Uncovering the Truth Behind Mary Magdalene and Jesus

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code revealed to the world the true extent of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, though that belief had already existed for roughly 1,800 years at that point. But is any of it true? Were Mary and Jesus really married?

Was Mary Magdalene Married to Jesus?

By Kevin Jennings

I’ve always been fascinated by various theologies and mythologies, though the only real difference between those words seems to be whether or not the speaker believes any of the stories are actually true. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned on this channel before, but I was actually an altar boy growing up. Back then when I was young and naïve enough to believe that helping people was actually a worthwhile goal, I had even considered becoming a priest.

There’s a chance that could have happened were I born into a different religion, but I was raised Catholic. Once the reality set in that Catholic priests weren’t allowed to have sex, or at least not with adult women, that was an absolute deal breaker for me. It didn’t help that the more different types of people I met and the more I learned about history and all the awful stuff the Catholic Church has gotten up to over the past 1,500 years, the less I felt that organized religion was for me.

But to be fair and despite the efforts of one recent pope, the Catholic Church’s official stance is that evolution is real, the Big Bang is real, and when scientists talk to you about things like cosmology and biology you should probably shut up and listen to them. That doesn’t erase centuries of corruption and violence, but at least they aren’t telling people the Earth is only 10,000 years old and that antibiotics are the tool of the devil.

Anyway, we’re not here to actually discuss religion. Instead, we’re here to discuss two historical figures: Jesus of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala, normally referred to as Mary Magdalene. There is little debate among secular historians that they were both real people, and honestly it feels like the debate that remains is just bad faith arguments from people who hate religion enough to want these people to have never existed.

But who exactly was Mary to Jesus? Was she just another run of the mill disciple, or was their relationship something more? Anyone who has read Simon’s all time favourite book, The Da Vinci Code, knows that there is a popular notion that the two were married and even had children. This may come as a shock, but Dan Brown wasn’t even close to the first person to propose this theory.

The controversy came to the forefront of public consciousness again in 2012 with the unveiling of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife by the Harvard Divinity School. By 2016 it was proven to be a forgery which is why you probably don’t even remember hearing about it, but it was a fairly high quality fake on medieval papyrus that took some effort to debunk. It certainly seems like people want it to be true, but was Mary Magdalene really married to Jesus?

Mary in the Bible

If you’re at all familiar with the story of Jesus’ life, there’s probably a singular, distinct image that comes to mind when you think of Mary Magdalene. She is generally portrayed as a repentant sex worker who famously washed Jesus’ feet with perfume and her tears, and dried them with her hair at a banquet in the House of Simon. This is what she is most well known for, and it’s not at all true. There are a few issues that have led to Mary’s depiction in this way.

The first is that we don’t know that much about Mary. The New Testament was written about Jesus and there’s still a solid 18 years of his life that are completely unaccounted for, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s not a ton of backstory and character development on the secondary characters. As the centuries of Christianity rolled on, they introduced new ideas to flesh the characters out more. In this instance, it was done by Pope Gregory in 591.

The above story of a woman washing Jesus’ feet did take place in the Bible, but it wasn’t done by Mary. The act was performed by someone who was referred to only as a sinful woman. While delivering a homily, the Catholic word for sermon, Pope Gregory decided to roll Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman all into a single character. He also unilaterally decided that the sinful woman must have been a sex worker and adulterer, because why not.

This highlights another major issue with the backstory of Mary Magdalene as it persists in the public consciousness: Mary was the most common Jewish name at the time this was taking place. Most common by an extraordinary margin. There’s like a dozen different women named Mary in the New Testament, and that is entirely too many to keep track of since most of them weren’t that important. It was much easier to just start rolling a bunch of them together into a single, more developed character.

Although Pope Gregory had invented the idea of Mary as a sex worker, the people really wanted it to be true. The only thing people wanted to be true more than for her to be a repentant sex worker was for her to be Jesus’ wife. It became an extremely important part of her character, showing the transformation from sinner to saint. It made for a nice narrative, but it’s completely untrue.

But of all the reasons people want to expand Mary’s backstory, quite probably the biggest reason is that she was one of the most important characters in the New Testament. Her name appears 12 times in the canonical Gospels, which is more times than most of the apostles names appear. Although she is often depicted as appearing as part of a group of women, she is the one that gets mentioned by name. It’s never just “here’s a bunch of Jesus’ groupies”, it was always “here’s Mary Magdalene and also all those other women no one cares about.”

Other than being repeatedly namedropped, what made Mary so important? We know Jesus was a carpenter, but there’s no evidence as to whether or not he was actually a good carpenter. He doesn’t seem to actually do any carpentry at all in the Bible, and it’s possible he only had that title because it was his father’s profession, not because he ever did it himself. But being the alleged messiah isn’t free, so if he wasn’t going to work he needed to get money somehow. That’s where Mary came in.

Mary, along with less important, unnamed women, was responsible for bankrolling Jesus’ activities. Because of this, it is believed that she likely came from a wealthy family. There is that one story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, but even if that really did happen as some sort of divine miracle, it didn’t seem to be an everyday sort of thing. In general, he still needed money like everybody else.

I assume Simon has drawn some parallels between Jesus using his female followers to bankroll his life and modern day sex cults, so if you’re done let’s move on. In addition to her financial contributions, Mary was a trusted disciple and present at many of the important events in his life.

She accompanied him on many journeys, including his journeys to Jerusalem. When the other disciples had abandoned him, Mary was present at Jesus’ crucifixion. She was there when the tomb was sealed, and was the first one to discover the tomb was empty. She was also the first to whom he appeared following his alleged resurrection.

Whether he actually died and came back from the dead isn’t really relevant, the important part is that within the Gospels she is seen as important enough to have been the first to bear witness to his resurrection. Considering the writers had eleven perfectly good male apostles and also Judas to choose from, Mary had to have been pretty important to be left in the official record as the first to see Jesus return.

Since I mentioned The Da Vinci Code earlier, I guess I should at least touch upon the last supper as well. Was Mary there? Eh, maybe. The only people specifically mentioned as being there are the twelve apostles, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t unnamed women in the background. The action in that scene was focused on the apostles and Jesus’ prediction that one of them would betray him, so there wasn’t any real narrative purpose in mentioning anyone else being there.

Unfortunately, this is most of what we know definitively about Mary Magdalene. She had money, she was one of Jesus’ disciples, and based on both how frequently and in what capacity she shows up in the New Testament, there’s a strong chance that she was more important to Jesus than most if not all of the apostles. That’s evidence that they were likely close, but it doesn’t really point to marriage or a romantic relationship. So where did this theory come from?

The Gnostic Gospels

The earliest references to Mary as potentially being Jesus’ wife come from around the second century during the rise of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a collection of religious ideas that focused on individual spirituality rather than orthodox adherence to traditions and rituals. During this time, Mary Magdalene was a bit of a hero. She was not only seen as the thirteenth apostle, but was considered more enlightened than the rest.

The Gospels of Philip, Thomas, and Mary all regard her as being the only one to truly understand Jesus’ teachings, and they add that there was much divine wisdom he had imparted exclusively unto her while he was alive. These Gnostic gospels aren’t considered canon, and to some are seen as heretical texts.

The Gospel of Mary, of which only about half has been discovered, is named as such because it focuses primarily on a character named Mary. It is believed to be about Mary Magdalene, but this is a matter of debate as the extant text doesn’t give her full name. Another possibility is that it may pertain to Jesus’ sister, Mary. Yes, Jesus had six siblings, but we’ll get to them later during the character assassination portion of this episode.

Anyway, the Gnostic Gospels frequently refer to Mary as Jesus’ companion or partner. The Gospel of Philip seems to push the narrative of their relationship hardest, with the other disciples complaining that he loved her more than them. When asked why Jesus basically just insults them. Even in the canonical Gospels, Jesus does an awful lot of insulting people for someone who is allegedly divine in nature.

However, just before that exchange in the Gospel of Philip is the passage that receives the most attention. It opens by describing Mary Magdalene as both “barren” and the “mother of the angels”, which is an interesting juxtaposition. It says she was loved more than all the disciples, and that Jesus used to “kiss her [often] on her…”

The next word is annoyingly missing, but the general consensus is that the missing word is “mouth”. This is still a religious book not a trashy novel from the checkout line of a grocery store, so it’s not like the next word was going to be neck, thighs, or labia. The two real options were mouth and cheek, and surprisingly of the two the cheek would be the more personal one.

It was traditional for early Christians to greet each other with the “kiss of peace”, which was a kiss on the mouth. This was also referred to as a “holy kiss”, or depending on the genders of the two involved it could also be called a “brother kiss” or “sister kiss”. If you’ve ever been to a mass where they told you to turn to one another and offer some sign of peace, historically this is what they meant. Fortunately, this has largely been replaced with a simple hug, handshake, or even just a polite wave.

On the other hand, the “kiss of love” was an ancient Jewish greeting used for family and close friends, which was a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Both of these were pretty common throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean at the time, though the latter version spread more and both became and remains much more common. It’s almost as if the later introduction of kissing being using romantically made people less thrilled about the idea of kissing random strangers on the mouth to say hello.

Although the Gnostic writings portray Mary as being a much more pivotal figure than the canonical Gospels did and seem to at the very least imply a much closer relationship between the two, there’s still some much needed context here. These works were written between roughly 200 and 400 AD, at which point they would be several generations removed from the actual historical figures.

Oral traditions exist so one could theoretically argue that these stories dated back to when Jesus and Mary were alive, and the four people who had already written biographies of Jesus either forgot or deliberately omitted the extent of their relationship. It’s true that the church would go on to try to severely downplay the importance of Mary, and of women in general, so on the surface this isn’t a terrible argument.

However, when we take into account the meaning of the Gospels of Mary, Thomas, and Philip it calls their historicity into question. Though these works contain the same main characters as the New Testament gospels, the religious message is completely different. These newer gospels show a clear and heavy influence by Gnostic ideals.

When Mary tells the other apostles of the private teachings she received from Jesus, she talks about things like the nature of matter and of the spirit, and that sin wasn’t a real thing. Considering Jesus is purported to have died to save us from sin, it would be pretty weird for him to have also claimed not to believe it existed. That would be like me letting myself be executed to save you all from the ghost of Bigfoot.

Although these texts were likely the impetus for the belief that Jesus and Mary were married, it’s difficult to give them much historical value in terms of the characters represented within the story. What we do know is that Mary was extremely popular with the people, as was the Gospel of Mary. The first version of the text, found in 1896, was written in Sahidic Coptic. However, two fragments of the text were found after this, both being later Greek translations.

This means that it was widely distributed, and the dates on the documents found show it was in circulation for hundreds of years.

While this is the earliest indication we have that the two may have been more than just friends or business partners, we can’t say for certain that the rumour didn’t exist beforehand, as it has certainly persisted long since then. But aside from fictional conspiracy theories presented by Dan Brown, this is the closest we have to direct evidence of their relationship. It’s maybe not the most compelling argument, but it’s been more than enough to generate over a millennium of speculation. That just leaves the question of if there’s any evidence against the theory.

Patrilateral Parallel Cousins and You

So if Jesus was married, who would be his wife? Because this was ancient Israel, we’d have known the answer to that before he was even born. A lot of what we’re going to talk about here is going to sound strange and maybe a little gross to modern western individuals, but Jesus lived in the Middle East in the first century AD, not in the United States of America. If we want to sincerely tackle the question of whether or not Jesus was married, we have to consider what marriage meant and how the institution operated for Jesus’ contemporaries. And if we don’t want to sincerely tackle the question, well then we’d be no better than Ancient Aliens.

Marriage was not a romantic pursuit where two self selecting partners chose one another. It was a contractual arrangement where the parties had no say in who they married, and love had absolutely nothing to do with it. Though temporary marriages or “pleasure marriages” did exist, these were also contracts with monetary compensation for services rendered.

Despite the name, the description probably makes it clear these were not romantic trysts. It was generally used to provide a male with companionship on a long journey in which his wife or betrothed could not accompany him, and was no more romantic than the traditional form of marriage.

Traditional marriage was meant to join two families to increase their honour, for financial and social stability, and to ensure the continuation of the family lineage. Well, I say two families, but it was usually only one. At the time, the best possible marriage partner would be your patrilateral parallel cousin, which is to say your father’s brother’s daughter.

This was the ideal and most common form of marriage, and in some places it still is. If you were to trace Saddam Hussein’s entire family tree, it consists of nothing but these first cousin marriages. This wasn’t to conserve some royal bloodline as was seen in many incestuous European monarchies, it’s just the way their society did things. These marriages would have been the norm throughout the Middle East including ancient Israel, so if Jesus was going to be married it should ideally be his first cousin.

Of course, this wasn’t always possible. If your father’s brother didn’t have a daughter, who would be left for you to marry? Well the next best option would be your father’s brother’s son’s daughter, or your first cousin once removed. If there was no wife to be had there either, then they would check the matrilateral cousins to find a daughter.

Your mother’s brother’s daughter may only be the third best option for marriage, but it was still pretty good. It made far more sense than some random woman that lived 350 miles away in Magdala.

These ancient societies not only focused on patrilateral marriages, but the families were also patrilocal. This meant that the new wife would move in with the husband and his family, or at least as close to the husband’s father as possible. This resulted in something that was highly beneficial to them but will again seem a little gross to our modern sensibilities.

If you lived in a small or smallish village, most likely everyone there was your cousin. They could be second or third cousins, but the nature of combining parallel cousin marriage selection and of residing close to the patriarch was destined to result in something like this. The benefit of that is that everything you need would be right there! All of a person’s best choices for marriage would live in the same town, as would their entire social support system.

There was no reason for a person to travel to seek out of a wife.

These cousin marriages were normally arranged at or shortly after birth. They were planned by the mother and then announced by the father. This led to an interesting question, and one that Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes would have been acutely aware of: who exactly was supposed to announce Jesus’ marriage arrangement? Was it the carpenter Joseph? Was it God Himself? Was it the Roman soldier Pantera? Rest in peace, Darrell.

Jesus’ birth was more than a little bit suspicious at the time. The people knew that Mary and Joseph hadn’t boned yet, but somehow Mary was pregnant. If you’re wondering how everyone knew they hadn’t had sex yet, think about small town gossip, then think about how much worse and more personal all that gossip would be if everyone in town was your cousin. Jesus’ birth was not only suspicious, but it was shameful.

If the point of marriage was to increase the family’s honour and standing in the community, what good would marrying a daughter off to Jesus do for the parents? It didn’t help that people loved to bring up Jesus’ shameful origin story to him frequently. This reputation didn’t stay with him in Nazareth, either.

In one instance in Jerusalem, Jesus was having an argument with a bunch of men who were essentially disparaging him for being a bastard. They claimed to be descendants of Abraham, and Jesus told them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would act like Abraham. You’re doing the works of your own fathers.” Basically he was telling them to fuck off cause half of them were bastards too. Like I said before, Jesus really had a thing for insulting people.

He was also frequently referred to as Jesus, son of Mary. This was a big social no-no. People were always referred to as son of their father’s name, not their mother’s, and to do otherwise was usually a huge sign of disrespect indicative of a bastard. The only time it wouldn’t be disrespectful would be if the mother was a widow, but unfortunately we have no idea when Joseph died. We know he died before the crucifixion, but without a better estimate of exactly when this one could technically go either way.

Even with Jesus’ lack of social standing, his best chance for a wife would be to remain in Nazareth. Eventually someone would have to have a daughter that was even more shameful than he was, right? So why would he break from societal convention to move away from his family alone? Well, he was essentially run out of town.

He spoke at the synagogue when he was twelve and his words resulted in an angry mob trying to murder him, so…you know, probably good to move at that point. There was also some stuff going on involving John the Baptist and King Herod that made the decision to move even easier.

Unfortunately, moving would not make him a more suitable choice for a husband. As I said before, his reputation and the scandal surrounding his birth followed him. It was also in Jerusalem, just after he appointed his twelve apostles, that his mother and brothers said that he was insane and possibly possessed.

So we have a guy without the normal social support structure, with no money, with no social standing, and whose family was rather concerned about his mental health. He had his ministry by this point, but would a believing woman be willing to look past everything else, and who would arrange this marriage? He had financial support from Mary Magdalene and the unnamed women, but if he married one would the financial support of all the others suddenly vanish? He was also already 30 years old by the time he started gaining any following, and the typical age for men to get married was 20 which is another strike against him.

Everything we know about society and marriage’s function in it at the time combined with the stories we have about the life of Jesus make it seem like he would not be a suitable partner for any sort of arranged marriage. Admittedly, we don’t know how much of the Gospels are accurate.

Historians agree that Jesus and Mary really existed as actual people, but nearly everything else is a bit up in the air. Considering that the Gospels were written by people who loved and wanted to spread the word of Jesus, since we’ve only been focusing on the parts of it that basically shit on him and his reputation I think it’s fair to be less skeptical of that stuff than if we were talking about the alleged miracles. Given the source of these stories and who the authors believed Jesus’ father to be, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually tried to downplay just how shameful his birth was.

Despite all of this, is it possible that Jesus and Mary got married anyway? She was important to Jesus, she had some amount of wealth though we don’t know how much, and she was unmarried. We know that she didn’t have a husband before meeting Jesus, because her surname was her derived from her home of Magdala rather than from her husband’s name. If the claim in the Gnostic Gospels of Mary being barren are true, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that it is other than maybe her marital status, then she would have been equally undesirable of a partner as Jesus so such a union wouldn’t be out of the question.

So far it’s theoretically possible, albeit barely, but there’s one big thing we didn’t mention yet. We talked about the culture surrounding marriage and what was written in the Bible, but we haven’t talked about what wasn’t written in the Bible. There’s no mention in it of Jesus being married or of he and Mary having any sort of romantic or sexual relationship.

That’s not necessarily proof in and of itself, as we did mention that the church definitely rewrote Mary’s backstory and tried to downplay her significance. However, there is one key omission that for many is the smoking gun in all of this.

In the Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, he speaks about the rights of a preacher. In it, he says, “Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” Cephas refers to the Apostle Peter who Jesus named as the first pope.

So in this passage when Paul is appealing for his right and the right of all preachers to marry, he points to the other apostles, to the pope, and to Jesus’ brothers and says, “Well they’re all married, so why can’t I have a wife too?” If Jesus had actually been married, wouldn’t Paul just have cited Jesus’ own marriage as the definitive proof that they too should be allowed to take wives? I would think that would be a much more compelling argument, and the fact that he didn’t make it is a pretty strong indication that he couldn’t because Jesus wasn’t married.

Wrap Up

Based on all the evidence, it seems vanishingly unlikely that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, or that either of them was married to anyone for that matter. Married or not, is it possible that they banged? I mean sure, why not. They were real historical people, and people have certain needs.

There was no requirement for preachers to be celibate, and many people of the day would have seen celibacy as the greatest sin of all. After all, the family unit was incredible important, especially when choosing a marriage partner.

Even though it’s possible that they did, I don’t know that I’d put money on it. Much of the texts make them seem too close for that, as weird as it sounds. Of all the types of relationships that existed back then, the emotional bond between husband and wife was the weakest; even enemies would at least have a strong emotional bond of mutual hatred, but for husband and wife there was really nothing. They were just the cousin that your parents decided you were going to have babies with for the sake of the family.

The strongest emotional bond that existed was between a mother and first-born son, which sucks for all the other sons, followed closely behind by the bond between brother and sister. If Mary was more to Jesus than just another disciple, they are more likely to have seen themselves as brother and sister due to the emotional connection. Then again, with everything else we’ve talked about I suppose that wouldn’t take sex off the table entirely.

So if the two weren’t married, why is this belief so popular? Even though religious and secular historians agree that there was no marriage between Jesus and Mary, why has this belief persisted so heavily? There is a mountain of papers on the subject that claim with absolute certainty they were married and had children, and it’s not a new idea either.

We mentioned that it began during the rise of Gnosticism in the second century, but it has persisted ever since. It was a key tenet in the beliefs of the Cathars of the 12th through 14th centuries and it has been greatly debated since it was first proposed. The concept of not just their marriage but their alleged children and the Jesus bloodline has an equally long history of debate with countless theories crafted on the subject. There are even documentaries exploring the bloodline and trying to trace the descendants of Jesus.

So why has this belief persisted, and why does it seem to be more popular than ever? The bloodline thing is pretty simple: people think it would be cool. The idea that there could be descendants of Jesus who possess some fragment of his magical powers is enticing to a lot of people, and even more enticing is the possibility that some of us could even claim to be direct descendants of Jesus.

If somehow my conclusion was proven wrong tomorrow and historians could definitively prove that not only did Jesus have children but that you, Simon Whistler, are his direct descendant, even as someone who doesn’t believe in God you have to admit that’d be cool as Hell. If nothing else, that story is getting you free drinks for life at any bar.

The other reason the idea not only persists but has risen in popularity is because it was so damn long ago that those of us in the west have little to no understanding of what life was like back then. In the Middle East, culture hasn’t actually changed that much. Parallel cousin marriages are no longer mandatory, but they remain common accounting for just under half of all marriages. And even though a man is not required to marry his father’s brother’s daughter anymore, she still needs his approval to marry someone else.

To them the idea that Jesus could have married Mary would likely still seem utterly ridiculous, but in the west things are different. We have romantic marriages with self selecting partners, and we don’t limit ourselves to the town in which we were born. Thanks to modern technology and especially the internet, it’s not uncommon for people to date and subsequently marry someone who lives hundreds if not thousands of miles away, something that would previously have been unheard of.

As our society changes, we mistakenly try to apply our beliefs and values to the past to make them more relatable; it’s the same thing the church did with Jesus’ physical appearance. A man born in Israel in the first century was not going to look like a northern European, and it would be really weird if he did. Likewise, he would not have had a similar thought process or belief system to a modern American, and that would be even weirder if he did.

A Middle Eastern man born in the first century would not have been a romantic individualist searching the world for his ideal soulmate, because that’s not how the world worked back then. The belief that he and Mary could have had a happily ever after, or at least a “happily until horrifically executed by the Romans”, persists today as a western fantasy. It’s what we want for them because it’s what our values tell us that we would want in that situation, and thus it is what they should have wanted 2,000 years ago. It’s just not a plausible outcome for the time and place.

Unfortunately, because that is the driving force behind the persistence of this belief, it’s unlikely to go away any sooner than flat Earth or fake moon landing conspiracies will. But there’s a silver lining. Mary Magdalene may not have been Jesus’ wife, but if the story of the resurrection is true then she is the first and only person on an episode of Decoding the Unknown to actually see a ghost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Mary Magdalene a repentant sex worker?

No, the portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a repentant sex worker is not accurate. This misconception arose from a homily by Pope Gregory in 591, who combined the stories of Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and an unnamed sinful woman into a single character and assumed she was a sex worker.

How important was Mary Magdalene in the New Testament?

Mary Magdalene was one of the most important characters in the New Testament. Her name appears 12 times in the canonical Gospels, more frequently than most of the apostles. She was a trusted disciple, present at many important events in Jesus’ life, and was the first to discover the empty tomb and see Jesus after his resurrection.

What role did Mary Magdalene play in Jesus’ ministry?

Mary Magdalene, along with other women, financially supported Jesus’ activities. She was also a trusted disciple who accompanied him on journeys, including to Jerusalem, and was present at his crucifixion and resurrection.

What are the Gnostic Gospels and their portrayal of Mary Magdalene?

The Gnostic Gospels, such as the Gospels of Philip, Thomas, and Mary, portray Mary Magdalene as a pivotal figure who understood Jesus’ teachings better than the other disciples. They often refer to her as Jesus’ companion or partner, with the Gospel of Philip suggesting a closer relationship, including a passage where Jesus is described as kissing her often.

What is the significance of the ‘kiss of peace’ and ‘kiss of love’ in the context of Mary Magdalene and Jesus?

The ‘kiss of peace’ was a traditional greeting among early Christians, involving a kiss on the mouth. The ‘kiss of love’ was an ancient Jewish greeting used for family and close friends, involving a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The Gospel of Philip describes Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene often, but the exact nature of this kiss is debated.

What evidence is there against the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married?

There is no mention of Jesus being married in the Bible. Additionally, in the Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul appeals for the right of preachers to marry by citing the marriages of the other apostles and Jesus’ brothers, but does not mention Jesus’ own marriage, suggesting that Jesus was not married.

Why is the belief that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married so popular?

The belief persists due to a combination of factors, including the idea that descendants of Jesus might possess magical powers, the lack of understanding of ancient Middle Eastern culture in the West, and the romanticization of their relationship according to modern values.

What was the cultural context of marriage in ancient Israel?

Marriage in ancient Israel was a contractual arrangement to join families, increase honor, and ensure the continuation of the family lineage. The ideal marriage partner was a patrilateral parallel cousin, and marriages were often arranged at or shortly after birth.

Why is it unlikely that Jesus would have been married according to ancient customs?

Given Jesus’ lack of social standing, his suspicious birth, and the scandal surrounding his origins, it is unlikely that he would have been a suitable partner for an arranged marriage. Additionally, he moved away from his family and community, further reducing his chances of marrying according to ancient customs.

What is the significance of Mary Magdalene’s name in the New Testament?

Mary was the most common Jewish name at the time, leading to confusion and the merging of different Marys into a single character. Mary Magdalene’s name appears 12 times in the canonical Gospels, indicating her importance and frequent mention in the narrative.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Uncovering the Truth Behind Mary Magdalene and Jesus
• Hero image source by Cbaile19 / openverse, cc0.