Two millennia are at last starting to come good!

The Christians always were in danger of forgetting to ask themselves whether the founder of their religion was married or not.

That sin of omission is now atoned for: the answer is ‘Yes, Jesus was married.’ At least, that’s what three English authors, who have written ‘The Sacred Enigma’ (1), and a French correspondent of Nostra (2) tell us. However, their conclusions differ as regards the date of the marriage, the identity of the bride, the destiny of the couple’s descendants and certain other points of detail. But there’s still a chance of reconciling the two viewpoints.

You have a choice between Theory A, that of the three English writers, and Theory B, that of the Frenchman. The source of the conflict between them is this: according to A, to be an unmarried male adult was regarded as something scandalous among the Jews; but Jesus never caused any scandal, ergo Jesus must have been married. If we remember that the adult Jesus died at the age of 33 after a public life of three years that began with the miracle at the wedding in Cana, it follows that the wedding in Cana was that of Jesus himself, who was then aged 30.  

According to Theory B, the ‘Gospel of the Holy Twelve’ (currently being translated) tells us that Jesus married at age 17, became a widower at 24, and then entered public life without remarrying.

At this level of analysis it is worth noting that Theory A is more attractive than Theory B. The really important thing is how we come to find ourselves now in the year 1983 A.D., and precisely what event in the life of Jesus marks the year 0.

On this point everything points to Jesus Christ having been born several years before Jesus Christ! The astronomer will perhaps date his birth from the phenomenon known as the ‘Star of the Magi’. Someone else might think that the year 0 is the date of the celebrated appearance of the child Jesus before the doctors of the law, while someone else will date the death of Jesus according to the calendar of Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. The champions of Theories A and B therefore have the field pretty much to themselves in an area of study that has been amply explored for many centuries, and can present us with one or other new solutions or a link to some former hypothesis. I myself can furnish them with the basics of a very ample bibliography on the subject.

The second point at issue between the two theories concerns the identity of ‘Mrs. Jesus’. According to A, Mary Magdala of Galilee, known as Mary Magdalene, alias ‘the Sinner’, was the bride in the wedding celebrations in Cana. According to ancient custom, the wedding reception was held at the expense of the fiancée’s parents, either in their own home or at a restaurant. As the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus the young bridegroom interfered in something that was none of her business by encouraging her son to change the water into excellent wine (‘the best was saved for last’). Unfortunately the passage where the mother of Mary Magdalene congratulates her son-in-law on his excellent and discrete initiative aimed at saving the dinner has not come down to us. Subsequently it is Mary Magdalene that we find at the foot of the cross, in the company of Mary the Virgin, at the same moment when she has been a widow for at least three days.

Theory B says that Jesus did marry someone called Mary (Myriam) but that she was from Judea, not Galilee. This was the woman whose widower Jesus became three years later. Given that the relevant wedding announcements have been lost and that we know nothing at all about Mary the Judean, we are forced to rely on the testimony of the ‘Gospel of the Holy Twelve’, a priceless document that no copyist has altered (3) and which has the advantage of having been drawn up by the ‘Holy Twelve’ themselves working together at the same penholder.

On this point of detail we have an intervention from – if not the Papacy itself – then, at least, Father Biondi, the spokesman for Monsignor Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris (who is of Jewish descent). ‘In the early days of the Church’, says Biondi, ‘no one would have been worried about saying that Christ’s disciples, with the exception of Saint John, were married. To say that the Christ was married is something that no one would have worried about – at least, not among Christ’s contemporaries. However, when the Gospel of Thomas says literally that Mary (i.e. Mary Magdalene) was ‘seated on Christ’s couch’ (in other words, on his bed), the commentaries on this image that have been written within the Church are alone sufficient to show that it was regarded as almost scandalous to suggest that any woman had approached him.’ (4)

It seems here that the church is leaning more towards Theory A, but Theory B has certainly not yet lost the battle. One might point out to Abbé Biondi that the Mary referred to by the Gospel of St. Thomas is not described either as a Judean or as a Galilean, but as a ‘Myriam’, as are a number others, and that she doesn’t have any ‘identity papers’ that we know of. We therefore await with impatience a comparative study of the Gospel according to St. Thomas and the Gospel of the Holy Twelve. From the text of his translation, theorist B quotes the opening of Chapter 48, verse 8, where Jesus, a widower and a single person, describes his own situation in the following terms:

48-8 ‘There are certain celibates who are born thus in their mother’s womb, and there are others who have been made into celibates by other people, and there are those who have made themselves into celibates for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let he who is capable of understanding try to understand this passage.’

A careful reading of this passage suggests that Jesus is actually posing a riddle with three possible answers, each with an equal chance of being incorrect.

Either:

I. Jesus was a bachelor because of his preoccupation with the kingdom of heaven, i.e. ‘My vocation is so time-consuming that a wife would simply be a nuisance’. Such has, in fact, been the general sentiment of Christianity for two millennia. Even if Jesus was married, Christian conscience would insist on his celibacy.

It is from this point that there arise the controversies regarding a mysterious ‘Mary’ who apparently got into his bed. This point of detail is only relevant today in the context of the possibility of priests getting married, but it could obviously not have arisen at a time when the priestly sacraments excluded this possibility.

Or:

II. ‘I am unmarried because men have interfered with my life as a married man’. The nature of the interference is not stated, but it could be the death of the wife or the castration of the husband. Whatever the details, the intervention seems to have been a very violent one.

Or:

III. ‘I am celibate from my mother’s womb’ could mean either that he has an innate vocation for celibacy or that he suffers from hereditary impotence.

Theorist B, forced to opt for I, II or III, presents a scenario in which a married Jesus has his vocation decided by the fact of becoming a widower, i.e. he deploys arguments II and III while completely ignoring argument I.

We eagerly await Theorist A’s formulation of a hypothesis on proposition III, i.e. on the political reasons for the castration of Jesus or the absence of his wife, who was presumably either killed or imprisoned. ‘Let he who is capable of understanding try to understand’ the text demands. At first sight I would say that this person who is ‘capable of understanding’ is the correspondent of Nostra, whom I have called Theorist B.

The third point of difference between the two theories is again raised by Theorist B. It concerns the progeny of Jesus and his wife Mary the Judean.

Theorist B quotes the ‘Gospel of the Holy Twelve’, chapter 10, verse 10, where Jesus declares that ‘He who does the will of my Father who is in heaven is my father and my mother, my brother and my sister, my son and my daughter (5)’. It follows from this that the Father in heaven corresponds to that which is commonly called ‘Our Father’, i.e. God the father of Jesus.

The father should be Joseph, the putative father of Jesus, and the mother should be Mary the Virgin, while the brother is one of the two saints James and the sister is someone else to be determined. The ‘son’ and the ‘daughter’ are therefore the children that Jesus and Mary the Judean had during their seven years of marriage.

Considering that Jesus, by definition, remained celibate during the nine years of his public life, the possibility of a second marriage with Mary the Galilean, known as Marie Magdalene or the sinner, can be excluded.

Apart from the fact that the wording of verse 10/10 seems to be confused, the idea comes into the reader’s mind that Jesus, who was engaged to Mary Magdalene before his death, could have married her after his resurrection. The 40 days that separated Easter from Ascension were more than sufficient for a couple in reasonable health to produce a child. Besides, we can point out that the life of Jesus during these ‘40 days of the glorious body’ was rather intangible, that we don’t find him meeting very many people, and that this period does not form part of his ‘public life’. It is superfluous to state that I accept full responsibility for this hypothesis, which I am surprised to be the first to formulate.

The next step puts the ball firmly in the other party’s court.

Theorist B states that the marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the Galilean and sinner, produced progeny which would end in the royal family of the Merovingians, whose present head is Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair.

Several items of evidence in fact suggest that the Merovingians were of Semitic origin. Grammarians have studied the mutation ‘Levi’-‘Clovis’-‘Louis’. There is the evidence in particular of the Mérovee-Levis, whose name gave rise to Levis-Mirepoix, and we all know the story of Frederick the Great showing the Duc de Levis Mirepoix a canvas representing the Holy Virgin and saying ‘A Levi, my dear friend. I won’t tell you anything about your grandmother that you don’t know already.’

If the fleur-de-lys is a royal emblem it is by allusion to the ‘lily that toils not neither does it spin’ sung by King Solomon, and which justifies the name of ‘rois fainéants’ (the useless kings) that the textbooks give to the Merovingians.

Theorist B then returns the ball to the other party’s court by eliminating these arguments (which, in fact, have no historical value) and reproaching Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair for claiming descent from Jesus and Mary the Judean, although he is willing to concede that Mary Magdalene could have had one of the many males that paid court at his couch.

Without A’s knowledge, Plantard has risen to his own defence on this point. ‘I admit’, he says, ‘that ‘The Sacred Enigma’ is a good book, but one must say that there is a part that owes more to fiction than to fact, especially in the part that deals with the lineage of Jesus. How can you prove a lineage of four centuries from Jesus to the Merovingians? I have never put myself forward as a descendant of Jesus Christ’ (5).

Thus, thanks to Plantard, Theorist B finally has the opportunity of achieving a victory over Theorist A that he wasn’t expecting.

The interview that Theorist B gave after his victory shows a certain excess of excitement. His way of interpreting the motto ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’ leaves the listener hungry for more. The links between divine law and political law that could be used to substantiate connections between two Jewish royal families, that of Jesus and that of Herod, are indeed mentioned, but are immediately followed by a deafening silence.

One would like to think that the Massacre of the Innocents and the condemnation of Jesus for which the Herods were responsible have only a moral or mystical significance.

Whatever may be the case, we await with impatience the publication of ‘The Gospel of the Holy Twelve’. The extracts that Theorist B has already published suggest that it is one of those deliberately ambiguous texts, like all the writings worthy of the name of Gospel. We hope, however, that the translator will approach his task with a greater degree of subtlety.

Philippe de Cherisey

P.S. I am compelled to state that I myself figure very prominently among the collaborators on the ‘Sacred Enigma’, and that one of the three Englishmen involved, Mr. Henry Lincoln, is known to me. I do not share in the least the opinions of M. Plantard de Saint-Clair on the romanticised aspects of a work that was very carefully put together. It is in this capacity that I am taking the liberty of writing to you.


(1) Editions Pygmalion/Gérard Watelet. Paris, 1983
(2) NOSTRA no 565 (7-14 April 1983)
(3) The italics are those of A
(4) ‘Vous avez dit étrange’. Jacques Pradel on France-Inter on 18-2-82
(5) The italics are those of the translator B
(6) ‘Vous avez dit étrange’. Jacques Pradel on France-Inter on 26-2-82