“Only in fairly recent times have people speculated that Mary and Jesus were lovers, e.g., The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Baigent et al, 1982), the dream sequence in The Last Temptation of Christ.”
I think this was also a belief of the gnostics, and is in the “gnostic gospels” although its vague how large a part those “gospels” played in christian history.
I don’t think the idea of the Knights Templar being the “guardians of Jesus’ descendants” is any older than the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail personally, abeck. That rotten.com have it listed under “conspiracies” is telling.
It’s been SPECULATED that Jesus’ brother ,James,took Mary Magdelane as a wife after Jesus’ death.He & Peter were having
quite the political battle as to who would take over as head of the
movement.James wanted to keep the hebraic traditions & practices,one of which gives the eldest surviving brother authority & posession of the deceased brothers properties, charges & family.Any spouse or betrothed would be included.This would have created the legendary"Holy Blood Line". While there’s no concrete evidence that Jesus & Mary Magdalene were married,
certain Jewish laws required a man of his station to be married.
unmarried men could’nt be called"Rabbi",and not only did his disciples & followers call Jesus by that title,but members of the Sanheddrin(sic).
unmarried men weren’t allowed to teach children.
if a man wasn’t married by the age of 30,it was a shame to him & his family.“Let him perish"was the community thought toward such a person.
Joseph,Jesus earthly father,would be responsible to see that his son met the above criteria or would’ve faced public ridicule.
His only recourse would be to disown his son publicly,& that in itself would have discredited Jesus to the general public.
Another incident in the scriptures invoving a woman who may or may not have been Mary Magdelane magnifies the heart of our Saviour. The woman who was being stoned for adultery,where Jesus told the crowd gathered"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and in some gospels he began to write their sins in the dust as they approached,then told the woman"your accusers are gone" and "I accuse you not"or words to that effect as he bade her “Go,& sin no more”.
IF this woman was Mary Magdelane & IF she was betrothed to Jesus,this incident comes into a new light.THe crowd,righteous in
carrying out Jewish law that demanded an adulterous woman be stoned,might have thought that they were serving their "rabbi"by
executing his unfaithful woman.Jesus forgiving Mary for such a transgression could have stemmed from his understanding of her frustration/confusion/bewilderment at what kind of man she was
betrothed to.Major reading betwen the lines there.
So if James took Magdalene as a wife,& they had offspring,they could be the lengendary bloodline that the “Knights of the Templar” supposedly protected.There’s an odd play on the words
“Holy Grail” aka “San Greal”. Change one letter position & you have “Sang Real”…Royal Blood.
Speculation abounds behind this subject,& while I won’t say it’s fact,it is possible…
Hey,“Kennedy”
I"ll “go” where and when I please.
Enough evidence exists to merit investigation & discussion of the subject,if only to prove or disprove it’s veracity.
Neither of which has as of yet been done.
It’s your right to dispute & dismiss this & any other idea you choose.
It’s also your right to bury your head in the sand.
That’s the beauty of living in a free society.
Actually, all the gospels say is that he wrote (or drew) in the dust. None of them say what it was that he was writing. Certainly, you can speculate that he might have been recording their sins, but that’s no more than speculation.
No, there’s just a shitload of lies and non-sequiturs.
As I say, provide evidence or go away. And, just in case there’s any misunderstanding, citations from “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” or websites (unless maintained by qualified scholars) aren’t evidence.
I SPECULATE that their children are a race of mutant super-beings who live among us plotting to take over the world.
Baseless speculation is just irrelevant. There’s absolutely no whiff of any credible evidence that this speculation actually happened. A million other things could have happened. This speculation has no particular status among all those other possibilities.
If you had any familiarity with the primary source of knowledge of Jesus’ life (i.e., the four Gospels), you’d know the Jesus’ execution was engineered by some of the Jewish religious leaders of the time precisely because Jesus was breaking Jewish law. Jesus even changed the ten commandments for pete’s sake. You think that lesser Jewish customs, such as being married by the time you’re thirty, was going to be a top priority for him?
Only those religious leaders who respected Jesus, or, who wanted to trap him in legal arguments used the title ‘Rabbi.’
Some were suspecting that Jesus was the Messiah, or at least a prophet (and prophecy in Israel had been outlawed for centuries), so, it’s not surprising he would be called, at least, ‘Rabbi.’
So, basically, your arguments are full of holes (plus they’re old ones discussed and argued and laid to rest decades ago) and your SPECULATIONS are unsubstantiated titillations, which is why, John W. Kennedy so rightly compared them to the National Enquirer.
Hey guys, it’s a legitimate question whether Jesus and Mary M. were a couple and had kids. Even Cecil said “coulda been”.
and abeck’s correct in his comment that this is not a new idea. How far back? Where? Good questions, I’ll see what cites I can dig up.
Personally, IIRC the first time I ran across the idea that Jesus also lived a mortal life and travelled abroad and lived in the Near East had a family and lived after the crucifixion was in a series of books written nearly a hundred years ago by Baird T. Spalding after spending several years in Tibet on a scientific expedition. He and his team supposedly interpreted some VERY old scrolls which included many observations recorded about Jesus’ life there before and after the cross.
The fact or fiction of his writing are irrelevent IMO because the point is that this is NOT a new idea, ie: 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Grail=offspring is a whole other can of worms. Too much for here.
BTW Dan it’s a really good idea around these parts to provide some credible sources when you offer knowledge or facts. The claims you make are relatively common knowledge and have been debated to exhaustion. The problem is that NO-ONE has any solid facts as evidence one way or another. Note that I am not disagreeing with your “speculations”. I for one don’t find it that implausible.
I would love to see you or anyone provide something concrete regarding the matter. I’ve studied this idea for years and have yet to find anything REAL, other than literature written well after the fact. Sadly much of our recorded history has been destroyed either by accident or worse, on purpose.
The show that was on tonight had some interesting stuff. Esp. the “lost” books found in Egypt that include references to Mary M.
The idea of her being in “The Last Supper” that was new to me. Of course it’s a painting done after the fact so it isn’t worth anything as evidence. Interesting none the less.
Therefore, I kinda agree with Unca Cece … coulda been.
Since this is a “Comment on Cecil’s Column”, I’ll leave it at that.
T-Keela,
Thank you for the warm welcome.
Thank you for pointing out that my claims are fairly common knowledge & have been exhaustively debated.
I would like to see concrete evidence that proves or disproves it.
What exists only creates controversy & unanswered questions.
And Moriah,I’m very familiar with the "Laws"that Jesus was 'breaking"per se,and am glad he did!
And does anybody really find it implausable that James wouldn’t invoke Jewish Law & custom to it’s fullest to claim the head of the
movement?
AS I closed my first thread:I WON’T say it’s fact, it is(however)
possible
It’s more than that. Rabbinical Judaism was only just being born at the time, among the sect of the Pharisees, who came to dominate Judaism only after the disaster of A.D. 70 left them with the only viable program. To complain that Jesus must have followed the later rules of a minority sect that was only then beginning to define itself is just plain silly.
Insisting that Jesus must have followed the rules of a minority sect that only became dominant in Judaism 30 or more years after Jesus’s ministry on earth ended is no more “plain silly” than demanding that a Hebrew textual tradition that was not codified until centuries after the first century CE must be accepted by Christians over the Septuagint.
Who requires the Masoretic (Hebrew, aka M) text be accepted over the Septuagint (Greek, aka LXX)? Catholic bibles don’t. And a professor of mine, who was on the board for the translation of the New Revised Standard Version, would tell how he would chide his Protestant peers if they were becoming too M-centric. Apparently, they were supposed to keep an eye on all ancient witnesses.
<< If you had any familiarity with the primary source of knowledge of Jesus’ life (i.e., the four Gospels), you’d know the Jesus’ execution was engineered by some of the Jewish religious leaders of the time precisely because Jesus was breaking Jewish law. Jesus even changed the ten commandments for pete’s sake. >>
I’ll respectfully disagree, moriah. Jesus did NOT break the Ten Commandments, nor did he suggest others break them. He wanted them enforced more strictly – not only should you not commit adultery, you shouldn’t even think about committing adultery. This is NOT breaking Jewish law, this is applying Jewish law even more strictly.
Now, after his execution, Paul reports that Jesus THEN says it’s OK to break Jewish laws, but that’s AFTER the trial and sentencing, not before.
Assuming that you mean that analogy in a way that makes sense, I entirely agree that it would be very silly indeed to maintain that the primitive church “must have” observed the Protestant canon, a belief that is, as far as I know, restricted only to the most deluded fundamentalists.
You’re conflating my claim that: 1) Jewish leaders were engineering Jesus’ death because he was breaking laws (from their point of view) with the next sentence that, 2) Jesus changed the commandments.
I am not saying that Jesus broke the commandments. At least not as they were originally meant. As John W. Kennedy points out, Jesus healed on the Sabbath and his disciples picked grain on the Sabbath – both of which were prohibitted by Pharisaical interpretation of the Law. So, in the eyes of the religious leaders, Jesus was breaking the Law. Jesus defended his (minority) view of the Sabbath that, in fact, he and his disciples weren’t really breaking the Law, but that the Pharisaical interpretation was too strict.
Which contradicts your assertion that Jesus changes were to make them more strict. At times Jesus loosened the legal bonds.
But, OTOH, when he did make them more strict, as in the examples you’ve given, then he clearly was changing the Law. We have the formula in the gospels, “You have heard it said… but I say…” or “Moses said… but I say…” Jesus, in these instances, makes himself a higher authority than Moses. And since he doesn’t quote Moses or the prophets or the legal commentary but simply says what God wants, he is teaching under his own authority. That is why the crowds say, “who is this that he teaches with his own authority?” And they suppose he is a prophet (cause that’s the way prophets speak) even though prophecy has been dead and criminalized in Israel for several centuries.
This whole thing with the Law and its correct interpretation leads to the trick questions they ask of Jesus to trap him in his own speech. Jesus then goes on the attack and rails against the hypocrisy of some of the leaders and claims their leadership is for self-gain and not for selfless service of God as it should be. So, even though you say…
I respectfully disagree. While political reasons brought about the actual execution (Jesus was seen as a challenge to the political authority of Rome), it was for religious motivations that some of the Jewish leaders handed Jesus over to the Romans. (Unless you make the claim that Jesus’ challenge of the status quo was a political struggle, then, you’d win, becuase then every human confrontation can simply be painted as ‘political.’)
Firstly, even in Jesus’ lifetime, the seeds of abandoning all the specific laws of the Mosaic covenant were already planted. Jesus’ own claim that he has not come to do away with the law but to fulfill it is paving the way that something is coming that will transcend simply following the do’s and don’t’s of the law. Even when he intensifies the commandment of ‘thou shall not kill’ to claiming that having any ill-feeling toward one’s neighbor is a breaking of the commandment, we see that there will be some other standard of righteousness than the Mosaic Law as given. When he is challenged by Pharisees that his disciples do not wash their diningware as procribed, he defends them by pointing out that it is what comes from within that makes one clean or unclean, not external things. Jesus then concludes his life teachings by telling his disciples he’s giving them a new covenant based on a new commandment of love.
Secondly, it was Peter, even before Paul’s ministry began, who had the vision that all things were clean to eat (in contradiction to Jewish law). This was not only about a change in dietary law, but it was allegorical to allowing the Gentiles to be baptized and welcomed into The Way. Paul only popularized and pushed to the logical extreme the freedom of Gentiles from all specifics of the Mosaic Law (while at the same time arguing against licentiousness as the opposite extreme).
It was criminalized? I would assume that they would exempt “real” prophets, which is why the Jewish leaders come to John the Baptist and ask if he was Elijah or “The Prophet”.
**
From what I understood, the Council at Jerusalem agreed on that freedom (sans strangled beasts, blood, or sexual licentatiousness), which lead to the Circumcision vs. Non-circumcision battles, of which Paul was a strong leader in the latter front.
