Ive been asked to comment on the big media hoo-hah over The Lost Gospel, by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, which claims a little-known Jewish text supposedly proves Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a married couple with children. 1) My comments come with the caveat that I have not read it and do not intend to any time soon. They also come with the caveat that nobody without a time machine in the garage knows whether Jesus was married or not, and that includes Dan Brown, Henry Lincoln, Simcha Jacobovici, and me. My studies of the Johannine writings do bring me to the inevitable conclusion that John the Presbyter believed Jesus was married and reflected this belief in his writings. But I am not interested in notoriety; I am interested only in doing painstakingly careful research and letting the research dictate its own conclusions. 2) I refer to this text, Joseph and Aseneth, in my own published Gospel of John restoration/translation/commentaries. While its not certain, the text probably dates from several decades or a century before Jesuss life. So I personally find it impossible that its a coded gospel. 3) Even if it is dated as written around the same time as the gospels we have, I can say after reading it with care in Syriac that it is merely a very typical novel of the kind that was popular in Jewish communities -- famous examples include Jonah and Tobit. It is an entertaining fiction very loosely spun out of Genesis 41:45. I see absolutely no clear similarities between the story of Jesus and this fiction. 4) I do think John the Presbyter was aware of this fiction, and that he obliquely refers to it in chapter four of his gospel. To quote my commentary, In one scene Aseneth is brought a pitcher of water from a “spring of living water” in the courtyard, in which she sees that her face is “like the sun and her eyes like the morning star arising.” Immediately after that, Joseph comes and marries her. The rest of the story is pretty far from the Jesus story. 5) I move now further into opinion. To call Joseph and Aseneth The Lost Gospel seems to me a clear move to gain notoriety and make money. The authors suggest the text has been forgotten and ignored by scholars, which is absolutely not the case; its well known and well studied in the scholarly world. The authors say they have decoded this fiction, this novel. Fine. Charles Manson decoded a Paul McCartney song, but nobody took him seriously. Give me any book in the world, and I will decode it into whatever you want it to be about. 6) I strive hard to be a careful, competent, serious, meticulous scholar. Yes, my research brings me to conclusions that resemble Jacobovicis. I do think Jesus was probably married, to Ms. Magdalene, and that they had children together. Without that time machine I cant prove it, but I can prove that people who knew him personally believed this to be true. But I am not going to pump my careful books full of hot air and then hit the talk show circuit just so I can make a lot of money. I would rather go down in history as a scholar, not as a media monkey. I would rather be forgotten by time than remembered as a purveyor of fancy dressed up in the clothing of fact. I may not be invited to Jacobovicis house for tea for my views, but I will do one thing many other people in and out of New Testament studies fail to do -- stick with the truth even when it hurts.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:17:03 +0000
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