Question 50 – Was Jesus married?

Many questions exist concerning Jesus and his life that we do not have the space in which to discuss. One among them is prominent and concerns his humanity, specifically sex and marriage. I would at lest like to respond briefly to this question. Did Jesus have a wife? Some people say that he did. After all, it is normal. "He was "just" a man," they say. There is nothing wrong with sex.

This idea was mainly popularised worldwide through the novel, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Under the guise of authenticity, it tries to develop the notion that the church has, for hundreds of years, tried to cover up Jesus' affair. At other times, news items on Internet portals spread the idea that some unclear, ancient fragments of texts exist that indicate that Jesus loved a woman (most often this relationship is credited to Mary Magdalene).

I am not going to deal with individual evidence and the logical inconsistencies of these theories. I will only note down the following to these ideas:

• This myth has no theological, historical, or Biblical basis.
• It is not possible to find the information and credibly prove it from any existing historical records that are trustworthy.
• If Jesus had married, the Bible would have recorded it (or at least indicated it). The Bible would not have stayed silent about something so important.
• The only suggestion (given a great amount of imagination and a good amount of violation of the text) that could support these conjectures is found in several small gnostic gospels (the apocrypha) of which we have already said are unreliable and in most cases are considered to be fabrications.
• The reality that someone in history wrote something does not mean that it was the truth. It could have been written with the intent to lie. The Bible itself contains many warnings and indications that there are people who try to twist and deform the picture of God and Jesus. Thus, we also find them in various apocrypha whose reliability can not be compared to the true Biblical sources.
• Concerning the popular work of Dan Brown, it must be said that this work is not precise and is invented, and has "coloured" many details. The sad fact is that it appears to be authentic and in this way many uninformed people have accepted it as true.
• The obvious question is, to where do these attempts to take away Jesus' deity lead? If we lose the picture of perfect God living a pure life, then the uniqueness and holiness of his very person that conveys his deity is lost…

Summation

No matter how unsubstantiated and highly speculative this idea is (and such similar ones), it finds fertile ground in people's thoughts. However, those who examine and judge such questions without prejudice must reject them on the basis of available and historical proof.