It is a Quest and not a Conquest.
– DAGMAR WINTER
Before Jesus rode into Jerusalem, before his clever stories gave way to righteous indignation, before he marched hell-bent toward fate, he was just another overzealous, drawling preacher from up north. At least, this is how he would have seemed to the people of Jerusalem. Indeed, before his crew of castoffs entered the city, few people in Jerusalem knew much about him. Chances are that they’d never heard of him before. But Jesus would soon draw quite a crowd. Jesus preached politics and accused religious luminaries of corruption. There were rumors of faith healings, demons, and revolution … and who were all of these women with him?
Those who wondered who he was and what he stood for wanted to know, “By what authority are you doing these things?” Witty to the last, Jesus replied with a question of his own. He asked about the famous John the Baptist: was John’s authority endorsed by God, or not? In other words, Jesus was asking, “Was John a prophet or a fake?” The leaders of Jerusalem knew better than to disparage the recently executed Baptizer. John, it seems, was the famous one. Long before Jesus was making outlandish claims in the holiest place on Earth, he was just riding the camel-haired coattails of John the Baptist.
So this is how Jesus introduced himself to the leaders of Jerusalem. This is how the biblical Gospels introduce Jesus as well. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – all begin their stories of Jesus with an endorsement from John. A great many historical Jesus scholars argue that John was Jesus’ mentor. And so I begin this book in the same way. Whatever their relationship, these two prophets had enormous respect for one another.
Jesus and John had a great deal in common. If we look to their portraits in the New Testament, both preached repentance and about the politics of God. Both were rumored to be the messiah of Israel. Luke’s Gospel even claims that they were cousins. In fact, one of the only noticeable differences between Jesus and John concerned carnality.
It seems that John was against creature comforts; he shunned fine clothing, avoided feasts, ate sparingly, and refused wine. Most scholars believe that John chose an “ascetic” lifestyle. Asceticism is the belief that a new and better self can emerge when a person withdraws from normal life. Ascetics often deprived themselves of worldly comforts and pleasures such as fine clothing, food, wine, sex, marriage, family, and so on.
This is where the topic of John the Baptist gets interesting. Did he, as we would expect from an ascetic, choose a life of celibacy? We don’t know if the Baptist was celibate, but he does seem to fit the profile. After all, he had withdrawn from society. He lived in the wilderness and foraged food from bees and bugs.
The vast majority of Jewish men, especially religious leaders, were married. There are very few examples of celibate Jewish men in the first century. The few Jewish men who did choose celibacy in the first century were ascetics. One could say that asceticism and celibacy fit hand-in-glove.1
John’s general lifestyle seems to be that of an ascetic and this, in all likelihood, would have included celibacy. And so this is the stance that many historians have taken: John was probably the rare example of a single, Jewish religious leader.
Jesus, on the other hand, was not an ascetic. New Testament scholar Dale B. Martin lists examples of Jewish asceticism that might have included celibacy in or near the first century. Noticing that these examples tend to show extreme concerns for purity of worship, abstinence from feasts and wine, and/or a general retreat from society, he writes that “we now know of several forms of Jewish asceticism current in Jesus’ day. But Jesus fits none of them.”2
More to this point, Jesus allowed patrons to support his ministry. Luke’s Gospel tells us that wealthy women supported Jesus and that he accepted their hospitality. The end of Mark’s Gospel reveals that several of these women traveled with Jesus. Mary Magdalene and a woman named “Salome” were included among Jesus’ traveling companions. The Gospel of Thomas claims that Jesus accepted Salome’s hospitality, including food and a comfortable place to recline and discuss discipleship while he ate. John the Baptist, by every indication we have, did not accept such comforts. Indeed, John’s retreat from social normalcy was so extreme that he was demonized. Luke’s Gospel includes this saying from Jesus: “For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine; and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”3
While they had a great deal in common, the one noticeable difference was that Jesus (as compared to John) gained a reputation for hedonism. Jesus accepted patronage, befriended wealthy and generous people, attended their feasts, drank their wine, and – yes – he brought women with him. It is, then, no mystery as to why Jesus gained the reputation of a “glutton and a drunkard.” By almost every indication, Jesus was the mirror opposite to John’s asceticism.
John, we think, chose celibacy for ascetic reasons.
Did Jesus?
THE FORGE OF CULTURE
A large portion of this book will offer arguments for and against a possible wife of Jesus. I will also explore various (ancient and modern) attempts to project sexual ethics onto Jesus. As our most celebrated and despised cultural icon, Jesus is always being remade to suit various social norms. That is what this book is about. The title “Wife of Jesus” suggests two things to me. First, it indicates a quest for an answer to the question “Was Jesus married?” Second, it indicates a cultural construct of the modern Christianized West. In this second sense, this book is about a topic that reveals our simultaneous fascination with and repulsion of the idea that Jesus might have been married.
Historians, when the topic relates to Jesus, tarry on that perilous border between the traditional icon and the ever-emerging iconoclast. Our various Jesuses are employed to lobby for our agendas. This has been most recognizable in recent years as debates over sex, gender, and family have come to center stage in the Christianized West. We who live in the wake of Christendom have leveraged Jesus’ legacy for a variety of causes and reasons.
For better or worse, we will continue to project our sexual norms and aspirations for progress onto the historical Jesus. Jesus will not remain silent on the subjects of sex, gender, and family. He won’t remain silent because the Christianized West will not afford him that right. Jesus lobbies on both sides. The recognition of this dynamic, coupled with our ongoing fascination with Jesus’ marital status, motivated me to write this book.
The wife of Jesus is a topic that ancient Christians explored and the Christianized West continues to explore, often haphazardly. Both ancient and recent controversies about the wife of Jesus reflect cultural obsessions and sexual taboos. So, in many ways, this book is an exploration of the evolving sexual identity of the Christianized West. But it is also about Jesus and the possibility that he was married.
There is perhaps no historical topic so fascinating to the general public that is so seldom addressed by professional historians. Fictions, films, and forgeries continue to raise our collective hope for some indication that Jesus was married. A predictable media swell now finds a pressure valve once every four or five years. All the while voices from the ivory tower tell the general public that they shouldn’t care. But, and this has always been the case, historians don’t have the luxury of autonomy (in fact, luxuries of all kinds seem to elude us). We can, at times, guide conversations, but we are also guided by the spirit of the times we inhabit.
This book, in addition to being prompted by an intriguing topic, is a response to cultural demands. Our questions about a possible wife of Jesus serve as a kind of cultural mirror. As we introduce new portraits of Jesus in popular novels, films, and so on, we also introduce a great deal of ourselves to these portraits.
In Bill Watterson’s insightful (almost prophetic) comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” he describes the troubling truth of writing history.4 Calvin, a six-year-old boy with an overactive imagination and a self-awareness beyond his years, discusses historical revisionism with his friend Hobbes. Calvin observes, “History is the fiction that we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction.” He continues to explain a key concept in postmodern historiography, this being the problem of “reinterpretation” when cultural values change. “We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices,” argues Calvin. The punchline of the comic reveals that our favorite six-year-old is writing a revisionist autobiography.
Calvin is undoubtedly correct that “events are always reinterpreted when values change.” But, as the punch line hints, historians must bring integrity to these cultural conversations, or risk absurdity. If our integrity cannot be measured by the foundations of past reality, it must be measured by our moral obligation to the present. To this end, I am reminded of the words of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi:
The burden of building a bridge to his people remains with the historian. I do not know for certain that this will be possible. I am convinced only that first the historian must truly desire it and then try to act accordingly … What historians choose to study and write about is obviously part of the problem. The notion that everything in the past is worth knowing “for its own sake” is a mythology of modern historians, as is the lingering suspicion that conscious responsibility toward the living concerns of the group must result in history that is less scholarly or “scientific.” … Who, then, can be expected to step into the breach, if not the historian?5
The popularity of the topic of the wife of Jesus in our collective imagination demands a response from historians. Moreover, this topic deserves a response that builds a bridge between our collective imagination and historical memory. Yerushalmi knows what all historians ought to know: that we define ourselves by the histories we highlight. I think that there is no better time than now to have a clearer portrait of Jesus’ sexuality.
This book is not another attempt to discover or invent an ancient personality who we can marry to Jesus. It is not a biography; how could it be?
I will put forward what I believe are the best arguments for and against a married Jesus. So, in this regard, I’m writing just another historical Jesus book. But no historical Jesus book is just about an ancient “him” – or, in this case, an ancient “her and him.” At the same time, I am not immune to the intriguing possibility of a particular, historical wife of Jesus.
While this book is indeed about the possibility of a wife of Jesus, it is just as much about us: the Christianized West. Being a member of the Christianized West myself – and fascinated by the question of Jesus’ sexuality – I acknowledge at the start that this topic is as much about “me and us” as it is about “her and him.”
CHALLENGES
The various quests for the historical Jesus have always provided mirrors through which to view our own reflections. We’ve learned a great deal about the Jesus of history in these pursuits, but we’ve also learned a great deal about ourselves. We attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct our cultural icons because we want to know how we got here and why. Is it any wonder that we sexually preoccupied Westerners feel the need to rethink the sexuality of Jesus?
It is the quest for the wife of Jesus that intrigues – for the journey it will provide, not for the destination it might promise. So, as well as addressing the question ‘was Jesus married?’, this book will also attempt to answer the question: what does it say about us that we’re so fascinated and repulsed by this possibility?
In the first century, many of Jesus’ contemporaries were scandalized by the ascetic way of life. Indeed, the choice to avoid bread and wine made some people openly hostile to John the Baptist. John chose a life of asceticism and his contemporaries thought he had a demon. We tend to use more modern insults when we demonize each other, but those first-century debates over carnality versus asceticism have a great deal in common with our debates over tradition versus progress. Both then and now, Jesus is indicted and venerated by the company he keeps.