Jesus Christ was married

[modeski]

in Galilee. Remember the water into wine myth? Did it ever strike you as curious what Jesus was doing, distributing wine at a wedding? Was it his party trick? Or was it something he did for his guests....because it was his wedding? Interesting. Consider this quote taken from here

What is curious about the wine episode, is it takes place during a marriage, in Galilee, when Jesus was perhaps thirty years old - on the "third day" (John 2); meaning that Jesus may have just turned 30. By "curious" we note that Mary may have been the hostess, and that Jesus played a role suggestive of a bridegroom. Consider: "when they wanted wine" and had no more wine, Mary instructs Jesus to make wine for the guests. She also gives orders to the servants to do the bidding of her son - which would be unthinkable unless they were in her command and it was her home or part. Jesus also appears to be both miracle worker and bridgeroom. Thus, after Jesus makes the wine which is then served to the guests, "the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and said unto him...thou has kept the good wine until now."
The bridegroom is never identified, though it is clear that Jesus in fact provided the wine, and thus logically he is the one to be thanked.

The article also goes on to discuss the term "calling". One of my best mates from school is on his seventh and final year in rome, training to be a priest. I think he's a f**king loony but he said he had "the call". I didn't dare ask from whom Personally I think he had just taken too many hallucinogenic drugs. Or perhaps not enough. But hey, you get to spend seven years in Italy chilling out at the church's expense, so whatever. Anyway, just as a priest is called to the ministry, Jesus was called to his wedding, and his disciples were guests. Consider the following:

ref: John (2): "And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there [in a lovely lilac frock - ed]: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come".

But you know mums, they always end up getting their own way. So anyway she makes him go and do his izzy-wizzy-lets-get-fizzy bit, and everyone gets pretty pissed. There was a bit in the bible about Jesus' drunk uncle Albert who was trying to hit on Mary Magdalene, but couldn't agree on a price. That was taken out, cos you know Jerusalem circa 30AD was trying to boost its tourism. But I digress.

In fact, I think uncle Albert was organising things, and was particularly impressed with young Jesus' taste in beaujolais (which is what they serve in church at the consecration btw). Yeah, so albo liked the booze, viz:

When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now."

This of course remains a common practice today. Hands up here who keeps the good shit for themselves and their best mates? Yeah I thought as much. You don't whip out your primo gear at a party with 90 people you dont know.

On a serious note, if Jesus wasn't the bridegroom, how come the servants were to obey him, and how come he was getting wine for the guests? It's really not that improbable an idea. Of course, the bible doesn't comment definitively one way or the other.


Discuss.

[ooohcarrots]

i kind of agree with you but not with what you think about the wedding...

how do you know that mary hadnt gone to whoever was in charge and claimed that her son could do something about it, and that because they couldnt think of any better to do they told her to get him to do what he could, whether they believed he could or not? its not impossible.... at least as probable as the leap from jesus being at a wedding to jesus being the bridegroom - thats just a little bit of an assumption...

the church is referred to in the new testament as the bride of christ. christ loves the church, and the church loves him back. it is also referred to as the body of christ. this is because in genesis 2 : 24 it says "a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh". jesus left his father in heaven to be with the people who would become his church on earth - he became human for them.

the church is the bride of christ so yes, jesus christ was married, and yeah i guess you could say that he was married to mary magdelene seeing as she was a member of the early church, right from the very beginning of the church after the resurrecton, so yeah i agree with your statement that jesus was married, i evebn agree that he was married to mary magdelene, but not for the reason that you give.

[Naselus]

I'm actually quite sure Jesus was married. He was 30 years old before he started mucking about with all that divinity stuff, and since the average life expectancy in Judia at that time was 35 years for a man he'd probably had at least one wife. And she was probably as young as 12 years old. Which may be considered a tad troubling, really, if Jesus is our saviour AND a dirty peado.

Historians and archaeologists have been throwing this question around for some time, and the fact is everything outside the bible suggests the only reason he WOULDN'T have been married by the age of 30 is if he was gay, which really makes the disciples seem a tad dodgy too. Were they an early incarnation of The Village People? I don't like to think so, so the conclusion is Jesus MUST have been nobbing someone, and given his sex-after-marriage principles it's pretty certain he did marry, probably around the age of 15 or so.

[ooohcarrots]

people did get married at an early age then - so it wasnt paedophilia - if people were considered adults at a younger age then how on earth can you call it paedophilia? that doesnt make sense.

actually the bible says in regards to marriage that 'some men will not marry' so your statement that jesus would have had to have been married to someone is not true. jesus wasnt into theology until he was thirty? he went missign for three days at the age of twelve - just becaus hed gone to listen to the teaching in the temple, and he referred to it as 'my fathers house' that doesnt sound to me like he wasnt interested in theology/divinity...

i like to think that maybe the reason that none of the rest of jesus childhood until his baptism and when his ministry began was recorded, is that maybe, since jesus adult life and death was going to be so public, (particularly the humiliating public death), maybe god wanted his son to be able to keep something to himself, maybe just have a little bit of a private life before he came to public attention...

thats not an approved theory by anyone... its just a thought....

[Naselus]

ooohcarrots said:

people did get married at an early age then - so it wasnt paedophilia - if people were considered adults at a younger age then how on earth can you call it paedophilia? that doesnt make sense.

Was just a joke. I'll not make any more, if they cause such confusion. Cultural pressures decide the acceptable age of maturity, and given that the main cultural pressure in this case was an average female lifespan of 25 years, it was quite acceptable to expect girls as young as 13 to be married and pregnant.

ooohcarrots said:

actually the bible says in regards to marriage that 'some men will not marry' so your statement that jesus would have had to have been married to someone is not true. jesus wasnt into theology until he was thirty? he went missign for three days at the age of twelve - just becaus hed gone to listen to the teaching in the temple, and he referred to it as 'my fathers house' that doesnt sound to me like he wasnt interested in theology/divinity...

I never said he would have HAD to be married. I said it was extremely likely. And it still is extremely likely. Also, what exactly would be so unacceptable about the idea of Jesus having a wife? Why would it be so wrong?
Oh, and I've generally seen that bit in the bible about some men not marrying being a reference to homosexuality. Which I'm quite sure you woiuldn't want to associate with Jesus. Although, since he apparently was unmarried, spent all his time hanging around with twelve guys, and washed all their feet...

ooohcarrots said:

i like to think that maybe the reason that none of the rest of jesus childhood until his baptism and when his ministry began was recorded, is that maybe, since jesus adult life and death was going to be so public, (particularly the humiliating public death), maybe god wanted his son to be able to keep something to himself, maybe just have a little bit of a private life before he came to public attention...

Or maybe God doesn't exist and it's attempting to cover up other bits of Jesus life. I'm not saying there is no God, or that Jesus wasn't his son (regardless of my own beliefs on the matter). I'm more concerned about Peter. He's recorded as betraying Jesus THREE times (more than any other disciple), he was the master of the Church, mainly through his own doing, and he became enormously powerful when Jesus was dead and gone. The lost gospels paint a very different picture of the last days of Christ, and include Jesus telling Mary Magdeline that SHE was to be the rock upon which his church would be built, but then these conveniently fail to get into the bible. Which would make the entire basis of the Church a fallacy and a lie.

[Naselus]

Anyone interested in Christian history should probably visit www.earlychristianwritings.com

It contains most of the Gnostic, Coptic and 'Lost' Gospels, with commerntaries from a variety of Bible Historians. You get to see all sorts of things; for example, in the earliest recorded Gospels and writings, Jesus is very definately portrayed as a MORTAL PROPHET. No one refers to him as the son of God in any writings until over one hundred years after his death. No-one refers to the resurection until around eighty years after the crucifixion (don't know about you, but that's the kind of stuff I'd have written down straight away).

Oh, and most of the stuff about Jesus' childhood was made up about 130 years after the event as well. Sorry, sorry, not made up, recorded. By all the 130 year old scribe present at the birth.

Imaculate conception was actually just pinched from the Egyptians; luckily they didn't transfer the natural follow-up of divine masturbation as well.

Oh, and to back up the marriage thing a little further: Mary Magdeline is clearly refered to in many of the earlier texts as the companion of Jesus, which is essentially a term for wife. Mary is never defined as a whore until around 400 AD; her family ties to the rich and influential House of Benjamin are instead often stressed before that point. Hard to believe that a scion of one of the richest families in Galilee, of royal blood, no less, decided she needed to go on the game. Perhaps Jesus just wasn't up to much in the sack.

I think perhaps the most intriguing piece on the site would have to be the Gospel of Mary herself. There's two points of note here; one is a dispute, after the death of Christ, between Mary and Peter. Peter claims that Mary is unsuitable to lead as she is but a woman. Andrew backs him up. They are then admonished by other disciples, but it seems a big, glaring sign of what must of been, at very least, a great envy of Mary's position at Jesus' right hand.

The other is more a point of conjecture, as it relates not to what is in the Gospel, but that which is MISSING from it. There are no surviving copies of pages 1-6 and 11-14 currently available. These are the pages in the Gospel which contain the words of Jesus to Mary. Why are they missing in all the sources? What did Jesus say to his wife?

There's also several articles on there about the mysterious Q document, the only first-hand writings about Jesus Christ. Q was the basis of the Gospels of Luke and Mathew, and possibly even influenced the work of Mark, the oldest 'official' gospel. Q was almost certainly written within a few years of the crucifixion, by someone who actually knew Jesus, and is probably the most important document in the entire history of Christianity. Why it wasn't included in the Bible, and indeed why there are no known copies of it, are fundamental mysteries, and they undermine the entirety of Christianity from it's earliest days.