For those who love to follow the marriages of the rich and famous, this week was a real doozy. In a new book, researchers are claiming evidence that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had two sons. In the meantime, a new publication on the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says that Church founder Joseph Smith had as many as 40 wives including one who was only 14 years old.
The findings in the new book “The Lost Gospel,” by Professor Barrie Wilson and writer Simcha Jacobovici seems like something out of “The Da Vinci Code.” It is based on the transcript of an ancient manuscript which tells the story of Jesus’s two sons and his marriage to Mary. The manuscript dates back to 570 AD and written in Syriac — a Middle Eastern literary language used between the 4th and 8th centuries and related to Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. It was written on animal skin or vellum and has been siting in the archives of the British Library for about 20 years after being held since 1847 at the British Museum (which bought it from a dealer who said he had obtained it from the ancient St Macarius Monastery in Egypt). Jacobovici, an Israeli-Canadian film-maker, and Wilson, a professor of religious studies in Toronto, decided to reexamine the text and believe that it contains a missing fifth gospel and confirms not just the long debate marriage to Mary but progeny of Jesus.
The news on the plural marriages of Joseph Smith is remarkable not only for its disclosure but its source. The LDS Church has always been highly reluctant to discuss the status of Smith as a polygamous. However, it was the Church that released the detailed account this month. It is a refreshing openness from the LDS leadership on a subject that has always been a matter of discomfort. The research suggests that Smith took his first “plural wife,” Fanny Alger, in the mid-1830s. There was a distinction drawn between bonds for this life, which included full matrimonial relations, and partnerships that would exist only in eternity in such marriages.
The essay, “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” notes that “[m]any details about the early practice of plural marriage are unknown. Plural marriage was introduced among the early Saints incrementally, and participants were asked to keep their actions confidential. They did not discuss their experiences publicly or in writing until after the Latter-day Saints had moved to Utah and church leaders had publicly acknowledged the practice.”
Researchers believe that most of those sealed for eternity to Smith were between ages 20 and 40. The wives included Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was [14.]” It was lawful to marry girls at the age during that period.
As was raised in our Sister Wives litigation (which is now on appeal), the LDS changed its position on polygamy when Utah became a state. In 1890, President Wilford Woodruff, the faith’s fourth prophet-leader, issued the “Manifesto,” which led to the end of the practice. That led to a split and the continued division between the LDS and FLDS, a small group that believes that polygamy is an essential part of the religion. The LDS Church remains opposed to plural marriages.
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
@Michael Haz
ROTFLMAO! The best put down in ages!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Back a century or two ago, 13 or 14 year olds weren’t necessarily “kids.” It was legal in many places for them to marry. Nowadays, 18 year olds are “kids”, and 20 year olds are not old enough to legally drink. To call somebody marrying up with a 14 year old in 1850ish a pedophile, is about like accusing someone who sold beer to an 18 year old in 1850ish of furnishing alcohol to minor.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Annie –
I just finished watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest on Netflix, and if only a fraction of what that said about Nurse Ratched is true, then nurses have a lot to answer for.
Isaac –
I appreciate the effort that went into writing your comments, but I’m not even mildly interested in evangelical atheism.
“Christianity has a lot to answer for.”
It’s called “sin.” It’s why Jesus came.
Next question.
I just finished watching Netflix’s third season of The Borgias. If only a fraction of that were to be true, Christianity has a lot to answer for. Wars, debauchery, drugs, illegitimate children, murder, mayhem, Niccolo Machiavelli! And that was just among the Church hierarchy.
Annie – Netflix The Borgia is fiction.
George Scialabba on Leszek Kolakowski:
” What is really on Kolakowski’s mind? One hint is that, despite his professed agnosticism, his references to skeptics are almost uniformly negative. Rationalists have “travestied” Christian notions like original sin. Free thinking, once an instrument of tolerance, has degenerated into “fanatical rationalism.” And so on. This may be the author’s idea of sportsmanship, since religion is definitely the underdog in this matchup and needs rhetorical support.
But these jibes sound too genuinely enthusiastic; more likely they are the product of Kolakowski’s long-standing ambivalence. He once declared himself an “inconsistent atheist,” and went on to observe wistfully that nevertheless “men have no fuller means of self-identification than through religious symbolism” and that “religious consciousness … is an irreplaceable part of human culture, man’s only attempt to see himself as a whole.”
In “Religion” he concludes forlornly that “human dignity is not to be validated within a naturalistic concept of man. The absence of God spells the ruin of man in the sense that it demolishes or robs of meaning everything we think of as the essence of being human: the quest for truth, the distinction of good and evil, the claim to dignity, the claim to creating something that withstands the indifferent destructiveness of time.”
Haz,
Centuries of writings by religious leaders trying to garner power among a world’s population that was primarily ordered by superstition, religion, ritual, beliefs in supernatural beings, etc. Read your history and you will find that the religious leaders of our time here on earth satisfied the needs of the ignorant and superstitious in exchange for power. Read Hobbe’s Leviathan where he explains that time in the 17th century when in exchange for order and protection the people gave up their freedoms and rights to a monarch. This was in response to the chaos of the English civil war. That power was intended to create order and sometimes outright theft. However you put it, it is order in chaos until the order becomes chaos, i.e. the reformation, the annihilation of indigenous peoples around the world, and now those who pray six times a day instead of seven and a few degrees to the left or right of the proper direction of the compass.
Haz, we live in a unique time and place, a time when enough has transpired and is available to each of us and not only to someone dressed up in fancy robes, and a place where we are protected from religion. If the forefathers fought for anything and Americans have died for anything it is not only the right to think for oneself but the responsibility.
America is behind some Western nations that correctly perceive religion as important but secondary to the Platonic ideals of searching for and aspiring to the truths in life. However, America is the greatest player at the table. Enjoy your religion and the sense of community it gives but don’t stop there.
I abhor religion as is preached around the world. I am a believer in Eighth Day Adventism. We educate humans that on the Eighth Day God Put Dog On Earth To Guide Humans. After that happened God got out of the equation. It is just us dogs here to give guidance. If you have a dog you are not just lucky. You made a choice. A choice not an echo. I bark and I’m proud. Tanksgiving is a holiday of special importance for Eighth Dayers. If you are not sure of your beliefs and have some doubts and own a dog then hedge your bets and give a dog a nice dog biscuit or healthy bone on Tanksgiving. Not a chicken bone! You will go to Hell for that.
stand, not Stan.
Isaac, centuries of scholarly works Stan in opposition to your comment.
In Pig Latin it would be: “ederastPay”.
I agree with Issac. But, what is a “pederast”? Is it a contraction of one who pets an ass?
When Pedophile Peet got off the boat at Ellis Island they suggested a name change. Joseph Smith emerged into America. Names are changed to protect the innocent.
Haz,
The earliest records of Jesus are not reliable in any way, fashion, or form. The only record of Jesus is that by the Roman chroniclers of the day in and around the time he was crucified for being a trouble maker. He was one of a never ending line of zealots and self proclaimed ‘those in the know’.
The entire life of Jesus, other than this record of him having existed just as did so many others, was written generations after his death by those using his ‘sacrifice’ to found a new religion. Whether or not they believed in what they wrote is not the issue. The issue is that for hundreds and hundreds of years through rewrites, discussions, synods, etc the story has been crafted. He was married. He wasn’t married. Mary did get pregnant by Joseph. Mary didn’t get pregnant by Joseph. Jesus is the one. Mary is the one. And on and on and on. Mankind is the god that created the god(s) that created everything and subsequently gave those who need answers, the answers. There is not answer and never will be, for when the end is reached, what lies beyond?
The answer lies in the essence of life, as Plato taught. Truth is not something a bunch of pedophiles and pederasts write down, not something that an exceptional warrior that defiled twelve and thirteen year old girls wrote down. Truth is there and for us to rise to. It is a goal.
We are in a unique moment in history. We are in the moment when you can laugh at and place some religions into context, Judaism and Christianity and at the same time we are back hundreds and thousands of years when not referring a religion would get your head hacked off. Islam is nothing more than Christianity, seven hundred years ago, about the time a raving pedophile rode a horse up to heaven to get him some more virgins.
Haz, Great informative post and comical one as well. The atheists sleep late, they’ll be here soon.
The “Jesus Had A Wife” story sounds like something Nancy Grace would run.
“Now this. Two Canadians claim that they were given a beaver pelt by a guy in Egypt. And ancient writings in the inside to the pelt prove, PROVE, that Jesus was married to reformed prostitute Mary Magdalene, AND that they had two sons, Jeff and Skippy! More about this BREAKING story after this commercial for the Good Feet Store!!”
The Joseph Smith story is correct. The accuracy of the Jesus and Mary Magdelene story is very suspect. There are four canonical gospels, one would have thought that one of them would have mentioned he was married.
The earliest and most reliable records of Jesus’ life – the New Testament gospels – do not tell us explicitly whether Jesus was married or not. They don’t mention his having a wife. Nor do they state that he was unmarried. The silence of the New Testament gospels has given rise to a cacophony of conflicting voices.
Jesus had close relationships with women, many of whom were his followers (Luke 8:2-3) and learned from him (Luke 10:38-42). Several of these women are mentioned by name in the New Testament gospels, including, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, but nothing in the New Testament suggests that Jesus was ever married to any of these women, or to any other woman, for that matter.
Mary Magdalene is first mentioned as one of the women who accompanied Jesus on his preaching mission and helped to support him financially (Luke 8:1-3). Luke adds that seven demons had been cast out of her, presumably by Jesus (Luke 8:2). Nothing in this passage suggests that there was anything unusual about Mary’s relationship with Jesus, other than the very unusual fact that she was included among Jesus’ retinue. Jewish teachers in Jesus’ day usually didn’t teach women or include them as followers. In his inclusive practice Jesus was virtually unique, and his relationship with Mary and her female counterparts quite counter-cultural.
The next time we run into Mary Magdalene she is among the women who observe the crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:40). Then, on Easter morning she and a couple of female companions go to the tomb of Jesus, only to find it empty. Mary, according to John 20, encounters Jesus near the tomb, and then goes to announce his resurrection to the other disciples (John 20:1-18). In a sense, she is the first Christian evangelist, the first person to pass on the good news of Easter.
This is all we know about Mary Magdalene from the biblical gospels. And there has been no verifiable, scholarly research over the ages that either proves or disproves that Mary Magdalene was or was not married to Jesus. Indeed, the story of a marriage wouldn’t be central to the message of the Gospels – that Jesus is the son of God and was sent by his Father to this world to bear the sins of mankind.
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As for Joseph Smith’s many wives – that is a verifiable fact. And the LDS church should be admired for its willingness to declare that part of its history in a public manner. It is a minor reformation of some sort to acknowledge that part of its history and offer it for examination.
Mohammad and Joseph smith, alike two paedophile prophets.