book. By way of warning, if you have not followed my explanations of collectivism, civic masculinity, and eschatology, my summary here might be hard to follow. Nevertheless, this chapter will draw together the key themes of the second half of this book.
THE CASE FOR A HISTORICAL WIFE OF JESUS
Historians of ancient cultures and figures must not succumb to the desire to fill in every gap left by historical memory. In keeping with one of the key themes of chapters 2 through 4, sometimes the problem of silence must remain a problem. Conjecture can damage the very legacies that we hope to commemorate. In keeping with one of the key themes of chapters 3 through 5, there is always the risk of projecting our own agendas and aspirations onto the figures of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
As a case in point, there is very little we can say with confidence about Mary Magdalene. What of her family? What of her social status? If she was among the wealthy supporters of Jesus’ mission, does this imply an elite social standing? I cannot make any such claim with confidence. A historical fiction from the thirteenth century may portray Mary Magdalene as a wealthy princess, but I must take that for what it is: fiction. Even if some of our early evidence hints that Mary might have been wealthy, there is still no warrant for making such a claim.
Mary’s social status is an example of a particular point of data that defies any confident assertion. But not every gap in historical memory is of this ilk. Some gaps can be filled in – with confidence – without specific data. Sometimes, historical memory is fortified by our knowledge of common practices within a society.
For example, consider the question: Was Jesus breastfed? It might seem like an odd query, but it is relevant to this chapter in multiple ways. Its primary relevance is that it is a query that can be answered positively without any data specific to Jesus. Indeed, while the nursing Madonna became prominent in fourteenth-century Italy,1 historians have very little data on this particular point of fact that is specific to Jesus. The Proto-Gospel of James portrays the infant Jesus breastfeeding. In this narrative, Jesus “went and took the breast from his mother Mary.”2 But, of course, this second-century text is a historical fiction and cannot be read as history (in our usual sense of that genre).
The Gospel of Luke contains this exchange between Jesus and a woman who called out from his audience:
One of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed.” But he said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”3
The Gospel of Thomas conveys a related conversation:
In the crowd a woman says to him: “Blessed is the womb which bore you and the breast which fed you!” He said to her: “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and keep it! In truth, days are coming when you will say: Blessed is the womb that has not brought forth and those breasts which have not given suck!”4
In my view, this saying very plausibly reflects Jesus’ downplay of blood relationships and biological progeny. In other words, this conversation cannot be reduced to mere fiction; it reflects history. Here the anonymous woman assumes that Jesus was breastfed and (indirectly) blesses Mary, his mother. Even so, assumptions do not always represent historical facts. Jesus does not confirm or deny her assumption. Even if he did, should we imagine that Jesus remembered his own infancy?
In the case of the question “Was Jesus breastfed?” our earliest and best sources do not convince us of any fact specific to Jesus. But we can conclude, on other grounds, that Jesus was, in fact, breastfed. This we can claim as historical fact for the simple reason that socio-typical study tells us so.5 We should imagine that all first-century Galilean children who survived infancy were breastfed, unless we have reason to think otherwise. There is no reason to think that Jesus was an exception to the rule in this case. It is, then, ironic that the fictional portrait in the Proto-Gospel of James of Jesus being nursed conveys a historical probability. In spite of its genre – that being fiction – it corroborates a historical fact. Here I underscore a matter of historical method: we tend to fill in the gaps. While novelists do so with the tools of fiction, historians do so with the tools of sociology, anthropology, archeology, and so on. We can arrive at historical facts based on what we know of common practice in a given culture.
The question Was Jesus married? is very much like the question Was Jesus breastfed? The two questions are not perfectly analogous, but the comparison might be helpful to convey how foundational marriage actually was for Jesus’ culture and religious integrity. To underscore a key theme of chapters 6 and 7: marriage was a cultural given. It was ubiquitous. It was seen as a foundational element of honoring one’s parents and the lifeblood of one’s ancestors. It was a path to economic integrity and manhood. Marriage was considered necessary for the survival of one’s people in a culture where the survival of one’s people was the highest ideal, the greatest good. We should imagine that almost every first-century Galilean who lived to age thirty was married, unless we have reason to think otherwise. Both breastfeeding and marriage were practiced to ensure survival.
Awkward as it might seem to us in the Christianized West, our default setting has been wrong. Our default setting has been to assume that Jesus was celibate because he was too holy for sex. But most people in Jesus’ culture would have considered celibacy to be altogether unholy. Multiple rabbis recite and comment on a sermon called “In Praise of a Wife”:
There are twelve good measures in the world, and any man who does not have a wife in his house who is good in her deeds is prevented from enjoying all of them. He dwells without good, without happiness, without blessing, without peace, without a help, without atonement, without a wall, without Torah, without life, without satisfaction, without wealth, without a crown.6
While the form of this sermon postdates the time of Jesus, the sentiments of the sermon are quite ancient. Marriage was a path to holiness, it was an avenue to civic contribution and economic stability, and it was a way to extend the lifeblood of one’s patriarchs into the future. In Jesus’ culture, honor was bound to marriage and family. Indeed, the first divine blessing and command to humanity implies marriage and progeny. God instructs the man and the woman, “Be fruitful and multiply.”7 As an extension of God’s fruitfulness in creating, the creatures made in the divine image are commanded to be fruitful in progeny. This fundamental feature of Judaism made marriage a given for holiness and (oftentimes) a requirement. Some rabbis instructed men to find a match for their sons while the father’s hands were “still on the neck” of their sons.8 The practice of early matchmaking allowed the father to receive honor by extending the longevity of his family (and of Israel at large) through his sons.
While this ideal does not necessarily reflect the thinking of Jesus’ parents, it reminds us that Jesus was subject to the will and wishes of his family when he was young. We should be aware that Jesus’ parents would have been expected to find a wife for him. Jesus’ thoughts about his marital status would have been only one factor in a family decision. For the sake of illustration, it would be much more likely that Jesus was married in early adulthood and that his wife died in childbirth (as was all too common); it would be far less likely that he would have dishonored his father and mother and rejected the Abrahamic blessing of progeny.
If the New Testament was truly silent about Jesus’ sexuality, our most cautious move would be to settle at the default setting. Given no further clues about Jesus’ views on marriage and family, we would be compelled to conclude that Jesus was married based on socio-typical practice.
JUDAISM AND JESUS
I must say a word about Jesus’ lifelong commitment to Judaism and the well-being of the Jewish people. My argument against a married Jesus is primarily found in chapter 8 of this book, where I demonstrate how strange Jesus’ views on marriage, family, honor, and economics must have seemed to his kinsfolk. Moreover, I suggest that Jesus’ lifestyle would have run contrary to some very foundational Jewish beliefs and practices. I did not foresee such an unexpected turn in my research when I began writing this book. I am surprised that the Jesus revealed to me in my research has, at times, seemed so “anti-family.”
So I reiterate a point that I made in chapter 1: in Jesus’ day there was a wide variety of Jewish expressions. The fact that Jesus challenged some of these expressions does not make him any less Jewish. In fact, it probably situates him quite comfortably within the line of Jewish prophets and wisdom teachers. I have no doubt that some of his contemporaries accused him of being an outsider and a foreigner, but the earliest followers of Jesus – those who knew him best – knew that he was from and for the people of Israel.
The historical Jesus does not transcend or outmode the religious expressions of Israel. I think Jesus knew that his teachings about marriage and family were subversive, but he did not think of himself as “anti-Jewish.” For that matter, I doubt that he saw himself as “anti-family.” My perspective, no doubt, is limited by my own cultural categories, and the category “anti-family” is probably an egregious misstep. At the same time, I can only see with my own eyes.
I will offer one more point along these lines. Many of Jesus’ subversive statements about masculinity, economics, progeny, and so on, would have scandalized most gentiles in the ancient Mediterranean. Romans who continued to support the marriage and family incentives of Caesar Augustus would have been especially scandalized by Jesus’ teachings. If Jesus was an iconoclast, he was a Jewish iconoclast first and foremost.
THE CASE AGAINST A HISTORICAL WIFE OF JESUS
In chapter 7, I observe that the age of twenty is an important transitional point for Jewish men concerning their readiness for marriage. I suggest that most first-century Jewish men were married between the ages of twenty and thirty. This emphasis on the ideal age (while not always indicative of practice) seems to survive into the rabbinic period. While the rabbis vary in their instructions, the chief virtue of the age of twenty was that it represented the upper limit of puberty.9 Jesus’ parents would have probably started to consider a marriage for Jesus soon after this transition.
What I did not discuss at length was the rabbinic significance of the age of thirty. This list of “life stages” is probably too late to offer much help, but it will assist in illustrating an important point:
At 5 years old one is fit for the Scripture, At 10 for the Mishnah,
At 13 for the fulfilling of the commandments,
At 15 for the Talmud,
At 18 for the bride-chamber,
At 20 for pursuing a calling,
At 30 for authority,
At 40 for discernment,
At 50 for counsel,
At 60 to be an elder,
At 70 for grey hairs,
At 80 for special strength,
At 90 for bowed back,
At 100 a man is as one that has already died.10
At first glance, this list seems to confirm what we generally assume about ideals for marriage shortly after puberty. The two-year gap between the bride-chamber (age eighteen) and pursuing a calling (age twenty) suggests that a young man would live with his bride within his parent’s house even before he was ready for the demands of full-fledged adulthood.
But a closer look at this list reveals two things that caution us against any definitive argument on the basis of life stages. First, notice how idealized and generalized these numbers are. After the age of eighteen, these stages are represented in generic decades. Second, as discussed in chapter 7, studies of life expectancy suggest that very few people lived past sixty years. Are we to imagine that there were so few qualified elders? Probably not.
The better solution is to see these numbers as symbolic.11 The ages of thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty are symbols of maturity of mind. Perhaps they were seen as milestones, as they are understood in many cultures, but they are not to be taken literally. We should not read this list and imagine that people would literally obtain “discernment” ten years after they obtained “authority,” or that their hair wouldn’t grey earlier than age seventy.
If so – if life stages were generally symbolic – the Gospel of Luke’s general assertion that Jesus was “about thirty” may well be symbolic.12 Perhaps Jesus was closer to his mid-twenties, and Luke simply means to convey that Jesus was ready for authority. Conversely, Jesus may have been in his early to mid-thirties. This qualification is important because any argument about Jesus’ marital status based on typical marriage practices and typical marriage ages must remain tentative without a firm assertion of Jesus’ age.
If we are cautious, no firm conclusions can be drawn concerning Luke’s motives for the generality “about thirty.” Likewise, we should be cautious not to give too much weight to the assumption that Jesus was close to the upper limit of marriage expectations. It would be safe to say that Jesus was firmly within the marriage-age range when he began his preaching career, but we cannot say exactly how old Jesus was when he began his subversive teachings about marriage and family.
This is where the analogy with the question “Was Jesus breastfed?” must be qualified. We can say with confidence that Jesus was an infant and was nourished like an infant. Jesus would have had no choice in this. He would, however, have had more to say about a potential marriage match (although the will and wishes of the young man should not be overstated). Marriage, like mother’s milk, was a cultural given, and the burden of survival would have been on the shoulders of the parents of the clan. But, in Jesus’ time and place, we do have precedents for celibacy.13
Striking to the heart of the matter, we cannot say when Jesus first decided to downplay the importance of what I have termed “civic masculinity” (biological family, economic responsibility, religious continuity related to land ownership, and so on). Could it be that Jesus inherited his nonconformist views of civic masculinity from John the Baptist? The Gospel of Luke portrays the preaching of the Baptist like this:
He said therefore to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”14
In Luke’s portrait, John the Baptist commands his audience to birth the metaphorical fruits of repentance to prepare for judgment day. Is this metaphorical bearing of fruit to be heard in contrast to literal childbearing? Did the Baptist mean to say that the biological fathers and sons of Israel were as unimportant as rocks? Or did he mean to say that the fathers and sons of Israel were defined by the land, not owners of the land?15 Whatever the case, John the Baptist seems to be challenging a traditional understanding of patriarchy and progeny.
Did Jesus grow up in a traditional household, with traditional views of marriage and family, until he met John the Baptist? Perhaps it is impossible to disentangle the influence of Jesus, the Baptist, and the Lukan editor in our accounting of this unique ideology. Who influenced whom is a question that must remain open-ended. What can be asserted with confidence is that Jesus was remembered for his nonconformity concerning marriage and family.
As seen above, Jesus was remembered for saying something along these lines: “In truth, days are coming when you will say: Blessed is the womb that has not brought forth and those breasts which have not given suck!”16 Even if Jesus never phrased the sentiment in exactly these terms, this saying fits well with the general impression that he left.
The Jesus we find in the Gospels had a very strange interpretation of “honoring” of one’s father and mother. I will here set together a variety of sayings (some of which have been discussed in chapter 8). Again, I’m more interested in illustrating the general impression left by Jesus:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”17
Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”18
And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” And he said to them, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”19
And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!”20
And Jesus said to [his mother], “O woman, what have you to do with me?”21
These statements and others like them are found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and suggest that Jesus valued his eschatological mission over and against his own family relationships. Given the social implications of such a subversive stance, many of Jesus’ contemporaries would have thought him insane. Indeed, when Jesus brought his new “family” of disciples to his hometown, his family “went out to seize him, for people were saying, ‘He is beside himself.’”22 In this portrait, Jesus looks to be the sort of son who brought shame upon his biological family.
These (sometimes embarrassing) impressions of Jesus indicate that he acted independently from the wishes of his family, particularly his parents. So when the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Thomas depict a woman calling out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed,”23 and depict Jesus contradicting this blessing of Mary, we are given further evidence that Jesus had a strange idea about what it looked like to honor one’s parents.
According to Luke, Jesus says, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”24 This saying conveys a feature characteristic of Jesus’ teaching: the true family of God is tied together not by blood but by faithfulness to the instructions of Israel’s scriptures.
This might seem an ironic statement coming from Jesus. As I discussed in chapter 8, Jesus seems to have an awkward relationship with Moses’ fifth commandment: “Honor your father and mother …” But perhaps the key here is the emphasis on metaphoric family. If Jesus’ “true family” is his eschatological community, he cannot be accused of dishonoring his biological father and mother. If this reading is close to the mark, Jesus may well have brought shame upon his biological family (from one perspective) yet still thought of his mission as honorable.25
The Gospel of Thomas appends this statement to Jesus’ contradictory blessing: “Blessed is the womb that has not brought forth and those breasts which have not given suck!” This dubious blessing probably reflects Jesus’ view of final judgment. Jesus’ mission seems to have been focused on the return of God as judge and a final utopia. This “blessing” of barren wombs and breasts might reflect Jesus’ belief that God’s judgment is very near. But what is most telling is that Jesus has not rendered this teaching in the form of a curse.
For example, the prophetic book of Hosea proclaims the curse of “no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!” The prophet asks the Lord to give the indicted people a “miscarrying womb and dry breasts.”26 In a culture where progeny meant survival and honor, such a curse would be heard as a death sentence – and, even worse, a fatal shaming.
For Jesus to call barren wombs and breasts a “blessing” indicates a subversive notion of family and honor. Recalling my argument in chapter 8, Jesus’ subversion of “civic masculinity” suggests that he was the rare example of a Jewish religious leader who encouraged celibacy. It could be that Jesus’ vision of Israel’s utopia did not include marriage. When Jesus was asked about this by fellow Jews who did not believe in life after death, Jesus said that people who rise from the dead “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”27 In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:
The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.28
In proclaiming that the heavenly rule of God was close enough to touch, Jesus began to enact certain symbols that pointed to his prophetic vision. He promoted eschatological feasts, formed a spiritual “family,” and he (most likely) forsook literal marriage in favor of his mission. This may well provide us with the necessary context for his praise of “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”29 Jesus encouraged his followers to accept this teaching, knowing that it would have seemed a subversion of the norms of civic masculinity. As I have argued in chapter 8, Jesus’ subversive message about marriage and family was part and parcel of his teaching about economic and patriarchal honor systems:
Peter said, “See, we have left our own and followed you.” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.”30
In short, our earliest and best sources for the life of Jesus do not give us the portrait of a teacher who instructed men to become civic patrons. Given all of this evidence, the pertinent question remains: Did Jesus practice what he preached? I think that he probably did.
This, of course, does not prove that Jesus was unmarried before his preaching career. It does, however, make it very difficult to imagine that he was married to Mary Magdalene or to any of his followers. In his career as a religious leader – short-lived as it was – Jesus was a sexual nonconformist. Specifically, he had invested in the two-sided coin of economic disobligation and celibacy.
CHALLENGES
In my introduction and chapter 1, I surveyed the evolution of Christian thinking about Jesus’ sexuality. As misogynistic and fear-driven notions of sexuality evolved, the sexual identity of Jesus devolved. The second-century ascetics, I argued, arrived at a celibate Jesus with weak reasoning. Their ascetic Jesus – the Jesus who never defecated, left footprints, or wed – was a fiction of their own projections. While they may have been unwittingly correct about Jesus’ marital status, their rationale was illegitimate.
We in the Christianized West inherited our iconic Jesus from Christian asceticism. And here we arrive at an irony too thick to ignore: even though our assumptions about Jesus were wrong all along, we were unwittingly close to the right answer about Jesus. The celibate Jesus of our iconographic imagination was a fiction. But, in spite of ourselves, we were probably right about Jesus’ marital status, at least concerning his public career.
This little book is just one step along the way toward a better solution. The quest for the wife of Jesus will be ongoing and will produce a variety of conclusions. On this point I am certain. But perhaps some of the talking points raised in this book will serve as a guide for future historical constructs.
While this might seem an anticlimax for a book titled The Wife of Jesus, I would challenge my readers to remember that the “why” questions of history are just as important as the “what” questions. Jesus was not celibate because sex is sinful or because the Church has claimed status as the wife of Jesus. If true – if our most celebrated and despised icon was celibate for other reasons – we in the Christianized West will do well to reconsider our misogynistic and fear-driven notions of sexuality. Perhaps our notions of civic masculinity will become causalities on our continued quest for the wife of Jesus.
