DID JESUS MARRY

Did Jesus Marry?

Some of Jesus’ teachings and habits  -  his prohibition of divorce, his rejection of showy fasting, his voluntary celibacy  -  did not square with the beliefs and practices of the major Jewish religious groups of his day. Had Jesus married, he would quite comfortably have floated on the cultural mainstream. As a working adolescent, he would easily have found a bride to his taste and earned the acclamation of the neighbours. And Jesus was surely not unaware of the tradition that expected every Jewish male to sire a legitimate son by the time he was 18 years of age. As an itinerant preacher, he enjoyed himself at wedding celebrations. Some of his parables were about the bridegroom, weddings guests, and bridesmaids  -  all painted in bright positive colours. Jesus saw sexuality and marriage as blessings given to humanity by a gracious Creator concerned with man’s happiness. Yet it is historically certain that Jesus chose to remain celibate, thereby going against what would have been unthinkable in his time.

Family Circumstances

It is worth noting that the New Testament is quite vocal about Jesus’ familial circumstances. The story of his conception and birth brings into play a lot of family ties and lines running up and down the family tree. Apart from his mother and her paradoxical marriage to Joseph the craftsman (“tekton” in Greek), a lot of gospel coverage is given to “his brothers and sisters.” Indeed, from the various statements of Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and Acts, we learn about Mary, the mother of Jesus, about his thought-to-be father, Joseph, about his four brothers named James, Joses, Jude, and Simon, and about his unnamed sisters.

The second century Jewish-Christian writer, Hegesippus, mentions Clophas, an uncle of Jesus, and Symeon, a cousin. The gospel story also pulls in a lot of characters with family connections, who figure in Jesus’ public ministry: Mary Magdalene, Joana, the wife of Chuza, steward of Herod, Susanna, Mary, the mother of James the Less and Joses, Salome, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, and, last but not least, Martha and Mary, the lady friends !  With so many familial characters thrown around him, like flowers in a garland, what prevented the gospels from popping in the name of a wife, if any? The loquacity of the New Testament about the one raises the question regarding the silence about the other; the answer to which is quite simply, there wasn’t any other! If Jesus had married, the gospel writer would have hurried to throw in the last piece and completed the family snapshot with grace and ease! But the total silence about a wife and children of Jesus, named or unnamed, has an obvious explanation: none existed.

Family Opposition and Loyalty

Jesus’ mother, brothers and sisters survived into the period of his public ministry, though not without tension between them and him  -  they thought him crazy (John 7, 5); or that Jesus refused to meet with them (Mark 3, 31 – 35). If Jesus had a wife, where was she in all this? Did she resist the family opposition, like a loyal wife, or ditch him to go over to their side? His Resurrection, however, demolished the family opposition; otherwise how explain that his brother, James, became a prominent leader of the Jerusalem church, with other family members following on?  How is it that the gospel says that some of his disciples left their wives and children to follow him, while never speaking of that precise sacrifice in his own case? The answer, quite simply, is that he had made an earlier and more radical sacrifice. If marriage is not the building of community in God, it is nothing. This is the ultimate reality of which marriage is one of the perceptible signs. Jesus Christ engaged the heart of reality; he could do without the sign.