Did Jesus really get married and have a child? 

Sincerely,

Matt Rimeaunie

No.

Yours,

Rev. Know-It-All

PS:  I suppose you're going to want me to prove my point.

I suspect that you’ve been watching television again and have seen one of those shows that has some crackpot archeologist wearing a silly hat proving that Mary Magdalene invented French cuisine and that she and Jesus started the French monarchy.

I’ve warned you not to get your theology from television.

Even National Geographic seems to have gone off the deep end. I just read an otherwise decent article about Herod the Great in “National G.” that casually mentions two or three times, “the slaughter of every male infant in Bethlehem is a crime of which Herod was almost certainly innocent....” They seem to maintain that Herod couldn’t have done it because it was mentioned in only one source, the Gospel of Matthew, and Herod was just an all around nice guy and a great builder, except for those unpleasant incidents about his killing his own children and wanting to have all the prominent citizens of Israel killed the moment he died, so there would be weeping in Israel. Other than that, the fellow was right as rain.

He was nuts! He went absolutely crazy in his final illness and seems to have been as happy to kill you as to look at you.  The article reconstructs Herod principally using Flavius Josephus. I imagine they report quite a few things for which Josephus is their only source. I am always amazed how we moderns feel that our prejudices are more informed than the ancient sources. Herod must have been a nice guy and Jesus must have married, because, well, that’s easier to believe than the gospel story.

If the story is true, then its moral demands are real, and that would be terribly inconvenient. I might have to stop chasing around on Saturday night and get up for church on Sunday morning.  And just think of the televised football games I’m going to miss and how will I explain to my “live-in companion” that we both may be going to hell? 

Far easier to say that Jesus was just a regular guy, the innocents were never slaughtered. The whole thing’s a fairy tale and there is certainly no hell, so “laissez les bons temps rouler” (That’s Cajun French for “whoopee!!” It’s the motto of the New Orleans Mardi Gras during which women expose themselves to collect plastic necklaces.)

My point is this; we moderns want to say that Jesus doesn’t really matter, so do what you please. That is, I believe, a large part of the reason we deny that Scripture can possibly be an accurate historical source. 

The line of reasoning espoused by TV scholars is that the Bible is a collection of the prejudices of old clergymen trying to control the “Jesus Movement” for their own profit. It never occurs to us enlightened moderns that we deny the consistent tradition because of our own prejudices. As for those crabby old apostles like Peter and Paul, they certainly benefited with imprisonments, poverty, whippings, and finally martyrdom. 

We think ourselves modern and sophisticated. Left to our own devices we are nothing more than cave men who have  gotten our hands on atom bombs. Now on to your question.

Did Jesus get married and have a child? 

The simple answer is “no.” 

That was a bit of a problem for the early church. The Messiah was supposed to be married and have a child. It was a requirement.  He was to re-establish the Davidic family on the throne. That’s why sick, old, paranoid Herod, crazed by his final illness killed the babies in Bethlehem. The Davidic Messiah was to come from Bethlehem. When Herod heard rumors spread by members of an Iranian think tank, spies more or less called “magi,” he had no problem killing a few babies from the old royal family of David, thus solving the problem once and for all.

Where was I? 

Oh yes, the messiah that the Jews expected was merely human. He would come, reestablish the Davidic kingdom, purify the temple and the priesthood, restore the manna, reveal the lost ark of the covenant , bring justice to the land, give the Romans what they deserved and then die, leaving the throne to his son. 

What we Christians believe is that they got more than they bargained for. God did not simply send a prophet. He sent His own heart, His own LOGOS, what we earthlings can only call “His Son,” enfleshed in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, who thus became a new ark of the covenant.  No son was necessary for the messiah. He would occupy His throne eternally, immortally. 

This didn’t sit very well with Jesus’ relatives who were looking for their piece of the pie.  

In Chicago it is said that the true city motto is not “urbs in horto” (trans. “City in a garden”) It is really “Ubi est meum?”  (trans. “Where is mine?”) Jesus’ relatives  would have felt right at home in the Windy City. I digress.

No wife is mentioned in the Scriptures, and no wife is mentioned even in the later gnostic gospels which were written decades, possibly centuries after the fact. It is clear, however, that Jesus had no children. Had he children they would most certainly have been mentioned in the texts, orthodox and gnostic because the messiah was supposed to have children. 

What we have is a group of people called the “desposyne” a Greek word meaning “family of the master.” I suspect that some of them traveled about wondering what was for dinner and taking up special collections. They were after all descended from the royal family of David and were the next of kin to the Messiah. We read about them in the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles ( Acts 1:14) and the letters of St. Paul (1Cor. 9:5). These brethren of the Lord were perhaps cousins of Jesus or children of Joseph by a first  wife who had died.

It was never suggested by any early author until Helvidius in 380 AD that they were children of Joseph and Mary. The idea was rejected as “novel and wicked.” Certainly Mary stood alone at the foot of the cross and went to live with St. John as the Scriptures attest, so she seems to have had no other children in the scriptural record. 

These relatives of Jesus were quite prominent in the first days of the Church and the bishops of Jerusalem were descended from the relatives of Jesus for generations, the point here being that if Jesus had a child he would have been the bishop of Jerusalem, or she would have been the wife of the bishop of Jerusalem or some such. Nothing of the kind happened.

A great deal is made of the “secret knowledge” hidden by the church, hid for millennia, but preserved by such noble gnostics as the “Priory of Zion.” Look up the Priory of Zion. It was an organization invented by a French loon in the 1950's and 60's. He wanted to be the king of France and thus claimed descent from Jesus. He had a false document planted in the French national library and went public. A whole industry has popped up since producing such literary and scholarly  masterpieces as the “Da Vinci Code” and “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”. 

The fantasies are popular, simply because they do not demand a moral response. 

The Scriptures are attacked because they do. 

So once again, I would suggest that you get your theology and history from places other than the television.

Rev. Know-It-All