Holy Blood, Holy Grail (49 page)

Church would have survived.

The Gospel of Luke is dated by scholars at around A.D. 80. Luke himself appears to have been a Greek doctor, who composed his work for a high-ranking Roman official at Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine.

For Luke, too, therefore, it would have been necessary to placate and appease the Romans and transfer the blame elsewhere. By the time the Gospel of Matthew was composed approximately A.D. 85 such a

transference seems to have been accepted as an established fact and gone unquestioned. More than half of Matthew’s Gospel, in fact, is derived directly from Mark’s, although it was composed originally in Greek and reflects specifically

Greek characteristics. The author seems to have been a Jew, quite possibly a refugee from Palestine. He is not to be confused with the disciple named

Matthew, who would have lived much earlier and would probably have known only Aramaic.

The Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew are known collectively as the

“Synoptic Gospels’, implying that they see “eye to eye’ or “with one

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eye’ which of course, they do not. Nevertheless there is enough overlap between them to suggest that they derived from a single common source -either an oral tradition or some other document subsequently lost. This distinguishes them from the Gospel of John, which betrays significantly different origins.

Nothing whatever is known about the author of the Fourth Gospel.

Indeed there is no reason to assume his name was John. Except for John the

Baptist, the name John is mentioned at no point in the Gospel itself, and its attribution to a man called John is generally accepted as later tradition. The Fourth Gospel is the latest of those in the New Testament composed around A.D. 100 in the vicinity of the Greek city of Ephesus. It displays a number of quite distinctive features. There is no nativity scene, for example, no description whatever of Jesus’s birth, and the opening is almost Gnostic in character. The text is of a decidedly more mystical nature than the other Gospels, and the content differs as well.

The other Gospels, for instance, concentrate primarily on Jesus’s activities in the northern province of Galilee and reflect what appears to be only a second- or third-hand knowledge of events to the south, in Judaea and Jerusalem including the Crucifixion. The Fourth Gospel, in contrast, says relatively little about Galilee. It dwells exhaustively on the events in Judaea and Jerusalem which concluded Jesus’s career, and its account of the Crucifixion may well rest ultimately on some first-hand eye-witness testimony. It also contains a number of episodes and incidents which do not figure in the other Gospels at all the wedding at Cana, the roles of

Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and the raising of Lazarus (although the last was once included in Mark’s Gospel). On the basis of such factors modern scholars have suggested that the Gospel of John, despite its late composition, may well be the most reliable and historically accurate of the four. More than the other Gospels, it seems to draw upon traditions current among contemporaries of Jesus, as well as other material unavailable to

Mark, Luke and Matthew. One modern researcher points out that it reflects an apparently first-hand topographical knowledge of Jerusalem prior to the revolt of A.D. 66. The same author concludes, “Behind the Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the other Gospels.” This is not an isolated opinion. In fact, it is the most

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prevalent in modern Biblical scholarship. According to another writer, “The Gospel of

John, though not adhering to the Markian chronological framework and being much later in date, appears to know a tradition concerning Jesus that must be primitive and authentic.”e

On the basis of our own research we, too, concluded that the Fourth Gospel was the most reliable of the books in the New Testament even though it, like the others, had been subjected to doctoring, editing, expurgation and revision. In our inquiry we had occasion to drew upon all four Gospels, and much collateral material as well. But it was in the Fourth Gospel that we found the most persuasive evidence for our, as yet, tentative hypothesis.

The Marital Status of Jesus

It was not our intention to discredit the Gospels. We sought only to winnow through them to locate certain fragments of possible or probable truth and extract them from the matrix of embroidery surrounding them. We were seeking fragments, moreover, of a very precise character fragments that might attest to a marriage between Jesus and the woman known as the Magdalene.

Such attestations, needless to say, would not be explicit. In order to find them, we realised, we would be obliged to read between the lines, fill in certain gaps, account for certain caesuras and ellipses. We would have to deal with omissions, with innuendoes, with references that were, at best, oblique. And we would not only have to look for evidence of a marriage. We would also have to look for evidence of circumstances that might have been conducive to a marriage. Our inquiry would thus have to encompass a number of distinct but closely related questions. We began with the most obvious of them.

1) Is there any evidence in the Gospels, direct or indirect, to suggest that Jesus was indeed married?

There is, of course, no explicit statement to the effect that he was.

On the other hand, there is no explicit statement to the effect that he was not and iris is both more curious and more significant than it might first appear. As Dr. Geza Vermes of Oxford University points

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out, “There is complete silence in the Gospels concerning the marital status of Jesus .. . Such a state of affairs is sufficiently unusual in ancient Jewry to prompt further enquiry.”9

The Gospels state that many of the disciples Peter, for example were married. And at no point does Jesus himself advocate celibacy. On the contrary, in the Gospel of Matthew he declares, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female .. . For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” (19:4-5J Such a statement can hardly be reconciled with an injunction to celibacy. And if Jesus did not preach celibacy, there is no reason either to suppose that he practised it.

According to Judaic custom at the time it was not only usual, but almost mandatory, that a man be married. Except among certain Essenes in certain communities, celibacy was vigorously condemned. During the late first century, one Jewish writer even compared deliberate celibacy with murder, and he does not seem to have been alone in this attitude.

And it was as obligatory for a Jewish father to find a wife for his son as it was to ensure that his son be circumcised.

If Jesus were not married, this fact would have been glaringly conspicuous.

It would have drawn attention to itself, and been used to characterise and identify him. It would have set him apart, in some significant sense, from his contemporaries. If this were the case, surely one at least of the

Gospel accounts would make some mention of so marked a deviation from custom? If Jesus were indeed as celibate as later tradition claims, it is extraordinary that there is no reference to any such celibacy. The absence of any such reference strongly suggests that Jesus, as far as the question of celibacy was concerned, conformed to the conventions of his time and culture -suggests, in short, that he was married. This alone would satisfactorily explain the silence of the Gospels on the matter. The argument is summarised by a respected contemporary theological scholar:

Granted the cultural background as witnessed .. . it is highly improbable that Jesus was not married well before the beginning of his public ministry.

If he had insisted upon celibacy, it would have created a stir, a

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reaction which would have left some trace. So, the lack of mention of

Jesus’s marriage in the Gospels is a strong argument not against but for the hypothesis of marriage, because any practice or advocacy of voluntary celibacy would in the Jewish context of the time have been so unusual as to have attracted much attention and comment.”

The hypothesis of marriage becomes all the more tenable by virtue of the title of “Rabbi’, which is frequently applied to Jesus in the Gospels. It is possible, of course, that this term is employed in its very broadest sense, meaning simply a self-appointed teacher.-But Jesus’s literacy his display of knowledge to the elders in the Temple, for example strongly suggests that he was more than a self-appointed teacher. It suggests that he underwent some species of formal rabbinical training and was officially recognised as a rabbi. This would conform to tradition, which depicts Jesus as a rabbi in the strict sense of the word.

But if Jesus was a rabbi in the strict sense of the word, a marriage would not only have been likely, but virtually certain. The Jewish Mishnaic Law is quite explicit on the subject:

“An unmarried man may not be a teacher.””

In the Fourth Gospel there is an episode related to a marriage which may, in fact, have been Jesus’s own. This episode is, of course, the wedding at

Cana - a familiar enough story. But for all its familiarity, there are certain salient questions attending it which warrant consideration.

From the account in the Fourth Gospel, the wedding at Cana would seem to be a modest local ceremony a typical village wedding, whose bride and groom remain anonymous. To this wedding Jesus is specifically “called’ which is slightly curious perhaps, for he has not yet really embarked on his ministry. More curious still, however, is the fact that his mother

“just happens’, as it were, to be present. And her presence would seem to be taken for granted. It is certainly not in any way explained.

What is more, it is Mary who not merely suggests to her son, but in effect orders him, to replenish the wine. She behaves quite as if she were the hostess: “And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus with unto him,

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They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” (John 2:3-4) But

Mary, thoroughly unperturbed, ignores her son’s protest:

“His mother saith unto the servants, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” (5) And the servants promptly comply quite as if they were accustomed to receiving orders from both Mary and Jesus.

Despite Jesus’s ostensible attempt to disown her, Mary prevails; and Jesus thereupon performs his first major miracle, the transmutation of water into wine. So far as the Gospels are concerned, he has not hitherto displayed his powers; and there is no reason for Mary to assume he even possesses them. But even if there were, why should such unique and holy gifts be employed for so banal a purpose? Why should Mary make such a request of her son? More important still, why should two “guests’ at a wedding take on themselves the responsibility of catering a responsibility that, by custom, should be reserved for the host? Unless, of course, the wedding at

Cana is Jesus’s own wedding. In that case, it would indeed be his responsibility to replenish the wine.

There is further evidence that the wedding at Cana is in fact Jesus’s own.

Immediately after the miracle has been performed, the “governor of the feast’ - a kind of majordomo or master of ceremonies tastes the newly produced wine, “the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:9-10; our italics.) These words would clearly seem to be addressed to Jesus. According to the Gospel, however, they are addressed to the

‘bridegroom’. An obvious conclusion is that Jesus and the ‘bridegroom’ are one and the same.

The Wife of Jesus

2)

If Jesus was married, is there any indication in the Gospels of the identity of his wife?

On first consideration there would appear to be two possible candidates

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two women, apart from his mother, who are mentioned repeatedly in the Gospels as being of his entourage. The first of these is the Magdalene or, more precisely, Mary from the village of Migdal, or Magdala, in Galilee. In all four Gospels this woman’s role is singularly ambiguous and seems to have been deliberately obscured. In the accounts of Mark and Matthew she is not mentioned by name until quite late.

When she does appear it is in Judaea, at the time of the Crucifixion, and she is numbered among Jesus’s followers. In the Gospel of Luke, however, she appears relatively early in Jesus ‘s ministry, while he is still preaching in Galilee. It would thus seem that she accompanies him from Galilee to

Judaea or, if not, that she at least moves between the two provinces as readily as he does. This in itself strongly suggests that she was married to someone. In the Palestine of Jesus’s time it would have been unthinkable for an unmarried woman to travel unaccompanied -and, even more so, to travel unaccompanied with a religious teacher and his entourage. A number of traditions seem to have taken cognisance of this potentially embarrassing fact.

Thus it is sometimes claimed that the Magdalene was married to one of Jesus’s disciples. If that were the case, however, her special relationship with Jesus and her proximity to him would have rendered both of them subject to suspicions, if not charges, of adultery.

Popular tradition notwithstanding, the Magdalene is not, at any point in any of the Gospels, said to be a prostitute. When she is first mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, she is described as a woman “out of whom went seven devils’. It is generally assumed that this phrase refers to a species of exorcism on Jesus’s part, implying the Magdalene was

“possessed’. But the phrase may equally refer to some sort of conversion and/or ritual initiation. The cult of Ishtar or Astarte the Mother Goddess and “Queen of Heaven’

involved, for example, a seven-stage initiation. Prior to her affiliation with Jesus, the Magdalene may well have been associated with such a cult. Migdal, or Magdala, was the