Here’s a line that could just as easily have been said back in 1633 by the Vatican to Galileo as it was to CBS News correspondent Alan Pizzi in Rome Wednesday when he sought comment on the possibility Jesus was married: “Let the scholars say and think what they like, the Church stands by its doctrine which goes back to the earliest Christians,” a Papal spokesman said, which Pizzi said translated to, “Jesus was a bachelor.”
It’s been a rather fascinating several days, what with the leaking of Mitt Romney’s secretly taped 47% speech and the revelation of a fragment of Coptic Church literature that puts into question two of Catholicism’s central tenets—celibacy of Jesus (and clerics) plus the male-only church hierarchy.
It’s always dicey chiming in on someone else’s religion, but I can’t help but being fascinated by the married or not married status of Jesus (I also find it rather humorous that this subject comes up the same week as Romney’s travails, Romney, of course, being the scion of a religion that for many years advocated polygamy).
To understand the rest of this post you’ll have to take a few minutes to read the Op-Ed piece at the end of this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/opinion/mr-and-mrs-jesus-christ.html?ref=opinion
Okay, now that you have The Rev. James Martin’s opinion, let me chime in with some thoughts on his analysis. First, Rev. Martin claims the four familiar Gospels were written much earlier than the Coptic manuscript which he dates from either the second or fourth century (the Gospels were written in the late first, early second century). Therefore, he gives them more credence. But there are inconsistencies even among those Gospels, so their complete credibility is open to question.
Second, he asks why there is no mention of Jesus's wife among family members who make a surprise visit to him in Capernaum. The simple answer is, she already was with him when he left Nazareth. Third, he suggests that since no wife was mentioned during Jesus’s public ministry days, ergo he had no wife. But we know the story of Jesus in many ways paralleled that of Moses. From the time Moses arrived back in Egypt to free the slaves and begin his ministry, his relationship with his wife Zipporah is barely mentioned in the Bible.
Fourth, Rev. Martin cites the Rev. John P. Meier’s hypothesis that Jesus “remained celibate on religious grounds.” But Jesus was Jewish; religious Jews and prophets were not required to be celibate. Only the prophet Jeremiah, among all Jewish leaders, is believed to have been a bachelor. Since we know celibacy among Catholic priests was not a strictly enforced canon requirement until the second millennia, and some say only then mandated to circumvent any inheritance claims against church property, perhaps the male church leadership of today doth protest too much about the egalitarian view of its leader and his marital status.
Of course, all these comments are the views of a fascinated outsider. But if Jesus was indeed married, did his wife get along with her mother-in-law? Since Mary remains a central part of the religion, perhaps they didn’t see eye to eye on all things Jesus and she influenced the writers of the Gospels to keep his wife out of the sacred texts. Far-fetched, you say? Not if you’ve heard as many stories as I have about Jewish mothers-in-law.
