The Priest-King Who Never Ruled

Most people today speak of “Christianity” as if it were a single specific thing—a coherent, homogeneous and unified entity. Needless to say, “Christianity” is nothing of the sort. As everyone knows, there are numerous forms of “Christianity”: Roman Catholicism, for example, or the Church of England initiated by Henry VIII. There are the various other denominations of Protestantism—from the original Lutheranism and Calvinism of the sixteenth century to such relatively recent developments as Unitarianism. There are multitudinous ‘fringe’ or “evangelical” congregations, such as the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. And there are assorted contemporary sects and cults, like the Children of God and the Unification Church of the Reverend Moon. If one surveys this bewildering spectrum of beliefs—from the rigidly dogmatic and conservative to the radical and ecstatic—it is difficult to determine what exactly constitutes “Christianity”.

If there is a single factor that does permit one to speak of “Christianity”, a single factor that does link the otherwise diverse and divergent “Christian” creeds, it is the New Testament, and more particularly the unique status ascribed by the New Testament to Jesus, his Crucifixion and Resurrection. Even if one does not subscribe to the literal or historical truth of those events, acceptance of their symbolic significance generally suffices for one to be considered a Christian.

If there is any unity, then, in the diffuse phenomenon called Christianity, it resides in the New Testament and, more specifically, in the accounts of Jesus known as the Four Gospels. These accounts are popularly regarded as the most authoritative on record: and for many Christians they are assumed to be both coherent and unimpugnable. From childhood one is led to believe that the “story” of Jesus, as it is preserved in the Four Gospels, is, if not God-inspired, at least definitive. The four evangelists, supposed authors of the Gospels, are deemed to be unimpeachable witnesses who reinforce and confirm each other’s testimony. Of the people who today call themselves Christians, relatively few are aware of the fact that the Four Gospels not only contradict each other, but, at times, violently disagree.

So far as popular tradition is concerned, the origin and birth of Jesus are well enough known. But in reality the Gospels, on which that tradition is based, are considerably more vague on the matter. Only two of the Gospels—Matthew and Luke—say anything at all about Jesus’s origins and birth; and they are flagrantly at odds with each other. According to Matthew, for example, Jesus was an aristocrat, if not a rightful and legitimate king—descended from David via Solomon. According to Luke, on the other hand, Jesus’s family, though descended from the house of David, was of somewhat less exalted stock; and it is on the basis of Luke’s account that the legend of the ‘poor carpenter’ came into being. The two genealogies, in short, are so strikingly discordant that they might well be referring to two quite different individuals.

The discrepancies between the Gospels are not confined to the question of Jesus’s ancestry and genealogy. According to Luke, Jesus, on his birth, was visited by shepherds. According to Matthew, he was visited by kings. According to Luke, Jesus’s family lived in Nazareth. From here they are said to have journeyed—for a census which history suggests never in fact occurred—to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in the poverty of a manger. But according to Matthew, Jesus’s family had been fairly well-to-do residents of Bethlehem all along, and Jesus himself was born in a house. In Matthew’s version Herod’s persecution of the innocents prompts the family to flee into Egypt, and only on their return do they make their home in Nazareth.

The information in each of these accounts is quite specific and—assuming the census did occur—perfectly plausible. And yet the information itself simply does not agree. This contradiction cannot be rationalised. There is no possible means whereby the two conflicting narratives can both be correct, and there is no means whereby they can be reconciled. Whether one cares to admit it or not, the fact must be recognised that one or both of the Gospels is wrong. In the face of so glaring and inevitable a conclusion, the Gospels cannot be regarded as unimpugnable. How can they be unimpugnable when they impugn each other?

The more one studies the Gospels, the more the contradictions between them become apparent. Indeed they do not even agree on the day of the Crucifixion. According to John’s Gospel, the Crucifixion occurred on the day before the Passover. According to the Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew, it occurred on the day after. Nor are the Gospels in accord on the personality and character of Jesus. Each depicts a figure who is patently at odds with the figure depicted in the others—a meek lamblike saviour in Luke, for example, a powerful and majestic sovereign in Matthew who comes “not to bring peace but a sword”. And there is further disagreement about Jesus’s last words on the cross. In Matthew and Mark these words are, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In Luke they are, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” And in John, they are simply, “It is finished.”

Given these discrepancies, the Gospels can only be accepted as a highly questionable authority, and certainly not as definitive. They do not represent the perfect word of any God; or, if they do, God’s words have been very liberally censored, edited, revised, glossed and rewritten by human hands. The Bible, it must be remembered—and this applies to both the Old and New Testaments—is only a selection of works, and, in many respects, a somewhat arbitrary one. In fact, it could well include far more books and writings than it actually does. Nor is there any question of the missing books having been “lost”. On the contrary they were deliberately excluded. In A.D. 367 Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria compiled a list of works to be included in the New Testament. This list was ratified by the Church Council of Hippo in 393 and again by the Council of Carthage four years later. At these councils a selection was agreed upon. Certain works were assembled to form the New Testament as we know it today, and others were cavalierly ignored. How can such a process of selection possibly be regarded as definitive? How could a conclave of clerics infallibly decide that certain books “belonged” in the Bible while others did not? Especially when some of the excluded books have a perfectly valid claim to historical veracity?

As it exists today, moreover, the Bible is not only a product of a more or less arbitrary selective process. It has also been subjected to some fairly drastic editing, censorship and revision. In 1958, for example, Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University discovered, in a monastery near Jerusalem, a letter which contained a missing fragment of the Gospel of Mark. The missing fragment had not been lost. On the contrary, it had apparently been deliberately suppressed at the instigation, if not the express behest, of Bishop Clement of Alexandria, one of the most venerated of the early Church fathers.

Clement, it seems, had received a letter from one Theodore, who complained of a Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians. The Carpocratians appear to have been interpreting certain passages of the Gospel of Mark in accordance with their own principles—principles that did not concur with the position of Clement and Theodore. In consequence, Theodore apparently attacked them and reported his action to Clement. In the letter found by Professor Smith, Clement replies to his disciple as follows:

You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians. For these are the “wandering stars” referred to in the prophecy, who wander from the narrow road of the commandments into a boundless abyss of the carnal and bodily sins. For, priding themselves in knowledge, as they say, “of the deep [things] of Satan”, they do not know that they are casting themselves away into “the nether world of the darkness” of falsity, and, boasting that they are free, they have become slaves of servile desires. Such [men] are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For, even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them. For not all true [things] are the truth, nor should that truth which [merely] seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith.

It is an extraordinary statement for a Church father. In effect Clement is saying nothing less than, “If your opponent happens to tell the truth, you must deny it and lie in order to refute him.” But that is not all. In the following passage, Clement’s letter goes on to discuss Mark’s Gospel and its “misuse”, in his eyes, by the Carpocratians:

[As for] Mark, then, during Peter’s stay in Rome he wrote [an account of] the Lord’s doings; not, however, declaring all [of them], nor yet hinting at the secret [ones], but selecting those he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died as a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress towards knowledge [gnosis]. [Thus] he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven [veils]. Thus, in sum, he prearranged matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.

But since the foul demons are always devising destruction for the race of men, Carpocrates, instructed by them and using deceitful arts, so enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got from him a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover, polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words utterly shameless lies.

Clement thus freely acknowledges that there is an authentic secret Gospel of Mark. He then instructs Theodore to deny it:

To them [the Carpocratians], therefore, as I said above, one must never give way, nor, when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath. For “not all true [things] are to be said to all men”.

What was this “secret Gospel” that Clement ordered his disciple to repudiate and that the Carpocratians were ‘misinterpreting’? Clement answers the question by including a word-for-word transcription of the text in his letter:

To you, therefore, I shall not hesitate to answer the [questions] you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel. For example after “And they were in the road going up to Jerusalem,” and what follows, until “After three days he shall arise”, [the secret Gospel] brings the following [material] word for word:

“And they come into Bethany, and a certain woman, whose brother had died, was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, “Son of David, have mercy on me”. But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over [his] naked [body]. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.”

This episode appears in no existing version of the Gospel of Mark. In its general outlines, however, it is familiar enough. It is, of course, the raising of Lazarus, described in the Fourth Gospel, ascribed to John. In the version quoted, however, there are some significant variations. In the first place there is a “great cry” from the tomb before Jesus rolls the rock aside or instructs the occupant to come forth. This strongly suggests that the occupant was not dead—and thereby, at a single stroke, contravenes any element of the miraculous. In the second place there would clearly seem to be something more involved than accepted accounts of the Lazarus episode lead one to believe. Certainly the passage quoted attests to some special relation between the man in the tomb and the man who “resurrects” him. A modern reader might perhaps be tempted to see a hint of homosexuality. It is possible that the Carpocratians—a sect who aspired to transcendence of the senses by means of satiation of the senses—discerned precisely such a hint. But, as Professor Smith argues, it is in fact much more likely that the whole episode refers to a typical mystery school initiation—a ritualised and symbolic death and rebirth of the sort so prevalent in the Middle East at the time.

In any case the point is that the episode, and the passage quoted above, do not appear in any modern or accepted version of Mark. Indeed, the only references to Lazarus or a Lazarus figure in the New Testament are in the Gospel ascribed to John. It is thus clear that Clement’s advice was accepted not only by Theodore, but by subsequent authorities as well. Quite simply the entire Lazarus incident was completely excised from the Gospel of Mark.

If Mark’s Gospel was so drastically expurgated, it was also burdened with spurious additions. In its original version it ends with the Crucifixion, the burial and the empty tomb. There is no Resurrection scene, no reunion with the disciples. Granted, there are certain modern Bibles which do contain a more conventional ending to the Gospel of Mark—an ending which does include the Resurrection. But virtually all modern Biblical scholars concur that this expanded ending is a later addition, dating from the late second century and appended to the original document.

The Gospel of Mark thus provides two instances of a sacred document supposedly inspired by God which has been tampered with, edited, censored, revised by human hands. Nor are these two cases speculative. On the contrary, they are now accepted by scholars as demonstrable and proven. Can one then suppose that Mark’s Gospel was unique in being subjected to alteration? Clearly if Mark’s Gospel was so readily doctored, it is reasonable to assume that the other Gospels were similarly treated.

For the purposes of our investigation, then, we could not accept the Gospels as definitive and unimpugnable authority, but at the same time we could not discard them. They were certainly not wholly fabricated, and they furnished some of the few clues available to what really happened in the Holy Land two thousand years ago. We therefore undertook to look more closely, to winnow through them, to disengage fact from fable, to separate the truth they contained from the spurious matrix in which that truth was often embedded. And in order to do this effectively, we were first obliged to familiarise ourselves with the historical reality and circumstances of the Holy Land at the advent of the Christian era. For the Gospels are not autonomous entities, conjured out of the void and floating, eternal and universal, over the centuries. They are historical documents, like any other—like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the epics of Homer and Virgil, the Grail romances. They are products of a very specific place, a very specific time, a very specific people and very specific historical factors.

Palestine at the Time of Jesus

Palestine in the first century was a very troubled corner of the globe. For some time the Holy Land had been fraught with dynastic squabbles, internecine strife and, on occasion, full-scale war. During the second century B.C. a more or less unified Judaic kingdom was transiently established as chronicled by the two Apocryphal Books of Maccabees. By 63 B.C., however, the land was in upheaval again, and ripe for conquest. More than half a century before Jesus’s birth, Palestine fell to the armies of Pompey, and Roman rule was imposed. But Rome at the time was over-extended, and too preoccupied with her own affairs, to install the administrative apparatus necessary for direct rule. She therefore created a line of puppet kings to rule under her aegis. This line was that of the Herodians—who were not Jewish, but Arab. The first of the line was Antipater, who assumed the throne of Palestine in 63 B.C. On his death in 37 B.C. he was succeeded by his son, Herod the Great, who ruled until 4 B.C. One must visualise, then, a situation analogous to that of France under the Vichy government between 1940 and 1944. One must visualise a conquered land and a conquered people, ruled by a puppet regime which was kept in power by military force. The people of the country were allowed to retain their own religion and customs. But the final authority was Rome. This authority was implemented according to Roman administration.

In A.D. 6 the situation became more critical. In this year the country was split administratively into two provinces, Judaea and Galilee. Herod Antipas became king of the latter. But Judaea—the spiritual and secular capital—was rendered subject to direct Roman rule, administered by a Roman Procurator based at Caesarea. The Roman regime was brutal and autocratic. When it assumed direct control of Judaea more than three thousand rebels were summarily crucified. The Temple was plundered and defiled. Heavy taxation was imposed. Torture was frequently employed, and many of the populace committed suicide. This state of affairs was not improved by Pontius Pilate, who presided as procurator of Judaea from A.D. 26 to 36. In contrast to the Biblical portraits of him, existing records indicate that Pilate was a cruel and corrupt man, who not only perpetuated, but intensified, the abuses of his predecessor. It is thus all the more surprising—at least on first glance—that there should be no criticism of Rome in the Gospels, no mention even of the burden of the Roman yoke. Indeed the Gospel accounts suggest that the inhabitants of Judaea were placid and contented with their lot.

In point of fact very few were contented, and many were far from placid. The Jews in the Holy Land at the time could be loosely divided into several sects and sub-sects. There were, for example, the Sadducees—a small but wealthy land-owning class who, to the anger of their compatriots, collaborated, Quisling-fashion, with the Romans. There were the Pharisees—a progressive group who introduced much reform into Judaism and who, despite the portrait of them in the Gospels, placed themselves in staunch, albeit largely passive, opposition to Rome. There were the Essenes—an austere, mystically oriented sect, whose teachings were much more prevalent and influential than is generally acknowledged or supposed. Among the smaller sects and sub-sects there were many whose precise character has long been lost to history, and which, therefore, are difficult to define. It is worth citing the Nazorites, of whom Samson, centuries before, had been a member, and who were still in existence during Jesus’s time. And it is worth citing the Nazoreans or Nazarenes—a term which seems to have been applied to Jesus and his followers. Indeed the original Greek version of the New Testament refers to Jesus as “Jesus the Nazarene”—which is mistranslated in English as “Jesus of Nazareth”. “Nazarene”, in short, is a specifically sectarian word and has no connection with Nazareth.

There were numerous other groups and sects as well, one of which proved of particular relevance to our inquiry. In A.D. 6, when Rome assumed direct control of Judaea, a Pharisee rabbi known as Judas of Galilee had created a highly militant revolutionary group composed, it would appear, of both Pharisees and Essenes. This following became known as Zealots. The Zealots were not, strictly speaking, a sect. They were a movement, whose membership was drawn from a number of sects. By the time of Jesus’s mission, the Zealots had assumed an increasingly prominent role in the Holy Land’s affairs. Their activities formed perhaps the most important political backdrop against which Jesus’s drama enacted itself. Long after the Crucifixion, Zealot activity continued unabated. By A.D. 44 this activity had so intensified that some sort of armed struggle already seemed inevitable. In A.D. 66 the struggle erupted, the whole of Judaea rising in organised revolt against Rome. It was a desperate, tenacious but ultimately futile conflict reminiscent in certain respects of, say, Hungary in 1956. At Caesarea alone 20,000 Jews were massacred by the Romans. Within four years Roman legions had occupied Jerusalem, razed the city, and sacked and plundered the Temple. Nevertheless the mountain fortress of Masada held out for yet another three years, commanded by a lineal descendant of Judas of Galilee.

The aftermath of the revolt in Judaea witnessed a massive exodus of Jews from the Holy Land. Nevertheless enough remained to foment another rebellion some sixty years later in A.D. 132. At last, in 135, the Emperor Hadrian decreed that all Jews be expelled by law from Judaea, and Jerusalem became essentially a Roman city. It was renamed Aelia Capitolina.

Jesus’s lifetime spanned roughly the first thirty-five years of a turmoil extending over 140 years. The turmoil did not cease with his death, but continued for another century. And it engendered the psychological and cultural adjuncts inevitably attending any such sustained defiance of an oppressor. One of these adjuncts was the hope and longing for a Messiah who would deliver his people from the tyrant’s yoke. It was only by virtue of historical and semantic accident that this term came to be applied specifically and exclusively to Jesus.

For Jesus’s contemporaries, no Messiah would ever have been regarded as divine. Indeed the very idea of a divine Messiah would have been preposterous if not unthinkable. The Greek word for Messiah is “Christ” or “Christos”. The term—whether in Hebrew or Greek—meant simply “the anointed one” and generally referred to a king. Thus David, when he was anointed king in the Old Testament, became, quite explicitly, a “Messiah” or a “Christ”. And every subsequent Jewish king of the house of David was known by the same appellation. Even during the Roman occupation of Judaea, the Roman-appointed high priest was known as the “Priest Messiah” or “Priest Christ”.

For the Zealots, however, and for other opponents of Rome, this puppet priest was, of necessity, a “false Messiah”. For them the “true Messiah” implied something very different—the legitimate roi perdu or “lost king”, the unknown descendant of the house of David who would deliver his people from Roman tyranny. During Jesus’s lifetime anticipation of the coming of such a Messiah attained a pitch verging on mass hysteria. And this anticipation continued after Jesus’s death. Indeed the revolt of A.D. 66 was prompted in large part by Zealot agitation and propaganda on behalf of a Messiah whose advent was said to be imminent.

The term “Messiah”, then, implied nothing in any way divine. Strictly defined, it meant nothing more than an anointed king; and in the popular mind it came to mean an anointed king who would also be a liberator. In other words, it was a term with specifically political connotations—something quite different from the later Christian idea of a “Son of God”. It was this mundane political term that was applied to Jesus. He was called “Jesus the Messiah” or translated into Greek “Jesus the Christ”. Only later was this designation contracted to “Jesus Christ” and a purely functional title distorted into a proper name.

The History of the Gospels

The Gospels issued from a recognisable and concrete historical reality. It was a reality of oppression, of civic and social discontent, of political unrest, of incessant persecution and intermittent rebellion. It was also a reality suffused with perpetual and tantalising promises, hopes and dreams that a rightful king would appear, a spiritual and secular leader who would deliver his people into freedom. So far as political freedom was concerned, such aspirations were brutally extinguished by the devastating war between A.D. 66 and 74. Transposed into a wholly religious form, however, the aspirations were not only perpetuated by the Gospels, but given a powerful new impetus.

Modern scholars are unanimous in concurring that the Gospels do not date from Jesus’s lifetime. For the most part they date from the period between the two major revolts in Judaea—66 to 74 and 132 to 135—although they are almost certainly based on earlier accounts. These earlier accounts may have included written documents since lost—for there was a wholesale destruction of records in the wake of the first rebellion. But there would certainly have been oral traditions as well. Some of these were undoubtedly grossly exaggerated and/or distorted, received and transmitted at second, third or fourth hand. Others, however, may have derived from individuals who were alive in Jesus’s lifetime and may even have known him personally. A young man at the time of the Crucifixion might well have been alive when the Gospels were composed.

The earliest of the Gospels is generally considered to be Mark’s, composed sometime during the revolt of 66-74 or shortly thereafter—except for its treatment of the Resurrection, which is a later and spurious addition. Although not himself one of Jesus’s original disciples, Mark was a companion of Saint Paul, and his Gospel bears an unmistakable stamp of Pauline thought. But if Mark was a native of Jerusalem, his Gospel—as Clement of Alexandria states—was composed in Rome, and addressed to a Greco-Roman audience. This, in itself, explains a great deal. At the time that Mark’s Gospel was composed, Judaea was, or had recently been, in open revolt, and thousands of Jews were being crucified for rebellion against the Roman regime. If Mark wished his Gospel to survive and impress itself on a Roman audience, he could not possibly present Jesus as anti-Roman. Indeed, he could not feasibly present Jesus as politically oriented at all. In order to ensure the survival of his message, he would have been obliged to exonerate the Romans of all guilt for Jesus’s death—to whitewash the existing and entrenched regime and blame the death of the Messiah on certain Jews.

This device was adopted not only by the authors of the other Gospels, but by the early Christian Church as well. Without such a device neither Gospels nor Church would have survived.

The Gospel of Luke is dated by scholars at around A.D. 80. Luke himself appears to have been a Greek doctor, who composed his work for a high-ranking Roman official at Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine. For Luke, too, therefore, it would have been necessary to placate and appease the Romans and transfer the blame elsewhere. By the time the Gospel of Matthew was composed—approximately A.D. 85—such a transference seems to have been accepted as an established fact and gone unquestioned. More than half of Matthew’s Gospel, in fact, is derived directly from Mark’s, although it was composed originally in Greek and reflects specifically Greek characteristics. The author seems to have been a Jew, quite possibly a refugee from Palestine. He is not to be confused with the disciple named Matthew, who would have lived much earlier and would probably have known only Aramaic.

The Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew are known collectively as the “Synoptic Gospels”, implying that they see “eye to eye” or “with one eye”—which of course, they do not. Nevertheless there is enough overlap between them to suggest that they derived from a single common source—either an oral tradition or some other document subsequently lost. This distinguishes them from the Gospel of John, which betrays significantly different origins.

Nothing whatever is known about the author of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed there is no reason to assume his name was John. Except for John the Baptist, the name John is mentioned at no point in the Gospel itself, and its attribution to a man called John is generally accepted as later tradition. The Fourth Gospel is the latest of those in the New Testament—composed around A.D. 100 in the vicinity of the Greek city of Ephesus. It displays a number of quite distinctive features. There is no nativity scene, for example, no description whatever of Jesus’s birth, and the opening is almost Gnostic in character. The text is of a decidedly more mystical nature than the other Gospels, and the content differs as well.

The other Gospels, for instance, concentrate primarily on Jesus’s activities in the northern province of Galilee and reflect what appears to be only a second- or third-hand knowledge of events to the south, in Judaea and Jerusalem—including the Crucifixion. The Fourth Gospel, in contrast, says relatively little about Galilee. It dwells exhaustively on the events in Judaea and Jerusalem which concluded Jesus’s career, and its account of the Crucifixion may well rest ultimately on some first-hand eye-witness testimony. It also contains a number of episodes and incidents which do not figure in the other Gospels at all—the wedding at Cana, the roles of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and the raising of Lazarus (although the last was once included in Mark’s Gospel). On the basis of such factors modern scholars have suggested that the Gospel of John, despite its late composition, may well be the most reliable and historically accurate of the four. More than the other Gospels, it seems to draw upon traditions current among contemporaries of Jesus, as well as other material unavailable to Mark, Luke and Matthew. One modern researcher points out that it reflects an apparently first-hand topographical knowledge of Jerusalem prior to the revolt of A.D. 66. The same author concludes, “Behind the Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the other Gospels.” This is not an isolated opinion. In fact, it is the most prevalent in modern Biblical scholarship. According to another writer, “The Gospel of John, though not adhering to the Markian chronological framework and being much later in date, appears to know a tradition concerning Jesus that must be primitive and authentic.”

On the basis of our own research we, too, concluded that the Fourth Gospel was the most reliable of the books in the New Testament—even though it, like the others, had been subjected to doctoring, editing, expurgation and revision. In our inquiry we had occasion to draw upon all four Gospels, and much collateral material as well. But it was in the Fourth Gospel that we found the most persuasive evidence for our, as yet, tentative hypothesis.

The Marital Status of Jesus

It was not our intention to discredit the Gospels. We sought only to winnow through them to locate certain fragments of possible or probable truth and extract them from the matrix of embroidery surrounding them. We were seeking fragments, moreover, of a very precise character—fragments that might attest to a marriage between Jesus and the woman known as the Magdalene.

Such attestations, needless to say, would not be explicit. In order to find them, we realised, we would be obliged to read between the lines, fill in certain gaps, account for certain caesuras and ellipses. We would have to deal with omissions, with innuendoes, with references that were, at best, oblique. And we would not only have to look for evidence of a marriage. We would also have to look for evidence of circumstances that might have been conducive to a marriage. Our inquiry would thus have to encompass a number of distinct but closely related questions. We began with the most obvious of them.

1) Is there any evidence in the Gospels, direct or indirect, to suggest that Jesus was indeed married?

There is, of course, no explicit statement to the effect that he was. On the other hand, there is no explicit statement to the effect that he was not—and this is both more curious and more significant than it might first appear. As Dr. Geza Vermes of Oxford University points out, “There is complete silence in the Gospels concerning the marital status of Jesus… Such a state of affairs is sufficiently unusual in ancient Jewry to prompt further enquiry.”

The Gospels state that many of the disciples—Peter, for example—were married. And at no point does Jesus himself advocate celibacy. On the contrary, in the Gospel of Matthew he declares, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female… For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” (19:4-5) Such a statement can hardly be reconciled with an injunction to celibacy. And if Jesus did not preach celibacy, there is no reason either to suppose that he practised it.

According to Judaic custom at the time it was not only usual, but almost mandatory, that a man be married. Except among certain Essenes in certain communities, celibacy was vigorously condemned. During the late first century, one Jewish writer even compared deliberate celibacy with murder, and he does not seem to have been alone in this attitude. And it was as obligatory for a Jewish father to find a wife for his son as it was to ensure that his son be circumcised.

If Jesus were not married, this fact would have been glaringly conspicuous. It would have drawn attention to itself, and been used to characterise and identify him. It would have set him apart, in some significant sense, from his contemporaries. If this were the case, surely one at least of the Gospel accounts would make some mention of so marked a deviation from custom? If Jesus were indeed as celibate as later tradition claims, it is extraordinary that there is no reference to any such celibacy. The absence of any such reference strongly suggests that Jesus, as far as the question of celibacy was concerned, conformed to the conventions of his time and culture—suggests, in short, that he was married. This alone would satisfactorily explain the silence of the Gospels on the matter. The argument is summarised by a respected contemporary theological scholar:

Granted the cultural background as witnessed… it is highly improbable that Jesus was not married well before the beginning of his public ministry. If he had insisted upon celibacy, it would have created a stir, a reaction which would have left some trace. So, the lack of mention of Jesus’s marriage in the Gospels is a strong argument not against but for the hypothesis of marriage, because any practice or advocacy of voluntary celibacy would in the Jewish context of the time have been so unusual as to have attracted much attention and comment.

The hypothesis of marriage becomes all the more tenable by virtue of the title of “Rabbi”, which is frequently applied to Jesus in the Gospels. It is possible, of course, that this term is employed in its very broadest sense, meaning simply a self-appointed teacher. But Jesus’s literacy—his display of knowledge to the elders in the Temple, for example—strongly suggests that he was more than a self-appointed teacher. It suggests that he underwent some species of formal rabbinical training and was officially recognised as a rabbi. This would conform to tradition, which depicts Jesus as a rabbi in the strict sense of the word. But if Jesus was a rabbi in the strict sense of the word, a marriage would not only have been likely, but virtually certain. The Jewish Mishnaic Law is quite explicit on the subject: “An unmarried man may not be a teacher.”

In the Fourth Gospel there is an episode related to a marriage which may, in fact, have been Jesus’s own. This episode is, of course, the wedding at Cana—a familiar enough story. But for all its familiarity, there are certain salient questions attending it which warrant consideration.

From the account in the Fourth Gospel, the wedding at Cana would seem to be a modest local ceremony—a typical village wedding, whose bride and groom remain anonymous. To this wedding Jesus is specifically “called”—which is slightly curious perhaps, for he has not yet really embarked on his ministry. More curious still, however, is the fact that his mother “just happens”, as it were, to be present. And her presence would seem to be taken for granted. It is certainly not in any way explained.

What is more, it is Mary who—not merely suggests to her son, but in effect orders him—to replenish the wine. She behaves quite as if she were the hostess: “And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” (John 2:3-4) But Mary, thoroughly unperturbed, ignores her son’s protest: “His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” (5) And the servants promptly comply—quite as if they were accustomed to receiving orders from both Mary and Jesus.

Despite Jesus’s ostensible attempt to disown her, Mary prevails; and Jesus thereupon performs his first major miracle, the transmutation of water into wine. So far as the Gospels are concerned, he has not hitherto displayed his powers; and there is no reason for Mary to assume he even possesses them. But even if there were, why should such unique and holy gifts be employed for so banal a purpose? Why should Mary make such a request of her son? More important still, why should two “guests” at a wedding take on themselves the responsibility of catering—a responsibility that, by custom, should be reserved for the host? Unless, of course, the wedding at Cana is Jesus’s own wedding. In that case, it would indeed be his responsibility to replenish the wine.

There is further evidence that the wedding at Cana is in fact Jesus’s own. Immediately after the miracle has been performed, the “governor of the feast”—a kind of majordomo or master of ceremonies—tastes the newly produced wine, “the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:9-10; our italics.) These words would clearly seem to be addressed to Jesus. According to the Gospel, however, they are addressed to the ‘bridegroom’. An obvious conclusion is that Jesus and the ‘bridegroom’ are one and the same.

The Wife of Jesus

2) If Jesus was married, is there any indication in the Gospels of the identity of his wife?

On first consideration there would appear to be two possible candidates—two women, apart from his mother, who are mentioned repeatedly in the Gospels as being of his entourage. The first of these is the Magdalene or, more precisely, Mary from the village of Migdal, or Magdala, in Galilee. In all four Gospels this woman’s role is singularly ambiguous and seems to have been deliberately obscured. In the accounts of Mark and Matthew she is not mentioned by name until quite late. When she does appear it is in Judaea, at the time of the Crucifixion, and she is numbered among Jesus’s followers. In the Gospel of Luke, however, she appears relatively early in Jesus’s ministry, while he is still preaching in Galilee. It would thus seem that she accompanies him from Galilee to Judaea—or, if not, that she at least moves between the two provinces as readily as he does. This in itself strongly suggests that she was married to someone. In the Palestine of Jesus’s time it would have been unthinkable for an unmarried woman to travel unaccompanied—and, even more so, to travel unaccompanied with a religious teacher and his entourage. A number of traditions seem to have taken cognisance of this potentially embarrassing fact. Thus it is sometimes claimed that the Magdalene was married to one of Jesus’s disciples. If that were the case, however, her special relationship with Jesus and her proximity to him would have rendered both of them subject to suspicions, if not charges, of adultery.

Popular tradition notwithstanding, the Magdalene is not, at any point in any of the Gospels, said to be a prostitute. When she is first mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, she is described as a woman “out of whom went seven devils”. It is generally assumed that this phrase refers to a species of exorcism on Jesus’s part, implying the Magdalene was “possessed”. But the phrase may equally refer to some sort of conversion and/or ritual initiation. The cult of Ishtar or Astarte—the Mother Goddess and “Queen of Heaven”—involved, for example, a seven-stage initiation. Prior to her affiliation with Jesus, the Magdalene may well have been associated with such a cult. Migdal, or Magdala, was the “Village of Doves”, and there is some evidence that sacrificial doves were in fact bred there. And the dove was the sacred symbol of Astarte.

One chapter before he speaks of the Magdalene, Luke alludes to a woman who anointed Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark there is a similar anointment by an unnamed woman. Neither Luke nor Mark explicitly identify this woman with the Magdalene. But Luke reports that she was a “fallen woman”, a “sinner”. Subsequent commentators have assumed that the Magdalene, since she apparently had seven devils cast out of her, must have been a sinner. On this basis the woman who anoints Jesus and the Magdalene came to be regarded as the same person. In fact they may well have been. If the Magdalene were associated with a pagan cult, that would certainly have rendered her a “sinner” in the eyes not only of Luke, but of later writers as well.

If the Magdalene was a “sinner”, she was also, quite clearly, something more than the “common prostitute” of popular tradition. Quite clearly she was a woman of means. Luke reports, for example, that her friends included the wife of a high dignitary at Herod’s court—and that both women, together with various others, supported Jesus and his disciples with their financial resources. The woman who anointed Jesus was also a woman of means. In Mark’s Gospel great stress is laid upon the costliness of the spikenard ointment with which the ritual was performed.

The whole episode of Jesus’s anointing would seem to be an affair of considerable consequence. Why else would it be emphasised by the Gospels to the extent it is? Given its prominence, it appears to be something more than an impulsive spontaneous gesture. It appears to be a carefully premeditated rite. One must remember that anointing was the traditional prerogative of kings and of the “rightful Messiah”, which means ’the anointed one’. From this, it follows that Jesus becomes an authentic Messiah by virtue of his anointing. And the woman who consecrates him in that august role can hardly be unimportant.

In any case it is clear that the Magdalene, by the end of Jesus’s ministry, has become a figure of immense significance. In the three Synoptic Gospels her name consistently heads the lists of women who followed Jesus, just as Simon Peter heads the lists of male disciples. And, of course, she was the first witness to the empty tomb following the Crucifixion. Among all his devotees, it was to the Magdalene that Jesus first chose to reveal his Resurrection.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus treats the Magdalene in a unique and preferential manner. Such treatment may well have induced jealousy in other disciples. It would seem fairly obvious that later tradition endeavoured to blacken the Magdalene’s background, if not her name. The portrayal of her as a harlot may well have been the overcompensation of a vindictive following, intent on impugning the reputation of a woman whose association with Jesus was closer than their own and thus inspired an all too human envy. If other “Christians”, either during Jesus’s lifetime or afterwards, grudged the Magdalene her unique bond with their spiritual leader, there might well have been an attempt to diminish her in the eyes of posterity. There is no question that she was so diminished. Even today one thinks of her as a harlot, and during the Middle Ages houses for reformed prostitutes were called Magdalenes. But the Gospels themselves bear witness that the woman who imparted her name to these institutions did not deserve to be so stigmatised.

Whatever the status of the Magdalene in the Gospels, she is not the only possible candidate for Jesus’s wife. There is one other, who figures most prominently in the Fourth Gospel and who may be identified as Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. She and her family are clearly on very familiar terms with Jesus. They are also wealthy, maintaining a house in a fashionable suburb of Jerusalem large enough to accommodate Jesus and his entire entourage. What is more, the Lazarus episode reveals that this house contains a private tomb—a somewhat flamboyant luxury in Jesus’s time, not only a sign of wealth but also a status symbol attesting to aristocratic connections. In Biblical Jerusalem, as in any modern city, land was at a premium; and only a very few could afford the self-indulgence of a private burial site.

When, in the Fourth Gospel, Lazarus falls ill, Jesus has left Bethany for a few days and is staying with his disciples on the Jordan. Hearing of what has happened, he nevertheless delays for two days—a rather curious reaction—and then returns to Bethany, where Lazarus lies in the tomb. As he approaches, Martha rushes forth to meet him and cries, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” (John 11:21) It is a perplexing assertion, for why should Jesus’s physical presence necessarily have prevented the man’s death? But the incident is significant because Martha, when she greets Jesus, is alone. One would expect Mary, her sister, to be with her. Mary, however, is sitting in the house and does not emerge until Jesus explicitly commands her to do so. The point becomes clearer in the “secret” Gospel of Mark, discovered by Professor Morton Smith and cited earlier in this chapter. In the suppressed account by Mark, it would appear that Mary does emerge from the house before Jesus instructs her to do so. And she is promptly and angrily rebuked by the disciples, whom Jesus is obliged to silence.

It would be plausible enough for Mary to be sitting in the house when Jesus arrives in Bethany. In accordance with Jewish custom, she would be “sitting Shiveh”—sitting in mourning. But why does she not join Martha and rush to meet Jesus on his return? There is one obvious explanation. By the tenets of Judaic law at the time, a woman “sitting Shiveh” would have been strictly forbidden to emerge from the house except at the express bidding of her husband. In this incident the behaviour of Jesus and Mary of Bethany conforms precisely to the traditional comportment of a Jewish man and wife.

There is additional evidence for a possible marriage between Jesus and Mary of Bethany. It occurs, more or less as a non sequitur, in the Gospel of Luke:

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:38-42)

From Martha’s appeal, it would seem apparent that Jesus exercises some sort of authority over Mary. More important still, however, is Jesus’s reply. In any other context one would not hesitate to interpret this reply as an allusion to a marriage. In any case it clearly suggests that Mary of Bethany was as avid a disciple as the Magdalene.

There is substantial reason for regarding the Magdalene and the woman who anoints Jesus as one and the same person. Could this person, we wondered, also be one and the same with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha? Could these women who, in the Gospels, appear in three different contexts in fact be a single person? The medieval Church certainly regarded them as such, and so did popular tradition. Many Biblical scholars today concur. There is abundant evidence to support such a conclusion.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, for example, all cite the Magdalene as being present at the Crucifixion. None of them cites Mary of Bethany. But if Mary of Bethany was as devoted a disciple as she appears to be, her absence would seem to be, at the least, remiss. Is it credible that she—not to mention her brother, Lazarus—would fail to witness the climactic moment of Jesus’s life? Such an omission would be both inexplicable and reprehensible unless, of course, she was present and cited by the Gospels as such under the name of the Magdalene. If the Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are one and the same, there is no question of the latter having been absent from the Crucifixion.

The Magdalene can be identified with Mary of Bethany. The Magdalene can also be identified with the woman who anoints Jesus. The Fourth Gospel identifies the woman who anoints Jesus with Mary of Bethany. Indeed, the author of the Fourth Gospel is quite explicit on the matter:

Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) (John 11:1-2)

And again, one chapter later:

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. (John 12:1-3)

It is thus clear that Mary of Bethany and the woman who anoints Jesus are the same woman. If not equally clear, it is certainly probable that this woman is also the Magdalene. If Jesus was indeed married, there would thus seem to be only one candidate for his wife—one woman who recurs repeatedly in the Gospels under different names and in different roles.

The Beloved Disciple

3) If the Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are the same woman, and if this woman was Jesus’s wife, Lazarus would have been Jesus’s brother-in-law. Is there any evidence in the Gospels to suggest that Lazarus did indeed enjoy such a status?

Lazarus does not figure by name in the Gospels of Luke, Matthew and Mark—although his “resurrection from the dead” was originally contained in Mark’s account and then excised. As a result Lazarus is known to posterity only through the Fourth Gospel—the Gospel of John. But here it is clear that he does enjoy some species of preferential treatment which is not confined to being “raised from the dead”. In this and a number of other respects, he would appear, if anything, to be closer to Jesus than the disciples themselves. And yet, curiously enough, the Gospels do not even number him among the disciples.

Unlike the disciples, Lazarus is actually menaced. According to the Fourth Gospel, the chief priests, on resolving to dispatch Jesus, decided to kill Lazarus as well (John 12:10). Lazarus would seem to have been active in some way on Jesus’s behalf—which is more than can be said of some of the disciples. In theory this should have qualified him to be a disciple himself—and yet he is still not cited as such. Nor is he said to have been present at the Crucifixion—an apparently shameless display of ingratitude in a man who, quite literally, owed Jesus his life. Granted, he might have gone into hiding, given the threat directed against him. But it is extremely curious that there is no further reference to him in the Gospels. He seems to have vanished completely, and is never mentioned again. Or is he? We attempted to examine the matter more closely.

After staying in Bethany for three months, Jesus retires with his disciples to the banks of the Jordan, not much more than a day’s distance away. Here a messenger hastens to him with the news that Lazarus is ill. But the messenger does not refer to Lazarus by name. On the contrary, he portrays the sick man as someone of very special importance, “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” (John 11:3)

Jesus’s reaction to this news is distinctly odd. Instead of returning post-haste to the succour of the man he supposedly loves, he blithely dismisses the matter: “When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” (11