How many Kids did Jesus have & did marriage, motherhood diminish Magdalene?

How Many Kids did Jesus and Magdalene Have? Does being wife & mother diminish Magdalene? Does an anti-marriage bias make some people resist a Jesus-Magdalene marriage?

Margaret Starbird writes, and I agree:

I personally believe that Mary was expecting at the time of the arrest and crucifixion, which would have been the reason that the friends and family of Jesus made an immediate move to get her out of town. She is never mentioned at all in the Acts of the Apostles — although the mother of Jesus and the apostles and brothers of Jesus are all together on Pentecost.

Katia inserts:
Magdalene is mentioned repeatedly in all four Gospels, yet not in Acts.  Something must have taken her quickly out of the picture.

Margaret continues:
What happened to Mary, his most devoted companion / beloved?… If she weren’t pregnant, there would have been no reason at all to get her out of town and protect her whereabouts and identity. But as the bearer of a royal bloodline, she would have been protected as a “national treasure.” I believe  Mary’s only child was a daughter — and that this piece of her story is part of the “underground stream” of European legend, art, and artifact (the subject of my 1993 “Alabaster Jar” book that apparently launched Dan Brown’s research). I was very reluctant to believe in the possibility of a surviving child, but numerous synchronicities eventually convinced me that it is at least a possibility.

I do not believe that Jesus and Mary had any other children. That view is supported by Barbara Thiering who postulated 2 sons and a daughter (Tamar) in 1992 (“Jesus the Man” aka “The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls”). Thiering postulates that Jesus divorced Mary Magdalene, an idea that has IMO even less credible evidence. The “three children” theory was adopted by Lawrence Gardiner in his “Bloodline/Grail” book, and has recently surfaced again in K McGowan’s book.

For years I’ve heard people argue that believing Mary Magdalene married Jesus and had a child somehow diminishes her — identifying her with a husband and child-bearing role rather than as a strong teacher or priestess in her own right.

Katia inserts:
As if parenting and partnering mean you can’t be a spiritual, magical, religious leader or teacher.  How many pastors today are parents and married? How many great men of the world were married with children?  Yet if a woman is not childless and completely independent of men she can’t be a strong teacher or priestess?  As a spiritual teacher myself (online Mystery School has 500+ students, 100 very active) it is true I struggle with motherly and wifely duties.  My three girls, one of them a baby in diapers, need my attention for hours of every day.  Furthermore, my oldest, as well as two teen step-sons are homeschooling, so I’m a school-teacher too.  I am plagued with guilt and worry almost on a daily basis as to whether I am doing right by them.  Motherhood is time consuming, yes, and you might could call it “distracting.” But it does not diminish a woman anymore than fatherhood diminishes a man.  A woman can still be a spiritual leader, can still write and teach inspiring things with kids in her life.  Magdalene probably only had one child.  That’s nothin’! 

Margaret, mother of five grown children herself, continues:
And, because certain feminists and others are not interested in conventional marriage, they don’t like the idea of a married Jesus / Magdalene, so they are sure it couldn’t have happened.

I’m be more interested in knowing the truth than in supporting a falsehood for the sake of a certain anti-marriage agenda.

In memory of Her–
Margaret
http://margaretstarbird.net

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While I was putting this post together, my friend Lore who moderates the Magdalene-List forum at Yahoogroups.com, wrote to me as follows:

What interests me about Magdalene is that she can be used to set an example of what Yeshua really taught about women in order to wipe out the misogyny that gutted his teachings. Which is why I can agree both with Margaret about sacred union / their marriage and with Karen King that immersing her too far into marriage and motherhood might do more harm than good because she should be recognized as a spiritual leader in her own right.

Christian definition of marriage has done great harm to women over many centuries. We’re finally making progress in that realm but the [extreme Christian] fundies would like to turn around all the gains we’ve made and put women back into servitude to men via marriage. And the progress hasn’t gone far enough, which is why women file for more divorces than men. It is the party being harmed that generally wants out of any relationship. I knew before I filed for divorce that I would never marry again because I wanted control of my own life. The whole divorce debacle only reinforced that.

I didn’t find out until after I’d filed that he’d run up thousands and thousands on credit cards I didn’t even know we had. Because he was my husband, he had the right (at least back then) to sign my name and put me in astronomical debt without my even knowing about it — and the legal system said I had to pay. He also had the right to batter me emotionally and physically, then complain to the divorce judge that I was emotionally unstable because I sought therapy. My attorney told me that he could get custody of my children because I sought refuge and healing from him. How crazy is that?

That has changed somewhat today but not near enough, so I’d love to see a strong, single MM who chose to be in control of her own life, including being free to choose her sexual destiny. I think it would transform women’s image of themselves if that were true. I don’t believe it is though. I believe if they loved each other and spent so much time together, touching and kissing in public, then they had to be married.

The irony is that the RCC [Roman Catholic Church] never taught that Jesus was single or celibate. They avoided addressing that directly (probably because they knew he was married) but everyone thinks that was church dogma from the earliest days, therefore it must be true. Even those who railed against women and marriage as evil didn’t say he was celibate or unmarried.

-Lore