[ 2015-03-27 ]

Jesus' marriage to Mary the Magdalene is fact, not fiction – Author
The publication on November 12, 2014 of the book I
[Simcha Jacobovici] co-wrote with Prof. Barrie
Wilson, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text
that Reveals Jesus' Marriage to Mary the
Magdalene, has caused a worldwide theological
firestorm, including demonstrations in India. I
was even the butt of one of Bill O'Reilly's
attacks and have challenged him to an on-air
debate. So far, he's demurred.

I think the reason for all this negativity is that
the proof for the historical marriage between
Jesus of Nazareth and the woman known as Mary the
Magdalene has become overwhelming. Even before our
findings, everything -- everything -- pointed to a
marriage, and nothing -- nothing -- argued for
Jesus' celibacy. The only thing that continues to
argue for Jesus' celibacy is 2000 years of
theological bullying. This may come as a shock to
most people, but the fact is that none of the four
Gospels say that Jesus was celibate. The Gospels
call Jesus "Rabbi" (Matthew 26:49, Mark 10:51,
John 20:16). Rabbis, then as now, are married. If
Jesus wasn't married, someone would have noticed.

The greatest promoter of celibacy for Christians
was Paul. On every other matter of Jewish law --
and Paul was a Jew called Saul at birth -- Paul
was lax. He threw out Kosher laws, ignored Sabbath
observance and prayed that the hands of ritual
circumcisers shake so that they cut off their own
penises when they perform circumcision (Galatians
5:12). Only when it came to sex Paul was more
severe than Moses and Jesus put together. Why? The
answer may lie in Paul's background.

As everyone knows, "Paul of Tarsus" came from
Tarsus, an area of modern-day Turkey. What people
don't know is that in the Tarsus of Paul's day
they worshipped a god named Attis. Perhaps not
coincidentally, Attis was a dying and resurrecting
god. He was called "the Good Shepard", and his
earliest depictions show him with a sheep across
his shoulders. All these images were later
incorporated into the iconography of Paul's
version of Christianity. Put simply, Paul's Jesus
looks a lot like Attis.

Attis had a great love in his life, Cybele. On
their wedding night, Attis decided to make the
supreme sacrifice and offer his testicles on the
altar of his love. He surprised his virgin bride
by castrating himself. This idea was a big hit in
the Tarsus of Paul's day. Attis' priests, the
Galli, would imitate their god by going into a
frenzy, emasculating themselves and offering their
testicles as holy sacrifices. Not surprisingly,
this once-popular religion died out. For his part,
Paul didn't promote literal castration -- although
some early Pauline Christians, e.g. Church Father
Origen, did castrate themselves. In the spirit of
Attis, Paul advocated abstinence and celibacy,
even in marriage (e.g. "It is good for a man not
to touch a woman," 1 Corinthians 7:1). Had Jesus
been celibate, Paul would certainly have invoked
him as an example when arguing for celibacy. But
he doesn't. Never once does Paul argue that
Christians should be celibate, because Jesus was
celibate. Not once!

If one looks at the Gospels without Attis-colored
Pauline glasses, there are many, many hints that
Jesus was married. Specifically, after the
Crucifixion, the Gospels agree that it was Mary
the Magdalene who went early Sunday morning to
wash and anoint Jesus' crucified body (Mark 16:1).
People have the quaint idea that ancient Jews in
Jerusalem went around "anointing" each other. They
didn't. What the Gospels are telling us is that
Mary the Magdalene went to Jesus' tomb to prepare
his body for burial. That's the Gospels, not me.
Then and now, no woman would touch the naked body
of a dead Rabbi, unless she was family. Jesus was
whipped, beat and crucified. No woman would wash
the blood and sweat off his private parts unless
she was his wife.

Besides the canonical Gospels, there are the
so-called "Gnostic" Gospels. The Gnostics -- or
"wisdom seekers" -- were an early branch of
Christianity, whose origins we don't know. What we
do know is that they represent the losers in the
Christian orthodoxy game. After the fourth
century, the Church burnt Gnostic holy books and
the people who believed in them. As a result,
until recently, we had almost no Gnostic Gospels
to refer to.

In 1947, in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, the Gnostics got
their revenge. At that time, several of their
Gospels were found hidden in jars. They all tell
the same story -- Jesus was married. More than
this, for his Gnostic followers, Jesus' marriage
and sexual activity was more important than his
death and resurrection. Simply put, they were more
interested in his passion in bed than in his
"Passion" on the cross.

What does archaeology have to say about a married
Jesus?

In 1980, in Talpiot, just outside of Jerusalem,
archaeologists discovered a 2000-year-old burial
tomb. In the tomb there were ten ossuaries i.e.,
limestone coffins. Six of them were inscribed. One
of them had the Hebrew/Aramaic name "Jesus son of
Joseph" scratched on its side, another "Maria,"
yet another -- "Yose" -- a nickname referred to in
the Gospels as belonging to one of Jesus' brothers
(Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55). A fourth ossuary was
inscribed with the name "Matthew" and a fifth --
the only one in Greek -- with the name
"Mariamene," a Greek version of "Mary" associated
in all of Greek literature with one woman only --
Mary the Magdalene. Even more disturbing for
Pauline Christians, a sixth inscribed ossuary --
apparently of a child -- had the name "Judah, son
of Jesus" carved on it.

So what happened with this paradigm-shifting
discovery? Nothing! Between 1980 and 1996 no
archaeologists even reported the find. It took my
2007 documentary, The Last Tomb of Jesus, and my
co-authored book, The Jesus Family Tomb to propel
the find onto the headlines. And what was the
world's reaction? Again, nothing. In the spirit of
The Life of Brian, according to the scholarly
consensus, the tomb must have belonged to another
Jesus and two other Marys. After all, if you
believe that Jesus is an Attis-type god, he can't
have a coffin, certainly not a wife and not a
child that could've resulted from their sexual
union.

This brings us to our "Lost Gospel". It appears to
be a sixth-century Syriac (Christian Aramaic) text
that is a translation of an earlier Greek text
(fourth or second century) that Prof. Barrie
Wilson and I believe preserves a first-century
tradition. The text, in the rare manuscript
section of the British Library for the past 160
years, is ostensibly about the biblical Joseph, of
multi-colored coat fame, and his obscure wife
Aseneth. But in the Syriac community from which
this Gospel emerged, "Joseph" was a stand-in for
Jesus, and Aseneth, "had many children by the
Crucified" (Hymn 21 of Ephrem the Syrian).
Clearly, we are dealing with a very thinly encoded
text, concealing a Gospel that would otherwise
have been destined for the bonfire.

In our manuscript, Joseph -- a.k.a Jesus -- is
identified with the sign of the cross traced in
blood. Some have argued that this manuscript does
not refer to Jesus. If so, why the sign of the
cross? Why the blood, and why is he explicitly
called the "Son of God"? As for Aseneth, our
manuscript depicts her as living in a "tower." The
Hebrew for "tower" is "Migdal", hence Mary the
Magdalene. It's not her last name, folks. It's a
title. It means "Mary the Tower Lady."

In our Lost Gospel, she is depicted as a Galilean
Phoenician priestess that abandons idolatry after
meeting and falling in love with Jesus. They
marry, but she's not simply "Mrs. Jesus." She is a
partner in redemption referred to as the "Daughter
of God" and "The Bride of God." Our Lost Gospel
states that Jesus and Mary had two children and it
witnesses to the idea that, for their earliest
followers, Jesus and his wife Mary were co-deities
embroiled in the politics of their times.

Pauline Christians can continue to have faith in a
celibate savior who is divorced from his family,
his people and his times. But for me, the most
important revelation in this long ignored
manuscript has to do with a foiled plot on Jesus
and Mary the Magdalene's lives, about 13 years
before the crucifixion. If our historical
sleuthing is correct, this text is a Gospel before
the Gospels and we can finally return Jesus to the
historical context from which Paul removed him.

The Author, Simcha Jacobovici is a three-time
Emmy-winning filmmaker and New York Times
bestselling author. His book on the subject, "The
Lost Gospel", is already on sale. The companion
documentary "Bride of God" will air on Discovery
Science, December 14 and 21.

Source - Huffington Post

... go Back