Spoilers to anyone who has not read 'The Davinci Code'
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JESUS MARY AND DA VINCI
ABC Television Network
October 28, 2003
http://www.abcmedianet.com/progcal/getpressrel.htm?assetid=PR7008
The best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code has sparked a vigorous debate by
raising a number of provocative questions -- most notably, was the
historical Jesus really a married man? Could he have even been a father? Do
his direct descendants still survive today? In an hour-long ABC News
special, "Jesus, Mary and da Vinci," Elizabeth Vargas explores these and
other controversial theories about the lives of Jesus and Mary Magdalene,
who some scholars believe was not a prostitute, as she is often portrayed,
but rather Jesus' wife -- and perhaps even the mother of his child. "Jesus,
Mary and da Vinci" airs MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET), on the ABC
Television Network.
The Da Vinci Code, a mystery novel that claims to be based in part on
historical fact, contains claims that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife, that
she fled Jerusalem following his crucifixion carrying their child -- and
that she was perhaps the legendary Holy Grail herself. In France, Jesus'
descendants married into French royalty. This story, it is said, was long
protected and perpetuated by a secret society of some of the most famous men
in history, including Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton.
Vargas travels to the Holy Land, Italy, Scotland, France and other locations
around the world to investigate what evidence exists to support some of
these extraordinary claims in an effort to separate fact from legend. Among
those she speaks with are religion and art history scholars, as well as a
Scottish aristocrat who says he thinks his family married into Jesus'
bloodline in the 12th century -- though he assures Vargas that, if true, the
blood line, "by the time it gets to me...will be very, very, very diluted."
Vargas finds plenty of disagreement among theologians and historians about
whether there is evidence to suggest that Jesus was married. "The weight of
evidence that we have suggests to me the contrary, that in fact he was a
celibate," says Elaine Pagels of Princeton University. "I think it's
entirely plausible to think that Jesus may have been married," counters
Karen King of Harvard University. "It was a normal practice for Jewish men.
It would also be normal not to mention that he had a wife." In the Bible
there is no mention of Jesus being married.
One thing several authorities interviewed agree on is that Mary Magdalene's
portrayal as a prostitute is attributable to mistaken identity, and her
importance may have been grossly understated -- or, as some charge,
purposely suppressed by the Church. "There's no factual basis for that
longstanding tradition that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, a woman of ill
repute," says Father Richard McBrien of Notre Dame University. "Mary
Magdalene is one of the greatest saints in the history of the church."
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ABC NEWS SPECIAL ASKS IF JESUS HAD WIFE
By David Bauder
Associated Press
October 30, 2003
http://www.tribnet.com/24hour/entertainment/story/1040625p-7311205c.html
NEW YORK - ABC News correspondent Elizabeth Vargas concedes her network is
stepping into a theological minefield with its one-hour exploration of
whether Jesus Christ had a wife.
The ABC News special, "Jesus, Mary and DaVinci," is scheduled to air Monday
at 8 p.m. ET.
"You can't talk about this subject without intriguing people or offending
people," Vargas said Thursday. "We're trying to do it as respectfully as we
can."
ABC screened the special for some reporters and religious leaders on
Thursday. The program is based on the best-selling novel, "The DaVinci
Code," which claims to be partly grounded on historical fact.
The book asserts that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife -- not a prostitute, as
in some teachings -- and that she fled Jerusalem with his child following
his crucifixion.
The story was kept alive for centuries by a secret society that included the
painter Leonardo DaVinci, who supposedly inserted clues about it in his art,
the book claimed.
The ABC special outlines the theories and speaks to several theologians who
either discount the story or assert that it is possible.
The show unravels like a mystery perpetuated by secondhand gossip. Vargas
said ABC found no proof that Jesus had a wife, but couldn't completely
discount it, either.
Vargas, who was raised a Roman Catholic, said her own parents said to her,
"Oh, my goodness, what are you doing?" when they found out she was working
on the story.
She said she was never aware of the power struggles and political intrigue
that went into how her faith is taught today.
"For me, it's made religion more real and, ironically, much more interesting
-- which is what we're hoping to do for our viewers," she said.
It drew some immediate criticism, particularly from a representative of the
Catholic League, who said ABC News relied too heavily on the opinion of
Father Richard McBrien of Notre Dame, who believes Mary Magdalene's
importance has been historically understated and that it's possible she was
his wife.
"I think it was not sufficiently balanced," said Joseph DeFeo, policy
analyst for the Catholic League. "The majority of the people who spoke
believed in either the plausibility or the outright truth of ('DaVinci Code'
author) Dan Brown's claims. The facts themselves scream out that this is a
crackpot theory."
The show even drew criticism from Nikki Stephanopoulos, mother of ABC News
correspondent George and the communications director for the Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of America. She the special might offend people who believe that
women have a more prominent role in the church.
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WAS JESUS MARRIED?
By Deborah Caldwell, Beliefnet's senior religion producer
BeliefNet
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/127/story_12776.html
Before the "Left Behind" <http://www.leftbehind.com/> series catapulted to
the top of the bestseller list, the idea that Christians could be lifted
bodily into the clouds during the Rapture was an idea that only obscure
theologians studied. These days, of course, lots of people believe that's
what will happen the day the world ends.
Now a new novel is forcing people to confront another biblical puzzle. The
DaVinci Code <http://www.danbrown.com/>, a thriller by Dan Brown, tells the
story of a Harvard professor summoned to the Louvre Museum after a murder
there to examine cryptic symbols relating to DaVinci's work. During the
course of his investigation, he uncovers an ancient secret: the claim that
Mary Magdalene represents the divine feminine, and that she and Jesus had a
sexual relationship.
Is it possible Jesus had this kind of relationship with her or that they
were, as some suggest, married?
Karen Leigh King <http://www.hds.harvard.edu/dpa/faculty/area1/king.html>, a
Harvard professor who is the world's leading authority on early Christian
texts about Mary Magdalene, gives "The DaVinci Code" a thumbs-up--but only
as fiction. ("It's a good read but historically way off.")
"The book certainly fits our timesÅ . Since the 1960s there has been a
hostility toward traditions in Christianity that are anti-sexuality," says
King, adding that the novel also plays to interest in women's issues.
But, she says: "there's no historical information whatsoever that either of
them was married, let alone to each other. When there's an argument from
silence, you can jump either way. On one hand, why not? Why shouldn't they
have sex? On the other hand, why every time you put a man and woman together
do they have to have sex?"
The possibility of Jesus' marriage fascinates people; biblical scholars say
they are often asked by audiences and readers about it. In general, only the
most liberal scholars even bother to entertain the question.
Here is what we can say about Jesus' sex life:
- Most mainstream biblical scholars do not believe Jesus was married to
anyone, because the Gospels don't mention it.
- A few biblical scholars argue it's likely Jesus was married -- even though
the Bible doesn't mention it -- because Jewish men at that time nearly
always married <http://www.pilgrimpress.com/books/book-1144-3.html>. These
scholars tend not to care one way or another whether his wife was Mary
Magdalene.
- A handful of scholars argue that Jesus was married
<http://www.grailchurch.org/marriedjesus.htm>, probably to Mary Magdalene,
in order to preserve a political dynasty <http://thiering.net/mary.htm> and
to continue a bloodline.
Conservative biblical scholars think the entire question is silly, since the
notion simply isn't in the Bible. "Mary Magdalene was one of several women
who contributed to Jesus' ministry and supported it," says Darrell Bock
<http://www.dts.edu/ccl/resources/aboutdarrellbock.aspx>, New Testament
professor at Dallas Theological Seminary.
And that's it.
Even liberal biblical scholars don't really think Jesus and Mary Magdalene
had a sexual relationship -- though they don't entirely dismiss it, either.
Marcus Borg <http://www.beliefnet.com/author/author_52.html>, a professor of
religion and culture at Oregon State University, for instance, had this to
say about the possibility of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as sex partners: "It
wouldn't bother me if he had a non-married sexual relationship with Mary
Magdalene. In some way I wish he was married because it would shake up our
ideas about Jesus and sexuality."
According to the New Testament: The Gospels say Mary Magdalene was a
follower of Jesus and that, according to Luke 8, she supported him out of
her own means, meaning that she was probably wealthy. She was the first, or
among the first, to discover the empty tomb. (Mark 16:9 says, "Now after He
had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary
Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.") After the Resurrection,
Jesus commissioned her to go to the other apostles with the news. Thus, she
has been known traditionally as the "apostle to the apostles."
But since the earliest decades after Jesus' death, a parallel lore
<http://www.gnosis.org/gnscript.html> flourished, particularly in southern
France, where in 1208 the people were condemned to death
<http://www.paralumun.com/cathars.htm> by Pope Innocent III for believing
that Mary Magdalene was the "grail mother." In the parallel story, Jesus
married Mary Magdalene, and she was pregnant with his child when he was
crucified at Qumran, not Golgotha as it is usually thought. Mary delivered a
child, and then she and the baby were spirited to France, where she died.
This secret teachingâ?¹partially described in "The DaVinci Code" -- is said to
have been preserved by the Knights Templar <http://www.templarhistory.com/>,
a monastic military order formed at the end of the First Crusade.
Outside France, historians and theologians for many years have debated if
Jesus was married -- to Mary Magdalene or to someone else. In 1970, for
instance, a Presbyterian minister and scholar named William E. Phipps wrote
a controversial book called Was Jesus Married?
<http://www.pilgrimpress.com/books/book-1144-3.html> His conclusion is
"yes," because the vast majority of Jewish males of Jesus' era married.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a rash of Jesus books and movies about
Jesus, including Jesus Christ, Superstar
<http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm68.html>, which made the
assumption that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a sexual relationship. More
famously, Martin Scorsese's 1988 movie The Last Temptation of Christ
<http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1800087273&intl=us> includes a
sex scene between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
But serious inquiry into Jesus' marital state -- and more specifically into
his relationship with Mary Magdalene -- got a huge boost from the discovery
of what is called the Berlin Codex
<http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Resources/Texts/nagHam.html>. Discovered in
Egypt in 1896, it wasn't translated until the 1950s, along with the Nag
Hammadi Codex <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Resources/Texts/nagHam.html>,
discovered in 1945, around the same time the Dead Sea Scrolls
<http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Resources/Texts/dss.html> were found. These
texts have become increasingly important to biblical scholarship, and they
illuminate a different kind of Jesus from the one depicted in the Bible -- a
wisdom teacher and spiritual seeker. That kind of Jesus is appealing to
Westerners inclined to combine elements of Eastern religions with
Christianity -- and so, what are called the Gnostic texts have also become
hugely popular.
The two Codex discoveries included The Gospel of Mary, the Sophia of Jesus
Christ, and the Gospel of Philip, among others. For a long time, they were
considered unimportant. But in the last decade, biblical scholars have begun
looking at these texts more closely. The Gospel of Mary, for instance, dates
to about 125 C.E., according to King, which places it among the oldest texts
of the early Christian church. By way of comparison, the Gospel of John was
written in the 90s C.E.
Particularly in the Gospel of Mary
<http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelmary.html>, Mary Magdalene is
depicted as having special knowledge of Jesus: "Peter said to Mary, 'Sister,
we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women." In the
Gospel of Philip <http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelphilip.html>,
she is described this way: "There were three who always walked with the
Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was
called his companion." Some scholars point to these passages as possible
proof of the Jesus and Mary Magdalene relationship.
A slightly more common view among liberal scholars is that whether or not
Jesus and Mary Magdalene were intimate, she was as important as Peter. In
fact, they say, Mary Magdalene was an apostle, but her story was suppressed
by early church fathers who excised the Gospel of Mary from the Bible in the
5th century.
And that is the idea that "The DaVinci Code" may popularize.
"They didn't attack Mary Magdalene because she was Mrs. Jesus," says liberal
scholar John Dominic Crossan
<http://www.westarinstitute.org/Fellows/Crossan/crossan.html>. "They
attacked her because she was a major leader, that she was up there with
Peter and the rest and they fought like hell to put her back down in her
place."
Crossan does not believe Jesus was married. In fact, he considers the entire
question an insult to Mary Magdalene, because it implies that she is
important only through marriage. "To say Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene
is a putdown, unless you say she was clearly as important as Peter and
that's the reason she's married to Jesus."
Crossan believes, instead, that Jesus wasn't married to anyoneâ?¹because he
was too poor to afford a wife and children.
In any case, many scholars agree that in the 4th Century, around the time
Constantine converted to Christianity
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/why/legitimization.h
tml>, church patriarchs began trying to suppress women's leadership roles in
the Christian movement. At the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E., convened by
Constantine, Jesus' divinity was debated and voted on. Later, as the church
evolved, the 27 books of the New Testament were canonized -- and the Gospel
of Mary and the others were thrown out.
Liberal scholars say that, among the reasons these other books didn't make
it into what is called the "biblical canon" are that they include clear
evidence of Mary Magdalene's importance in Jesus' ministry, and that they
portray Jesus less as the Son of God and more as a great teacher preaching
about an interior spiritual path.
But Bock, a conservative scholar, says there is an even simpler reason the
books were axed. "It's a later collection of material, probably belonging to
a splinter group of Christians, and therefore isn't very trustworthy," he
says.
He also says the theory of Mary Magdalene as a major church leader doesn't
hold up. "Anyone who argues that there were women who had a full-orbed
ministerial role in the time of Jesus that's equal to the Twelve Apostles is
arguing beyond speculation. There's really no basis for it at all. There
certainly were women who participated in the earliest church and who were
faithful. But the only office women held was deaconess in the early church
period. And there is no trace of a ministry of Mary Magdalene in any of the
biblical materials."
Still, this much is known: In the 5th Century, not long after the Council of
Nicea, Pope Gregory the Great delivered an Easter sermon in which he
associated Mary Magdalene with sinfulness
<http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1141/15_37/70926901/print.jhtml>. He said
that the adulterous woman in John 8 was Mary Magdalene, even though that
woman is never named. And he said that the woman who anointed Jesus' feet in
Luke 7: 36-50 also was Mary Magdalene -- but she, too, is not actually named
in the Gospel. "They turned Mary Magdalene into a paradigmatic female
sinner," King says. Meanwhile, the church began describing Mary, the mother
of Jesus, as a virgin. In the process, says King, "they molded the ideology
of femininity in Christianity."
Now, it seems, that ideology is being examinedâ?¹and in some liberal Quarters
-- debated, even within Christianity. Many of these liberal scholars say
they wouldn't mind if someone proved Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married.
If it could be proved, all kinds of questions about Christian women's roles
would be forced into the open. But at this point, the facts aren't there.
"History for historians is more fun than fiction," says Crossan. "Fiction
for me is like playing tennis without a net. But history means you have to
go with the facts you have."
Nevertheless, popular culture continues to grab at bits of biblical text to
answer perplexing questions. How will the world end? Left Behind takes a
piece of I Thessalonians to answer. Those who are "left" alive on earth when
the Lord "comes down from heaven" will be "caught up together in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air." The word rapture doesn't even appear in the
text.
And now, the ancient legend of Jesus' marriage and the divine feminine
reemerges. The question remains if it will become -- like Left Behind --
popular theology , as well as popular fiction.
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