For Catholics: So, Jesus Was Married to Mary Magdalene?

auparavant

New Member
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: EDIT: Please note faces of sarcasm :lol:

Anyhoo, I thought this would be a good time to explore St. Mary Magdalene according to scripture and church tradition. It's a wonderful site and for the full article, please link:

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=83

Eastern Orthodox tradition

Eastern Orthodox icon of Mary Magdalene as a Myrrhbearer.


The Eastern Orthodox Church maintains that Mary Magdalene, distinguished from Mary of Bethany and the "sinful woman", had been a virtuous woman all her life, even before her conversion. They have never celebrated her as a penitent. This view finds expression both in her written life (βίος or vita) and in the liturgical service in her honor that is included in the Menaion and performed on her annual feast-day. There is a tradition that Mary Magdalene led so chaste a life that the devil thought she might be the one who was to bear Christ into the world, and for that reason he sent the seven demons to trouble her.
Mary Magdalene is honored as one of the first witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, and received a special commission from him to tell the Apostles of his resurrection.[Jn 20:11–18] She is often depicted on icons bearing a vessel of ointment, not because of the anointing by the "sinful woman", but because she was among those women who brought ointments to the tomb of Jesus. For this reason, she is called a Myrrhbearer.
According to Eastern traditions, she retired to Ephesus with the Theotokos (Mary, the Mother of God) and there she died. Her relics were transferred to Constantinople in 886 and are preserved there.


The traditional Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene celebrated her position as a penitent. The Magdalene became a symbol of repentance for the vanities of the world to various sects. In 1969, the Catholic Church allegedly admitted what critics had been saying for centuries: Magdalene's standard image as a reformed prostitute is not supported by the text of the Bible. They reportedly have revised the Roman Missal and the Roman Calendar, and now neither of those documents mention Mary Magdalene as a repentant sinner of ill repute.[51] St. Mary Magdalene was the patron of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Magdalene College, Cambridge (both colleges pronounce her name as "maudlin"). In contrast, her name was also used for the Magdalen Asylum, institutions for "fallen women".
 
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naturallygoldie

Well-Known Member
IDK, for sure, Mary Magdalen being saintly but I do know she was Jesus' wife. Some say she was in the original portrait of the last supper. A lot of the text that would support this was long removed from the bible.
 

auparavant

New Member
I appreciate your comment @naturallygoldie and thank you for posting. But I must make my thread clear, it's contained within the Christian Forum, not Off-topics. It's leaning toward the tenets of the christian faith and doctrine and the question is not whether he was or not, that was sarcasm. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

There is no verifiable support that Jesus was married. As for Mary Magdalene, the idea toward her that she was a penitent has been disproven. She was not a penitent but a saintly woman from the start. The church has made amends towards that image given her. I'll post another article in support of single Jesus as well. Thanks again and I apologize for the confusion.
 

auparavant

New Member
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/was-jesus-married

For the full article, please link the url.

Dan Brown’s wildly popular novel The Da Vinci Code postulates that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. Brown argues that Mary Magdalene was the true "Holy Grail"—not some piece of dinnerware from the Last Supper. His many other absurdities, which he apparently intends to be taken by readers as fact, not fiction, are amply refuted in such works as The Da Vinci Hoax by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel.

Most people assumed until recently that Jesus wasn’t married. Like so many other things people believe, they didn’t give much thought to the basis of their idea. But that’s changing. The assumption of the unmarried or celibate Jesus is now under considerable fire.

Brown isn’t the only one who has argued for a married Jesus. While virtually no mainstream scholar holds such a belief, many fringe scholars and popular neo-Gnostic, feminist, and New Age writers do. Of course, many of these writers also believe other extravagant notions—that Jesus was an extraterrestrial, for instance. Why, then, bother with the question of a married Jesus?

The answer is that unfounded notions often become popular misconceptions if they aren’t addressed at the outset. It’s unlikely that many people will fall for the idea that Jesus was an alien. But the idea of a married Jesus may be more susceptible to acceptance, and the work of Christians will be all the more difficult if people come to believe it. Why? Because Christianity holds that Jesus gave himself wholly to the mission of inaugurating the kingdom of God through his teaching, passion, death, and resurrection. If Jesus were married, then at some point he compromised his mission in the interests of married life or compromised his marriage in the interest of the kingdom. Neither scenario fits the Christian view of Jesus, which sees him as completely dedicated to doing the Father’s will—and to forming the Church to be his Bride.

Furthermore, if Christianity could get wrong something as basic as whether Jesus was married, what else could it have gotten wrong? More insidiously, perhaps Christianity hasn’t simply gotten it wrong; perhaps it has, as The Da Vinci Code claims, concealed and suppressed the truth about Jesus. In either scenario, the Church’s credibility suffers, and so does its ability to bring people to the full truth about God and man.
What the Bible Doesn’t Say

Catholics, of course, have Tradition as well as Scripture to which we can appeal to settle the matter of Jesus’ celibacy. And celibacy is not, for us, such an odd thing as to require elaborate explanation. Neither of those points is true, though, for many other Christians. They are uncomfortable with celibacy. They may have given little thought to why they believe Jesus was celibate. They will try to substantiate their view by appealing to the Bible. Indeed, looking at the biblical evidence on the subject can help us to help them—while it helps us, too. It shows us how Scripture and Tradition mutually support one another.

Appealing to the Bible when talking with non-Christians has its challenges, because non-Christians don’t necessarily accept what the Bible says as authoritative or historically reliable. Still, Christians have no place else to go. Nor, for that matter, do non-Christians. The fact is that the New Testament writings get us as close to Jesus, historically speaking, as anyone today can get. The New Testament documents were written far closer to the events and people they describe than the non-canonical gospels. Some non-Christians don’t accept that idea, but many do, and many don’t take the spurious and so-called "lost gospels" at face value or regard them on a par with New Testament writings. When talking to such people, Christians can and should use the New Testament as a set of historical documents—rather than as the word of God—to make the case for Jesus’ celibacy.

The New Testament doesn’t say that Jesus had a wife. There’s no hint of a wife in the Gospels, the book of Acts, the writings of Paul, or any other writings of the New Testament.

Supporters of a married Jesus argue that the absence of evidence in the New Testament isn’t necessarily evidence of absence. Of course, this could be true, unless the situation under consideration causes us to expect to see something we don’t see. For example, if a man is thought to be rich, but a thorough review of his bank account, his property holdings, and his lifestyle shows only average wealth, it’s a safe bet he’s not rich. Absence of evidence of wealth implies evidence of absence of wealth.

Similarly, if we find nothing where we would reasonably expect to see some reference to Jesus’ wife, then the absence of such evidence should be taken as evidence that Jesus was unmarried. In fact, we find no word of a wife of Jesus in places where we would surely expect to see such a mention if he had, indeed, been married: Jesus’ call to his ministry; his discussion of marriage, divorce, and celibacy; his death on the cross; and his resurrection. There are no explicit references in the Gospels to a wife of Jesus.

Sometimes it’s claimed that the wedding in Cana in John 2 is really Jesus’ own wedding. But that’s not what the text says, as a careful reading of it makes clear. On the other hand, it can be argued, as spiritual writers sometimes do, that Jesus’ "marriage" to the Church is hinted at in the way John tells the story of the wedding in Cana. In other words, on a figurative, spiritual level, the story of the wedding might lead us to think about how Jesus is united with his Church in a way similar to how a husband is united to his wife in marriage. But that’s very different than saying that Jesus married a woman in the story. According to the text, he didn’t.

Nor does Paul mention a wife of Jesus when it would have been helpful for him to do so. When Paul discusses the relationship between husbands and wives in 1 Corinthians 7, being able to cite the example of a married Jesus would have come in handy. Likewise, it would have been useful to point to Jesus’ wife when Paul argues that he and his collaborators have the right to bring a Christian sister along on their missionary trips to help with temporalities. Paul certainly drew on the example of the other apostles who brought their wives to help (1 Cor 9:5). Surely if Jesus had been married his example would have trumped that of Peter.

In Ephesians 5, we have the famous exhortation for spouses to model their relationships on the relationship between Jesus and his Bride—not a woman but the Church. It’s hard to understand why this analogy would have been used if Jesus had a wife.

The manifest absence of a wife continues in the book of Acts. It is true that there is no mention of Peter’s wife here either, but Luke had told his readers of Peter’s mother-in-law in his Gospel (Lk 4:38-39), so her existence was known. When Peter tells Jesus that he and the others have left their homes to follow him, Jesus says, "There is no man who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life" (Lk 18:29-30).

Jesus’ statement accounts for why we don’t see spouses of the apostles mentioned in the Gospels and in Acts; the apostles and their wives were separated for the sake of the apostolic ministry. Some apostles later took their wives along to assist them, as we have seen from Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 9:5. Yet we have no similar mentions of Jesus separating himself from a wife as the apostles did, no mention of a wife assisting him during his ministry, and nothing about a wife continuing Jesus’ work in the early Church, as later the apostles’ wives seemed to have done. The Gospels mention the putative father, mother, and "brothers" and "sisters" of Jesus (actually kinsmen of Jesus, not "blood" brothers and sisters). They mention his hometown of Nazareth and the people’s response to him there. They mention how some of Jesus’ family thought he was out of his mind, at least at one point during his ministry. But we find absolutely nothing about a wife. There is as much historical evidence for Jesus being married as there is for him being a professional surfer.
Evidence of Absence

Supporters of a married Jesus still object. Most Jewish men of Jesus’ age were expected to marry and had wives, they say. The Jews, they add, rejected celibacy, so, in the absence of explicit testimony to the contrary, we should assume that Jesus had a wife.

These are weak arguments. Celibacy was rejected by later Judaism, but whether it was widely rejected in Jesus’ time is not clear. At least some of the Essenes of Qumran—of Dead Sea Scrolls fame—practiced celibacy. Old Testament prophets such as Jeremiah were celibate. John the Baptist appears to have been celibate. Furthermore, some Jews of Jesus’ day thought Moses had lived as a celibate after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai. We have no reason, then, to rule out a celibate Jesus based on a supposed universal practice of Judaism.
 

auparavant

New Member
con'd

Furthermore, Jesus talks about those who are radically committed to serving the kingdom of God—those who are "eunuchs" for the kingdom of God (Mt 19:12). Since Jesus saw the kingdom as embodied in his ministry and his actions, it makes the most sense to see Jesus himself as the quintessential "eunuch for the sake of the kingdom."

Regarding the particular claim that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, no extant document written within 150 years of Jesus’ death depicts or even implies such a relationship. Some might argue that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ lover rather than his wife. But surely someone during Jesus’ lifetime would have to have known this in order for us to know it today. If so, we should be able to find evidence of this in the gospel accounts written by Jesus’ enemies, where other accusations against Jesus are clearly recorded. But Mary Magdalene is nowhere called his lover. Furthermore, if such a claim were widely known in the early Church, there would be a body of polemics in the canonical Gospels against those making the charge. If it were true, why would the evangelists have even mentioned Mary Magdalene and risked giving credence to the very idea the Gospels supposedly want to suppress?

Only in a few obscure and very late apocryphal gospels is Mary Magdalene depicted in romantic terms. But these writings were generated by sects known to have specific ideological agendas and axes to grind. As they were attempting to counter the canonical Gospels and existing Christian beliefs in their "gospels," we have no reason to think that they give us reliable information about the Jesus of history.

What’s more, none of the writings of those who immediately followed the New Testament writers—writers such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Irenaeus of Lyons—refer to Jesus as having been married. We have to jump a century or more, ignoring all the evidence in between, to find even the slightest support for a married Jesus.

Absence of evidence is not, as we have said, evidence of absence. But neither is it evidence of evidence. The assertion that Jesus was married puts the burden of proof on those making the claim. Those who argue for a married Jesus simply haven’t met that burden. What evidence we have—even when considered apart from the Church’s Tradition—all points in the other direction.
 

Belle Du Jour

Well-Known Member
Having seen DaVinci's Last Supper in person, I can say that there are exactly 12 apostles in the painting and the one they claim is Mary Magdalene is John, "the disciple Jesus loved." People constantly want to twist the truth to support their own ideologies and beliefs. It's harder to believe in celibacy than something completely non-historical.
 

auparavant

New Member
^^^^
Egyptian papyrus making the headlines today...a mere 4 x 5 inches of it or other? LOL. Suuuuurrrrrre, that's explains all of it! Who will have the last chuckle? :yep: But anyhoo, here's another on WHY christians must become apologists.

http://www.gotquestions.org/defend-faith.html


Question: "Does the Bible call Christians to defend the faith / argue for the faith?"

Answer:
The classic verse promoting apologetics (the defense of the Christian faith) is 1 Peter 3:15, which basically says that believers are to make a defense "for the hope that you have." The only way to do this effectively is to study the reasons for why we believe what we believe. This will prepare us to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” as Paul said we should (2 Corinthians 10:5). Paul practiced what he preached; in fact, doing apologetics was his regular activity (Philippians 1:7). He refers to apologetics as an aspect of his mission in the same passage (v.16). He also made apologetics a requirement for church leadership in Titus 1:9. Jude, an apostle of Jesus, wrote that "although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (v.3).

Where did the apostles get these ideas? From the Master Himself. Jesus was His own apologetic as He stated time and again that we should believe in Him because of the evidence He provided for what He taught (John 2:23; 10:25; 10:38; 14:29). In fact, the whole Bible is full of miracles specifically being done by God to confirm what He wanted us to believe (Exodus 4:1-8; 1Kings 18:36-39; Acts 2:22-43; Hebrews 2:3-4; 2 Corinthians 12:12). People rightly refuse to believe something without evidence. Since God created humans as rational beings, we should not be surprised when He expects us to live rationally. As Norman Geisler says, “This does not mean there is no room for faith. But God wants us to take a step of faith in the light of evidence, rather than to leap in the dark.”

Those who oppose these clear biblical teachings and examples may say things like “the Word of God does not need to be defended!” But which of the world’s writings are the word of God? As soon as someone answers that, he is doing apologetics. (How well he does it might be another story!) Some claim that human reason cannot tell us anything about God—but isn’t that a "reasonable" statement about God? If not, then there is no reason to believe it, and if so, then they have contradicted themselves. A favorite saying is, “If someone can talk you into Christianity, then someone else can talk you out.” Why is this a problem? Did not Paul himself give a criterion by which Christianity should be accepted or rejected in 1 Corinthians 15? It is only misplaced piety that answers in the negative.

Now, none of this is to say that bare apologetics, free from the influence of the Holy Spirit, can bring someone to saving faith. This creates a false dilemma in the minds of many. But it does not have to be “Sprit vs. Logic.” Why not both? We must not confuse the fact that the Holy Spirit is required to move one into a position of belief with how He accomplishes this feat. With some people God uses trials; in others it is an emotional experience; in others it is through reason. God can use whatever means He wants. We, however, are commanded to use apologetics in as many or more places as we are told to preach the gospel. How is it then that all churches affirm the latter but so many ignore the former?
 
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auparavant

New Member
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=936


That Coptic papyrus fragment tells us nothing about Jesus
By Phil Lawler (bio - articles - send a comment) | September 19, 2012 5:29 PM
From Our Store: Misinterpreting Catholicism (eBook)

A Harvard Divinity School professor has unearthed an ancient Coptic papyrus fragment that reportedly refers to a wife of Jesus. What does this prove?

Absolutely nothing.

When Karen King submitted an article about her discovery to the Harvard Theological Review, two of the three scholars who reviewed it concluded that the papyrus was probably a forgery. Other scholars with strong credentials believe it is genuine. Let’s put that question in the “don’t know” category, and move on.

If it is real, and if King is reading it correctly, does the papyrus fragment show that Jesus had a wife? No. It shows that someone in the 3rd or 4th century said that Jesus had a wife. The person who allegedly wrote this fragment of a sentence would not have been an eyewitness to the life of Jesus, nor would he have met any eyewitnesses. The eyewitnesses—the Lord’s disciples—testified unanimously that Jesus did not have a wife. It’s difficult to see why this mysterious Coptic correspondent, arriving on the scene a few centuries after the fact, should be taken more seriously.

The BBC report on Professor King’s discovery suggests that if Jesus did have a wife, it might have been Mary Magdalene. Why mention Mary Magdalene specifically, among the thousands of women living in Palestine at the time of Christ? Because the hypothesis that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene has been a favorite of imaginative authors for years.

Professor King isn’t foolish enough to jeopardize her own academic credentials by claiming that her discovery validates the Mary-Magdalene hypothesis. She lets credulous reporters draw their own inferences. Her own claim about the importance of her discovery are actually quite modest:

“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married.”

Fair enough. Some Christians in the early 21st century have a “tradition” that Jesus was married, too, and they’ll trot out any evidence, however thin, to advance that theory. As one Coptic scholar told the BBC, there are "thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things.” Professor King’s papyrus might be much older than a Dan Brown novel (although we can’t be too certain of that), but it’s not much more credible.
 

auparavant

New Member
Disclaimer: As initially mentioned, this thread is about St. Mary Magdalene, mostly, and was conceived from a response in the public/news about the Egyptian papyrus recently found.

Question: Where did she die? In Ephesus where Our Lady resided until her death or in France where she spread the gospel? Both?

http://www.fairhavenspress.com/what-happened-to-mary

What Happened To Mary

What the New Testament Tells Us
Nothing. After the resurrection Mary is not mentioned by name in any of the gospels, though we can assume she is among the disciples who are mentioned without naming them in the last two chapters of John, and in the first two chapters of the Book of Acts, especially among the unnamed women.


What the Non-Canonical Ancient Writings Tell Us
The non-canonical writings show Mary continuing as a leader among the disciples, teaching, preaching, and healing. She runs into conflict with Peter, who is jealous of her and disapproving of women in general, and of female church leaders in particular.


What Church Tradition Tells Us
Church tradition holds that after the resurrection of Jesus, Mary went to Ephesus, in Asia Minor, with the Apostle John and Mary of Nazareth. The house where Mary the Mother of Jesus is supposed to have lived still stands in Ephesus. According to tradition, Mary Magdalen died and was buried in Ephesus, and in 899 AD the Emperor Leo VI had her relics transferred to a monastery in Constantinople.


What the Legends Tell Us
Beginning at least as early as the Sixth Century AD, a legend grows that Mary Magdalen was set adrift off the coast of Palestine in a boat without rudder, oar, or sail, off the coast of Palestine, with Lazarus and Martha of Bethany, Salome the mother of John, Maximin, Joseph of Arimathea, and others whose names vary from account to account. According to this legend the boat carried them to the southern shore of France, where they were cast ashore at the mouth of the Rhone, at what is now Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargue.

The “French Legend”, which is rich and complex, can be found in the medieval collection The Golden Legend, and is available in several versions online. According to this legend, Mary met a French prince and his wife, who at first resisted conversion, but who became Christians when Mary miraculously brought the princess and her son back to life after they had been given up for dead. Leaving Mary of Bethany and Mary Salome at the mouth of the Rhone, where they founded a church, Mary traveled with the rest of her companions to Marseilles, where Lazarus was declared the first bishop, then went on with Maximin to what is now Aix en Provence, where Maximin became bishop in his turn. Eventually Mary entered a cave in a mountain overlooking the Plan d’Aups (this cave is still a pilgrimage site today). There she spent her last 30 years, becoming the first female Christian contemplative. Every day angels came and lifted her up to heaven, where she was fed heavenly food, then they brought her back to her cave. As she felt her life drawing to a close, Mary sought out Maximin at what is now St. Maximin la Sainte-Baume, died a glorious death in his presence, and was buried in the crypt under his chapel. There, in the crypt at the 12th Century Basilique Sainte Marie Madeleine, her sarcophagus can still be found beside the tomb of St. Maximin, along with a reliquary containing her head.

Another, more recent legend from the Eastern Church tells us that Mary approached the Roman Emperor Tiberius at a banquet and told him the story of Jesus. Tiberius told her that he would as soon believe this story as he would believe that the egg Mary happened to be holding in her hand would turn red. The egg turned red on cue, but there is no legend that Tiberius became a Christian.
 
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