\u201cThis fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,\u201d Dr. [Karen] King said. \u201cThere was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Was or was it not Mary Magdalene, that is the question. Or was she just a well-off woman who helped to finance the ministry, as so often happens? Or as the Gnostic gospels suggest, one of the disciples \u2014 maybe one with special privileges \u2014 which brings us back to the question of her possible spousal status. Or were there two Marys \u2014 Magdalene the patroness and Mary the wife?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You don’t think a good Jewish boy from a peasant culture got to be thirty years old without being married, do you? Now there is textual evidence that suggests that he was. \u201cThis fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,\u201d Dr. [Karen] King said. \u201cThere was, we already know, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,51],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity","tag-judaism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1ck","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7932,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7932","url_meta":{"origin":4608,"position":0},"title":"Assessing a New Book on Jesus’ Wife","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to think that of course Jesus was married \u2014 what normal 1st-century small-town Jewish man would not be married? Answer: most of the Essenes, to name one group. The perennial interest in an actual bloodline of his descendents is periodically stoked by books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1605986100","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6866,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6866","url_meta":{"origin":4608,"position":1},"title":"Jesus [Heart] Mary Magdalene (Again)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's get this out of the way first \u2014 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'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"lostgospel","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/lostgospel.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=93","url_meta":{"origin":4608,"position":2},"title":"Drat that Mary Magdalene","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More attempted damage control from the Christian right to the fuss raised by The Da Vinci Code, about which I blogged earlier on Dec. 9, 2003. Here, AP writer Richard N. Ostling writes a fairly snide review of Karen L. King's The Gospel of Mary Magdala: Jesus and the First\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":550,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=550","url_meta":{"origin":4608,"position":3},"title":"Voodoo and Halloween and New\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Voodoo and Halloween and New OrleansSome Christian web sites are linking to the ABC news item about Hurricane Katrina allegedly killing the retail voodoo-supply business in New Orleans. Plans for today's celebration continue, however.Some Pagan Witches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast find themselves more accepted after Katrina. Halloween partiers, meanwhile,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":664,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=664","url_meta":{"origin":4608,"position":4},"title":"A Pagan's perspective on The\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A Pagan's perspective on The Da Vinci CodeThe most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper is that a Pagan was asked to join the \"panel of religious experts.\"The most serious problem according to the panel - a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4645,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4645","url_meta":{"origin":4608,"position":5},"title":"Following Up the Hint of Jesus’ Wife","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The\u00a0 recent announcement of a bit of Coptic writing that apparently referred to Jesus' wife has stirred up plenty of controversy. Was the inscription really as old as claimed? Was it a forgery? Did it really mean \"wife\"? At the Bulletin for the Study of Religion blog, Ian Brown will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4610,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions\/4610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}