What the Bible Doesn't Say

I finally watched “The daVinci Code” movie. Never got around to reading the book. I'm one who gets nervous when people start playing fast and loose with information and misinformation about Jesus. But history, being His story, is of utmost importance to the Godhead, so I don't think any of us have to worry much about God's management of his own intellectual property. He is quite able to handle it, thank you very much. The film is quite a clever and entertaining romp in the tradition of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and “National Treasure.” The pivotal plot points are so obviously preposterous that only the most gullible could actually be convinced that the whole logical chain holds together any more than that there is actually a treasure map on the back of the United States Constitution. The fact that the premise is admittedly based on a fairly recent forged document puts to bed any doubts.

That said, the story does beg a few questions about what the Bible doesn't say. The plot line about Mary Magdalene is indeed true, as far as what the Bible doesn't say, that we have no reason to believe that she was ever a prostitute. This might have been fabricated and become part of tradition as part of an attempt to propagate a general belief that Jesus was always a virgin, that his mother always was, that generally anything to do with sex never had anything to do with Jesus. I have a big problem with this. How can Hebrews 4 be true (“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”), if Jesus had no direct human experience with the thing that almost every human being struggles with above just about everything else in the human condition?

What the Bible doesn't say is anything at all about the period between Jesus' childhood and his three years of ministry in his thirties. That's a big chunk of personal history, my friend. Why have I never heard a preacher discuss what may have gone on during those years? In the Jewish tradition of that time, people generally got married in their young teens. Why not Jesus? Why couldn't he have been married for quite some time during those silent years? The Bible is so abundantly clear that sex in marriage is not sin in any way, shape, or form but rather one of the finest treasures that God bestows upon mankind (ref: Song of Solomon). And the troubles endured in male/female relationships are one of the greatest sources of angst for every single one of us, whether we ever marry or not. How could Jesus not have experienced this in some way and have any idea in his humanity of what my own personal agony of soul is in this world? I submit that the probability is that he did have a wife at some point. And for that matter, though we of course have no word of Jesus being married during the recorded ministry years and I'm no Biblical scholar, but again, as far as I know, the Bible doesn't say that he wasn't at that point. As a side note, I have no idea why anyone would entertain the notion that Mary his mother would have remained a virgin for life. The record implies that she and Joseph abstained only until after his birth. That whole thing is a real stretch.

There are those who have postulated that Mary Magdalene and Jesus might have been romantically involved. And we are told that Jesus had a special love for Lazaraus and his sisters, Martha and another Mary. When that Mary anointed his feet in the room with the disciples, it seems only she had any understanding of his state of mind and heart. It's possible she did comprehend what was coming when nobody else did. In fact, does not this event imply this? Might not a spouse or one in love be the one in a position to possibly understand?

Why would any of this be scandalous? How does it have any logical affect on the veracity or purity of the Gospel? Logically, Jesus and Mary Magdalene could have been married. Or he may have been married to someone else. Or he might not have been married but in love. The heartache of loosing a spouse earlier in his life or the prospect of loosing a spouse at the cross or the agony of being in love with a woman he could not have for any number of possible reasons does not logically lead to any necessary sin involved in any of these scenarios. On the contrary, it would have been a huge part of the painful consequences of The Fall that Jesus took to the cross and embraced and felt as he died for you and me. These are the things he took on for us. Not some generic concept of the sin of mankind, but the deepest personal pain you and I feel in our guts. The agony that crushes us, that beats us up and leaves us for dead. That which lays waste to all the good that God originally created in this world for your benefit and mine, to our individual potential, and to hope.

Fiction has great value. It causes us to think.