Jesus Was Married?

Jesus is in the news again. This time the controversy concerns His alleged marriage. According to the New York Times, Harvard Professor Karen King has a scrap of papyrus with the words, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’”

On September 18, 2012, Professor King announced the discovery of the Coptic papyrus fragment. If the fragment is authentic, it simply means that an early Christian population believed that Jesus was married. Professor King has made it clear that the fourth-century artifact is not implying that Jesus had a wife.

King believes the text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived. The fact that all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question would suggest that the idea of Jesus’ marriage was never a major matter of concern in the early centuries.

Like Professor King, I believe the fragment is authentic. However, that does not mean that Jesus was married. Authenticity of the fragment has to do with the genuineness of the source, not the accuracy of the thing stated. From my research, the necessary checks and balances that have been done to date, give us sufficient reason to believe that the fragment is not fraudulent.

The fragment may have been written sometime between 175 to 200 years after the death of Jesus. We should therefore attempt to find out what were the opinions at that time concerning the subject of Jesus and marriage. Historians tell us the fragment could have been written at a time when there was an intense debate over marriage and Christians.

Actually, around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria declared that believers should emulate Jesus by not marrying. Some twenty years later, Tertullian of Carthage said that Jesus was “entirely unmarried.”

Citing the Gospel of Peter, Dan Brown in his volume The Da Vinci Code, suggests that Jesus was married to Mary of Magdalene. Both the source cited and the writings of Dan Brown are not historically credible. In the first place, The Gospel of Peter is not one of the New Testament gospels. Secondly, it was not written by Peter, the disciple of Jesus. As a matter of fact, it may have been written some 200 years after Peter died. In essence, it is not a reliable source of information about Jesus. Hence, Dan Brown’s work is discredited since it was built on such a foundation. 

In the accounts of Jesus’ life in the Bible, there is no mention of His marital status. The four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, tell the story of Jesus’ birth and early childhood. Following some 18 years of silence, the New Testament then accounts for His three-year ministry before detailing His death, resurrection and ascension. 

According to Professor Darrel Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary, “One could say the text (New Testament) is silent on Jesus’ marital status because there is nothing to say.” Professor Bock believes the fragment is quite similar to Gnostic Gospels – writings of an early sect of Christians. He believes the fragment could be referring to a “Gnostic rite of marriage that is a picture of the church and Jesus, not a real wife of Jesus.”

Using marriage as an analogy, Paul refers to the church as the bride of Christ in the book of Ephesians. Paul contends that husbands should treat their wives as Christ loves and cares for the church.

Like Paul, John uses the bridal imagery to illustrate the meeting of Christ and His church in heaven. In his apocalypse he states “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7).

Christians after the New Testament era would have had access to this teaching of the church as the bride of Christ. Is it possible that with the practice of interpreting the Scriptures allegorically, some could have concluded that Jesus was married? Considering that the essential feature of allegory is that of double meaning, where a detail in the story also stands for something else, I believe it is very likely that Christians in later periods of history may have concluded that Jesus was married.

However, persons who lived and worked with Jesus never hinted at or mentioned anything about His married life. Interestingly, John who wrote the book of Revelation, was one of the closest disciples to Jesus. It was this John who used the imagery of the church as the bride of Christ more than any other New Testament writer. The imagery was intended to highlight the familial bond between Christ and His church. This picture is consummated in the wedding of Christ and His bride in heaven.

That imagery would have been blurred had Jesus been married. The media hype is another case of media sensationalism. Interestingly, such sensationalism would not have been possible, had it not been for the impact Jesus has had on the world for more than 2,000 years.