Was Jesus Ever Married?

There is no passage in the Old Testament concerning the Messiah being married. There is also no passage in the New Testament Gospels nor the writings of Paul nor the epistles of the Apostles that state Jesus was ever married nor had a romantic relationship with a woman. Jesus made it clear that His family was anyone who does the will of my father is my mother, brother and sister (Matthew 12:47-50). The Book of Revelation uses the term Bride of Christ and after the marriage ceremony held in Heaven, His Bride is now referred to as His Wife. However, this term does not refer to a certain female but instead His saints also known as His Church.

Jesus' Bride the Church becomes His Wife, in a ceremony officiated by God the Father in Heaven (Revelation 19:1, 7-9). And, according to the Book of Revelation, this takes place after He raptures His Church into Heaven so the saints can attend the marriage ceremony. Then, after the ceremony and the Supper, the saints now followed Christ to the Earth to witness His Second Coming (Revelation 19:11, 14, 21). It will be at this time that His Wife the saints, will now live with Him in their eternal home located on the earth (Revelation 21:2-4). So, Jesus will eventually be married but not in the traditional sense.

One might initially think that it would be a scandal for Jesus to have fallen in love. However, while there is no evidence that He was ever romantically involved with a woman, this does not mean He was incapable of falling in love. Jesus was fully human by way of His mother, so He felt the same emotions as all people feel. Also, while Jesus did not sin, He could have sinned if He had wanted too. But He famously resisted the temptation to sin by declining Satan’s offer to rule all the kingdoms of the earth while in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). He resisted this and all temptations that might distract Him from His mission to preach the word of God, self sacrifice Himself for the sins of the world, and create the Everlasting Covenant of eternal salvation for mankind. Therefore, there was simply no time nor necessity for Him to include becoming married and starting a family. He also understood that His life would be cut short and prophesied that many of those intimately connected with His Church movement would be mistreated and in some cases martyred.

The idea that He had a love interest but that it was kept a secret makes no sense. To the public, Jesus was a bright, healthy Jewish male who was expected to be married in His late teens or early twenties. Jesus could easily have married and still started His ministry as a rabbi with His wife as His helpmate. A number of the disciples were married and some even took their wives with them on their travels. See Related Paper: Peter and Paul Had Wives? Or, His wife could have stayed at their home in Capernaum and waited for Him to return from mission trips. And, had this been the case, there would have been no reason for the writers of the Gospels not to have included this fact in their writings. Jesus could have served as the perfect role model for the perfect husband and their marriage the perfect union of a man and his wife. But this was not the case. Also, if Jesus was married, His family would have known and the public would have been informed. In fact, Jesus insisted at his trial before Caiaphas that He had spoken openly to the world and said {done} nothing in secret (John 18:20). There would have been no social stigma attached to a famous rabbi having been married. In fact just the opposite as Rabbi’s were expected to be married and have a family. So again, there would have been no reason for Jesus not not marry unless He had made a conscious decision to stay single.

However, since there is no mention of His being married, then the only way to flesh out this theory would be to say that Jesus was secretly married. In other words, you start with a hypothetical theory that it would be impossible for Jesus not to have been married. But since there is no written evidence to support this theory, you are forced to further deduce that He must have been secretly married. So we are now going rapidly down the proverbial rabbit hole. How Jesus’ marital status could have remained unknown to His twelve disciples, who were with Him day and night for forty months, would be inexplicable. And, if He was married, they would have known and mentioned this fact in their writings. We need to also consider that Jesus had an additional seventy loyal disciples that He sent out to announce His immanent arrival in various villages and towns (Luke 10:1-3).  All of these devotees would have known if He was married. Plus, He had an additional entourage of women who, with some regularly, followed Him during His ministry (Matthew 27:55). Therefore, His secret marriage could not have been kept a secret for long (Luke 10:1). The religious leaders also employed spies to watch and report back on Jesus’ every move. And once again, we do not have any scriptural evidence that they were worried about Jesus leaving a family to continue His movement. So the secret marriage theory has a number of large gaping holes. However, to help close theses gaps so as to make this theory remotely plausible, the theorist would need to include the name of this women in question. But, how do you find a credible candidate?

Apparently, the theorists looked to the women that are mentioned as being followers of Jesus. Unfortunately all the women mentioned in the Gospels had husbands except one, and her name was Mary from the recently excavated city of Magdala. So, while there was only one female available, it was a good one in that her name was mentioned twelve times in the Gospels. And, she was cited as not only being healed by Jesus, but accompanied Him on several of His trips, and possibility anointed Him just prior to His crucifixion. She was also there with Mary His mother at the cross, witnessed His burial, and according to all four Gospels, was the first women to visit His tomb on resurrection Sunday. In fact, she was the first person Jesus talked to after His resurrection. So, if you want to create a wife for Jesus, she would be not only an ideal choice but the only choice you would have to work with. Thus, it was decided for all the above reasons that Mary Magdalene would be drafted as the most possible wife of Jesus.

But in the words of all great story theorists, don’t confuse my storyline with the facts. And the facts start early on with the baptism of Jesus as a single, thirty year old itinerant rabbi. We know that His first miracle was at a wedding at Canna which He attended with His mother Mary, some of His biological siblings and His first 5 disciples (John 2:1-2). But there is no mention of a wife accompting Him. He moved from His home village of Nazareth to the city of Capernaum where He stayed in the home of Peter. We know that Peter had a wife as Jesus healed his mother in law (Mark 1:29-31). But no wife is mentioned as living with Jesus in Peter’s home. He later revisited the village of Nazareth where He announced His ministry as the Messiah (Luke 4:16-22). The village elders were amazed at His pronouncement and publicly considered how His statement could possibly be true. They reasoned among themselves He was only the son of Joseph and Mary with brothers and sisters still living in the village (John 6:42). If Jesus was married, they would have listed Him as a husband and the name of His wife as they did with His step father Joseph and His biological mother Mary. Instead, the village religious leaders tried to throw Him off a steep cliff in order to kill Him. This act of violence throws light on two particular reasons why Jesus not only did not marry but could not marry.

First, Jesus knew before the time He was twelve years old that He was the prophesied Messiah and would fulfill Old Testament prophecy by self sacrificing Himself on behalf of mankind (Luke 2:41-50). So, Jesus knew at a very early age what His mission was and that it did not include the luxury or necessity of being married. Second, the sacrament of marriage carried with it the Biblically required duty that the couple would start a family and stay together for life. In the first century, seven out of ten children did not survive to adulthood. Therefore, couples were encouraged to produce as many children as possible. A modern example of the state encouraging its citizens to have large families is Russia.

Over the past ten years, the population of Russia has steadily dropped by ten million people and now stands at 145 million. In 2022, Russia began a campaign to encourage and reward women for having at least fourteen children. The reward is the official title of Mother Heroine which includes a frameable certificate of achievement along with a five star medal pin and a one-time payment of $1,142.86 per child. However, this generous amount by Russian standards, would be reduced with any additional child. Thus, for the fifteenth child the mother would be rewarded with a payment $1,066.66 and the reward for the sixteenth child would be $1,000 and so forth and so on.

Jesus well knew that He, His disciples and many of His followers would initially be persecuted and die as martyrs. Therefore, there was no rational reason why he would start a family only to have it assassinated by the religious leaders and or Rome. Third, when would Jesus have had the time to care for a wife and start a family? A preincarnation {Christophany} of Jesus created Adam and Eve, introduced the two, created the Holy Marriage Covenant and performed the first marriage ceremony. He then walked and talked with the couple each day in the cool of the evening in the Garden (Genesis 2:22-24; Genesis 3:8). Therefore, He of all people understood all the obligations marriage entailed. So, He would have been the last person to denigrate the sanctity of marriage by secretly marrying, then seldom being home with His wife, not helping to raise the children and causing them to be persecuted due to His mission. In fact, Jesus told His followers that those who put the preaching of the Gospel above family life would receive in return one hundred fold and everlasting life (Matthew 19:29). Forth, with His ascension, He would be spectacularly abandoning His family at the exact moment of their most intense persecution. Fifth, as previously noted, Jesus stated that everything He did, He did in public. Every belief He had, He taught in publicly yet no mention of a wife. Sixth, Jesus told the Pharisees and Sadducees that there was no marriage in heaven as there was no need for this institution there.

On a side note, the Sadducees taught that there was no resurrection, no angels, no personal God and no heaven. So just imagine their chagrin and furor when they asked Jesus about who was the heavenly husband to a woman who had been married to multiple men. Jesus answered the question by saying, "As for the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30). This answer completely refuted a list of major tenants that the Sadducees taught.

So, Jesus who came from Heaven was not married there, nor was He married while on earth, nor is He married now that He has returned back to heaven. When He returns to earth, He is not cited in the Book of Revelation as bring a wife but only His saints and the angelic armies of Heaven. He will reign for one thousand years on earth but here is no mention of His being married (Revelation 20:4). Jesus made sure that the religious leaders knew He was a direct descendant of King David, kept all the Mosaic laws perfectly, and that He had nothing to hide. Therefore, the idea that He would secretly marry and then kept it a secret ran directly contrary to His statements of complete transparency concerning His life and mission. And finally, the life and ministry of Jesus was incredibly time consuming, dangerous and exhausting. The idea that He would have the time or need for a wife is ludicrous. Why would He, the Son of God and the person on who’s shoulders the eternal salvation of all mankind rested, knowing full well that He would eventually be crucified, decided that what He really needed to do was to get married and start a family? This is such an absurd idea that defies imagination and is actually humorous in its abject stupidity.

On a separate note, while Jesus was fully human and made of flesh and bone by way of His mother Mary's genomes, He was also fully Devine by way of His biological Father God (Luke 1:35). Thus, Jesus made it clear that while He would die, He could not be killed as are ordinary men. Instead, He said that He could only die if and when He decided to do so (John 10:18). This strongly implies that Jesus was an immortal, and as such could have lived as long as He desired. Jesus was born and grew up, but this was necessary so that He could display His humanity. Jesus also showed His followers that He had complete control of time, space and matter. Jesus changed water to wine and aged it (John 2:10). Jesus could instantly calm storms and walked on water. Jesus brought rotting corpus' back to life. Jesus resurrected Himself, ascended under His own power into Heaven, and two thousand years later, still sits on the Throne of God in the same thirty three year old body that He had when He left the earth. With only a command, Jesus will instantly raise billions of Christians and children from the earth and give them immoral bodies. So yes, it was completely within the power of Jesus to have been immortal. In His humanity, He could feel love, hunger and pain, but in His divinity, He could not be killed before His time. He would have to personally command His Spirit of life to leave His body in order to experience physical death.

He did this on the cross, and the Centurion who witnessed this act was so alarmed that a man could command Himself to die that he exclaimed, "Surely this man was the Son of God" ( Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47). Therefore, Jesus as an immortal would have honored the understating that, just as the angels in Heaven were immortal and as such do not marry nor can they die, thus He as an immortal would also voluntarily keep this same law that He Himself created.  So, Jesus was definitely never married or in love with His followers in the romantic sense. He loved them with an agape love. This is a love that transcends the physical with a focus on caring for the intellectual and spiritual needs of a person. Many of His female followers no doubt adored Him but more importantly they revered Him as their spiritual leader. So, any desire for a more intimate relationship was always out of the question due to their respect for Him and His mission as Messiah.

However, if you were a popular pagan fiction writer in the second century looking to take advantage of the incredible growing popularity of Jesus, then it makes all the sense in the world to write a what if fictional biography. And, because it was for entertainment purposes only, one could write a novel in which Jesus gets married, has children, buys a home, talks His best friend Judas into turning Him in to the authorities, narrowly escape His crucifixion, then has His family smuggled off to the West where they live out their lives as super heroes battling dragons and eventually become the Kings and Queens of Europe.

Wow… what a great book or film that would make. And this fictional scenario along with others has in fact been reinvented multiple times down through the centuries. But, the best part is that in today’s world, you can get away with hoodwinking an uneducated public by only including a tiny disclaimer stating for entertainment purposes only displayed occasionally at the very bottom of the screen to avoid all possibilities of a law suit.

But the greatest most overreaching reason Jesus would never have considered starting a family is because of His supernatural conception. As stated earlier, Jesus had twenty three pairs of human genomes by way of his human mother Mary. But His other twenty three pairs of genomes to complete His conception was provided by the Holy Spirit. This explains how Jesus was the only man since Adam born without the Adamic or genetically induced, cognitive predisposition to sin. If Jesus was to marry and father children, this would mean that the children would also be born without sin as Jesus would have passed on His twenty three sin free genomes to them. And this eventuality would never have been allowed by God the Father. God was repeatedly clear that Jesus was His only begotten {human} Son. Meaning, He was conceived without sin, lived without sinning and died as the unblemished Lamb of God. Thus, there would be no other person who would ever again be born in the flesh this way. Please see related: "What Did Jesus Look Like? "Just as Adam and Eve were sin free one-off creations of God for a specific purpose, so Jesus was a one-off sin free creation by God for a specific purpose. And this purpose was accomplished on the cross. There could be no other sin free offspring left behind to muddy the tremendous mission that Jesus accomplished to perfection. There would be no sons or daughters to be worshipped as children of Christ. Nor the creation of a dynasty that would initially be born without sin, but eventually sin and possibly taking the Church movement in a self-edifying direction.

So where does this idea of Jesus being married originate? First, most people do not realized that thousands of years before the time of Jesus, the world was full of writers. These artist wrote poems, plays, factual and fictitious historical accounts and novels. Yes that’s right, they wrote novels and fictional biographies that were published, distributed, bought and read by millions of people. Most of these popular writings were written for entertainment purposes. It would not have taken long for these writers to understand the tremendous popularity of Jesus. And thus, the monetary gains to be made by writing fictitious accounts of His life before, during and after His ministry. One such publication was produced circa 150 A.D. but most began to be produced in the middle of the third century. All of these publications have been scrupulously studied by religious scholars down through the ages and all have been unanimously declared as only fictional novelettes for mass public consumption. These evaluations are based on dating the age of the paper used, dating the composition of the ink used, analyzing the hand writing that changes with time, dating the language used as well as unintentional references to people, places and events that did not take place until after the first century. Still, these manuscripts are continuously pulled from the files, dusted off and used as the bases for endless publications and documentaries. And while these programs eventually state that the writings upon which the stories are based have been proven false, still people watch and to some degree believe the premise of the presentations. It is like the old adage, What we appreciate, to some degree we appropriate.

So, it is clear that the reason for these modern productions is to entice viewers to watch the show. The viewer will then inevitably watch the commercials. In watching the commercials, the program's producers and cable networks derive fees charged to air the commercials. When you question the ethics of these blatantly false programs being aired for monetary gains, the station managers and video producers will simply answer that the programs were created for entertainment proposes only. In other words, today a person or a major network, can make a completely untrue accusation about another person with little or no threat of legal action by prefacing their remarks with the word allegedly. And while you have to be on the lookout to notice them and even quicker to read them, you can be sure that God will judge these purveyors of false accusation against Christ upon their deaths.

The latest modern reincarnation of this idea of Jesus having Mary Magdalene as a love interest started in 1970 with the Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar. While there is no direct romantic scene between Jesus and Mary, she sings a song in which she imagines a possible love affair. And, if that were to occur, how would she cope with the idea of having a romantic relationship with her spiritual leader. So, this production only introduces the idea that Jesus’ female followers may have had conflicting feeling for Him as a man and as their rabbi. But while this idea was both shocking and titillating to a modern audience, the general theme was almost two thousand years old.

The next time this subject was reintroduced to the public was with the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ. In the final scene, Jesus is on the cross and hallucinates what His life would have been if He has simply married Mary Magdalene, settled down and raised a family. But He overcomes this last temptation and thus cries out, “It is finished.” Once again, the idea of His being married to Mary Magdalene was realized on screen and seen by hundreds of millions of people.

Most recently, Dan Brown’s 2003 book, The Da Vinci Code revitalize this idea as a fictionalized historical mystery novel. To date the book has sold approximately 100 million copies. The writer apparently researched and cherry picked numerous scripturally unsupported tales among which was the idea that Jesus had a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene. His primary source for his unscriptural information came from a manuscript that has been titled The Gospel of Philip. The text was found in 1946 and listed three women by the name Mary that figured prominently in Jesus’ life. One was Mary His mother, one was Mary His sister and the third was a Mary called His koinonos. This word has most often been translated as companion, but can also be translated as fellowship, sharing, business with, spouse, or a person with a belief or faith in another. This Mary is not named as being from the city of Megalania nor as His wife but only a companion. Still, this term has been taken by some to imply that she could possibly have been His wife. Dan Brown obviously decided that this idea would be yet another tantalizing theory to include in his novel storyline. The Philip manuscript has been dated to circa 250 A.D. and has been unanimously deemed by scholars as a fictionalized or pseudo historical account. In other words, a writer starts with a recognized actual character, then attributes a fictionalized account to the character as a way to legitimize and extend an undocumented storyline. This is sometimes referred to as pseudo historical writing. So, while the novel presents nothing new, Dan Brown did exactly what a successful writer would do. He researched His subject, chose those ideas he found most fascinating and strung them together to help create and seemingly support his plotline. And, as is always the case with these type fictional works, it is often said that the story is for entertainment purpose only.

So, is there any actual physical, archeological evidence that Jesus had a romantic relationship with any woman much less that He was married? In 2012 a scholastic paper was published concerning a small piece of papyrus that has been named “The Gospel of Jesus Wife”. The artifact was part of a private collection that was donated to the Harvard Library. The owner apparently bought it on the black market as it came with no provenance. Meaning, it is and will always remain unknown as to where it came from. This in turn is always a red flag to researchers as the artifact’s authenticity is immediately in serious doubt and is most likely a forgery.

The piece of papyrus is the size of a small cell phone and has been dated as a fourth century Coptic text. The text appears to be a ragged remnant of a larger work. Among the first line is the name “Mary”. However, Mary is a derivative of the name Mariam who was Moses sister. Therefore, Mary was the most popular name in first century Israel, just as it is today throughout the western world. The text then has Jesus saying the phrase “tahime” which translates my wife. But immediately after this phrase, the papyrus is broken off. The last line of the text has the phrase “I live with her and” but once again, the text is mysteriously broken off. So, the text is intimating that Jesus was married to and living with a woman named Mary.

With this in mind, we now need to consider a manuscript that was given the title of “The Gospel of Thomas”.  This provenance manuscript was properly excavated in 1945. It was sealed in a clay jar and buried in Egypt. When we compare the text concerning Mary with the text in the Gospel of Thomas, we see that the text of Mary has been directly lifted word for word from Thomas including text breaks in the Thomas text. Now here is when we see Biblical authentication scholarship at work. Coptic script lines can abruptly end even in the middle of a word. The break in a text will occur at the end of the edge of the paper. Thus, the text beginnings and endings are arbitrary depending on page space. Also, the lines of text from one copy to the next are almost always unique depending on the size of the script the writer is using and the size of the paper written on. Thus each copy is textually the same but not identical as the copies are written by different people at different times on different size paper.

We have a very unusual situation with the text of Mary and the text of Thomas. The only complete manuscript of Thomas was put on the internet. And the manuscript text had an English translation directly below each Coptic word. The manuscript on the internet included all the words, but the downloaded version did not include what are known as text markers. These are simple inconsequential very small dashes or markers used only by the writer to keep his place in the transcribing process. They were left out of the internet version as they are not words so they are untranslatable. The Mary text does not include the text marker which would have been included on all the original copies of Thomas. Therefore, the person who wrote the Mary text was transcribing from the Thomas text that was on the internet. Thus, the Mary text is undeniably a forgery.

There is one other ancient text that has been named “The Gospel of Mary” written circa 150A.D. It is supposed to be a private revelation that Jesus gave to only Mary Magdalene. This manuscript is so completely different from the message of the New Testament that it has been categorically rejected as nothing more than a bazar fictional writing with absolutely no commonalty with the four Gospels or the writings of Paul.

On a final note, there is also no mention in early Christian writings of Jesus being married nor of Him having an intimate relationship with any woman including Mary Magdalene. Jesus saw all His followers including His own mother and siblings in the same way. They were all equal members of His extended family to later be known as His Church (Matthew 12:50). So, how did the idea of Jesus having a wife come to a second century authors mind? It no doubt occurred when the writer read or heard that Jesus had a large following of women. And it should come as no surprise that men, down through the ages, could only dream and apparently write about how they would have taken advantage of these women had they been in Jesus' position. Thus, they are transposing their carnal imaginings onto the one man that only ever looked at women as the loving, gentle and caring individuals they are.