[ 2014-12-26 ]

Jesus had wife and two children, claims book
A new book has stoked controversy in the already
churning cauldron of religious conspiracy theories
with its claims that Jesus was married and had two
children.

The Lost Gospel, which is based on ancient
religious texts held by the British Library,
asserts that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene
and they had two children.

It also reveals that there was a failed attempt to
kill Jesus and the children, and rape Mary
Magdalene — although it does not reveal who was
behind this heinous ploy on the holy family.

“The book also describes Jesus’s alleged
connections to top political figures in the Roman
empire such as Emperor Tiberius and his best
friend, the soldier Sejanus. In addition, it
explains why Jesus was constantly on the move to
avoid Herald Antipas,” writes Richard Brooks,
The Sunday Times Art Editor.

The controversial book, co-authored by
Israeli-Canadian writer and film maker Simcha
Jacobovici and religious professor Barrie Wilson,
was released last month to a sceptical public and
a dismissive clergy.

It has been termed as “speculative” and
“allegorical” since the ancient manuscript it
is based on does not explicitly mention either
Jesus or Mary Magdalene.

The Lost Gospel takes its cue from a new
translation of a historical document, The Story of
Joseph and Asenath, which was originally written
in Syriac — a 1500-year-old language that is
believed to have been Jesus’s mother tongue.

While most religious and historical experts think
the Syriac manuscript chronicles the life of a
Hebrew patriarch named Joseph, authors of The Lost
Gospel insist that it is in fact a coded
chronology of Jesus’s personal life.

“It returns Jesus to history, it returns Mary
Magdalene to the story,” Jacobovici said during
the launch of the book at the British Library in
London last month.

“Not only is he married — but [the manuscript]
celebrates his sexuality. She, his wife, is not
just Mrs Jesus; she’s actually a goddess. He’s
the son of God, she’s the daughter of God.”

HARDLY NEW
While the assertions that Jesus may have been a
husband and father might seem blasphemous to many
Christians, they are hardly new.

And although accounts of Jesus’s personal life
have over the years been documented in several
religious texts and, therefore, have long been
studied by religious scholars, it was not until
1953 that these assertions exploded into public
domain when a Greek author published a book
exploring the theme of Jesus’s marriage.


“In 1953, Nikos Kazantzakis’ book — The Last
Temptation of Christ — made the same suggestion,
but it stated that their marriage occurred after
Christ was taken down from the cross. In 1988,
Martin Scorcese made a film of the same name,”
writes Brooks in the November 9 edition of The
Sunday Times.

However, it was not until Dan Brown wrote The Da
Vinci Code in 2006 that the world really took
notice of the possibility that Jesus might have
had a life that was not documented in the Bible.

In his best-seller, Brown’s central plot is that
Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, and that
their bloodline was continued in the Merovingian
kings of France. The book claims that Jesus’s
descendants live on even today, but their identity
is protected by a secret organisation known as the
Priory of Scion.

The book’s central theme is that Mary Magdalene
is herself divine because she carries Jesus’s
bloodline, but that the church has for centuries
worked to erase all evidence of her sacred nature,
even going to the extent of depicting her as a
prostitute in the Bible.

According to the novel, The Holy Grail, which is
thought to be the cup from which Jesus drank
during the Last Supper, is in fact an allegorical
allusion to Mary Magdalene.

More intriguing is the book’s assertion that
while the church has for centuries fought to hide
this bit of information and has gone as far as
murdering those that might propagate an
alternative Gospel to what is written in the
Bible, evidence of Jesus’s union with Magdalene
lives on and is hidden in plain sight in famous
works of both old and modern art.

Brown claims that the sacredness of Magdalene has
been acknowledged not only in the famous Mona Lisa
painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, but also in the
Walt Disney’s animations, Sleeping Beauty and
Snow White.

HARSH CRITICISM
Brown’s book drew harsh criticism from a section
of the clergy who viewed it as an attack on the
Church. The film adaptation of the book did not
fare any better.
“In the Philippines, which has Asia’s largest
Christian population, the City Council of Manila,
the capital, passed a resolution banning the film
in local theatres. Greek authorities banned the
film for viewers under 17, saying it touched on
“religious and historical questions of major
importance that a minor is not able to evaluate.
An Athens court rejected a religious
organisation’s petition for an outright ban,
citing freedom of expression,” reported The
Washington Post in May 2006.
Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic archbishop of
Birmingham, England, also castigated the film,
telling The Post: “The Da Vinci Code’
gratuitously insults Jesus Christ and the Catholic
Church, it deliberately presents fiction as
fact.”
While Brown’s Da Vinci Code was denounced even
by non-religious scholars for peddling historical
and scientific inaccuracies, The Lost Gospel might
endure a better fate due to the strength of the
work it is based on.
“What makes this book in principle more
significant is that it is based on a manuscript
known as The Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias
Rhetor (of Mytilene), which has been with the
British Museum and then the British Library for
nearly 170 years. It was purchased originally by
the British Museum in 1847 before being
transferred to the British Library about 20 years
ago,” The Sunday Times reports.
That has, however, not managed to convince the
book’s critics of the veracity of its claims.
The Sunday Times reported that when reached for
comment, the Church of England said, “It seems
another text is discovered every year as a ‘lost
gospel”. This book appears to share more with
Dan Brown than with Matthew, Mark, Luke or
John.”
Closer home, the National Council of Churches of
Kenya (NCCK) has also rubbished the ‘truths’
revealed in The Lost Gospel, terming the book
speculative and sensational.
“There is a lot of speculation that goes on
about the life and person of Christ.
Unfortunately, they are not based on fact,” says
the NCCK General Secretary, the Reverend Canon
Peter Karanja.
“It is true that there are certain things in
religion that you cannot entirely resolve. But
Christians only believe what is written in
scripture. Protestant churches have the 66 books
of the Bible, Catholics have added a few more, and
all these books have been authenticated to
determine their veracity. We stand by what they
say,” he adds.
But even as the Church fights off what it says are
fantastical works of fiction, it cannot be escaped
that differing accounts of Jesus’s life keep
springing up every now and then. If there is no
truth behind the humanised life of Christ, why do
they keep popping up?
“Speculation does not die off because it
presents exciting information that goes against
the grain of what is taught in church. It keeps
people fascinated. But we must not forget that
none of it is anchored in fact,” Rev Karanja
says.
On a personal level, the canon is not averse to
reading The Lost Gospel once it finds its way to
Kenya

Source - Daily Nation

... go Back