Deepest darkness

Some days ago, an American professor at Harvard Divinity School caused quite a stir by claiming to have come into the possession of a fragment of an ancient scroll that seemed to indicate that Jesus Christ was married. There’s a part there, says Karen King, that says, “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife.’”

King herself has said her findings are by no means conclusive. The “my wife” could only have been the impression of the writer of the script. And the fragment has yet to be authenticated by an analysis of the ink.

Vatican officials are not particularly sold on it, although they have stopped short of dismissing King’s proposition. There’s simply no mention of Christ being married in the writings of other people, not least of them the epistlers, the Vatican officials say. The epistlers were forthright about saying that John and some other apostles were married, so why shouldn’t they be just as forthright if Christ were so?

But King argues that Christ’s marital status was never an issue to his followers, which could be why they never bothered to specify it. It would become an issue only later. “From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’ death before they began appealing to Jesus’ marital status to support their positions.”

I leave them to their debate, although I myself wouldn’t be too surprised if someone came out with more definite proof that Christ was married, or lived more or less with a woman in whatever circumstances. Different times, different norms. Certainly, there’s ample mention of the fact that he kept the company of one Mary Magdalene in his ragged retinue.

What I myself find fascinating in all this is how little we really know of the historical Christ. Or how much we see him only through the prism of theological reinterpretation and Hollywood revisionism. We’re not alone in this, of course; other countries are prey to it as well, not least the United States.

You can’t find any more breathtaking, and hilarious, display of it than Fox show host Megyn Kelly saying in December last year: “Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” Kelly said. “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure, that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa. I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?”

That statement, of course, provoked a storm, some of the reactions particularly about her capacity to ascribe a skin color to a fictitious character, Santa, being richly funny. But the part about Christ being white drew more insightful responses. As Jonathan Merritt pointed out, that notion is far more prevalent than is supposed and began in the early days of Christianity, calcifying when it became a state religion. Western writers and painters were at pains to paint Christ as white because of the association of whiteness with purity and blackness with deviltry.

In fact, said Merritt, “the scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA (Transportation Security Administration).”

But white is how he appears as well to us, courtesy of the icons in our churches, many of those churches dating back to the time of the friars. In fact, that is how Joseph and Mary appear in the belen despite the fact that one is a carpenter and the other is, well, a “homemaker,” to use a current term. Except that, to go by the manger story, they didn’t really have a home.

Which is yet another of our gross distortions of history. I remember how a letter-writer said angrily that I would burn in hell for my sacrilegious propositions. What she minded in particular was my saying one Christmas that to go by the Nativity story, Jesus’ parents must have looked not unlike our indigenous people who descend on the capital during the holidays, palms outstretched, when they were turned away at the inn. Certainly nothing like the fair-haired, smooth-skinned, and well-groomed figures that adorn depictions of the scene.

But why on earth, or heaven, should we be so loath to appreciate Christ’s circumstances with a little more realism? To see in the “Son of God”—there’s a new movie that goes by that title—not just the “God” but the “Son,” not just the divinity but the humanity. That can’t detract from faith, if you are a believer, it can only deepen it.

I’ve always thought that was Christianity’s strength, not its weakness—it’s allowing, no, demanding, from its followers that they dwell on Christ’s corporeal reality quite apart from the metaphysical one. Instead of forbidding any attempt to understand it, probe it, depict it verbally or visually, on pain of, well, harsh corporeal punishment, including death, quite apart from eternal damnation.

Appreciating Christ’s historical circumstances does offer all sorts of insights, not least into the meaning of miracles. The greatest miracle of all may very well be not that Christ raised Lazarus from the dead but that he brought down the most powerful empire on earth, and continues to do so, not by the power of arms or an incendiary philosophy but by preaching the power of turning the other cheek. He lived it, too, by dying for it.

Something to ponder in deepest darkness, while waiting for the light.