Jesus Christ The Father Of Not One But Two Children?

Brace yourselves — a new book released within the last week purports to have found actual evidence that Jesus Christ did in fact marry Mary Magdalene and have not one but two children. The book, called The Lost Gospel, was written by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson. This is the pair’s follow-up to The Jesus Family Tomb.

Jacobovici is a three time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker who has contributed to such publications as the New York Times. While it would seem that this would give him clout, he has been criticized in the past for pursuing theories that many scholars find insignificant. Wilson is a professor of Religious Studies at York University in Toronto and is author of How Jesus Became Christian. The two have paired up to write this book that claims to be a translation of a “lost gospel.”

The original text, called The Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias Rhetor, dates back to the first century, approximately A.D. 570. Part of why the authors spent six years studying it is the fact that it was written in Syriac, which is a dialect of Aramaic, the actual language that Jesus spoke. The text has been in possession of the British Library since 1847, when it was purchased from the St. Macarius Monastery in Egypt.

Part of what has many people up in arms is the fact that the book starts out by saying, “What the Vatican feared… has come true.” It then goes on to make claims that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and then had two children with her. It also claims that the Virgin Mary, who the Roman Catholic church reveres as Mary, the mother of Jesus, was actually Mary Magdalene. It also states that there was an assassination attempt on Mary Magdalene and her children’s lives while Jesus was still alive.

While the authors decided that this was Jesus’ life story, it should be pointed out that the text was based on the life of a man called Joseph. Joseph could be a substitute for Jesus, but then Joseph’s wife was not Mary in the story but Aseneth. Jacobovici and Wilson claim that the manuscript was written in code explaining the difference in names, and they also are quick to point out some similarities in the story and in what the church teaches to be the truth about Jesus Christ. These similarities include Joseph being portrayed as a savior and how Joseph was presumed to be dead but then turned up alive just as Jesus had. Are the similarities enough, though, to provide definitive proof?

This is not the first time that anyone has declared that there is a conspiracy or cover up of the real life of Jesus. In 1953, Nikos Kazantzakis wrote The Last Temptation of Christ which states that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, too. Martin Scorsese created a film by the same name in 1988. And who could forget the Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code? While we think of Brown bringing this controversial topic to the forefront, it has been around for years. The Daily Mail stated that “If true, this would make it the greatest revelation into the life of Jesus in nearly 2,000 years.”

But there are people out there who are still skeptical seeing as how so many texts have been found such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and keep being found. University of Arizona archaeologist, William G. Dever, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “It’s a publicity stunt.” The church has not commented but that’s probably because they have yet to change their teachings thus far. So did Jesus Christ father two children? It’s not certain we’ll ever really know.

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