HIEROGAMY & THE MARRIED MESSIAH
by James Wesley Stivers
(c) copyright, 2003
CHAPTER ONE
THE MARRIED JESUS IN POPULAR LITERATURE
As with any proposition, the
motives and biases of its proponents must be examined along with
its message. This author does not pretend to have no biases of
his own, but the honest seeker of truth will recognize his
biases, admit them in the proposition and will compensate for
them.
There is a growing body of
literature in support of the proposition of a married Jesus. Some
of it is literary fiction, some of it is speculative history, and
some of it is spiritual mysticism. Some of the literature is
written by well-educated individuals, some of it is not. The
authors undoubtedly differ in their motives. Perhaps some are
purely mercenary in their motivation: they are out to make a
buck. But for most of them, there is an underlying sense of
adventure in discovering a "secret" which serves their
iconoclasm. A few of them have caught a wonderful vision for the
world.
What they all have in common is
their audience: a growing segment of the population that is
discontented with the Christianity as propounded by classical
theologians. For that audience, there is first a fascination and
then a personal identification with a sexual Jesus. This
motivation deserves closer examination and an explanation.
Unlike any other time of human
history, we live in a time of plenty. People are usually well-fed
and well-clothed. Even our poor people are rich in amenities
compared to our ancestors of just a hundred years ago.
Yet, in spite of that, people in
our culture are unhappy. They are unhappy with their jobs, with
their spouses, where they live, and so on. People move a lot.
They break-up a lot. What is going on here?
I don't think our unhappiness
comes from a "spoiled brat" mentality, although some
social commentators think so. I think it grows from the fact that
human nature is first a spiritual nature before being a physical
one. Having enough isn't really enough. As our Lord said,
"Man shall not live by bread alone." There is a
spiritual side to our existence.
For example, while an animal eats
when he is hungry, he does not understand or relate to the idea
of feasting: the joy associated with the process of preparing
food and eating it with others. Humankind thinks about the meaning
of all of our bodily needs and functions. It thinks about
why they were made. It wants to connect with the Being that made
them. That's why we have sacraments. Sacraments help us connect
with the Creator who made water (baptism), food (Eucharist), and
- dare I say it - sex ( ? ).
Is it possible that we find here
the reason why the idea of a married Jesus so captivates our
generation? We are trying to re-sacramentalize sex and the idea
of a Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus just isn't enough.
Human beings need symbols that
inspire them, Divine symbols. When it comes to romance, marriage
and sex, where do we find them in Christianity? Where do we find
the symbols to lift our souls and help us to stay the course?
There are none. There are plenty of human symbols (e.g. Abraham
and Sarah, Ruth and Boaz, Solomon and the Shulamite), but there
are no Divine symbols.
The finger waggers point to Christ
and the Church. Somehow, we are supposed to believe this Pauline
metaphor sets the standard for emulation. How inspiring can a
fictional entity called "the Church" be for anyone? Who
or what is "the Church"? The Church is not a person; it
is a collective body of people - male and female. It's like a
club. You cannot have romance, marriage and sex with a club. It
is nothing anyone can relate to, certainly not when you are alone
on a cold, rainy night.[1]
Many people want a Jesus who loved
a woman. That is why you have the rock musical "Jesus Christ
Superstar". That is why novels like The Da Vinci Code
become New York Times Best Sellers.
That is also why certain
reactionary elements in the Church were abhorred with Nikos
Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ. Many have
forgotten the public outcry against the movie version of that
novel. There was picketing, boycotting, and even bombings against
the cinemas showing the film. Not having seen the movie, this
author too condemned it. After seeing it, I felt betrayed by the
leadership of the Church. They had misrepresented the movie and
its message in a shameful display of bigotry.
The movie begins as a typical
R-rated movie, with Mary Magdalene, as a prostitute, servicing a
long line of Bedouin customers. Jesus is at the end of the line,
but unlike the false representations made by some of the movie's
detractors, He does not have sexual relations with her. Instead
He apologizes to her for not fulfilling the vows of their
betrothal. In this way, we are told that Mary and Jesus were
engaged to be married and because of His dereliction in
fulfilling His promise, she became a harlot to spite Him.
The story continues in presenting
Jesus as a member of the Essene tradition and
"discovering" His mission. It does not follow the
Gospel accounts, and that is a reasonable point of contention for
Christians. However, in presenting a truly human Jesus the movie
is more accurate than many of our Gospel films which present Him
with a plastic humanity.
The movie ends with Jesus on the
Cross facing the Last Temptation. The Last Temptation was not
sex, as some have charged. The Last Temptation was the desire to
give up His messianic mission to live a normal life. He falls
into a swoon and dreams of marriage and fatherhood - first, to
Mary Magdalene, who tragically dies, and then to Mary and Martha
of Bethany. He resists the temptation, awakens, and finishes the
Crucifixion.
And that's it. Other than the
discomfort of His suggested bigamy (which was not uncommon for
the Jews of that time), we are left to ponder why traditional
Christians are so offended with the movie and why the idea of a
married Jesus arouses such anger? I think it is this: in
Christian theology Jesus is supposed to be married to the Church.
If Jesus were married to someone else prior to the Church, then
there would be a Bride with precedence over the Church and, thus,
the Church could be looked upon as a rival, even false, bride. Do
we not find the truth of this in the audience of the new
literature? The people who are most interested in a married Jesus
are people who are disenchanted with the Church. They are turning
away from Churchianity and are searching for a more authentic
faith. The new literature strikes a dagger into the heart of
Christian dogma; for it declares that the Church is not the
Bride of Christ. The Bride speaks for her husband.
If the Church is not the Bride, then the Church has no authority
to speak for Christ. It does not have the "keys of the
kingdom" and thus, all of its claims and pretensions come
crashing down.
Few see these implications, even
few of its authors. Perhaps the leadership in the Vatican does.
If they don't, they will soon. Regardless, whether there is a
conscious understanding of these implications, it does not
matter. Like the rising tide, the message of a married Jesus is
raising all ships.
We have been here before. We are
revisiting the phenomenon of the Grail legends from the late
Middle Ages.
Grail Theology[2]
The legends of the Holy Grail
center around Medieval heroes on a quest to recover the lost
relic of the Cup of the Last Supper. Believing that its recovery
will bring a supernatural healing to a stricken land, the Grail
heroes hazard their lives and overcome sundry foes preventing
them from success in their quest. Their adventures make for
interesting reading, and the reader is often tempted to become so
engrossed in the story that one loses sight of their goal. But
there are guardians along the way, usually feminine, who
encourage the Grail heroes and keep them focused on their
mission.
In the eyes of the Medieval
Church, the idea of a Holy Grail seemed ludicrous. Eventually,
the Medieval world became an age of holy relics and supernatural
powers derived therefrom, but only after the Church understood
the profits that could be made from exploiting such
superstitions. At the first, however, the relics and their
legends competed with the Church's claims about itself.
Why would any one want to find the
Holy Grail, the Cup of the First Communion? Did not every
worshipper have access to the Holy Grail in the blessed Cup of
the Mass? At every Mass, the believer had the opportunity to
partake of the very blood and body of his Lord, why should he
feel a need to find this "Holy Grail"?
The Grail romances were a cleverly
devised attack on the validity of the Catholic Eucharist.
Christendom centered its life and worship around the altar, not
the Scriptures. And at the center of the altar was the Host and
the Cup where the Atonement was recapitulated, somewhere, at
every hour of every day. It was founded upon the belief that the
priest had the power to transform ordinary bread and wine into
the very blood and body of Jesus Christ. The Grail romances
implicitly denied that belief.
To attack the Catholic Eucharist
was to attack its Apostolic succession. The idea that Christian
civilization had exhausted itself and needed to return to its
roots suggested the failure of that succession. The Grail
romances, thus, became the literary wedge which pried away the
death-grip which the established Church had upon the Medieval
mind. It suggested that a new Church could be founded upon the
archaeological recovery of the original "Cup of the
Covenant".
During the late Medieval period,
circulation of the Grail stories reached its peak in Europe. It
was followed by the Renaissance and then the Protestant
Reformation. Renaissance thinkers found their Holy Grail in
Science, hence alchemy. The Reformers, on the other hand, found
it in the Scriptures. That is why Protestant churches have
preachers and not priests. The Holy Communion was demoted to a
mere symbol, and the Bible, translated into the common language,
was promoted as the cornucopia of life.
In the Original Manuscripts
Most Protestant denominations have
historically taught that the Bible - the Canon of Scripture - is
the inspired Word of God. Most have at some time taught that the
Word of God is infallible, the only source of Divine and inerrant
truth on Earth. In recent years most denominations have backed
away from that dogma, finding their new position somewhere in the
fuzzy notion that the Bible "contains the Word of God",
but that not every word is Divinely inspired (which words are
inspired and which ones are not becomes anyone's guess).
Conservative denominations still
hold to the doctrine of inerrancy, but their leaders have hedged
the point in a different way. You will hear them claim Biblical
inerrancy, but only in the original manuscripts. They will no
longer claim that any translation or version of the Bible is
infallible.
It may not at first seem obvious,
but if you stop to consider, the Protestant world is in the same
position that the Medieval Church was in when the Grail stories
first took the Continent by storm. The priesthood of the Catholic
Church was admitted to be corrupted. Like the proverbial
corruption of the carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy,
Apostolic succession had become diminished and powerless in the
eyes of thinking Christians. There was an intense desire to
return to the "original" sources to revive the faith.
This spiritual yearning led to experiments with heretical
rituals, mysticism, the Crusades, and the quest for relics.
In modern Protestantism, the quest
has been turned in a different direction: the search for older
and better manuscripts of the Scriptures. The hope is ever out
there that someday the archaeologist's spade will turn up the
originals - but until then, let it not be forgotten, the
Protestant churches do not have the very, inspired, and inerrant
Word of God. By their own admission, since they
cannot produce the Bible in its original manuscripts, they have
corrupted copies of the Word of God, not the very Word of God
itself. And by so doing, they have denied to themselves a basis
of authority to speak prophetically to any issue.
It is not enough to claim to have
the "virtual Word of God". What does that
mean? Anyone who knows the difference between "virtual"
sex and real sex should be able to figure-out that the Protestant
claim to "virtual" inerrancy is the same delusion as
the Catholic claim to Apostolic succession. Just like the Grail
threat to the Catholic Church to produce a priesthood which
possessed the "original" Cup and Blood of Christ, how
are we to know that the discovery of an older manuscript will not
differ from our current texts enough to change Protestant
doctrine? The turmoil surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls is only a
sign of things to come.
The Alternative Priesthood
The Grail romances claim that
there exists in the world an alternative priesthood based upon a
sacred lineage. The "Fisher King" or the "Grail
King", as it is in some versions, is depicted as a royal
personage, yet a king to be distinguished from the current ruler
of the realm. The romances are generally set in the time of King
Arthur. He is the ruler of the realm; yet the Fisher King is also
a ruler in distinction from Arthur. In some sense, Arthur's
authority is dependent upon the Fisher King; for it is the Fisher
King who is in possession of the Holy Grail.
The Grail castle is an ethereal,
mysterious place, which can disappear from ordinary human vision.
In this we find the Celtic belief of parallel worlds or
dimensions which are connected with each other in some
fundamental way: either through ritual unification or
angelic-type emissaries. Thus, we might find that the Grail
Castle can be interpreted as a spiritual counterpart of Camelot
and the Fisher King of Arthur.
The Fisher King is wounded in the
private parts. He cannot be healed by the Church's Eucharist. The
Eucharist sustains him, but it does not heal him. He cannot be
healed until someone else who shares his lineage is worthy to
become his successor and possess the Holy Grail.[3]
In this we can sense Arthur's
dilemma. His was a crisis of succession. But it was more than a
crisis of kingship. It was a crisis of federal headship. In the
Grail romances the ancient view of the king as priest and
sacrifice still lingers. This priesthood is one patterned after
the Melchisedecal priesthood of the Davidic Covenant which was
confirmed in Jesus Christ. Melchisedec was a father to his people
and became a father to Abraham (Genesis 14; Psalm 110:4; Hebrews
7). This spiritual connection is why in the Grail stories the
realm is afflicted with its king and why the land is turning into
a haunt of ruin, unless the king can find a worthy successor. The
weal of the realm depends upon the integrity of its king-priest.
In Grail theology the priest of
the established Church can never be a federal head of the people,
because he is not organically connected to the people. Nor does
he share in a sacred lineage, a lineage which organically
connects him to the Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7). He claims an
Apostolic succession, which is valid in terms of ministry, but
not headship. He cannot represent the people because he is not
one with the people.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail[4]
What the old Grail literature does
not unequivocally state is that there was another Bride of Christ
other than the Church. The message is avoided except in strong
metaphor. It refers to a sacred lineage but avoids connecting it
directly to Jesus. It makes Joseph of Arimathea its source, who
was ostensibly a kinsman of the Virgin Mary.
That is what is different about
the Grail literature of today from the literature of the Medieval
period: the origin of the sacred lineage is openly stated to be
Jesus Himself.
Credit must go to three British
authors - Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln - who
co-authored a book in 1983 entitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail. It
astonished the world and became a bestseller. In 1986 they
published a sequel, The Messianic Legacy.
In these two books the authors set
out to revise the accepted history of Christian origins. Central
to their thesis is the allegation that Jesus Christ was part of
an international conspiracy of Davidic Jews attempting to restore
the Throne of David in Jerusalem. He was the heir-apparent. When
their plot failed, he was killed (or simply disappeared) and a
new religion was concocted around his legend, which eventually
became Christianity. He was married to Mary Magdalene who bore
him children to continue the dynasty. The failed revolt caused
her to flee with the children to the Jewish communities of
southern Gaul (France). A few centuries later, the authors
allege, a descendant married into Frankish royalty, which became
the Merovingian dynasty. The authors claim that the history of
Europe is the story of the families of nobility descended from
these Merovingians (e.g. the Hapsburgs), their rule over the Holy
Roman Empire, their meddling in world affairs, and their quest
for political supremacy.
Today, they are said to be working
through a secret society known as the Priory of Sion, which was
founded by one of their own, a knight who made himself King of
Jerusalem during the Crusades. The Knights Templar, Rosicrucians,
and other secret societies are supposed to be a part of this
historic effort toward world government.
They find proof for their
assertion of a Jesus origin of this lineage in the legends of the
Holy Grail:
In many of the earlier
manuscripts the Grail is called the Sangraal; and even in the
later version by Malory it is called the Sangreal. It is likely
that some such form - Sangraal or Sangreal - was in fact the
original one. It is also likely that that one word was
subsequently broken in the wrong place. In other words, "San
graal" or "San greal" may not have been intended
to divide into San Graal" or "San Greal" but into
"Sang Raal" or "Sang Real". Or to employ the
modern spelling, Sang Royal: Royal blood. (p. 306)
They refer, of course, to the
royal bloodline of Jesus Christ.
Many Grail scholars dismiss this
assertion. But the storylines of the Grail legends themselves
speak of a sacred lineage. So whether "San Greal" ought
to be "Sang Real" need not stand alone, considering
that the larger message of the Grail romances supports the idea
of a mysterious and holy bloodline. The burden of proof lies with
those who do not believe that such a lineage could have been
founded by Jesus Christ. Within the Christian context, who else
would have had such legitimacy?
The Pagan Christ
A burgeoning class of feminist
writers has seized upon the idea of a married Jesus to revive the
image of Mary Magdalene, His assumed lover, as a feminist figure.
As in the Gnostic Gospels, she is juxtaposed with Peter who is
never short of chauvinistic contempt for her and in their
rivalry, we see the origin of the two branches of Christianity:
the Church, with Peter as its head, and the Bride, with Mary
Magdalene as the Daughter of Zion. From this dichotomy, these
feminist writers assert that Christianity was hijacked by a
misogynist leadership in the Church which displaced the purer
faith of Mary, the Johannine Community and the esoteric church.
These writers find much affinity
with pagan myths. In her novel, The Moon Under Her Feet,
Clysta Kinstler presents Mary Magdalene as a High Priestess in
the religion of Isis. But her fiction is an attempt at "what
if" kind of historical revisionism. Maintaining that the old
fertility cults of the Canaanites never lost their hold on the
people of Israel, the story is set in Jerusalem at the time of
Jesus with the Temple of Yahweh doubling as a temple for goddess
religion.
This was not without precedent in
Israelite history. Kinstler provides this reference in her Notes:
Dr. Raphael Patai, in his
carefully documented works "Man and Temple" and
"The Hebrew Goddess", shows that out of the 360 years
that Solomon's temple-complex lasted at Jerusalem, the
matriarchal Canaanite goddess Ashera, who represented the old
farming population of Israel, had been worshipped there for 240
as Jehovah's bride and sister with her wooden image publicly
displayed. The tribe of Ahser had originally been named in her
honor. Dr. Patai points out that when Elijah slaughtered the 400
priests on Mount Carmel he left the priests of Ashera unmolested;
Baal was then Jehovah's rival male deity and therefore like
Molech, Milcom, Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7) and all other male gods,
had to be suppressed.
-
Kinstler, p. 308
It is likely that the "Hieros
Gamos" - sacred marriage - was known to the Israelites,
since it was so popular in the nations surrounding Israel.
Kinstler quotes the eminent Sumerologist, S. N. Kramer, to
describe it as it was in ancient Sumer:
The most significant rite of
the New Year was the Heiros Gamos, or holy marriage between the
king, who represented the god Dumuzi, and one of the priestesses,
who represented the goddess Inanna . . . The idea arose that the
king of Sumer, no matter who he was or from what city he
originated, must become the husband of the life-giving goddess of
love, that is, Inanna of Erech . . . The kings of Sumer are known
as the "beloved husbands" of Inanna throughout the
Sumerian documents from the time of Enmerkar (about 2600 B.C.)
down to the post-Sumerian days, since they seem to have been
mystically identified with Dumuzi.
-
Kinstler, p. 306
Curiously, Israel's New Year began
at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles - the harvest festival -
when they were encouraged to rejoice with strong drink
(Deuteronomy 14:26). It is likely that the festivities included
dancing and lovemaking, as well.
It must be remembered that Abram
of Ur lived in this culture and Moses was well-versed in
"all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22).
Significant portions of the Song of Solomon appear to be drawn
directly from the "Hymns of Invocation" sung by priests
and priestesses in the temples of Isis. Harold Bayley identifies
thirteen parallels in his The Lost Language of Symbolism (vol.
1, p. 169-170) where these are found (I am using the Authorized
Version):
Song of Solomon 1:3, "Because
of the savour of thy good ointments, thy name is as ointment
poured forth; therefore do the virgins love thee . . ."
Invocation of Osiris,
"Hail thou, sweet scented one! There is unguent for the hair
at thy coming. . ."
Song 4:10, "How fair
is thy love, my sister, my spouse!"
Invocation, "Come to
the one who loveth thee. . . Come to thy sister, come to thy
spouse."
Song 4:11, "The
smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon."
Invocation, "The
odor of thy limbs is like the smell of Punt."
One must remember that
brother-sister incest is forbidden in the Mosaic law (Leviticus
18:9). This form of incest was endorsed in Egypt and even
required of the Pharaohs. Considering that Solomon's principal
wife was the daughter of Pharaoh, the origins of this Song of
Songs becomes obvious.
In Egyptian mythology, we have
Isis, the goddess of fertility, who is the sister-bride of Osiris
the Shepherd (who is later killed and dismembered) and gives
birth to a son, Horus. The rite of circumcision is thought by
some to be a symbolic memorial of his emasculation. In some
variations of the myth, the son of the goddess becomes king by an
anointing from the goddess and consummated in an incestuous union
which is, in turn, followed by a sacrificial death of the king.
He is killed to atone for the land and return the annual cycle of
fertility. This king is resurrected (or reincarnated) to repeat
the cycle again.
The similarities with the
Christian story are painfully obvious. In fact the Catholic
exaltation of the Virgin Mary and the celebration of Christ's
birth on December 25th, the birthday of Horus, was long a
complaint of some Protestant Reformers as a compromise with Isiac
religion. Indeed in the larger context, Christianity's
sacrificial death and resurrection of a god-king is a theme which
finds more syncretistic affinity with the ancient fertility cults
than with Judaism. In it we have the voluntary death, the descent
into hell (netherworld), the weeping goddess at the tomb, and the
eating of the sacrifice in a cannibalistic eucharist to obtain
eternal life. Even the rite of baptism was practiced by the Isis
religion (the Nile River was considered sacred) before it was
introduced to the Jews by John the Baptist.
In Kinstler's tale Jesus dies as a
pagan human sacrifice to save the nation from Roman anger and
Mary flees to live anonymously in Gaul.
While we cannot simply dismiss
these pagan roots of Christianity, the question which might be
properly offered is "what kind of paganism are we talking
about?" Are we talking about the pre-revelation, natural
religion of the Biblical patriarchs who worshipped the true God
and followed customs commended by that true God in their
conscience? Or are we talking about the degenerate paganism
roundly condemned by Paul in Romans 1 - who turned themselves
over to idolatry and death? Is true Christianity a mere
continuation of Canaanite religion as these feminist interpreters
enthusiastically claim? Or is it a special revelation correcting
the false turn that mankind has made in its understanding of the
Deity?
We shall explore these questions
in the next chapter.
Jehovah-Jirah!
Footnotes:
[1] We stand before God on
Judgment Day as families and individuals, not as church groups.
There is no sentient being called "the Church". It is a
metaphor and nothing more.
[2] The following material on the
Holy Grail comes from The Cambrian Pesher available at
www.grailchurch.org .
[3] This can be learned in the
rite of Footwashing.
[4] This material is drawn from
the author's work on Biblical Midwifery.
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