Was Jesus Married?

I tend to believe that he wasn’t married based on the absence of evidence. We have mention of his father, mother, and siblings. We also have record that several of the apostles were married, Peter specifically. (1 Corinthians 9:5)

Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?

Reading between the lines, I believe if Paul knew that Jesus had been married he would have included Jesus in his argument. That Jesus is not included is significant in my opinion.

OTOH – I am not “married” to this opinion 😆 😆 😆 and reserve the right to change my mind with new information.

My opinion is that for him to fully experience the human condition, he was married

As a church, we do not suppose that Jesus physically experienced everything in the human condition. For example, we do not suppose that Jesus experienced childbirth in mortality. However, we (as a church) do believe that Jesus experienced the human condition fully (including childbirth) through the supernatural process of the atonement. This doctrine, as I understand it, primarily comes from the BoM and the D&C

Alma 7:11-12 “And he shall go forth suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

“And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”

After listing trails that include being torn away from a young son and imprisoned, the D&C makes the following argument:

D&C122:8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

I know the Fundamentalists claim that Jesus was Married, but in my opinion, it is poorly sourced and there are a lot of leaps of logic to get there. I spoke with Anne Wilde who was a plural wife of Ogden Kraut who wrote “Jesus Was Married.” I spoke to her and an apostle for a polygamist group (Christ’s Church) for the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book. Anne edited and typed the book. See https://gospeltangents.com/2019/11/making-case-jesus-married/

She does state that shortly after the publication of Ogden Kraut’s “Jesus Was Married,” that she gave a copy to Joseph Fielding Smith, who was Pres of the Q12 in 1969. She says that Smith whole-heartedly accepted the premise of the book and claims the wedding at Cana was the wedding of Jesus. It’s an interesting speculation, but clearly there is not enough evidence. I think it was clearly a belief among the early Q12, but I think the current Q12 would have no official position on the matter, which I believe is the Church’s official position as well.

I would like to think he was, for theological and emotional reasons, but my inner analyst says he probably wasn’t.

Beside the lack of direct evidence, there also is his close ties to Nazareth and the Nazarene sect. He was related to John, the Baptist, and went to him to confirm the start of his ministry. Jesus is never referred to as a disciple of John, but he was younger and obviously sought his blessing to begin preaching. John was unmarried, as part of his religious affiliation. He lived alone in order to dedicate himself to preaching. There is no way to be certain, but I would guess that he and Jesus grew up “connected” as more than just cousins, so I think it is plausible that Jesus also followed the overall mandates of John’s commitments – including preaching primarily, at first, in the wilderness, away from direct conflict with the Roman Empire and the Jewish establishment.

Honestly, my view on this has changed over time. I used to focus on my hope that he was married, and I used LDS teachings to maintain that hope. Elder Talmadge was a brilliant man, and I liked his framing of this issue in terms of the resurrection (Jesus saying to Mary, “Hold me not.”). I still like that insight, but I no longer think it proves what Talmadge believed it proves.

My heart still loves the idea of Jesus being married, and our theology opens that door for him after his death, but my mind leans toward his being single.

In other words, the short answer is:

“I don’t know and am fine with either answer.”

Hi friends, just popping in for a quick thought and to say ‘hello’.

Was Jesus married? We don’t know, can’t know (and in my opinion, will never know). So, we get to speculate. But as with all speculation, we often fill in the gaps with what we want the outcome to be. It’s our nature to do so.

As TinSoldier mentioned, the Gospel of Phillip is our best document to indicate that Jesus might have been married to MM. Problem is, the GoP isn’t a great source because it was written more than a century after Jesus; much later than the canonical gospels. However, it does reflect thinking of some of the (probably) 3rd century Christians. FWIW, I actually think that the GofP narrative points toward a view that Jesus was NOT married to MM or to anyone else. The reason is that the same passage has the disciples asking why Jesus loves MM more than them. If Jesus was married to MM, this would be a ridiculous question. Ask your Bishop why he loves his wife more than the ward and see how he responds. Yet Jesus is said to have loved her more than all the disciples, so it also seems unlikely that there was some other woman that he would have been married to… or… it could have been a bit… awkward.

Instead, I think what is related in the GoP is more like Francis and Clare (Francesco and Chiara) of Asisi. They were peers. She started as a follower, but became a near-equal. They became a team. Each now has a beautiful 13th century basilica built and dedicated to their memory in Asisi. Although similar speculation will always exist about Francesco and Chiara, I think it’s pretty safe to believe they were never romantically involved, given the vow of celibacy and virtue in their collective order.

I much prefer thinking of MM in this way; so much in the inner circle that she was a person of considerable consequence, like Chiara to Francesco. To me, this conveys the radical belief among the earliest Christians that there was no spiritual difference between men and women. Conversely, I think that if we assume, instead, that they were married, then MM would have been a person of secondary importance to the disciples… just going off of the contemporary view of the role of women in society at the time. So, for my 2 cents, I’ll go with ‘no’, because I think it elevates Mary Magdalene as an individual.

I would just think that, as a church that puts millions into temples and culturally and socially pressures youth and young adults to prepare for and get married in the temple, to stress the importance of eternal families and to constantly remind us to have a temple recommend for these purposes… that the church with all of this would also teach and believe in a Jesus that was married. We claim to follow Jesus, or at least to want to. Heck, Nelson changed the church logo during a pandemic to “convince” us that Jesus is in charge of the church. Yet, if he wasn’t married, that’s fine, but why do we claim to need to do so much in 2020 as mormons if Jesus didn’t do half of it? He got baptized, and we emphasize that. Great! if he wasn’t marriage, why do we live and breath temple marriages?

Fwiw, I don’t think there has to be a direct link between Jesus being married in mortality and the concept of sealings.

We teach that people who aren’t married in this life can be sealed in the next life, so Jesus could be the perfect example of that doctrine.

Whether or not eternal marriage is “true”, Jesus doesn’t have to be a poster child for mortal marriage, based on our overall view of marriage. He just has to be married at some point in the eternities.