marriage Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Readers’ Mailbag November 27, 2015

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 [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T13:06:33-04:00November 28th, 2015|Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

A Married Jesus and Celibate Priests

So, I’ve written a few posts on the question of whether Jesus was married. Short answer: I don’t think so. I’m surprised at how many people on the blog apparently do think so, and I don’t recall that anyone has actually presented any evidence for it. :-) But, well, maybe he was! (I should stress though, that since history is a matter of probabilities, “maybes” don’t as a rule go very far.) Anyway, some readers do think Jesus was married, and fair enough. But does it actually matter? I have jokingly said on a number of occasions: “Not to *me*!” And that’s absolutely true, as I’ll explain later. Some people think that it certainly would matter. For example, if Jesus was married, wouldn’t that more or less single-handedly destroy the idea that priests have to be single and celibate? That would matter! And wouldn’t it elevate the importance of women (especially one of them) in relationship to Jesus, and wouldn’t that be a good thing for women who are oppressed within the Christian tradition? And [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-30T12:44:10-04:00January 29th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Jesus and Marriage: An Actual Argument!

So far I have pointed out that it is flat-out wrong to say that every Jewish man in the first century was married and was expected to be married. It is not only demographically impossible (there were not enough women to go around) but we know of Jewish men from the time of Jesus who were not married and were proud of it. Strikingly, they, like him, were apocalyptically minded Jews – such as the Essenes and the apostle Paul. I have also argued that whatever Mary Magdalene was to Jesus, she was not his lover and spouse, to the great disappointment of us all….. But is there an actual argument that Jesus was not married other than the silences? I think there is. And this is what it is. A good deal of Jesus’ teaching, of course, was ethical in nature, about how people ought to live and conduct themselves. Many people think of Jesus as one of the great moral teachers of all time, and I have no quarrel with that. But I [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-30T12:45:07-04:00January 27th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Jesus and Mary Magdalene

I pointed out in my last post that most people simply assume that Jesus was not married because there is no mention of his wife in any of our sources, or any mention that he ever had a wife. And so it is assumed that he did not have one. As Karen King pointed out in our discussion the other night at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, that is an argument from silence, and as such is not a very strong one – since, among other things, none of these sources indicates, either, that he was not married. And so this is not evidence in one direction or another. It’s a good point, but my own view is that the silence in this case is telling – though not for the reason people sometimes say. It is sometimes wrongly asserted – by no less authority than Dan Brown, in the Da Vinci Code – that if there was not claim that Jesus was not married that must mean that [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-30T12:46:02-04:00January 26th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Women in Early Christianity|

Was Jesus Married?

I am en route just now, back from Las Vegas, where I participated in a discussion with two other scholars at the Black Mountain Institute on the question “Would It Matter If Jesus Were Married?” The Black Mountain Institute is part of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV); it sponsors events having to do with literature and history. Usually these involve two or more scholars, on stage, on chairs, with a moderator, discussing a topic of mutual interest. The moderator last night was Carol Harter, the former president of UNLV. The two other scholars were Karen King and Mark Jordan. Both Karen and Mark are very well known and highly respected scholars. Karen is a professor of early Christianity at Harvard, where she holds the oldest endowed chair, of any kind, in the country; her expertise is especially in early Christian Gnosticism, and she has become best known in the past few years for her role in publicizing the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” that I have blogged on before (search and see!). I’ve [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-30T12:46:37-04:00January 24th, 2014|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Sorting by

Readers’ Mailbag November 27, 2015

A Married Jesus and Celibate Priests

Jesus and Marriage: An Actual Argument!

Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Was Jesus Married?