Like DtC touched on, the gospels aren’t biographies. They’re collections of Jesus’s teachings, so they don’t mention whatever romantic feelings he might have had, his favorite color, what he liked to eat, or personal information about Jesus in general. That’s not why they were written.
I saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in my tortilla this morning, and in that beautific moment or absolute rapture the entire life and times of Jesus was revealed to me.
I can’t tell you all of it, because I’m writing a book and you’ll have to pay $100 for it.
But, I can tell you that Jesus never married because he had an ugly goiter and alcoholic cirrhosis. He got Mary Magdalene drunk one time and had his way with her, but she never remembered it. She felt pity for him and fended off bullies.
She was his best friend. He felt really bad about the sex thing afterward.
Wait till you read about what really happened during the ‘water into wine’ incident!!
Forget it, beajerry, it’s already been done, only with actual humor and real grace. Read *Lamb * by Christopher Moore for a funny and human treatment of Jesus’s “lost years.”
Then read everything else he’s written, just for fun.
We have a local reporter (Richard Burnett, columnist for The Hour), who reiterates his theory ever couple of weeks that Jesus was clearly gay and Mary Magdalene was his fag hag.
My response to this is the same as my response to Mr. Burnett: an we first establish that he was a real person, before we start to speculate on his love life? I mean, I don’t think we have any independent records of this guy until after Christians start to become a thorn in the side of Roman authority, a long time after the date given for his birth. I’m certain we don’t have a marriage certificate floating around.
I’ve heard the theories BrainGlutton mentions, but I’m not convinced. Even if there was more evidence, the “sang réal” theory has one major, telling flaw: it’s too perfect. History is rarely that clean.
It made the basis for a great video game, though – one of the Gabriel Knights, from Sierra.
rimshotgdansk, does that mean you’ll not buy MY book?
“actual humor and real grace” sheeesh 
Cite? I’ve seen this argument before but I’ve always had doubts on the following points:
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Was Jesus a rabbi at all? My understanding is, in Jesus’ time there was no such thing as a “rabbi” as the term is now understood: a Jewish religious-legal scholar in the Pharasaic tradition, who is guided by the Talmud in interpreting the Torah, and who serves as a religious leader, minister and master-of-ceremonies for a synagogue or congregation. The hereditary Temple priests and their acolytes, who in religious politics formed the Sadducee party, were still the acknowledged leaders of Jewish religious life; they would be destroyed as an organized body when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 71 A.D. The Pharisees, religious fundamentalists insistent on observing every clause of the Torah and every religious custom that had grown up around it, were on the rise and eventually would evolve into the class of “rabbis” who would put the Talmud into its final form; but that, still, was all in the future. (The proto-rabbis Hillel and Shammai were, I believe, alive in Jesus’ time.) At the time, the word “rabbi,” often applied to Jesus, simply meant a teacher, implicitly a religious teacher or leader, but one who could be of any of several different sects. So it might be possible that Jesus was called a “rabbi” even though he had no connection with the Pharisees and his actual religious connections were with the celibate Essenes – a theory that has often been floated although there is no hard proof. (On the other hand, Jesus often argued with Pharisees as though he had been trained in their legalistic style of argument, so maybe he was one of them all along.) Certainly there is no mention, anywhere, of Jesus being the pastoral rabbi of any established community congregation in Nazareth or elsewhere; and being “rabbi” of an itinerant band of enthusiasts probably would not be an appropriate role for a genuine rabbi by the standards of modern Judaism.
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If Jesus was a rabbi, in the modern sense of the term, was the rule that rabbis must be married established by his time? How far back can it be traced?
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Is it true that Jesus, rabbi or not, would have been a husband and father if he were a good Jew? I’ve often read that Jews in general have a religious duty to get married and have children – but, again, that rule might not have been generally recognized in Jesus’ time, when Judaism was still broad enough to encompass the Essenes.
About these references to Jesus as a “rabbi”. By all indications, Jesus’ ministry came relatively late in life, at age 30, and was not associated with the Jewish priesthood (with which he was continuously at odds) or any temple. In other words, it was self-directed and unconventional. The temple priests in Jerusalem found him dangerously heretical and a threat to Judaism.
Given his unconventional nature, why should we expect that he followed customs regarding marriage? All this talk of rabbis would be expected to married seems beyond the point. First you would have to establish that Jesus was a conformist, and that he attracted a conformist following. I just don’t see that.
Walloon - by this rationale:
Could we not say that if Jesus was not considered technically a Rabbi as we are talking about them, than could we say that his non-conformity would fit right in with him being married? If no one has any proof of what he did in his late teens early 20’s I do not see how we can completely, cart blanche assume he was never married.
This is true. My Church, the Coptic Church of Alexandria, along with the other Christian churches fought these “heresies” at the time. No one should be surpised that we find evidence of these movements now, but one should not try to categorize them as early Christian. They were countermovements in Christianity that attempted, incorrectly, to justify their misunderstandings of Christ’s divinity, and His Crucifixion and Resurrection. Arianism, Nestorianism, and Gnosticism were rejected by Christians in their times and should be rejected by Christians now.
No, just the opposite. I am addressing those on this list who say that Jesus was probably married because rabbinical tradition — allegedly — called for marriage. Counter to that suggestion, I say that Jesus was a rebel. Why should we assume that he followed that tradition? Or that his followers required that he conform to that tradition? St. Paul was another first century Jew who by his own admission never married, and it never hindered his career as an evangelist.
As a separate issue, I would like those who allege a rabbinical tradition to be married to address BrainGlutton’s points:
Aww, jeez. . . now you went and made me feel guilty for being all mean :mad: and stuff.
<sigh>. Okay, put me down for ten copies from the first run.
A soft answer turneth away wrath . . . and it’s good for sales
I am with you. One other thing that has always confused me on this craze: where on earth is this “Mary was another royal line” stuff coming from?
JC married? To Mary? Somehow she gets to France and 600 years later her descendant Dagobert is killed … OK. I don’t believe it for a second, but I can see some [flimsy, misinterpreted] evidence for all that, making some leaps to fill in the blanks …
But even in the apocrypha I have never seen “Mary was a Queen/princess” verse … does anyone have a Cite older than 1980 (or really pre-7th century)? I don’t mean that the normal chesty way you ask for a cite on SDMB – it is more that I literally don’t understand where the concept is coming from.
So, if I’ve got this all correct, we have a conspiracy of 2,000 years duration in which people who despised each other (Athanasius and Arius, the Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch in 1054, etc.) secretly agreed to suppress the truth about Jesus. And the Merovingian monarchs themselves, who were noted for following up their bloodlines, traced it only back to Merovech, and ignored all the evidence linking them back to Jesus – which would have invested their kingship with authority and power in the eyes of early-medieval Christians that would have given them all kinds of hooha over most of Europe?
Right.
Hamish, don’t you think having an Eglise de Sainte-Marie-Madeleine le Faghague would be a trip?
As for the “books that were taken out of the New Testament,” they were never in it in the first place. There were scads of accounts of various mystery religions running around in the First and Second Centuries, some utilizing the burgeoning Christian movement. They were treated by serious folks of the time about how we regard the latest revelation of Ultimate Truth as reported by Weekly World News or U.F.O. Reporter.
Most of them were reviewed by the surviving Apostles, or by people like my namesake who were taught by them, and found to be seriously wanting in reporting the teachings of Christ – and had a remarkably bizarre collection of stories about His life. I mean, if you think walking on water or feeding 5,000 people with seven loaves and two fishes are a bit hard to swallow, wait until you get the news of the seven-year-old Jesus who resurrects sparrows killed by his playmates and then strikes the playmates dead, apparently with his Death Vision!
Polycarp, I think most “serious folks” of the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries A.D. would have seen no significant differences between all these various loony cults calling themselves “Christian.” We look at just one grouping and say they were the “real” or “orthodox” Christian church because they were the group that ultimately won out in the struggles and survived to become the state religion after Constantine; but that doesn’t mean that Nicene Christianity is really a truer expression of the original teachings of Jesus than, say, Gnostic Christianity, or Arian Christianity. My personal view is that Jesus, who thought of himself as a Jew, would have been dismayed and astounded by all of them equally.
All those who buy 10 copies of my book, or more, will receive an autographed photo of my Virgin Mary tortilla!
Why not? We have a fairly reliable tradition of successive people who gathered the teacheings of Jesus and spread them. Against that, we have the very same people arguing against the Gnostic variations on a theme of Jesus. Now, it is probably true that the typical pagan Roman thought all these folks were flakes and you can make an argument that Christianity differed from what Jesus would have preferred to see. However, the Christianity that proceeded from Peter and James the Brother of the Lord up to the Council of Nicaea can be pretty well established as the “mainstream” version of Christianity (at least if you read the actual writings of the early Christians and their Gnostic foes).
…it would have a disco ball, stained glass windows of Margaret Cho, and naturally the best gay weddings…
As for the Merovingians-as-Christ’s-descendants thing, I have to admit it’s one of my favourite conspiracy theories, just because it’s so creative. But throwing the Merovingians into anything tends to make things more interesting. If they were descended from a sea monster (Merovech) on one side of the family, and Christ on the other, does that qualify as a mixed marriage?
Oooh Diogenes the Cynic, you bite hard. By which I mean that you argue your point well. Although I do think that Brainglutton’s comments on the marital status of rabbis were interesting and at least worty of consideration.
However, I remain unmoved. I don’t believe that Jesus was married. I will not reject the possibility completely, but consider it unlikely based on
a) the absence of any biblical evidence that he was married
b) the absence of any significant historical tradition purporting that he was married, and
c) the mention in the bible of Jesus marriage some time in the future. And no, I will not elaborate on my understanding and theological interpretation of this in this thread. That would be hijacking.
It is this third point that we seem to disagree on. You have said:
May I point out that yours is by no means the only logical and internally consistent interpretation of these passages and that your approach to the bible is not the only valid position to take. For a start, I do not consider Revelation apocryphal.
J.
??? What WOULD you consider apocryphal?
Revelation was included in the canon by most Christian denominations last time I checked.