Why do people get so upset when it's suggested that Jesus might have been married with a family?

Question

Really, what is so wrong about it?

I'd like to think that he had a family, knew a little of one of life's most basic pleasures before dying in such an awful way. Even though I'm an atheist, I believe that Jesus existed, and I find the thought that he might have had a family to be pleasant, almost comforting.

Answer 1

Nothing would have been wrong with Jesus having been married. It's just that the earliest and most trustworthy accounts of His life don't suggest that He was; prophecy about Him in Isaiah suggests He would die without descendants; and the Gnostic "gospels" that say He was married say a lot of other things that are heretical, that compromise His message in many ways and trivialize His life and death.

I don't believe He was married, and I don't believe He had children. But if I am proven wrong in time, the salvation message and the mission of Christ will remain unaffected.

Answer 2

As a Jew, Jesus would have most likely have followed Jewish tradtions and married but since the Bible doesn't mention it we have no way of knowing for sure. The Bible is completely silent on the life of Jesus between the ages of 12 and 30. He could have gotten married during that time. The possiblilty of him being married to Mary Magdalene is also a very real possibility but again we can't be sure.

If He was married there are two possible reasons that it's not mentioned in the Bible: One is that his marriage wasn't important to the story (there is plenty of examples where certain information is left out of the Bible because it wasn't important enough to put in) and the second is that maybe His marriage was mentioned in one of the "lost books" that the early Catholic Church suppressed.

Either way, it doesn't impact my faith in any way. Marriage (and sex within a marriage) was certainly not a sin so He would have still died sinless even if he had sex with his wife 10 times a day.

I agree with you that it would be nice to think of Jesus enjoying some of the little pleasures in life and as long as none of those activities were sinful, it shouldn't have an impact on Christianity.

As far as having a family, that can be a touchy subject. my personal belief is that if He did have children, they wouldn't have been gods. His DNA would have mixed with His wife's and they would have produced children who were 75% human and 25% perfect. I don't believe His DNA is what made him a God. I would expect God's DNA to be perfect but that doesn't mean that Jesus' power to do miracles came from that. The Father gave him the power because Jesus had faith like no one else ever has and because He was God's son.

The issue will never be settled so we can only speculate. If one chooses to believe He was married and had children then so be it. That belief takes nothing away from, nor contradicts, the Bible

Answer 3

In the name of Allah the most Gracious the most merciful

As Muslims we believe that jesus [pbuh ] was born Miraculously to a virgin named Mary [pbuh ] without a male intervention.He [pbuh ] had a mother and a foster father Joseph [which the bible speaks about but the quran makes no mention of Joseph ] and cousins John the baptist and Barnabas and so on and he surely may have enjoyed his childhood as any child would.Regarding having married and
having a family neither the bible nor the Quran mentions it and
there are no records of jesus [pbuh] having married, We
know that he will come again at some point in time and
peraphs at that time he would marry and have a family .

Answer 4

Life expectancies weren't very long, so people of that time married young. It's possible He did have a family, and it wasn't mentioned in the bible to keep the family safe. He was called a rabbi, and I don't think you could be a rabbi if you weren't married. On the other hand, if He did have children, His disciples would have run to them after the crucifiction, which they didn't, not to mention after the resurrection. The whole "Jesus was a virgin" thing wasn't an issue until a few hundred years later, so it would have been completely acceptable, actually preferrable, at that time for Him to have a wife and children so the disciples and apostles wouldn't have seen it as something to hide, especially considering his "rabbi" title.

Personally, I think it wasn't mentioned because it simply doesn't matter.

Dan Brown wasn't suggesting anything at all, he was simply doing what he does best, writing a fictional conspiracy book. Lots of people apparently shouldn't be allowed to read fiction because they don't get what fiction means.

Answer 5

My personal feeling is he did. By the time the bible was written 300 years had passed from the time Jeshua walked on the planet. Before that, most people who were there to witness everything passed everything on orally, very little was actually written as most people didn't know how to read.
Well, when you are relaying a story how much detail do you remember? And if it's a tad boring, how many times will you play up a story to keep the interest going? And how much do you and I personally remember from 300 years ago? Anyway, I think it's all about perception. Everyone's reality is a bit different.

Answer 6

Those who believe / teach that Jesus was married are doing so in an attempt to "humanize" Him, to make Him more ordinary - like everyone else. People simply do not want to believe that Jesus was God in the flesh (John 1:1,14; 10:30). So, they invent and believe myths about Jesus being married, having children, and being an ordinary human being.
There is nothing sinful about being married. There is nothing sinful about having sexual relations in marriage. So, yes, Jesus could have been married and still be the sinless Lamb of God, the Savior of the world. At the same time, there is no reason Biblically that Christ would have married. That is not the point in this debate. Those who believe that Jesus was married do not believe that He was sinless, or that He was the Messiah. Getting married and having children is not why God sent Jesus. Mark 10:45 tells us why Jesus came, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many."

Answer 7

On the surface, the question and the idea may seem innocent enough. Especially if you consider Jesus an ordinary man living some two thousand years ago.

However, the ramifications for the teachings of the Bible as a whole are disastrous. I am not sure this may be understood by all, but let me give a try.

Jesus is called the Last Adam. This refers to Jesus being born perfect as Adam was perfect. Also, it refers to Jesus being in that sense, as Adam was, a son of God! (human one)
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Luke 3:38,"which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God."
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The ransom works by the "tooth for tooth" divine justice principle. Adam threw away our perfection and lost us our perfection. Jesus had to pay God his perfect life for us to regain perfection.
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If Jesus had produced offspring, these would have been perfect as their father! Thus Jesus would have had children!

The ransom works by Jesus adopting us. If he had children already they would have displaced us and he would have had no need to die nor any to adopt such sinful creatures.

Questions? ask.

See ransom here:
http://bythebible.page.tl/Ransom.htm

Answer 8

Dan Brown isn't just suggesting that Jesus had a family -- that sounds harmless enough -- he is suggesting that the entire New Testament, and thus the entire Christianity as we know it, is a lie and that the church KNOWS it, and that they are doing bad things to people to keep the secret safe. You can figure out why religious people don't like his implied slander.

Since even the History Channel, a secular and objective organization, said that the Da Vinci Code was trash fiction (I.E.: presented a vastly distorted view of history as we know it), it seems that Dan Brow is also dumbing down an entire generation of people by feeding them false information that many people accept as true because of how it is presented.

So historians don't like him either.

But conspiracy theory nuts do (see below).

Answer 9

I agree with you. I'm Catholic but have never been able to come to terms with Jesus not having had a family. I believe in Jesus that he was the Son of God, but why would that stop him from having a family? Guess we'll have to wait til he comes back to see.

Answer 10

In the scriptures he is referred to as Rabbi and Rabboni. Both mean teacher and master. In Jewish tradition to be a rabbi you had to be at least 30 and married. So in order to have these titles he would have had to been married. He is also our perfect example. We are to follow him.