The King of King's Code

Mr and Mrs Jesus

You know it all already, don’t you?  You know that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, having penetrated the code and read the gospel according to Da Brown, or at least seen the movie of the gospel of the code of the book.  Even so, it might interest to know that a far older code has been discovered proving the same point…or proving that Dan Brown is a lot older than he pretends!

I fragment of papyrus has been discovered, an ancient Da Vinci Code, which makes the ‘explosive suggestion’ (that’s Daily Mail, not Ana speak) that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were man and wife.  The report I read in the Mail pompously declares that the discovery “undermines centuries of Church dogma by suggesting that the Christian Messiah was not celibate.” 

Au contraire, monsieur le Mail; this undercurrent has been around for centuries, part of a Gnostic tradition, text that did not make it into the official text, Satanic Verses, if you like.  The Gospel of Philip promoted the marriage claim centuries before Dan Brown.  But the Gospel of Philip, along with that of Thomas and Mary Magdalene herself, is among the scriptural also rans.  In other words Christian dogma trumps the other dogma; the Nicene Creed trumps the Gnostic heresy!  

Anyway, this in the cryptic script, translated from ancient Coptic, the language of Biblical Egypt;

…not [to] me.  My mother gave me li[fe]…

The disciples said to Jesus,

deny.  Mary was worthy of it

Jesus said to them, My wife

she will be able to be my disciple

Let wicked people swell up

As for me, I dwell with her in order to

an image.

An image?  What image!  Hmm, yes, well, you can make of that what you wish. What Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, wants to make of it is quite a lot.  She recently told the Smithsonian Magazine that the fragment casts doubt “on the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’ celibacy.”  Oh, really, more so than the far more complete Gospel of Philip?  In time to come we may have the Gospel of Karen to add to the unofficial canon, or a new cracking bestseller – The Da King Code.

Hey, let’s get our feet back on the ground and look at the picture a little more soberly. To begin with, Jesus was a practicing Jew, a rabbi.  There is nothing in Jewish tradition and law that would proscribe marriage for such a person.  More than that, an unmarried rabbi is likely to have been considered as a bit of an oddity. 

The other thing is that the Catholic Church itself did not always insist on priestly celibacy.  That came later, when the performance of sacred duties was felt to be incompatible with carnal marriage.  When the Church decided on the purity of the priesthood it was easy to fall back on the canonically accepted Jesus as the avatar of perfection. 

There was no problem in this.  Scripture is completely silent on Jesus’ marital status, pointing neither one way nor the other.  But the whole point of Christianity is its novelty – it took a rabbi and prophet and turned him into the Messiah and the Son of God.  The Son of God as a carnal being? – never in a month of sexless Sundays! 

I always find it amusing when an academic advances a bridge too far, when making a mark rather than scholarly probity and caution becomes the important thing.  It’s like the silly fuss over the ‘discovery’ of the remains of Richard III in the archaeological dig at Leicester, a conclusion trumpeted before the facts have been fully established.  Wait and see, always wait and see.  

Professor King does not wait.  She goes that much further.  Never mind dead bones; she has the living text!  There she is, a more fatal Martin Luther, ready to shake the Catholic Church to its foundations with an enigma that is no enigma, a revelation that is no revelation!  It’s such a pity that Philip and Dan got there first.  It makes her dramatic dénouement look just a tad derivative and oh so passé.  

Stop Press!

There have been developments.  This ‘explosive’ evidence has been systematically rubbished by other specialists since I wrote this story at breakfast time this morning.  Now the King herself, in the light of this, is backtracking, at least to a point. 

With the stable doors creaking and groaning in the wind she says: “We still have some work to do, testing the ink and so on and so forth, but what is exciting about this fragment is that it's the first case we have of Christians claiming that Jesus had a wife.”  To this she adds that the papyrus itself provides no evidence (what?!) that Jesus was married, merely that ‘some Christians’ believed he was two hundred years after his death. 

Yes, and would ‘some Christians’ go by the name of Philip; would some Christians be considered as Gnostics?  She has also revealed – what a surprise – that the unnamed owner wants to sell it. 

"There are all sorts of really dodgy things about this,' said David Gill, professor of archaeological heritage at University Campus Suffolk.  "This looks to me as if any sensible, responsible academic would keep their distance from it.”  Ouch!  Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn into the Hollis Professor of Divinity. 

Making Martyrs

One aspect of the career of Sir Thomas More-Saint Thomas More-that tends to escape popular attention was his enthusiasm for the persecution of heretics, because it is not at all in accordance with the saintly 'Man for all Seasons.'

In religious and intellectual terms More was highly orthodox. The primary message of Utopia, for example, is the need for order and discipline, not liberty. The society described is totalitarian, about as far removed from present day ideals of freedom as it is possible to get. This is a world where attempts to discuss public policy outwith officially allowed forums are punishable by death.

So, More placed great value on the attainment of harmony and on a strict hierarchy of order. All challenges to uniformity and hierarchy were perceived as dangers; and in practical terms the greatest danger, as he saw it, was the challenge that heretics posed to the established faith. The most important thing of all for More was to maintain the unity of Christendom. The Lutheran Reformation, with all of the prospects of fragmentation and discord, was for him a feared and fearful thing.

His own personal counter-attack began in the manner that one would expect from a writer. He assisted Henry VIII with the production of the Defence of the Seven Sacraments, a polemical response to Martin Luther's On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. When Luther replied with Contre Henricum Regem Anglie, with all of the venom and vulgarity of which he was capable, More was given the task of firing off a counter-broadside, which he did in Responsio ad Lutherum. Just as violent and as vulgar as Luther, this book deepened More's commitment to the forms of order and discipline outlined in Utopia. Heresy was a disease, a threat to the peace and unity of both church and society.

More was more than a writer: he was a lawyer, a political and one of the King's chief councillors, so he was able to give his hatred of heresy some practical direction. His early actions included aiding Cardinal Wolsey in preventing Lutheran books being imported into England. He also assisted in the production of a Star Chamber edict against heretical preaching. Further literary polemics appeared under his name; but his greatest opportunity came in October 1529, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England.

The task before him was simple enough "Now seeing that the king's gracious purpose in this point, I reckon that being his unworthy chancellor, it appertaineth...to help as much as in me is, that his people, abandoning the contagion of all such pestilent writing, may be far from infection."

Heresy was a cancer, and could only be stopped by burning, of books and of people. In June 1530 it was decreed that offenders were to be brought before the King's Council, rather than being examined by their bishops, the practice hitherto. Actions taken by the Council got ever more severe. In 1531, one Richard Bayfield, a book pedlar, was burned at Smithfield. Further burnings followed. In The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, yet another polemic, More took particular delight in the execution Sir Thomas Hitton, describing him as "the devil's stinking martyr". The extraordinary persecution only came to a (temporary) stop when More resigned as Lord Chancellor in May 1532. It was the end of Utopia.

Kings, Heretics and Witches

Heretics had to burn in England, yes, but why and for what reason? The timing of the introduction of De Heretico Comburendo in 1401, the law that allowed for this practice, hitherto unknown, intrigued me.

The facts are, I suppose, quite simple: the passing of this rather extreme measure at that particular point in English history had a little to do with religion and a lot to do with politics. You see, Henry IV had only two years before the introduction of De Heretico Comburendo deposed his cousin Richard from the throne of England in highly controversial circumstances. There were other people, moreover, who had a claim to the throne just as good if not better than he did himself. He was thus open to challenge and was to spend virtually the whole of his reign defending himself against conspiracy, plot and treason in all of their many forms.

The one thing he needed was support, the support of the church above all. So, on the advice of Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, worried by the growth of Lollardy, a crypto-Protestant heresy, Henry decided that the flames would have to be lit. Rather burn heretics than lose the crown of England.

Henry’s second wife, Joanna of Navarre, probably unknown to most people who read this, has the right to be know as the only Queen Consort to be accused and condemned as a witch. Yes, she was. When Henry V, her step-son, succeeded to the throne in 1413he was anxious to renew the struggle with France, in the long conflict subsequently known as the Hundred Years War. Joanna, the daughter of Charles the Bad of Navarre, had relatives in the French service and refused to agree the king’s request for money. She subsequently found herself accused of attempting to poison the King by malificia. She was convicted, her lands seized and Henry got his money…and his war.

One does not execute royal witches, oh no. Joanna was kept, rather, in Pevensey Castle, and subsequently released after the death of Henry in 1422. Witch or not she is buried alongside her husband, Henry IV, in Canterbury Cathedral.

Tertullian and the Nature of Heresy

For Tertullian, an early Christian apologist, the Church alone bore the apostolic rule of faith, revered the canon of Scriptures, and bore through its ecclesiastical hierarchy the sanction of apostolic succession. Heretics were those who challenged any of these precepts. They were people who refused to accept the rule of faith, as others did. Instead they challenged people to raise theological questions to which there was no answer, "...being ready to say, and sincerely of certain points of their belief, 'That is not so' and 'I take this in a different sense' and 'I do not admit that'".

Tertullian has it that all such unnecessary questioning automatically leads to heresy-"This rule was raised by Christ, and raises among ourselves no other questions than those which the heresies introduce and which make men heretics!" Heretics, moreover, are those who do not restrict themselves to the Scriptures, but bring in other writings or challenge orthodox interpretations. Heretics are, quitesimply, rebels, in theological and in practical terms.

The answer was to believe and never question. It seems clear what practcal form this kind of thinking would take, to the fires of the Middle Ages and beyond.

Heresy and Belief

Christianity borrowed and adapted from older religions, and the New Testament is, arguably, little more than a palimpsest. But perhaps the objection is more fundamental than that. The original parchment is, of course, Judaism, and prior to the advent of St. Paul Christianity was little more than a Judaic heresy.

Yes, the foundation is Judaic but it proceeds by way of an almost total misunderstanding, or, perhaps, a deliberate perversion of the mother tradition. The Messiah, the anointed one, of the Old Testament, is a figure who combines both spiritual and political power. He comes as an earthly ruler and spiritual authority, a judge rather than a saviour of souls; his power is of this world. Mohammed might be said to have been such a figure, and there have been others, pretenders of one kind or another, in both the Jewish and the Muslim tradition. But Jesus is not to be perceived in such a light, for the simple reason that the Messiah was not and could not be the son of God. For if God is one, indivisible and absolute, such a claim is logically absurd; it is also heretical.

So, Christianity, as a religion, is founded on a fallacy, an error of interpretation, and a heresy. So, has belief in itself been enough to give life to their God, to their Messiah, to their Christ? Perhaps it has, but it has also given rise to theological and philosophical problems beyond all resolution. However, there is another question, even more fundamental. Is it possible for a mortal to become God? Would belief in itself be sufficient to invest you or me or any of us with divine and miraculous powers?

Well, again perhaps, though it is not a question that I can answer. All I will say that if it is possible to give life to a god it is equally possible to kill him, and the Christians have been doing that, in their several ways, for well over a century.

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"