The Book Group is reading The Book of Longings, a historical fiction novel about Ana, the wife of Jesus of Nazareth. This prompts the question: “Was Jesus married?” You may have read a book like Holy Blood, Holy Grail or The DaVinci Code which portrayed Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife, or you may even have listened to a tape of Bishop John Shelby Spong’s more Biblical analysis that concluded Jesus was married.

Sometimes what is not said is important. I was nineteen when I first decided Jesus had been married. This was more a romantic teenager’s gut reaction against the idea of illegitimacy than any real knowledge of Jesus’ time. My argument then was that nothing in the bible indicated he was not married. Little did I see this logic as my first glimmering of Biblical historical criticism which has since become a passion. The principle involved is simple: if Jesus had not been married, it is more likely than not that someone – a gospel writer, the Apostle Paul or one of his imitators, a noncanonical writer, or one of the Early Church Fathers – would have mentioned this important fact. The more I read, the more convinced I am that no one who knew Jesus or knew someone who knew Jesus ever recorded that he defied the strong custom that a good Jewish boy should be married by his late teens. Jesus’ early followers did not remark that he was a bachelor or that he modeled celibacy. So, without arguing a host of details, I maintain – with many others more learned than I – that Jesus was married. Who his wife might have been and what might have happened to her are questions for another day.

From Lyn Pickhover, Searcher