While modern novels like the DaVinci Code make the case that Jesus was married. I asked what might have happened to the family of Jesus.
Anne: Joseph of Arimathea, who was the great uncle of Christ, the uncle of his mother Mary, took his immediate family, which could include his mother. It definitely included her and any wives or children that he might have had. He took the immediate family. And that’s where you get these stories of them taking a boat, and some say it was even set adrift without oars. But the other one was it Joseph of Arimathea was going to protect and save this family. So he took him to England, on the way he went through other countries. So that would explain the answer to your question. They were not around. They were being protected.
David: There are legends that Christ was in other places.
GT: We have The Da Vinci Code.
David: Right.
Anne:Yeah.
GT: Did he go to France?
Anne: Yes, it was Gaul at the time. And yes, he definitely went there.
However, most Christians balk at the idea that Jesus was married, and even fewer accept the Da Vinci Code novel. I’m going to channel my inner evangelical and try to push back on this idea that Jesus was married. Apostle David Patrick from Christ’s Church, and polygamy expert Anne Wilde will respond to arguments questioning why we should even consider Jesus to be married. We will also talk about modern scholarship that has uncovered the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife!
David: In 2012 Karen King, she is a very high ranking scholar at Harvard Divinity School, and she ends up receiving this papyrus. And the person who owns it wanted to remain anonymous. But he said, you should review this and go through it and so she presents this in Rome, among her peers. And she they call it the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. And so it’s this little papyrus about this big [about the size of a credit card.]
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Let me read the words that they found in it so that I get it exactly right. It says, “Jesus said to them, my wife.” And then the next line says, “she will be able to be my disciple.” And so they get this and it’s like the first time anybody has any discussion about Jesus being actually married, and uses the word wife. And when they did the research on this, of course, right after she comes out with this, some of the Vatican newspapers come out and say, “Well, it must be a fake. It must be a forgery.” It must be inaccurate, right? So they did all their tests upon the papyrus that they found to determine if it was forged or not. And of course, the person that gave it to him want to remain anonymous, so that’s suspicious. And so the provenance or the origin story is pretty weak on where this came from. But they tested it, and it doesn’t appear to be inaccurate. And the papyrus appears to be from about 700 to 800 A.D. So it’s old.
GT: So it’s at least 700 years after Jesus lived, though.
David: That’s right. So it was it wouldn’t have been contemporary with his his time, but it shows is people were talking about it. And that’s interesting. Conclusive? No. Interesting? Yes.
Check out our conversation….
