stephan huller

I am always of two minds about these 'experts' who claim that this or that theological concept 'isn't possible' in early Christianity. People like Alin Suciu, Francis Watson would certainly make ineffectual lawyers. Stephen Carlson also takes this position and apparently used to be a lawyer which may explain why he changed careers.

A good lawyer has at his disposal a God-given ability - imagination.

It comes down to the basic problem is that these people typically see 'what is' (as a concept) to develop directly from 'what is known' today. In other words, something like the Jesus Wife Fragment comes along and people raise concerns about (a) the papyrus, (b) the Coptic grammar and (c) the Coptic letters and these are all legitimate concerns. But then they pile on top of the general argument that certain theological concepts like the Son having a wife which are allegedly unknown in antiquity, which really gets me annoyed.

Let's leave aside the concept that if Jesus was understood to be a man then marriage is well attested for males. In other words, it is akin to arguing that discovering a text where Jesus ate melons, defecated, stubbed his toe, shaved or did any number of things that are quite ordinary for men should be excluded from the likely realm of possibilities merely because some ancient text hasn't come down to us which mentions this precise activity.

But then there is the greater question of what 1 Corinthians chapter 5 is about - the reference:

"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles; that a man has his father’s wife!"

Ever since I started to take an interest in the literature of this foreign religion I have always been struck by the idea that this statement could be taken in two ways - (a) some guy LITERALLY took his father's wife as his wife or (b) that this is some FIGURATIVE reference to a man having declared that he is now wed to a feminine being - likely Wisdom - and understood to be the wife of the heavenly Father.

I could be mistaken but I think Elaine Pagels makes the argument that this passage can be taken 'gnostically' in her Gnostic Paul. The point however is that while Jesus is not mentioned explicitly in this passage it is easy to reconstruct a cultic environment where:

a) 'orthodoxy' was understood to be paired with a male (= Jesus) in baptism
b) a contemporary 'heretical' community understood baptism to consist of being wed to a female (= Wisdom or some such hypostasis)
c) the first person to have undertaken this rite was Jesus and the likely pairing was him and Mary Magdalene

The point isn't whether any of this proves that Jesus was actually married to Mary, or the fragment being promoted by Karen King (and which bumped my documentary from this years line up) is authentic, the original question was that it was 'impossible' or that the concept didn't exist in the first century. I think a powerful argument can be constructed to the effect that:

i) our current edition of 1 Corinthians is senseless and manipulated to read as a literal account of porneias
ii) that the Marcionite text witnessed in the Dialogues of Adamantius understood the topic of 'marriage' to be divided into 'same sex' (= with Jesus and good) and 'opposite sex' (= with a woman and bad). God wants men to paired with a male power while Satan encourages the female (and hence the Eve references in 2 Corinthians and elsewhere).

The point is that people who say that this or that can't be true want to limit our understanding of history based upon the impoverishment of their own ability to imagine what might have been.

stephan huller

An example of 1 Corinthians chapter 5 being used in this way from the Latin Epistle of Titus:

Notice also how unusual the original citation of 1 Corinthians 5:1 - 5 is that starts the discussion. This comes from a heretical community.

sotto voce

Good heavens.

That's not theological, if it's literal. It's downright mundane. There was no absolute reason why Jesus could not be married. This would not have made his wife into God; even if Catholics like it to be thought that being Jesus' mother made her divine. :devil1: Obviously, if one knows that one is going to die young, and famous/notorious too, one would hardly want to expose one's 'chickens and their dam' to the bereavement and the fall-out. And the crass genealogy. O, Lordy. As if there isn't enough hogwash.

If this refers to God's spiritual bride, then it is orthodoxy, of course.

Mundane, yes. But absence of info has to be judged against expectation. If Jesus ate melons, as he possiby did, in Egypt, it's hardly headline stuff. But if he was married, one would expect mention of it, even if only incidentally, as his wife would have been among the named women travelling with Jesus and the disciples. There is natural assumption by the reader, any reader, that Jesus did not marry. So this slip of papyrus, probably bearing a forged inscription, may seem to be intended only to stir things up a bit among believers. If so, it hasn't worked!

Quite how being married to Wisdom counted as unmentionable sexual immorality is really quite hard to figure. It's not in the Kama Sutra, I've checked.

Now if pagans thought that being Wise was simply downright cussed and inconvenient, I could understand it.

stephan huller

Read a book on the subject:

and in a volume edited by Karen King herself - http://books.google.com/books?id=cUK...nostic&f=false

sotto voce

You read the improving book, then use your resulting improvement to improve the rest of us. Or, we may assume that the book is not improving. That's the drill, soldier.

Most books are pretentious crap, aren't they.

Net2004

according to the orthodox christians called catholics, jesus had a daughter and through that daughter he was born.

sotto voce

Someone's read a book!

Littlejohn

I always said that Catholics are among the most intelligent religious of the world...

Too bad that, in the past, were also among the most criminals in history! ...

Littlejohn S

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Littlejohn

'.. you begins with listening the catholic priests and then you comes to believe that even donkeys fly. And when someone tries to explain the truth to the brainwashed faithful, the clergy intervene promptly with the "foaming at the mouth," trying to make them believe that he is the incarnation of "Satan"!.. It was through this perverse and criminal mechanism that masses of Catholic faithful were pushed to slaughter hundreds of thousands of "heretics," guilty of not following the "holy" doctrine taught by the equally "holy" institution, ie the Church Mother! .. "

- Anonymous venetian -


Littlejohn S

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