Let’s get this out of the way first — yes, the source is the Daily Mail, which, I strongly suspect, occasionally makes up “news” articles from scratch.
And I cannot speak to the quality of research in this new book, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene.
But the idea that Jesus was married, perhaps to the woman know to history as Mary Magdalene — who was not a prostitute but, more likely, the sort of well-to-do woman who you often find underwriting spiritual leaders’ work — seems totally plausible to me.
The idea of celibacy for spiritual purposes was foreign to Judaic culture (and still is). Assuming that he was a healthy, thirty-ish man, he would have been married. Period. Village culture would have seen to it.
I think we can say that even while treating as unproven all the hypotheses that Mary M. was a priestess of Canaanite goddess religion (see Robert Graves’ 1946 novel King Jesus); that she after his death went to the South of France, to Egypt, to Glastonbury, or some other place; that she is connected with the medieval “black Madonna” figures; or anything else.
Since this book is being released just ahead of the American Academy of Religion — Society for Biblical Literature joint annual meetings, I expect I might see copies in the book show. Reviews from people who can ready Syriac and Aramaic will follow in due course.
I have seen some tiny, brownish bone fragments purported to be relics of Mary Magdalene in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Salt Lake City, of all places. Maybe Salt Lake could use some Canaanite goddess priestess energy. She happens to be the patroness of that diocese.