Kannte: said:
Was Mary Magdalene the wife of Prophet Jesus?
Bishop James Spong speculates that Jesus may have been married. And of course, he says, the woman he was married to was Mary Magdalene, whom the church has painted with a wide-scarlet brush down through the centuries.
Bishop Spong says that such negative views of Mary Magdalene are pure nonsense. "The only indications that Mary Magdalene even had problems," he says, "are a short Gospel passage that says she was a sinner and another passage that says Jesus cast seven demons out of the woman."
But Bishop Spong sees other positive indications that Mary Magdalene could have been the wife of Jesus. For instance, when the Gospel writers list the contingent of women who followed Jesus and the disciples from town to town, Mary Magdalene is always mentioned first.
Given the many prohibitions on single Jewish women in those days, Bishop Spong says that the women following Jesus could have been mothers, wives or prostitutes. Bishop Spong thinks that Peter and some of the other disciples had wives who followed along. What then was the role of Mary Magdalene?
The Bible says the women “provided for them out of their means.” And in every account Mary Magdalene is the central figure. Even at the tomb after the crucifixion, the focus is on Mary Magdalene. She tells an angel inside the tomb that someone has taken away her “Lord,” which would have been a common reference to a husband in those days, Bishop Spong says. And when she sees a mysterious figure outside the tomb whom she believes is a gardener, she lays claim to the body of Jesus which, of course, would be the duty of a man’s wife.
He talks about the narrative that describes the moment after the resurrection when Jesus sees Mary and greets her by name. Mary responds, “Rabboni,” an intimate reference to Jesus’ teaching role. Apparently, Mary then moves toward Jesus to embrace him, and Jesus says, “Do not embrace me” or: “Do not cling to me.” In Orthodox Jewish sects, the bishop says, women did not embrace men unless they were married – and then only in the privacy of their homes.
Bishop Spong contends that the wedding at Cana in Galilee was actually the wedding of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The bishop notes that the only likely time that Jesus’ mother and all of his friends would be at the same wedding was when Jesus himself got married. And he wonders why Jesus’ mother became so upset when the wine was running low. Probably because she was the hostess of her own son’s wedding.
Bishop Spong charges that the real Mary Magdalene was excised from holy stories as a way of denying women their true sexual nature. “By the turn of the 1st century, there was in the life of the Christian church a clear need to remove Mary Magdalene, the flesh-and-blood woman who was at Jesus’ side in life and in death, and to replace her with a sexless woman, the virgin mother. The record of history is that this was accomplished by portraying Mary Magdalene as a prostitute...and thus assassinating her character...