Again, there are reports that Jesus was married in the news (you can read some here, here and here).
Frankly, I find the whole discussion strange.
It is odd because of the "evidence" unearthed and the weight which is being given to it. Included in the 33 words of the fourth-century fragment is the phrase... "Jesus said to them 'my wife'..." with the rest of the sentence lost.
Now this sentence could have taken any number of turns which wouldn't result in Jesus having tied the knot. For example 'my wife is anyone who is devoted to God.' Additionally, we have no clue of the genre of this document. Could "Jesus" have been speaking poetically or using a metaphor? We can't tell since we have no context provided.
More so, I thought we made up our minds about historical figures from documents which were the closest to the actually events, not just the most recently discovered. Furthermore, don't we decide upon what was historically reliable based upon general consistency within the sources? The gospels, the epistles (all written within a generation of Jesus) and the early church fathers mentioned nothing, as far as I'm aware, about Jesus having a spouse.
But would it cause a giant uproar if they did?
I don't think so.
Marriage is not sinful. It is spoken of highly throughout both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, in first century Jewish culture, it was expected that blokes would get married. The bible tells us that Peter was married (Matthew 8:14 & 1 Corinthians 9:5) as were prominent early converts to the message Paul preached like Priscilla and Aquila (Acts 18:2).
I wouldn't be offended if it "somehow come out" that Jesus had a wife.
But it would certainly be puzzling...
With no stigma attached to marriage why would the biblical authors be silent that Jesus has a wife? It doesn't make sense. You think she would have popped up somewhere if she were travelling alongside him.
It makes even less sense when you take into account that the epistles write about the topic of marriage, and being a husband, on numerous occasions (like Ephesians 5, Colossians 3 & 1 Peter 3) but never mention that JESUS HAD A WIFE. You would have thought that was the first thing they would have mentioned! The passages should have instructed believing husbands to reflect the way Jesus treated His missus.
Are we to believe that the authors inconveniently forgot about Jesus' marital status?
John Dickson seems to handle the topic well here. Speaking of, I like the quote which was attributed to him yesterday...
"...basic rule of history: When you have multiple first century sources, you don't rely on one from centuries later."
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