Reply #35: Hey, the bit about Jesus and apostles being gay, and about Mary M as

[shimmergal]

his wife, neither have much official acceptance in Christianity, at least not yet. That could change, of course.

There is however, a lot of new scholarship based on the discovery of other gospels, which indicate that Mary Magdalene was much more important -- to Jesus, the disciples, and in early Christianity--than we've been led to believe. I'm currently reading "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala" by Karen L. King, which I recommend to anyone who's interested in pursuing this subject further.

But it's been known since the 1950's at least, by Biblical scholars (except for the fundies, who knows what direction their "scholarship" goes) that Mary Magdalene was NOT a prostitute. That impression comes only from the first mention of her in Luke (8:2) directly following passages (Luke 7:36 and beyond) in which a prostitute comes to Jesus and annoints his feet with oil (and her tears). It's sort of a "guilt by rhetorical propinquity" which has been stuck on Mary
Magdalene for centuries. (Just like the Bushies' constantly conflating "war on terrorism" with the Iraqi venture.) Speculation is that some of the early church fathers encouraged this, in order to justify a subordinate position for women. They didn't want to let any woman appear as deserving as the male disciples.

I'll check out those links. Mostly by accident I've gotten further into the topic than I ever expected during the past year. Personally I like the idea of Jesus and Mary M. having been married, but I don't think there's enough evidence to justify it at this point. I do think it's quite likely that Jesus _was_ married, possibly during those years from 18 to 30 that we know nothing about, because almost all Jewish men of his time were. Possibly his wife died, and he began his ministry after that. ('Course those last two sentences are pure speculation on my part. This theory does, however, help explain his harshness toward divorce, if he lost a wife he loved and saw how other men divorced their wives just to get a new model, so to speak.)