I hope everyone had a fulfilling (and fillingful) Thanksgiving!

Now it is time to answer some questions I have received over the past couple of weeks, in short rapid-fire order.   If you have a question you would like me to address, please ask it in a comment to this post.  I am keeping a list and deal with the questions, weekly, more or less in the order in which I receive them.   And I’m running low on questions!  So ask away!

 

 

QUESTION:  Why do you think Jesus remained single his whole life? Could that have been part of the reason he was seen as a divine being? Ordinary people marry, not highly esteemed divine beings?

RESPONSE:  That’s an interesting hypothesis, but I don’t think it is “it.”  Let me start with the necessary preliminary: I do indeed think that Jesus was, in fact, unmarried.  People have disputed that (most notably that inestimable authority on ancient Christianity, Dan Brown, in the Da Vinci Code!) but the evidence is very strong.   I have dealt with some of it on the blog before in two different posts, and so do not need to do that again here.  See:  https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-married-members/  and https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-marriage-actual-argument/

There were as many reasons for people not to be married in antiquity as there are today.  Sometimes…

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