Scholarly Smackdown: Were Mary Magdalene and Jesus Married?

Continued from page 2

In the New Testament itself, a woman identified as Mary of Bethany in John's gospel "took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment" (12:3). This is a direct allusion to Song of Solomon 1:12: "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." The Song of Solomon verses refer to the wedding liturgy of the kings at the time of David; it is clear that John's text delicately alludes to the wedding of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Your second point is that if Mary was married to Jesus, she would be featured more prominently in the Gospels. Here, you are not taking into account the strong evidence that Jesus came from the Essenes. It does not work to argue from present-day middle class society to the Essene society of 2000 years ago.

Essenes were very different from mainstream Jews in that they tried to avoid sex. Some were monastics, total celibates. But the members of the Essene dynastic lines, the second order of Essenes that the historian Josephus describes, had to marry in order to continue their lines. Jesus was a descendant of the line of David (Romans 1:3). Joseph, whom I take to be Jesus' biological father, was a descendant of the royal house of David, as the genealogies in both Matthew's and Luke's Gospels state.  Essene dynasts went outside the monastery to have sex with their wives at regular intervals, then went back to the ascetic life. Their wives certainly did not go around with them. The Essenes and many early Christians regarded women as the agents of sin, as certain early Christian writings such as 1 Timothy 3:13-15 and similar statements by the patristic writers illustrate.

The years of Jesus' ministry described in the Gospels period were those in which Jesus lived outside the Essene monastery, the three-year trial marriage of Essene custom that Josephus describes (Jewish War 2, 160-161). Mary Magdalene appears with Jesus at key moments. She was the same person as Mary of Bethany. "Bethany," meaning "House of the Poor," was a name for the Therapeutae, a Jewish sect described by Philo of Alexandria, to which Mary Magdalene belonged. She was not a demoniac or a prostitute. Here, and at all points, the pesher has to be taken into account. The pesher is a new way of reading the Gospels, learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

According to the pesher of the Gospels, a "demoniac" was a militant zealot. Mary was a freedom fighter with nationalist opinions that Jesus "cast out"—that is, he persuaded her to change her politics. The full historical background of the first century has to be taken into account.

Your third point, about the name "Mary," overlooks Philo's description of the Therapeutae. They were ascetics based in Egypt closely related to the Essenes. Their worship centered on Exodus imagery, and included a liturgy with a choral dance. The Therapeutae, unlike the monastic Essenes, had women members. In the liturgy, the male choir was led by a man acting as a "Moses" and the female choir by a woman acting as a "Miriam," the sister of Moses. "Miriam," translated as "Mary," was a title. ("Joseph" was also a title, as were "Jacob," "Abraham," "Isaac," "Moses," and "Elijah.") Once this is recognized, a woman with the title Miriam (Mary) is understood as a holder of the office of the chief woman of the Therapeutae. The mother of Jesus had held that role, and his wife continued it.

From: Bart Ehrman
To: Barbara Thiering
Date: May 22, 2006

Dr. Thiering,

Thank you for your lively and imaginative response to my initial posting. I too will try to give a point-by-point response.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree that scholars of biblical studies and early Christianity think there is evidence that Jesus and Mary were married. Quite the contrary; there is scarcely a bona fide scholar in the field who thinks they were married. Of the hundreds of biblical and patristic scholars whom I know personally, who attend the meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the North American Patristics Society, I don't know of a single one who subscribes to this view.

Continued on page 4: Bart Ehrman: 'Christians kissed each other as part of liturgical ritual.' »