What's so unholy about married sex? Abrahamic religions are full of fanatical notions and silly dogmatism.

I'd like to know where this "fear" is? I've never heard of anyone being AFRAID of Jesus being married or having sex. The Bible simply shows that he didn't marry, probably because that would mean that God would have grandchildren on earth. Imagine how THAT would play out. ("I'm better than you are because I can trace my family line all the way back to God!") Jesus did not come to earth to marry, he came to die. Knowing that he would die and all that would happen, I doubt that he would have wanted to subject his wife and possible children to the danger and sorrow that were sure to follow him. It had nothing to do with being "too holy for sex." LOL! This article is a classic example of a big mountain being made out of a non-existant molehill by people who ought to know better.

The big turd in that religious punchbowl is based on the fact that the Bible, written by men, was filled with the truth.

The Bible is a book written long after Jesus died by old men who had religious agendas.

I don't think its likely Jesus would have married. If he had been married, would she have traveled with him all through israel as he preached? Otherwise, he would never have spent any time with her to take care of her. Would not she have been baptised with him, and traveled with him? Just the silence on the matter makes me think it wasn't so. What about the fact that a man and woman are "one flesh?" If Jesus and his wife are one, wouldn't they both have to die, for a complete death? Also, the sinful nature of humans make them very dark to a perfect man. How can the light and dark exist together? If they had children, the children would not be ordinary. They would be super human in some regard. Remember when the angels fathered children, making a sinister race before the flood? Also, any wife would yoko ono the group of 12. Next thing you know, Matthew would be off on a solo tour, Peter Paul and Mary would form a trio, etc. It also makes me wonder if the disciples were married. If not, that makes it less likely Jesus was married, as they would be following his example. And what wife would want to be married to a man that knows everything? She could not be his complement or his helper. Jesus would not be gay, obviously. He wrote the rules against gay relations. That idea defies common sense.

stoopids, what rules did Jesus write about gays??? Where can I find them in the bible?

I always thought Judas acted like a jilted lover. I've always believed Jesus was bi-sexual and Judas was his gay lover and when Mary Magdalene came on the scene, Judas became so jealous of Jesus and Mary it led to Judas betraying Jesus to the Romans. Perhaps Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene was the thing that set Judas' jealousy off the deep end.

I have heard evangelicals and other extreme religious groups say everything from Jesus never had sex to Jesus didn't even have genitalia which I think is absolute nonsense. Jesus was a man with all the desires, emotions and vulnerabilities that go with being a human being. If he didn't, what point would it have been for God to incarnate as a man in the first place?

In the New Testiment, the Church is The Bride of Christ.

Whether it's true or not is a strange questions to ponder. Does anyone ponder Red Riding Hood or any other fairy tale this deeply? A fairy tale can't be true by nature of the fact that it's a story. Just as the bible is.

not certain about Jesus being gay.. but we do know that more than one of his decipiles was gay..

one thing we have to remember.. there has been a great deal of strectching the truth.. with regard to the life of jesus.. the old testament was written 3,000 years prior to the birth of christ.. so not a great source of information... The new testament was written more than 300 years AD.. so it's not on site reporting either..

try this game.. it's an important game.. you and your friends sit in a circle and the leader whispers something to his neighbor on the right.. that story/ whisper continues around the circle.. when that whisper returns to the orgiinator it is completely different.. so what makes you believe that the bible is any different..

Many older sects believed Jesus was married, Templar Knights, Masonic orders, Coptic , even Peter ; so what, it is his message that is divine; the Madeline sect of the Catholic church believed he was married, 7th century popes believe Mary was his wife, many ancient writings refer to Mary as his wife as well as their child Sara, they settled in what is today southern France; what is the big deal he lived as a man on earth you can not kill God), he died and was raised from the dead, ; even the Muslims believe he was one of the three great prophets; he was referred to by the jews as a Rabbi, in those days a Rabbi must be married; what is the big deal, Man and women were created to have sex, the church in the 4th century got it all wrong, when they outlawed marriage by the clergy, until then it was accepted, remember Catholic is a extension of Judaism .

I don't think it is a fear of marriage but rather a fear that we are adding to the Gospel. The Bible doesn't say anything about Jesus' marriage status, but it also doesn't say anything about his childhood or early adulthood. We hear about Jesus' birth, it then skips to a single episode when he was 12 then skips another 20 years to when he was 30. John ends his Gospel by saying he didn't write everything Jesus said or did. Maybe a wife is one of those things. I tend to think silence on the issue lends credence to his singleness but as far as I can tell scripturally there is no reason why Jesus couldn't have had a wife and still been divine. I don't think He would have had kids though because many people would have tried to make them their leader.

It's a lot easier to understand once you realize that Jesus never existed. Not one historian living any time around the time that Jesus was supposed to have lived, ever made mention of a man that was born to a virgin who traveled around with 12 diciples performing miracles until he was crucified by the Romans.... Use common sense people. Its a fictional story.

"And I love the way some "writing" from 400 years AFTER Jesus is suddenly found to be "fact". Christians believe in the bible and that the bible is the true representation of our Lord Jesus Christ."

and yet the bible, written a lifetime after jesus, is considered fact by christians. you can't have it both ways pro business.

The Bible simply shows that he didn't marry, probably because that would mean that God would have grandchildren on earth. Imagine how THAT would play out.

Where does the Bible show that he didn't marry? I don't remember any such passage stating that. Granted there is no passage saying he WAS ... but remember, a great deal of early Christian writings were eliminated.

I can understand WHY they were eliminated .. by your very own statement. The church hierarchy didn't want any "pretenders to Peter's throne" to complicate matters. God's grandchildren certainly would.

Hmmm ... that might be the plot of my next book!

I do not understand. I am a Christian, Jesus was an observant Jew. Jews married, why couldn't he have? Was God the Father to deny him that? He laid down his life, not of his own accord but following the will of the Father, why would the Father deny him a partner? If sex is evil and dirty then why did God make it feel so good? Why did he say "go forth and multiply"? This is not blasphamy, I do not understand how it could be.

As a side note, why does Jesus have to be an only child, as so many of my fellow Catholics profess? Mary was a virgin at the time of cenception of Jesus, you think a loving God would deny Joseph and Mary a child of their own, "Mother behold your son."

Frank you are right. Mary was a virgin at the time of the birth, but with Joseph as her husband she would certainly have had more children.

And you are right about the other. Marital sex is not a sin, it's an expression of the kind of marriage God intended. I'm with you completely on this one.

Jesus was married!? Explains why he didn't resist being crucified.

Frank, if Mary had other children, don't you think it is kinda weird that Jesus, on the cross, said "Behold your Mother" to the Apostle John?? Wouldn't Mary have been taken care of by one of her biological children instead of John?

Married sex IS holy and I wouldn't have a problem if I found out Jesus was married. However, He wasn't as as the Gospels indicate. The Jesus is the article we are debating obviously was not the Son of Man, it was another Jesus!

The thing that is so curious is that Christians (should) know that more ancient texts and books about Jesus and early Christianity were purged because they didn't fit the Church's agenda. The texts that were carefully selected, edited and approved for the New Testament clearly did not include MOST of the ancient texts from early Christians. The church invented the history of Christianity and Jesus by picking and choosing passages from old texts that supported their agenda. There are scores of texts that describe a much different history of the religion but those texts were dismissed since they were inconveniently counter to the church's dogma.

So, we've got a "Bible" that was written 7-8 generations after Jesus time... with only cherry-picked history to support the church's political agenda... admittedly written by MEN, not god.... translated repeatedly throughout history by MEN with an agenda... these same MEN dismiss MANY books and texts and simply ignore them because they don't like what they say.

This article not only doesn't prove Jesus was married but it doesn't even prove he existed. Since Jesus's life (birth-30 years old) is barely mentioned in the bible at all, and there is no proof that he actually existed at all, it seems more likely the whole thing is just myth. Perhaps based on a real Jesus, perhaps not.

The one thing that is certain is that the bible is a human invention carefully edited to reflect the story the church chooses to tell. How anyone can literally believe any of it still baffles me.

"he came to die"

He dies??? Oh gee thanx, I was reading that book.

Elliot: "So MSNBC/NBC feels it is OK to question the lords son and call him a phony."

Blame the messenger much?

Yes Elliot, it IS ok to question whether an historical account is accurate. NBC is a news organization and this discovery is news. But they did not call him a phony; that was your take on the article.

"The Mormon faith teaches that Jesus had 3 wives and many children, but they still believe that Mary was knocked up by a Mormon spirit."

-No, they don't teach any such thing.

Ok. The Bible doesn't say if he was married or not. Here's something 2 ponder.....

The Bible doesn't mention Lilith, either.....

Hopefully before another Big Rock slams onto the planet earth God shows up and reveals to human if 'shemale' is real. Or maybe aliens shows up and let us know Star Trek is to be in the future if we behave our-self.

Otherwise it will take hundreds to a few thousand years to rule this in or out of the Taliban System of both the Christian and Muslim doctrines. The Hindus, Buddhists and Jews will evolve "God" to an "inner" something as time goes on. Other primitive and modern Humanism doctrines will always see "God" as the power of nature itself.

There was 13 "gospels" written, one supposedly from each apostle and Mary, yet only 4 of those were included in the Bible, the rest declared to be "apocryphal" 4 centuries after the fact. The selection appears based more on what the biblical editors wanted, rather than sound evidence.

The whole bible reads more like a historical fiction, a tiny bit of real history mixed with a lot of tall tales.

Rick ?????? Precisely where is the connection? Or the disconnection, for that matter????

(sniff, sniff) I smell the printing presses warming up. Another version, edited, paraphrased, rewitten, translated, etc of the bible is going to press.

Some mythical being knocks up somebody else's wife and it is accpeted as unimpeachable evidence of a god. By god, I did get pregnant from sitting on a dirty toilet seat. It is because of me that they now market those toilet seat protectors - can't have too many gods vying for recognition. Mother Goose and Grimms brothers fairy tales are just as believable.

Nonsense. Han shot first. The true believers know this to be true. It wasn't until George Lucas got all PC that the nonsense about Greedo shooting first got started.

I really beg to disagree, MDrn. The modern canon, approved by Lucas Himself, corrects the earlier misinterpretations. I mean, what a mess it would be if we could each choose which text to believe.

Worf would have kicked both their asses.

I voted you up Ron, because whether ou know it or not, basic Christian doctrine was decided in a series of church councils between the 5th and 9th centuries. Early Christian elders and bishops, considered in their time as defenders and apologists for the Faith were later labeled as heretics.

I find it very odd that the fundamentalist Christians demand an asexual perverted Christ to a "normal" married Christ with children. I guess they really picture Him in their hearts as a thirty-something loser living at home with his mom. Nothing like being able to feel smugly superior to your gods, is there?

LOL! Jedi have been arguing for centuries about whether Luke kissed Leia knowing she was his sister or not. The whole scandal could rock the Jedi religion and turn some towards the Dark Side!

"Too Holy"? Who made sex dirty anyway? It was the Roman pagans in the second and third centuries. There is no problem with a married Jesus.

Gosh, God wanted to experience the creation He created. Married life is beautiful and I can't see why God won't want to be a part of that.

Grow up. In fact, I always thought Jesus was married. It was customary for Jews to marry young. There were 12 years missing from His life. Obviously it wasn't a big deal to the early Christians. They focused more on the Teachings of Christ.

To me, Jesus - married or not - will always be the Son of God and my Lord and Redeemer.

A problem - for whom? Despite assumptions to the contrary, Christians are open minded. Yes, there are those who put the "mental" in fundamental who are "my way or the highway," but most of the theologians I know embrace science, the Big Bang Theory, dinosaurs, evolution, etc., and the idea that Jesus was married doesn't change what he taught or how it all ended. If you believe, you believe - it's as intangible as love and just as much a waste of time to try to prove or disprove.

Ironically I find Atheists to be the ones who can't be open to possibilities, and yet they're supposedly the "Bright" thinkers.

aarpmom - I agree. The idea that he was too holy to marry or have sex doesn't really make since, when matrimony itself is considered holy. If he were fully God and fully man, then he was a human being in a human body. He ate food, and thus he also would have urinated and deficated. Hard to imagine someone holy taking a poop too, but there is no way he got around that! I believe he lived like ordinary humans, and in those days it was customary for a young man to marry. I have no problem with it. Doesn't change anything.

Why are christians so in denial about the normal sexual function of the body. IF as they believe, we are made in god's image, then god must have some junk. If Jesus is the son of man AND god, he going to be shaped in this same image. It seems to me to be more an insult to the gift that god has bestowed (making us in his image) to deny the sexual nature of our bodies.

If it was to proven Jesus was married it wouldn't change anything. The only people who think this is a big deal tend to be media and college professor types who don't have a clue. Jesus Getting married and having a normal, healthy, sexual relationship would not prove or disprove anything. This is just an attempt to show Christians as intolerant to anything that has been previously assumed when in fact most Christians would not have any problems with a Messiah that was married.

At least if he was married his marriage wasn't to a 9 year old girl, thank you Islam and Prophet MUHAMMAD

"To holy" for sex? Absolutely. The "wife" is simply a symbolic reference to the church and not any woman.

He was born of a virgin and was crucified and rose as a virgin, a spotless lamb, for the remission of the sins of both men and women that were their undoing in the beginning, and still even now, to show men, thru Him, and women, thru His mother Mary, the way to oneness with our Father in heaven.

Zues had a child with a human woman. That didn't work out too bad did it? OH wait wrong cult.

Why are christians so in denial about the normal sexual function of the body.

I don't know what Christians you are talking about, the ones I see and talk to every week are very comfortable with sex between a married couple and their own sexuality. One of the best selling Christian books is "A Celebration of Sex" by Dr. Douglas Rosenau.

I don't see why the faithful object to Jesus being married and fathering children. Great easy way to spread salvation. The Bible teaches that God knocked Mary up. Why would He prohibit His son the same rite of pleasure? Doesn't make any sense.

"Can God sleep with a woman and have a child?" Um, I'm not religious myself, but what was the Incarnation all about?

I find it fantastic when there is a statement in an article describing Dan Brown's depiction of Jesus as "gospel" to some. Dan Brown has written very convincing books that make us think about the possibilities just like the men who wrote the Bible and other religious texts.

Christians and every other religious belief puts their faith in books that were written thousands of years ago. Now let's fast forward 3000 years from now and someone finds all the writings on the Internet and starts spreading it as "gospel". What percentage of the writings on the Internet are mistruths, mistakes or flat out lies? Reading the Internet 3000 years from now they might wind up worshipping Tom Cruise or even Yoda.

Stop believing in the man and focus on the word. The more we focus on the entity these books were written about the more hatred and war stay with us. Faith in a god isn't helping the world it is hurting it. The lack of faith in humanity then goes hand in hand. Put more faith in the human race and less faith in an entity and we just might be able to turn things around.

Science has explained, in a more logical way, how the earth came to be and it wasn't a man in the sky stating 'then it shall be" while doing a Harry Potter and poof, there it all is.

Everything around us is evolving. We are evolving yet so many still want to believe we are a creation. Not only that, they want to beleive in the writings of people much more primitive than we are today. We are so technologically advanced today yet we are just as primitive as the writers of all the holy books.

Use the force----between your ears.

Funny thing is, LogicReguired, that it directly speaks to that intolerance if what they (Christian leaders) currently believe is so inflexible as to be unable to come to terms with such a development. The going presumption is that those espousing knowledge of their faith don't say it as 'to the best of our knowledge' and are willing to fill in the blanks. That these leaders drive the direction of the church and direct their followers to given tasks is dangerous if it is not based in fact, and speaks to the church's beliefs being corrupted. It doesn't ultimately matter anyways, because it's impossible to truly prove Jesus was married or not (document stating so is not proof, even if it is a 4th Century document), so there will always be doubts.

Oh, and back around 2000 years ago, people didn't live to be 80 or 100 years old. It was probably closer to 40 or 50. To be married early (married doesn't imply sex, by the way) was to remove all that 'looking and waiting' time to find a partner, so that children could be had as quickly as possible to sustain family lines before any disaster befell the child. I don't doubt it was very common to have marriages and betrothals for children before puberty. That notion of 'arranged marriages' isn't a modern concept, after all. Looking at history with modern mores does a disservice to what they had to go through and the reasons behind their decisions. That isn't to say we need follow in their footsteps, but at least understand why they did it and accept it for that fact alone instead of turning it into some religious or racial slur.

The belief that Jesus must be not be fully human in some way, isn't Christianity, its docetism. Christians should have no problem with Jesus having sex - it's part of being fully human. Also, the belief that Jesus was fully human, but not fully divine is also not Christian. Jesus was more than a mystic or a great teacher - he was the Son of God! People are welcome to believe that he wasn't the Son of God - but it isn't a Christian belief.

As for the belief that Jesus was celibate having anything to do with the priesthood being celibate shows a remarkable ignorance concerning the history of the priesthood. Celibacy for priests came about because the European landowners objected to people leaving their lands to the clergy, and the clergy then leaving those lands to their offspring. The landowners realized that the catholic church over time would own all their lands. They objected and challenged the church. That is when it was decided that priests would no longer be allowed to marry - and of course a different reason - Jesus' celibacy was offered as the reason.

This is the problem when non Christians attempt to explain Christian Doctrine. You are confusing the Catholic Church ( approx. 40% of Christians) with the rest of us.

Jesus was sent to earth to live among mankind. To experience fear,joy, pain, anguish, temptation and all that it means to be human. Being married is consistent with the divine plan that Jesus was sent to earth to fill out. Again, the Bible is silent as to his marital status.

Catholic priests gained so much power and land and control over their parishes in the middle ages, that forbidding them to marry and procreate was seen as a way to limit their power. There is NOTHING Biblical that prevents priests from being married. That is a man made invention of the Catholic Church, which frequently strays far afield from Biblical teachings in its doctrine.

Many Catholics also believe that Mary remained a virgin. Most other Christians believe she and Joseph had normal sexual relations and it was likely that Jesus had " earthly" brothers and sisters. Jesus was sent to live among a family and experience all that family life involved.

In that time, it would have been very odd for a 30 year old man to not be married. Many scholars believe that most of the 12 disciples were married. For a bunch of reasons, including brevity and sexism, the lives of the wives were not mentioned by writers of the gospels. Mary and Mary Magdalene were major figures in the Bible, but other women were left unmentioned.

I don't know if this document is authentic or not, but it makes no difference to this conservative evangelical Christian if Jesus was married or not. He came to live among us and to die for our salvation.

Those of us who are patiently waiting on His return will just have to continue to wait. Should He show up, then we can ask Him ourselves. Those who do not believe in Him should probably not be discussing the wife issue anyway.

Gary420, you're conveniently omitting the fact that the early Catholic church determined what would be included in Christian doctrine. Every bit of the bible that your particular denomination uses (unless you happen to be a Mormon) was defined by the Catholics, so it is 100% impossible for any non-mormon denomination to divorce their doctrine from Catholic doctrine.

First century Christians had no problem with Jesus being married and having children. It wasn't until a misogynistic religion and society categorized women as either a sexual Eve or saintly Mary, mother of God that Jesus had to be asexual. The corruption of the Roman Catholic Church (especially during the Renaissance) proves that the Holy See doesn't believe in celibacy. And it hasn't destroyed their religion. If ones faith is contingent on Jesus marital status, then you have a flimsy faith that won't hold up to any inspection.

Ransom, there is still nothing in the Bible ( written by the Catholics according to you) that speaks to priests being married or celibate. Celibate priests are a man made idea. As many others have pointed out, priests remaining celibate was an attempt to limit power; it had nothing to do with Jesus.

@Andy Ritch: If Jesus should throw up again, this world would just crucify him again -- starting with his "followers." We have learned nothing.

It has nothing to do with sex or being celibate. It has everything to do with Jesus purpose in life. He was born to do the will of his Father, not to get married and have a family. He had nowhere to lay down his head, as in no house. He didn't work to support a family after baptism. He was a single guy so he could devote himself to his work. That's all there is to it.

Sue-Weet Jay-sus in Heaven! A fourth article on this burning issue. GEEEZ I hope Dan Brown is taking notes. Ssomething this CONTROVERSIAL just BEGS for a sequel to the DA VINCI CODE.

PUH-LEEZE.

Did Jesus eliminate waste like the rest of us? Does the Bible talk about it? Did he get sick? Get a cold, the measles, a hang nail? Does the Bible talk about it? Did Jesus eat? I mean other than that last supper, and now that I think about it, it doesn't say HE ate, he just passed the bread and wine to everybody else. Could Jesus read? Write? Does the Bible say anything about it? Was he too holy to do any of these things?

GEEEEEMINEEE Christmas.

C'mon folks get a grip here.

I cannot believe we're now on our fourth story regarding this hot news item and over 600 people (sadly, myself included) have so far weighed in on this.

How about this folks. What if Jesus was married? What if he had children? What if he was just a man, a human being and when he was executed he stayed dead and his bones were placed in the family ossuary like any other good Jewish boy? Does that, in any way, diminish the value of his teachings? Does that in any way, impair your ability to follow those teachings?

No.

Then get over yourselves for heaven's sake.

written by the Catholics according to you)

Actually Gary, Ransom never said the Catholics WROTE the Bible. He said they selected what was put into it. BIG difference. And his point is still valid.

Unless your brand of Christianity includes OTHER writings, such as the Book of Mormon or perhaps the Gnostic Gospels, you have simply reinterpreted (with a little help from Martin Luther, Zwingli and, not to forget, Henry VIII) the books the CATHOLIC church selected for the Bible thousands of years ago.

Other writings and gospels that did not fit with their vision of Christianity were labled heresy and ordered to be destroyed.

Ironically I find Atheists to be the ones who can't be open to possibilities, and yet they're supposedly the "Bright" thinkers.

Oh I see, you believe in magical sky-wizardry and find it ironic that atheists aren't bright enough to defy logic, reason, fact, evidence and common sense to agree with your fantasy world!

You truly are ironic!

It has everything to do with Jesus purpose in life. He was born to do the will of his Father, not to get married and have a family. He had nowhere to lay down his head, as in no house. He didn't work to support a family after baptism. He was a single guy so he could devote himself to his work. That's all there is to it.

And how do you know all of this? Please point out some passages that explore this issue. How do YOU know that part of his purpose was NOT to have children and a family?

Really, The media just attacks the Resurrected Christ at every turn. They don't believe in the true son of God. They are out to smear his name and his real nature. He was NOT a normal human being. He was divine. You'll all fine out soon enough.

Er, Rick. How EXACTLY is this story "attacking" Jesus? To suggest that he COULD have been married? That's an attack? WOW.

Even if you take the Bible 100% literally, it never states he wasn't married nor that he was even celibate.

You have to work pretty hard to be offended that this one.

Maybe Jesus married an atheist. That is why we have never heard of her.

In early history, it was not uncommon for popes to be married and/or have children. There was a time that there was more than one pope. So . . . I suspect that the celibacy situation was man-made, not biblical, unless as edited and it was "interpreted" as such in order to rein in the papal shenanigans.

it makes no difference to this forward thinking christian, either, Gary. Jesus being human by his nature and actions doesn't make him any less divine...because we're all divine.

let's take a different angle on the whole God aspect. God is not a human, he's never been a human and that aspect of most peoples' dogma is a take over from the roman and greek gods. God describes himself very clearly in the Bible. "i am that i am. i am the alpha and the omega. the beginning and the end." that doesn't sound like some guy sitting on a cloud somewhere. he doesn't have a lightning bolt, that's Thor. God only 'appears' as forms of energy, fire, smoke, clouds, a voice. Jesus, after he died and came back would be sitting with his followers and then disappear into thin air. not human.

so, what's going on? well, ask yourself what could possibly fit the description of being the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end? what exists everywhere all at once? The universe. Could the universe itself have a consciousness and a self awareness? that might sound crazy at first, but is it any crazier than some guy sitting on a cloud?

the truth is the universe is energy. everything in the universe is energy, including us. the adage that we are all star children, is true! every atom, every molecule, every quark is just part of a huge mass of energy that is so vast that we have no concept of it. your thoughts are energy taking form. the idea that consciousness could exist without physicality may seem like so much science fiction, but i don't believe it is impossible. and although we may never be able to 'prove' this consciousness exists scientifically, people have encounters with this consciousness all the time and all the science in the world can't prove it isn't true.

the universe works in perfect synchronicity. it is ruled by a logic that many scientists say shouldn't exist. happenings in the universe can be predicted using mathematics. many scientists say that the perfection of the universe connotes intelligence. if God is the consciousness of the universe itself, then we could move away from the arrogance and greed that drives religion today and has always driven religion and look to the REAL philosophy of God.

the universe works in harmony with itself. this planet works in perfect harmony with itself. we and we alone are the snag in that harmony. the true philosophy of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah and every other religion is that we should strive to live in harmony with God. and what does it also say? cause and effect. if you are bad, bad things will happen to you. if you are good, good things will happen. there is no way to buy your way into heaven, there is no way to pray your way into heaven. your deeds are your only path to becoming one with God and in harmony with the universe.

some people find this enlightenment, like Buddha and reach the realm of oneness with God. others, like Jesus, i believe are born with this enlightenment. perhaps the universal consciousness chose to have him born this way, i don't know. but, Jesus was a man, like any other man. he just understood the secret to enlightenment. unfortunately, he had to try and explain this to a people who believed in demons and humanistic gods and monsters in the closet. if he had come today, he would have been ignored. but, he sewed a seed that for the last two thousand years has been germinating.

although the 'church' (i mean all religions) has taken this philosophy and basically flushed it down the toilet while they set up their own dogma that has nothing to do with God, the truth is still there, hiding in plain sight in the words of Jesus. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." you don't even have to believe in God to understand this universal truth. imagine, like John Lennon said, if we all lived by the golden rule. would we have war, genocide, famine? would the rich rule over the poor?

But, we have been brainwashed for thousands of years into believing this humanistic ideal that is God. it puts us at the top. it makes us superior. it feeds our arrogance instead of helping us to understand that we are a PART of the universe, part of God, he exists in everyone of us right now and we are all equal!

Don't know if anyone else said it, but would this be a "HOLY F#%K."

Couldn't resist, just too easy.

Of course Jesus had a wife, he was a Rabbi at a time in history when all Rabbi's had a wife.

He may very well have had children, though we will never know.

The most we can say about Jesus time on earth is that we know of about maybe 3 years of his life, in very general terms. We know he ate fish, bread, drank water and wine. We know he moved about in an area not much larger than modern Israel (including the West Bank.)

If Jesus was fully God and fully man, then to be fully man he had to have take a wife, had sex and most likely had children.

journal journal,

Yes, I agree, Jesus was an itinerant preacher, and had no home or possessions, merely the clothes on his back. The story related in both Matthew 8 and Luke 9, states that clearly.

"a man came to Him and said, 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.' Jesus replied, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head'"

Jesus was completely free from earthly ties and would not have had the comforts of a house to come home to in the evening. He would not know where his next meal was coming from. Jesus wanted to make sure that this man that wanted to follow him knew what he was getting into.

Actually, I have no problem with the theory that Jesus might have been married. Marriage is not a sin and neither is sex within marriage. But, there is no evidence in the bible anywhere that Jesus had a wife, and there is plenty of evidence to refute it.

Besides, so many women were mentioned in Jesus' life: his mother, sisters, his great aunt Elizabeth, women that believed in him and were his followers, Peter's wife and his mother, and many more.

Seems that if there had been a wife, she would have been mentioned at least once somewhere in the vast amount of scriptures we have about the life of Christ.

Why would a Christian even read or comment on this story - unless they had some doubts about the whole Christian story. My Catholic mother-in-law would never read a story like this - she has been in her own bubble since birth.

The more topics like this are discussed - the more apparent it becomes just how evil the Catholic church is...oh, silence was soooo golden.

I love these articles - some posters are funny as all get out - very clever.

In the end, the robot from Lost in Space saves us all.

Married or unmarried, it doesn't change anything in how I think about Him. He came here to experience life as we do; the joys, heartaches, temptations, etc. HIS teachings are what I follow.....

Some here have patted them selves on the back and pointed out how Christians haven't gone all jihad over articles like this...um, sure, don't credit Americans as a whole for being an advanced culture, lets make it about how great Christians are instead.

The only thing that saved Europe from Christians was others formed powers that were stronger militarily than what the Christians could muster...it isn't Rocket Surgery folks. Even though the Church of England was still basically Catholic - it found a higher power - they liked to keep their heads attached to the rest of their body.

Actually, I agree with the poster who asked why anyone who is not a Christian would even be vaguely interested in this topic. Seems the only ones interested in discussing it would be believers of the Christian faith.

Odd, how so many unbelievers jump feverishly into the pool to somehow belittle the Christian faith or religion in general, when it really doesn't involve them at all.

Here we go again, another attempt to discredit Christianity. Jesus was refering to his church or his followers as his wife, his (for lack of a better way of explaining it) marriage was his love for all of us. Have you not read that in the beginning man was not to have a "wife" but Adam seen the animals had a mate and God said Adam needed a mate also so he created Eve by taking a rib from Adam so they could be as one and formed a woman in their ( Father-God and Son-Jesus ) image as Adam was, but with the ability to pro-create.Jesus always said he sole reason for being was to die so man could be forgiven and be accepted by God into eternal life. There is no way Jesus would even have thought about anything else, he knew from the beginning what his role for humanity was. I believe that more of you should really read the Word and ask God to open up your mind in order to recieve it and to fully understand what he said. I do not listen to a word man says about God or Christ unless they back it up with scripture. As to the ones who translated God's word from Hebrew to GreeK and all the other languages, I am absolutley convinced that not a single word was changed or left out in the translation. If anyone were to attempt to do such a thing I am convinced God would have stopped them in some way thta scares me to think about it. You see while I believe and except God as my creator I also know that as God he can do anything he wants reguardless of what we believe to be right or wrong. It is as he told Job "who are you to question me, can a pot ask the one who created it as to why he made it that way", No, God is God and even though he loves you when you do not except him it will be you who will pay the ultimate price. So to all those who claim to not believe in God or Jesus or Satan, in the end just exactly who are you harming by refuseing to believe "God?" No, Jesus? No, it is yourself. I will also add this, I believe that all of the things that will lead to the destruction of the heavens and the earth that are fortold in the Revelations have been fulfilled and however God chooses to end it all can happen at any time, but only when He says it will, man does not know when that will be.

Do you not understand that there is no religion when it comes to God, The only requirement from God was to believe in him and to believe in his Son and to obey his commandments and when we fail "as we surely will" to ask for forgivness in the name of his Son, and because Jesus who was the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, he would without hesitation forgive you. There is no churches in God's relm, all of existense is his church. We human beings are all God's church, the only thing he mention about the assembling together was that if two or three or gather together in his name there he would be also. The main commandment from God was that we were to love one another as we love our self.

Once you made a real person into God it is hard to admit they had sex like you and me. Typical primitive religiosity.

Odd, how so many unbelievers jump feverishly into the pool to somehow belittle the Christian faith or religion in general, when it really doesn't involve them at all.

You mean like how the people that bang their Bibles at homosexuals citing scripture for their reason to hate them? Seems to me that there are many Christians out there that do not believe in a homosexual lifestyle, but they are sure passing judgement, aren't they?

Pot, meet kettle. Many of you believers are hypocrites.

Oops, I accidently checked your box, NYMike, instead of reply. Didn't mean to.

Anyway, I don't know personally any true Christians that hate homosexuals, although most do not condone homosexuality.

There seems to be a lot of Christophobes across the planet that hate Christians though. This thread is certainly proof enough of that.

Yes, I agree, Jesus was an itinerant preacher, and had no home or possessions, merely the clothes on his back.

No home or possessions? He must've been divorced!

Anyway, I don't know personally any true Christians that hate homosexuals, although most do not condone homosexuality.

I keep hearing that, but saying that someone doesn't deserve to love or to have equal rights sounds like hatred to me.

I have never heard or known a Christian say that homosexuals don't deserved to be loved or have equal rights, even though they might believe that homosexuality is wrong. But, I have heard gay people claim that Christians say that. Jesus taught we were to love people and not judge them, and that we were to hate the sin, but not the sinner. (Although many Christophobes scoff at this.)

I like what Billy Graham said in a tv interview one time. Asked if he believed homosexuality was a sin, he said yes, as a Christian, he believed that it was. Then, he was asked if one of his five children came out and said he/she was gay, would he still love that child? And Mr. Graham answered, "Why, I would love that one even more!"

I didn't say "to be loved" ... I said "to love" ... a big difference. So many, but not all "Christians", don't believe that gays should love the consenting adult to whom they are emotionally and sexually attracted. And, they're all for gays having "equal" rights, so long as those rights don't involve raising children, covering partners on health plans, hospital visitations and so, so many more.

Book of Revelation 19:7

Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has
come, and his bride has made herself ready.

Book of Isaiah 55:8

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares
the LORD.

1st Corinthians 7: 1-2, 8-9

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” ² But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

(Jesus cannot be sexually immoral for he is God manifested in the flesh)

1st Corinthians 7:8

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. ⁹ But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Matthew 4:8-10 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”

Jesus was tempted in Everyway this is why he stayed holy. We are obviously from the world and our thouts arent his thoughts he is in higher plain of existance. We are his wife the church is his wife. Brothers and sisters around the world please understand by wife Jesus means in a spiritual sence not physical. 2 other verses. Jesus had complete control of himself therefore he did not need to be married in the way we men marry a woman. Allot of people back in the days wer just as confused as people are now. And we thought we got smarter... wow after 2000 years we're still thinking the same way.

Yes go to God. Tell him you want homosexuals to be married. I don't think he will answer you. You can wait all day long but I believe you will never get an answer. The bible is what we use. Heck its a sin for a man or woman to have sexual relations out of wedlock. Its a sin for a man to marry his sister or aunt or mother. Its a sin for a man to marry a sheep a goat or a cow cat or dog. God put the issue to sleep by creating one man Adam and one woman Eve. God then married them....he is devine so he can do that. God intended for marriage to be between one man and one woman. Okay no I am going to play devils advoctate. Where did Adams sons find their brides. Also did you know Lots daughters got their father druink and slept with him to have children? But you go ahead and ask God your question see if he answers you. He may be you may not like the answer.

Jesus was tempted and he did not fall into sin but stayed strong to his last breath on the cross. No christian should be insulted by this it is just a big confusion. the Bible explicitly instructs us that we, the church, are his wife.

Jeremiah 3:14

"Return, faithless people," declares the LORD, "for I am your husband. I will
choose you--one from a town and two from a clan--and bring you to Zion.

Hosea 2:19

I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice,
unfailing love and compassion.

Jesus does have a wife and always will WE THE CHURCH will be one with him forever.

Matthew 13:13,14

¹³ This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

¹⁴ In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

THIS IS A PERVERTED WORLD INDEED. BUT WE ARE ALL SINNERS AND THEREFORE FAR FROM THE GLORY OF GOD.

1 Corinthians 6: 9-10

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men^{[a] 10} nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Allot of people just will not believe. and they wont ever believe. and they will die not believing.

Matthew 22:14

"For many are invited, but few are chosen."

Thank you.

I seem to recall that in genesis it says something like, "The sons of god looked upon the daughters of men and found them comely, in those days there many giants." Not an expert on the bible, I am an atheist.

Jesus was a natural Man, a carpenter, a construction worker, who, when he He saw the Dove and became the Christ, became Divine, He was touched by God. From now on, sometimes when He spoke, He spoke the Words of God. If He had a wife or not, doesn't change the value of His Words. I hope He was married, many of our Messengers from God were. At the very least that would have had much more healthy expression for sex in the Christian church!!

It makes no differance to me wether or not Jesus Christ was married.
But I say yes, it could of happened.
And "The DaVinci Code" was not the first film to bring up this question of wether he was or not.
The first film to bring up the question was "The Last Temptation of Christ".
Christ was played by William DaFoe & Mary Magadlene was played by Barbara Hershey.

There was a scene in the film where we see a naked Hershey sitting on the floor of a cottage
and she is visablely pregnant~ I would say 6 months along.
Now something happens and she & the child are killed????

I loved "The DaVinci Code" and have seen it countless number of times.
I love it cause it makes me ask "Could Christ have been married?"
The only way that we will ever really know the answer to this question is if we were there.
Otherwise it is a question that will be continued to be discussed just as the subject of
The Shroud of Turin is still debated wether it's real or a fake???

OK, so Jesus was a rock star - any groupies? Chicks on the lay low? Where is the paparazzi when you need them!

Retros (3.13) - So are you suggesting that the "church" was his wife? If so, how does one differentiate between any other people being married to a fanatical belief versus a human being.

On second thought I might be able to see your point after all. I've heard about workaholics "being married to their jobs" and I've been F'd by upper management but never felt any sexual gratification. So, yes, maybe there is something to your point.

There are more and more examples of "the church" (priests) F'ing young members (literally) of the congregation and then the church Fs them further (proverbially) by covering it up.

In the early first century, you couldn't be a Rabbi unless you were married. A 30 year old Jewish man that was not married would have been not only rare, but a bit of a social outcast.

Also, its the groom's family who was responsible for the wine/food at 1st century Jewish weddings. Why would Mary have gone to Jesus when the wine ran out? It wouldn't have been their responsibility.

spydergirl. perhaps it was jesus' brother's wedding. Also, the request for wine was not a request for wine. It was a request for a miracle, as evidenced by Jesus' response to the request.

stoopids, you need to go back and read the story. There was a wedding, the wine ran out, and Jesus converted water to wine as a demonstration of his power. No one ASKED him for a miracle.

The taproot of all that church celibacy ridiculousness = Catholic church money and greed. Unfortunately, as history shows, few priest were celibate. If only they had been. Lots of popes and priests married and had tons of kids. The Vatican invented their celibacy nonsense late in their game because married priest and popes were keeping land and riches for their families instead of it all going to the church. The sole reason the Catholic church came up with celibacy was so that it could hoard more wealth of what was then an emerging albeit mostly tribal Europe, after the fall of Rome/Dark Ages. The Catholic church was instrumental in keeping entire populations illiterate so it could retain power and spread into "pagan" northern lands.

However, perpetually demeaning and murdering female "heretics" is something the Vatican has always done. The Vatican wanted the lands and wealth of all those Lords and Knights killed during the endless Crusades, so the church invented the concept of witches ... a convenient way to take a widow's vast property - which often was essentially a free standing little village. Too bad Americans don't read ancient and early European history anymore, preferring the religious fiction of fantastical fairy tales and parables. It really is a window into today much more than modern folk want to believe. One of the chief reasons Europeans are more secular than any other people in the world is because of that period in history that engendered nothing but war and misery, thanks to the greedy Catholic church keeping people on their knees while it aligned itself with and interfered in every monarchy on the continent, generally resulting in war or lovely control techniques such as the Inquisition. Churches in the Dark and Middle Ages were simply money making endeavors. Still are. That's why the Vatican is considered a country, and even has a U.N. seat, feeling entitled and allowed to by all cowardly countries to still interfere in world politics and nonreligious realms ... tax free, of course.

Don: The unmarried priesthood didn't come about until much later .Catholic Priests were marrying and their offspring were leaving "home", with "church property". That was all about property rights. Chastity and Celibate living ( the word means NOT MARRIED , Single) , are two different things too. Many people confuse them.

Wonder why you call the Church Fathers "Zealots"? If you actually read some of their work, concerning their thoughts on scripture, I believe you would have to think them quite thoughtful and thought provoking. But , maybe not. The Canon of Scripture most people are familiar with actually predates The Christian Era. The Gospels are a logical continuation of The Old Testament, based on the writings of period. People continued for centuries to write their own version. Because of the "New Versions" not being consistent with earlier ones and in conflict with earlier writings the various Christian communities got together and decided to Finalize/ "EDIT" things. That's all, nothing sinister!

So tell me Don: would you call the Plays of Shakespere "HOGWASH" if you knew he didn't edit them himself?

Better to marry than to burn, but then we are not perfect so we can go ahead and have sex and have our heavenly father forgive us for this horible sin.

Jesus was a Middle Eastern male who lived 2000 years ago. As a Jewish male he would have been expected to marry.

A 30 year old Jewish man that was not married would have been not only rare, but a bit of a social outcast.

Well Jesus was an outcast, at least from the "establishment."

"No one ASKED him for a miracle."

Actually after Mary spoke with Jesus, he stated "My hour is not yet come" insinuating that she was asking him to do something that would come to define his life on the worlds stage, being the Son of God and performing miracles. So ya she was asking him.

Religion is a man made instituition invented for one purpose . Power and control over the people.

No different than a dictatorship.

exltcusa

stoopids, you need to go back and read the story. There was a wedding, the wine ran out, and Jesus converted water to wine as a demonstration of his power. No one ASKED him for a miracle.

Ahhh, name calling .... the mark of a well-reasoned and persuasive argument. In fact, his mother asked him, in a roundabout way.

The Council of Elvira (306) is often seen as the first to issue a written regulation requiring clergy to abstain from sexual intercourse. Its canon 33 decreed: "Bishops, presbyters, deacons, and others with a position in the ministry are to abstain completely from sexual intercourse with their wives and from the procreation of children. If anyone disobeys, he shall be removed from the clerical office."^[

exltcusa:

denver bill 2 and Drezz have accurately articulated my thoughts. In fact, I have hired the firm of Denver & Drezz to represent me for all future posts on this thread. Please direct all correspondence to them.

Hey denver bill 2 - maybe you should look up and see that Exltcusa was responding to someone who's "name" is stoopids and was not calling anyone that.

What I find humorous is that people want to debate Jesus (married or not), God, or any of this with random people on the internet, although it does provide for amusing reading seeing how everyone is correcting everyone else. lol

denver bill 2 - no body was name calling - "stoopids" is that person's ID on here, LMAO!

Don,

Unfortunately you are correct to a point. While the teachings date back to the time of Christ in most instances, The emperor Constantine, in negotiations with the early church, helped determine much of the content of the modern bible. It was done to keep his empire from flying apart because of the christian revolution taking place at the time. Later the Church picked and chose additional material to keep the christian church a patriarchal society. Teaching that Jesus was married or that women played large roles as disciples was stifled.

As a Catholic Christian, I personally do not have a problem with a married Christ. It is only logical that as flesh and blood he would be subject to the same wants, needs, and temptations as any other man. Being married, in my eyes, does not conflict but enhances the teachings he left for us. If he left children behind, so be it, it makes his sacrifice all that much more personal and important. Many modern theologians focus on his message rather than the mechanics as what actually happened 2000 years ago will probably never be known. It is his teachings that matter and no where is there a contradiction between his teachings and a married life.

Nothing like being able to feel smugly superior to your gods, is there?

Almost as bad as acting smugly superior because of an absence of belief in one...

OK, full disclosure, I am a Mormon and so some of my beliefs may very from yours, that said. While we have never had definitive proof that Jesus was married I have always thought that he should have been. Jesus was perfect and yet he still needed to baptized. Why? because baptism is a requirement for entrance into to heaven. The scriptures also teach us of the importance of families "therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife". In my Church families are forever. Who you marry here, you will have the opportunity to stay married to in the eternities "whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven". It just makes sense to me, that if Jesus must comply with all holy ordinance and marriage can be considered a holy ordinance then he probably needed to be married.

This is not proof of course and it is not considered orthodox Mormon doctrine, just my opinion but it makes sense to me.

Rhino40--is that a malt liquor? I hereby call for you to be stoned to death for blasphemy. I contribute $10 for the stone thrower. It is clear that Jesus said (Matt 22:30) that people in the resurrection will not marry. There will not be two classes of people, one class that marries, while the other class stays single and horny. No, people will be recreated with a different nature then. Ever notice that "Willrd Mitttt Romney=666?

Revelation 19:7 (for those who don't know this, Revelation is the last book of the Bible. Jesus' BRIDE is the church)

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.

Spydergirl:

In the early first century, you couldn't be a Rabbi unless you were married. A 30 year old Jewish man that was not married would have been not only rare, but a bit of a social outcast.

My goodness, the establishment of the Jewish religion might be very upset. They might conspire against such a person, maybe even kill him ?

Sorry, again too easy.

LOL - so something that was written 400 years after the fact is now being considered a fact? Wow - I wonder what they will say 400 years from know about the Holocaust or the US? They will probably say that the Jews mysteriously disappeared and the US was involved with burning up all the Native Americans and blacks in gas chambers.

According to the biblical text - it is quite obvious that the "Jesus" figure has to be free completely of sin or any impurity - a proper "sacrifice". There are references to a spiritual marriage between "God" and the church. I"m sure there was a lot of debate - People take words out of context even now to prove a point and get their own way. If they wanted to have sex with a lot of women - of course they had a "vision from god" saying that they should have multiple wives. If they wanted to have sex with their daughter-in-law, of course they would have a"vision from god".

However - wouldn't someone in the gospels have mentioned a wife in passing or a child in passing? What kind of man walks around the countryside when he has a wife and kids (something that at the age of 30-33 - JC should definitely have achieved)? Why don't we have traces of information about Jesus and his alleged marriage from the documents of that age?

If the portion of the fragment ended with "Jesus said, "My wife ...", then how do we know whether the word "wife" was cut off in the middle or not? For example, in the English language, you can cut a word in half and have a different word, such as "mother or moth", "brother or broth," etc. I imagine Greek, Hebrew, or any other language would be the same way.

Seems a lot to assume that we know what the rest of the ancient fragment says.

@stoopids: your post made me laugh. I'm willing to bet you have been stoned a few times yourself.

@JH-0294...: You can hardly look at a lack of writing in the bible of evidence. There is a lot of stuff that was taken out of the Bible. That was the whole point of the council of Nicea. To decided what stayed and what did not. As I said before, this is just my opinion but if there is no family beyond the grave, then why so much empasis on families in the scriptures. "honor they father and they mother" "husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the church" "Husbands cleave unto your wives" "fathers teach your children"

There are litterally hundreds of verses that discuss the importance of strong families. If gods commandments are eternal, then why give us such strong instruction for something that just goes away when we die? I believe there is more to it than that. I believe that strong families are a training ground for better things to come. I could be wrong of course but you have to admit, it's a much more optimistic view of eternity than just floating around and singing hyms for all eternity. Or worse yet, just disapearing into nothingness.

It is amazing how the so called unbelievers always come to these forums and attempt to put their three cents in, kinda makes you wonder why, if they really do not believe then what are they doing reading anything about God or Jesus au any thing to do with religion.

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well.

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history.

Danno, not true.

Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and any of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of
formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

rabbi is just a hebrew word for "teacher." Under the Mosaic law, after any kind of seminal emission, the man would be unclean for a day, until cleansed with a bath. I don't think Jesus was unclean ever, not even for one day. Therefore, he was not married.

stoopids,

I was raised Eastern Orthodox Christian and Methodist (mixed family), my husband is Mormon. I have studied Christianity for a very long time because of the conflicting teachings of so many Churches. The Orthodox bible has 77 books, the Protestant KJV has only 66. The early councils couldn't even decide if Mary's virginity (physically) was preserved through the birth and whether or not she bore Joseph sons after Jesus. The nature of Christ himself drove schism after schism. One thing I was always taught was that Jesus came to early to become human, experience humanity and then die as our Messiah, a proxy sacrifice for all our sins. Part of being a human man of quality is being a good husband. If he was to be our example in everything, why not as a compassionate loving husband? God created sex, its not dirty. God ordered Adam and Eve to cling to each other, so why would Christ not experience this blessing and test? Christ was tested, even if he was holy. Marriage and marital relations would not cause him to be tainted with Sin. The Mosaic law about Mikveh's are not about spiritual cleansing, its about physical/ritual cleansing. Blood, dirt, sweat, fluids, all need to be washed from the body, but nothing about it is about sin. Jesus was sin free, that doesn't mean he never got dirty. He would have had to complete his ritual Mikveh to go to the Temple, Son of God or not. So, that's not a valid argument.

Silverton (4.23) - I agree. I've been called by one-half of a word before, on more than one occasion. People have called me a mother- so many times that I now celebrate that special occasion that the Virgin Mary also celebrated - Mother's Day.

The real reason that Jesus could not have been married is shown in the following example.

Jesus: "Honey......I'm going out with they guys and we will grab something to eat"

Wife: "Listen Buster I have been sweating over this pot all day making dinner...........your staying hear and eating dinner with me"

Thus no "Last Supper" if Jesus had been married.

LOL, I have to admit, that was funny. You have been voted for.

Well, perhaps he was eating out with the guys because he had a fight with the wife?

If he was married there would not be any reason to hide it yet it is not mentioned by 12 of his closest followers.

Yet there are only 4 gospels. Info on his marital state could and very likely would have been edited out of the bible by the very same ones that decided which gospels to include and which ones to discard or hide.

Also, you really can't prove that the Bible wasn't altered somewhere along the line by the thousands of people who transcribed it throughout the centuries.

Those 12 books were hand-picked by man, just as other books were omitted because they did not serve the church's purpose at the time.

I'm a Christian but I also have a grip on reality. And reality is, women were often made out to be pariah's, so there's little room for them in early scripture....whether they were there or not.

I think the author of the paper herself quickly cautions us that this is not proof that he was married, only that different sects were using his possible marriage, or not, could be used to justify their particular beliefs.

Cause the Church purged all that dirty human stuff

None of the Gospel writers identify themselves in their Gospels. Writers were definitively assigned by Church elders around the time the New Testament was collected. As it is, current Biblical scholarship (minus the fundamentalist wing) show that at best, only two of the four Gospels included in the New Testament, as decided by Church elders in the 4th century AD (three hundred years after the death of Jesus) were written by disciples. Mark was the Roman/Latin/Italian secretary to Peter, who wrote down what Peter remembered translating it from Aremaen/Hebrew to coloquial Latin to Konine Greek, probably between 65 and 75 AD in Alexandria. Luke was a companion of Paul and everything he knew of Jesus was third-hand. In fact, in the introduction to his Gospel (which is actually a two part book with Acts), written in Konine Greek in Syria or Roman Asia around 75-85 AD, he states that he is compling his story from written and oral tradtions and stories. Most scolars believe that Matthew was not written by the Apostle, as the tax collector in this Gospel is named Levi. Most believe Matthew was written by a Hellenic Jew in Konine Greek in Roman Asia sometime between 75 and 85 AD. Only John claims to be written by an Apostle, the "Beloved Disciple" that Church elders identified as John. Yet this Gospel is generally accepted as having been written betwee 85 and 95 AD by a fluent Konine Greek writer with an educational level ad grasp of composition not evident in 95% of the population of the Empire, much less an Aramaic speaking Jewish peasant.

As far as date and age, the oldest extant COMPLETE Gospel in existence dates no earlier than 180 AD, 150 years after the death of Jesus. The oldest fragments of a Gospel extant are credit card pieces of a Gospel by John dated no earlier than 150 AD. It would be like having four different biographies of George Washington, claiming to have been written within decaes of his death, but the oldest available copy having been produced in 1949. Also consider that between 1900 and 2010, the number of surviving documents of early Christianity increased over 4000% and the age of those documents were pushed back from around 300AD to 150AD. Yet we still HAVE NOT ONE ORIGINAL of any book of the New Testament.

ArgueFS: there are many gospels (@75).

Think of it like a l-o-n-g running hit tv series with a big staff of writers that each contribute their own scripts for a single season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gospels

Jonathan says " If he was married there would not be any reason to hide it yet it is not mentioned by 12 of his closest followers."

Hogwash. There is plenty of reason to hide it. Were he married then he likely had children. Children who could have grown up to demand they lead the sects that were developing in their fathers name. It is all about power and who is in control. Don`t believe me you need look no further than the centuries of on-going fight whether religious power must flow from mohammeds progeny versus any old person can decide they are an iman. Or to put it in more christian terms.....just look at all the mega churches. Power flows to the children because they are businesses versus churches.

Were Jesus to have children then there would be a fight to determine who was in that lineage and whether that gave them some form of higher calling, greater power, etc. Read Dan Brown...... it isn`t like his was an original thought. Just because it is not a common topic of discussion I do believe there is an entire area of study on the subject.

Personally. Despite my catholic upbringing..... jesus was a man. He was a jewish man. Men and women of that time period married young and had children (many) young because they died young (relative today). It is a logical thought pattern. It serves no purpose whatsoever to say he was celebite because then that makes me wonder why he would have been. It wasn`t like he began his ministry as a young man. And Catholics? Hellllloooo. The priests were not celibate until hundreds of years after the church was created. How do we know it wasn`t a decision based on a pope who couldn`t do a thing due to plumbing problems and decided if he couldn`t then none of them could.

History is full of conjecture and mine are just as good as the rest in the absence of multiple, independent primary sources.

Why do they even care about evidence anyway? If it contradicts the current system, it's obviously "fake", right? Christian's ignore evidence of other facts when it contradicts their system, why not this too.

I love the way some "writing" from 400 years AFTER Jesus is suddenly found to be "fact". Christians believe in the bible and that the bible is the true representation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Non believers are welcome to believe anything they want but why all of a sudden the desire to try and DISPROVE the Christian faith and religion? Why can't non-believer's simply say "Hmmm, interesting article" and let it be? Why such desire to point a finger at Christians and say "AHAH!!". If you want to believe Jesus was married from a "writing" 400 years AFTER Jesus walked the planet then have at it - and enjoy. I am a believer in the writing's of the bible and the truth spoken about Jesus Christ in it. If you DON'T believe the bible that is your choice - but if I believe in the bible why do you have such a desire to tell me I am wrong? Why can't you be respectful and let it go?

I doubt very seriously if a random "writing" showing the prophet Mohammed was different than the teachings of the Koran MSNBC would spend so much time telling those who believe in Islam that THEY are wrong - so why the importance of trying to discredit Christians?

pro business, the bible was written a lifetime after jesus yet is considered fact by chrisitians, why not this? it's the same principle.

Pro, because discrediting Mohammed and/or the Koran would not be considered Politically correct, not to mention that the Muslims would start attacking each other again over it.

Based on our culture today, insulting Mohammed would be considered bigotry or racism.

Criticism of Christianity however is always fair game.

Some things to keep in mind about what was going on when Jesus was active

1. Galilee was was separate from Judea and had been since the return from Babylonian exile.

2. Galilee was much more heavily Hellenized because the main road from the Decapolis cities to Damascus and the sea coast ran through it and directly through Nazareth.

3. The Galileans were considered by the Judeans to be very liberal in their interpretation and practice of Judaism, but also less sophisticated. Galileans spoke with a distinct accent and a Galelean in Jerusalam would be like a Texan in New York City.

4. Jesus spent a lot of time preaching in the Northern Decapolis cities, and maybe all of them.

I don't think you can understand Jesus without understanding the influence of the Hellenism on the Jews, especially the Jews of Galilee. On of our biggest errors is portraying Jesus as some kind of Abraham-like rural shepherd. He was very urban. He almost certainly did not have long hair, or a beard and he most likely wore Greek dress, as did almost everybody in the Levant, at that time.

It is difficult to underestimate the influence that very modern, independent, Greek polis/cities like Skythopolis, Philadelphia, Gadara, Pella and Hippos had on the culture of the rest of area. This was where it was happening prior to the establishment of Caesaria and Tiberias as big Roman outposts, and even after that these cities were important all the way up to their destruction, buy the severe earthquake of 749.

arguesforsport,

Yet there are only 4 gospels. Info on his marital state could and very likely would have been edited out of the bible by the very same ones that decided which gospels to include and which ones to discard or hide.

There are far more than 4 gospels, in fact that is the great debate over the dead sea scrolls. Only Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John's Gospels were included in the modern bible. There were 12 Apostles and each has written his version of the story of Christ, in fact so did Mary Magdeline. Even those 4 were edited by the Church over the centuries and really how much of his story was lost as most of his history recorded in the Gospels was written 40+ years minimum after his death.

If you DON'T believe the bible that is your choice - but if I believe in the bible why do you have such a desire to tell me I am wrong? Why can't you be respectful and let it go?

Because you make illogical decisions and impose them on the rest of us. Why don't you keep your noses out of politics? Why can't you be respectful and let everyone else live their lives free of Christian morality and dogma?

ProBusiness

I love the way some "writing" from 400 years AFTER Jesus is suddenly found to be "fact". Christians believe in the bible and that the bible is the true representation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Non believers are welcome to believe anything they want but why all of a sudden the desire to try and DISPROVE the Christian faith and religion? Why can't non-believer's simply say "Hmmm, interesting article" and let it be? Why such desire to point a finger at Christians and say "AHAH!!". If you want to believe Jesus was married from a "writing" 400 years AFTER Jesus walked the planet then have at it - and enjoy. I am a believer in the writing's of the bible and the truth spoken about Jesus Christ in it. If you DON'T believe the bible that is your choice - but if I believe in the bible why do you have such a desire to tell me I am wrong? Why can't you be respectful and let it go?

The reason many people can not be respectful for other people's religions and just "let it go", is the belief that deep down inside, organized religions and the belief in unproven supernatural gods are diminishing our species little by little. Chipping away as society. Just another thing that divides people and keeps them at each other's throat.

I think many of the people on this board who do not believe we are on this planet because some entity put us here are of the opinion that truly devout religious people are pining away for the end of times. That's a scary notion for us Atheists. We live the life we're given. We live knowing that at the end of our lives our consciousness will cease, and we will no longer exist. Because we know this, we treat everyone around us with love, respect, and we care deeply for our families, because what else can we do? We feel that the love we have for life, and the morals we demonstrate on a daily basis shows our deep, deep love we have for the one and only life we have.

Religious people on the other hand. We don't believe they love life all that much. We see it on the news with Muslims blowing themselves up on school buses filled with children. We saw it in old newspapers discussing KKK lynching's of black people on a Saturday night and then seeing the same people filling the pews of their Baptist churches the following morning. We see the doomsday prophets like Harold Camping, and we're scared... Here's a whole group of people - Selling off all their possessions and craving the end of the world to come.

You know... If you follow a religion that has an "End of Times" scenario in it like the Book of Revelations lays out, then it's just scary to contemplate how "true believers" who have control over nuclear weapons may interpret their holy texts...

As a life-loving Atheist, there's nothing scarier than a death-loving Christian or Muslim.

Another area that we have issues with religions is the sheer scale of them. Hey, my kids believed in Santa Clause when they were young. It was fun. But I wasn't taking 10% of my pay to create stone monuments to Santa Clause. I wasn't asking my government to give tax exemption to my stone monuments to Santa Clause. I wasn't organizing my neighborhoods, cities, and states into individual houses, regional houses, and National Gathering centers for the worshiping of Santa Clause. I wasn't sending my younger members of my Santa Clause loving sect to visit third world countries to convert the kids there to my love of Santa Clause. Nor, was I attempting to sway national political initiatives to honor or abide by my rules for my love of Santa Clause.

The scale of religion scares us, as does the sheer waste spent. The earth is just a bubble in space. We don't have meteors raining raw resources down on us at a daily rate to replenish what we're consuming. Eventually, we'll be left with a "Panned-out" planet. Must we continue to waste resources on the building of churches, temples, synagogues and Mosques? Must we continue to waste resources on more funny hats for the guy who lives in the Vatican City? Must we continue to waste human life by telling our practioners to NOT practice birth control because God is against it? Religion, on a whole, is just such a wasteful, useless endeavor solely in place to soothe people's spirits who may be scared by their own mortality.

Dying is not scary. Vanishing into nothingness? Scary on the outside, but actually rather comforting once you get use to the notion. An afterlife after death? Now that's scary. Eternal imprisonment in either Heaven or Hell. Rules (there's always rules) that have to be followed for all eternity. Is it ever really just pure "Nirvana" or do you get to retain some of your own mind and identity (which means you still have moods and no matter how heavenly something might be you're going to have a bad day).

Yeah... Typically, I would be of the opinion to leave the Religious folks to their own devices and I would just hope that our species would eventually grow out of our need for the "Nightlight" of religion. Unfortunately, too many of the religious folks like to dabble in government and impose their skewed religious moralities on the rest of us (like this whole abortion thing). That's where you guys fire us up, and THAT's why we don't give it a rest. Because YOU GUYS won't give it a rest.

It makes little sense to believe Jesus was not married. do you think he lived with his mother thirty years?

Jonathan F

The FOUR GOSPELS were written 400 not 40 years after Jesus died. At least as far as carbon dating can prove no gospel older has been dated so your point is unsupported by the FACTS. This document is every bit as old as any thing tested for age by carbon dating.

Anjisan1963 (Mr. Pilot):

Exactly!!

I consider myself a Humanist, which means that I believe in us, as humans - as a species. Our "Heaven" is our progeny - we will live forever through our children. What is important for us is the here and now - our job is to leave the Earth a better place, a world without fear.

Danno, sorry, once again your posts are incorrect.

Carbon dating has proven nothing of the kind. Most archeologists and scholars agree the original gospels were written much earlier than that.

Biblical archaeologist William Albright concluded on the basis of his research that all the New Testament books were written while most of the apostles were still alive. He wrote, “We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book after about 80 A.D., two full generations before the date of between 130 and 150 A.D.given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.”⁴ Elsewhere Albright put the writing of the entire New Testament at “very probably sometime between about 50 A.D. and 75 A.D.”⁵

The notoriously skeptical scholar John A. T. Robinson dates the New Testament earlier than even most conservative scholars. In Redating the New Testament Robinson asserts that most of the New Testament was written between 40 A.D. and 65 A.D. That puts its writing as early as seven years after Christ lived.⁶ If that is true, any historical errors would have been immediately exposed by both eyewitnesses and the enemies of Christianity.

I love the way some "writing" from 400 years AFTER Jesus is suddenly found to be "fact".

No one is claiming that this find is "fact" ... just something that has to be properly evaluated and considered objectively.

There are far more than 4 gospels, in fact that is the great debate over the dead sea scrolls. Only Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John's Gospels were included in the modern bible.

I know that. If you bothered to read and comprehend my entire post, you would have seen that I mentioned other gospels being edited out or hidden. The entire bible has gaping holes in it that can only be explained by creative editing, starting with genesis and the story of Adam and Eve.

why is it so many people state the media is discrediting christianity? Seriously, if the J-man is married, it equates your religion is discredited? Saying he was married is disrespectful? Isn't marriage a sacrament? Isn't it a holy joining, conducted in holy places to sanctify it?

Also, as others have said: the early Christian church's clergy - priests, popes etc - were allowed married. Later when they were ordered to be celibate, that literally meant they couldn't get married/live with a woman, but they could have sex. Everyone from lowly clerics to the Pope was known to be sexual - it was a physical sin, and easily forgiven. It wasn't until the reformation (1500 years later) that sex out of marriage was also forbidden and the rules were enforced. Know you own history, people. Unless your Orthodox or Coptic your bibles came from the Catholic Bible and was shaped to meet the needs of the church to survive and was changed accordingly.

This is kind of interesting. A few years ago there were some people, in Israel, that found, they said, what was Jesus's family tomb, and in fact Jesus's burial box that had had bones in it, that were removed. So now we find Jesus may have had a wife. This old story just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser!!

The 4 gospels are mentioned by name and accepted early to mid 2nd century (100s). There are quotations from 3 of the gospels in the writngs of Clement and Polycarp, late 1st century to very early 2nd century. The first evidence of any other gospels comes in the late 2nd century, about 180 AD, as Christian writers began to warn of false gospels being written by men who did not follow the teachings of the apostles. It is believed these warnings refer to the gnostic gospels, which this scrap may be part of. Evidence that this may be gnostic are the date (although it could be a copy of something older) and the language as it is coptic (prefered by gnostics) rather than Greek which is the language of the New Testament.

So we must ask ourselves which is truly evidence of Jesus' life? Writings that were from close to His lifetime, and which even if you do not accept apostolic authorship and divine inspiration, they were still within the lifetime of people who remembered him, or something 300 years from Jesus' lifetime?

Contrary to the ideas popularized by Dan Brown (DaVinci Code) and others, the gnostic writings were never even considered for inclusion in the New Testament. The disputed books were very few, and included Hebrews and Revelation, which made it, and a few writings from the early second century, Shepherd of Hermes and some letters by early church fathers, which were left out as being too late and lacking apostolic connections.

It has become very popular these days to attack the roots of Christianity, and neglect of our history by both Catholics and Protestants, makes us easy targets. But, even a basic knowledge of early Christianity, plus common sense, should tell us that a fourth century gnostic writing is not evidence of Jesus' life. As to whether Jesus was married, it certainly would not have been a sin, but from the silence on that subject in the gospels and the epistles of Paul, Peter, John, and James, I would say most likely He was not. The only bride of Christ mentioned in the New Testament is the Church.

Jonathan F - Kinda like Thomas Jefferson sired a child by one of his black slaves. I'm sure there were others that knew about it but kept quiet for a variety of reasons. Who wants to bet that about the possibilities about offspring of Ben Franklin?

This concept that sex is bad, or that Magdalene was a prostitute with seven demons.

bluejaguar

This concept that sex is bad, or that Magdalene was a prostitute with seven demons, Demons then It'S

BYPOLAR now things change.

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well.

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history.

Danno, not true.

Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and any of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of
formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well.

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history.

Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and many of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

The barmaids down at the Messiah Tavern beg to differ.

No, it was Jesus' soul that made him special.

Actually, the fact that Jesus was fully God and fully man made him, for lack of a better word, special.

We do something else we in the Church do...and that's fear the unknown and push our religions on others.

I am a Christian, but that is my choice. And it is folks like you who give the lot of us a bad name. The church has been criticized throughout the centuries for hampering progress by ignoring investigations into possible historical and scientific developments...and that is exactly what you are doing here by putting your fingers in your ears and encouraging others to do so as well.

If you are really strong in your faith....no developments going to shake that.

'Leave it alone'? I know you are not trying to quelch free thoughts or free speach. That would be too inquisitional. There is a place for religion. But when dogma rules, men and womens lives and freedoms are under oppression. There are some large institutions that have been responsible for this for thousands of years. We should not be so adamantly against the actions of individuals which do not cause harm and turn a blind eye to the actions of institutions which ruin peoples lives.

Wait, what? How do you get from Jesus not being married to that being the justification to be against gay marriage? Wouldn't it be justification to be against traditional marriage?

Get a grip, guys, this newfound papyrus means nothing,

Spoken like a true denier.

Pooh pooh I don't want it to be true therefore it is not.

You will tell people to read a book that somehow expects you to believe that two of every kind of animal fit on one boat and a handful of humans took care of them by themselves because of a being that destroyed all the rest of mankind with a flood, and that being is the good guy.

That says a river was turned to blood and a sea was parted by a being that can't be bothered to show himself to all of humanity.

A book in which incest is condoned.

A book in which adulterers should be put to death.

You will expect people to believe this book but this papyrus means nothing.

Wow!

With the gift of intelligence often comes the great epiphany that you may be totally wrong about your beliefs.

Stan-613659

I think Jesus had sex with men/boys from time to time, maybe even a goat or 2 from his herd. It would not be unreasonable for that period of time and the geographical location. People still do that today inside GODS house while he watches. What a sick basterd this GOD is.

Stan, please share with us the address for this church where members are having sex with goats during worship. I tend to fall asleep during church. This might be a cure for the problem.

All the above comments are well and fine but if the document is authenticated what does it prove ? Nothing. There already exist conflicting documents. Hey how about I wrote a revelation down on paper. Is it true or false ? Obviously it wouldn't have as much weight as something written a couple thousand years ago, but would that make it wrong in and of itself ? I'm not saying I don't have any faith, but the whole thing is a matter of faith, or what one believes anyways.

I believe the Earth is flat and at the center of the universe, and that angels push the stars across the sky each night. If you don't believe the same thing, just shut up about it and leave me alone! Let me teach my kids what I want because it doesn't affect you! ... or does it???

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well.

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history.

Danno, not true.

Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and any of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of
formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

They didn't HAVE alter boys, then.....

I agree....

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well.

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history.

Danno, not true.

Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and any of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of
formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

Son of God AND Son of Man. I don't think I quite believe He did not have the same urges as other men.

eek,

Some people choose to control their urges.

The Bible says that Jesus was tempted in every way we are.

Jesus lived on earth as fully God and fully man. Who is suitable for God to marry? Would he marry one of his own creations? Why would he need to be bound to a lowly human being, he is the ultimate power in the universe. Jesus falling in love with one woman and marrying her doesn't make any sense, he loved us all so much that he died on a cross and took all our iniquities on himself.

Would he marry one of his own creations?

Are you suggesting that he wouldn't practice incest? I'm not advocating the correctness of incest but what am I missing? Adam and Eve bore children who married - to whom? Suppposedly people are taught through their religious beliefs that they are to strive to be god-like. If god thought it too unnatural to marry while being "like man" why is it taught that marriage is a god-fearing religious institution and that out of marriage sex is so sinful?

OMG! Squish-mitten....lol

It was edited out to prevent controversy. I mean, look how it's freaked you out! How on earth would Jesus getting married contradict his teachings? He taught mercy, compassion and forgiveness, first and foremost, all of which are required for a healthy marriage.

See 6.6. Also I have read all four Gospels and don't find anything in what Jesus taught that would prevent him from getting married. You may have the Gospels confused with Paul's letters (only seven of which are genuine) in which he advised not getting married, because he believed that Christ would return in his lifetime and so people should remain in their current state and await the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Scholars now have over 4,000 manuscripts with single or multiple books or a complete New Testament dating from 180AD to the end of the 16th century. They can even track the development of families of manuscripts from a single copy to multiple renditions.

The printing press did not exist until late in the 16th century. Every document generated before then had to be created and then copied by hand. Christian manuscripts were originally created by a group of people, slaves, women, the disposed, the poor, who had little or no education. 95% of the population of the Roman Empire were illiterate. Less than 5% were more than functionally literate, and could compose letters and books. Not one original of any book of the New Testament exists to day. The oldest extant manuscript dates to no earlier than 180AD. Christian manuscripts were initially copied by people with minimal literacy. Then from the Dark Ages forward, they were copied by Church employees, scribes and monks, many of them barely literate and simply copying what was before them. They worked under difficult conditions of light, heat and cold, equipment and their own health and physical health conditions. It was natural that they would make mistakes. Scholars can even trace these mistakes from manuscript to manuscript. Often these were errors of commission or ommission, with letters, words, sentences and even whole paragraphs added, reproduced or left off. These mistakes were then perpetuated by hose that used their copies as the origin of THEIR copy.

Even worse, scholars can trace where changes were made deliberately to make the content of a manuscript conform to the copyist's beliefs. One of the more famous was the editing of the names of the addressees in Paul's letter to the Romans,in which first, the importance of the womenhe addressed and named was reduced and then their names were actually removed or changed to masculine forms (some of which did not exist in Latin or Greek at that time).

To make the argument that we know what Jesus REALLY taught, when we add up all the contradictions and inconsistencies in the Gospels and understand when they were written, by who and for what purpose and then keep in mind as to why they were picked and not other Gospels by the Church elders in the 4th century AD, is to assume an arrogance in contrast with that taught by Jesus.

exltcusa,

Many people don't realize that scribes were often illiterate and more often artists than scholars. They were employed to make exact copies, not read nor paraphrase books and documents.

The bible also does not mention the regular meals Jesus undoubtedly ate, him taking any kind of bath, his bodily functions, whether or not he snored.

There is not much evidence of many things that Jesus, as a man, would have done.

About the best we can say of the evidence from the bible is that he lived, started to preach at about 30 years of age for about three years, eventually was killed, buried, rose from the dead, taught for another 40 days, ascended to heaven.

"If Jesus was married why wasn't it mentioned in any of the prophecies of the OT?"

I'm just throwing this out there, but; maybe because the OT was written before Jesus was kickin' around the sandbox?

And yes, I'm aware you said "prophecies," but there's a tonnnnn of tihs that "they" didn't see coming.

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well.

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history.

Danno, not true.

Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and any of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of
formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

The books that comprise the Bible were chosen by men, not divine forces. In the time of Constantine, it is believed that there were up to 600 books. Through decisions by early church leadership, all but 80 books were eliminated by 1611. The Protestant Reformation further reduced the number to 66 which is now the Authorized King James Bible. Now, according to the layman, these books are "lost" and to the Catholic Church, they are "forbidden, heretical, dangerous, and corruptive".

The Archbishop of Canterbury purged the Apocyphal Books, which were actually included in the King James Bible until 1885. Whatever the number before the purge by the formation of Catholicism by Constantine; even one lost book is a great loss indeed.

If you do a search of "books not included in the Bible" there is a site, bibleufo, where you can read the lost books, at least those which have been found.

We know that Jesus was called "rabbi" by his followers, which at the time meant "teacher" or "master." The official rabbinic ordination had NOT yet been established, so it was not a formal title associated with public ordination. In short, being called "rabbi" in Jesus' time does not mean the same thing it means today.

The early church leaders in order to keep inaccurate accounts out of the compilation of the books of the Bible, chose only those that were written by those who were eyewitnesses or privy to events that actually took place during Jesus' life and during the early years of the church after his crucifixion.

Most likely all dead killed by the black death or the inqusition.

There is no "proof",that's where the period goes. Some of you will believe anything,want to buy a bridge or ocean front property in Arizona? Oh wait that was never written in some mystical "book".

Sex is a natural part of life and necessary to sustain our species. I have read that it was St. Augustine who decided that sex was "dirty". I follow Christ's teachings, not St. Augustine's. If we study history a little we can see where many silly ideas orginated in the middle ages. If Jesus had a wife, and of course had sexual relations with her, I simply don't see how that would make him any less holy.

Sex is only "Dirty" if you're doing it right.

@rodney725

Sex, as an expression of love within marriage, is certainly not unholy.

Those Catholics (and Protestants) who jump from one (unmarried) relationship to another are certainly unholy, in their deeds.

God will not be mocked.

for Nataliya S:

Those Catholics (and Protestants) who jump from one (unmarried) relationship to another are certainly unholy, in their deeds.

And you are exactly the type of person with those demented perverted Puritanical notions that I was referring to.

Exactly why I have no use for organized religion. Religion is completely different from faith. The world would be a much better place if we had less of the former and more of the latter.

Amen to that, Brother.

Very true the four Gospels that are accepted today were actually writen 400 years after his death at least the oldest copy found is that old. No Gospel found anywhere has a carbon date near the death of Jesus.

Seems to me there are several references in the Bible of Jesus being referred to as a Rabbi, If one were to research this, you would find out a man can not be a Rabbi unless he is married. Jewish law, and Jesus knew this very well, he knew all Jewish law very well. Any Jews out there that can verify this for us ?

So this whole thing is much to do about nothing. The Catholics married their priests until Charmaine changed the rules now they forget their own history. It seems there weren't enough solders for his army because everyone was joining a monistary to get out of military service so Charmaine changed the law so they either had to give up sex or join the army tough choice.

Not true, Danno.

Most archeologists and scholars date the original gospels much earlier than that.

Biblical archaeologist William Albright concluded on the basis of his research that all the New Testament books were written while most of the apostles were still alive. He wrote, “We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book after about 80 A.D., two full generations before the date of between 130 and 150 A.D.given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.”⁴ Elsewhere Albright put the writing of the entire New Testament at “very probably sometime between about 50 A.D. and 75 A.D.”⁵

The notoriously skeptical scholar John A. T. Robinson dates the New Testament earlier than even most conservative scholars. In Redating the New Testament Robinson asserts that most of the New Testament was written between 40 A.D. and 65 A.D. That puts its writing as early as seven years after Christ lived.⁶ If that is true, any historical errors would have been immediately exposed by both eyewitnesses and the enemies of Christianity.

And Jesus was not technically a rabbi, nor did he portray himself as one. The apostles and any of his followers addressed him as such to say he was their teacher, not because he held any kind of official Jewish office. The Jews asked Jesus 'by what authority' he did certain things because he did not hold any kind of
formal office within Judaism. He did not have an official position that would have permitted him to do things like act within the temple (Mark 11:28). As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus had no recognized role within Judaism.

Yes, Willie. Isn't THAT the truth!

By the way, you look a little sunburned, there in Arizona, Alfred...E. Neuman (aka, AZ Willie)!

not about His Teachings...it"s about who He said He was and what He said about why He was given.

Catholics, with their "weirdness", somehow want Jesus to be "Immaculate": Immaculate Man born of an Immaculate Virgin! Somehow, in all of this weird "immaculate" stuff, SEX is given a dirty name.

Of course, SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE truly is unacceptable to God.

But, inside of marriage, there is nothing unholy about it: unless the two people somehow begin to act like goat phlubbers, or some such filthy thing.

Well he did say celibacy was a gift some had and some did not have. If anyone had it, he did of course. It is indeed a gift when you consider how much time and money sex-obsessed people waste- easily half their lives in some cases. I can only marvel at how anyone would believe a fourth century "gospel" which were published daily. But I guess 10th generation hearsay from a papyrus scrap is good enough evidence for people who don't really like to think.

Plain and simple, there is just not enough evidence to prove Jesus was married, and much more evidence supporting the fact that he was not.

But, whether he was married or not, doesn't change his message.

There is no real evidence for either view, and it really doesn't matter.

That's funny!

Doug, surely you jest. Satan invented sex? Remind me to drink a toast to Satan tonight right after boinking my girlfriend. Of course, I'm joking (not about the boinking part, though); there is no such being as Satan. I can't believe in this 21st century intelligent beings still believe in such superstition.

@Doug-950479

And, all of that "stuff" procreated, too: in order to produce "more stuff".

No reason to think that it is not the Jesus, as it refers to disciples.

Read "Jewish Antiquities" by Flavius Josephus. There were a number of prophets and messiahs named Jesus (Yeshua) in Judea at that time.