by Elliott Stearns

The word is from two Latin roots meaning, literally, "[in] another place." What it means, of course, is "I was elsewhere [i.e. in another place] when the crime was committed; so it is impossible for me to have done it." When proven, an alibi all but acquits a suspect of a criminal charge, however much the mystery writers love to make up stores where a "perfect" alibi is eventually found to be untrue and the bad guy gets his due.

Our task here is to see if Jesus had an "alibi" to the charge of marrying and having offspring by Mary Magdalene, as Dan Brown purports to demonstrate in his novel The DaVinci Code. Though marriage is an honorable estate, of course, for Jesus to have married and to have begotten physical children wreaks havoc on the Church's traditional view of Him and the purpose of His coming to earth. Mr. Brown actually wants the reader to believe that it is the Church, not Jesus, which hid the true facts concerning His life, and that therefore the search for an alibi would rest there. Although we may touch on that further down, what I intend to demonstrate is that Jesus' alibi is very simple: He could not have married and begotten children for to do so would have violated the prophetic picture of the Messiah presented in the Old Testament.

The beauty of this approach is that even if one does not accept that Jesus was the Messiah, practically no one denies - even Jesus' enemies - that Jesus intended to present Himself as the Promised One, Israel's hope. So regardless of whether you are a believer or non-believer, any solid Old Testament prophecy demonstrating that the Messiah (whoever it may be) would not marry and beget children (in a natural sense) should be enough to convince the reasonable person that Mr. Brown is out in left field in terms of his thesis. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Church could have "exorcised" the New Testament documents of the "real" facts about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, no one dares to presume it could have done the same with the Old Testament.

Of course, critical to this thesis is that Jesus either was the Messiah (my own personal belief), or pretended to be the Messiah, or intended to be the Messiah. To the best of my knowledge, this is accepted almost everywhere. That the earliest church could have "morphed" Jesus from a simple itinerant Rabbi with no messianic ambitions into Israel's Messiah is next to impossible to prove - there is absolutely no contemporaneous documentary evidence of such a transformation. The church's enemies make no such claim, and they certainly would have if they could.

Therefore, we are safe to examine the Old Testament portion of the Holy Scriptures and decide if it can reasonably be supposed Jesus would marry Mary Magdalene or anyone else. We much find Scriptures which are for the most part clear and unambiguous as referring to the Messiah and which contemporaries of Jesus, especially the religious leadership, would have accepted as being at least potentially messianic and then see if they even allow the Messiah to marry, or whether they remain neutral or cryptic as to such a fine point.

CLEVER EDITORS?

But first of all, let us take a little digression into the Gospels and Epistles and book of Revelation. Since these are the very writings the Dan Brown school claims were tampered with or sanitized of the pertinent materials proving his (The DaVinci Code) case, it may seem a dead-end place to explore for evidence against Brown. But it is not what was claimed to have been excised into which I wish to peer, but what the Church fathers at the fateful Council of Nicea (Brown's arch deceivers) decided to leave in and which do not make sense to leave in if they wanted to make it look that Jesus never married.

For example, in the Gospels, Epistles, and the Book of Revelation, Jesus styles Himself, or is styled or described as "The Bridegroom," with the Elect being the Bride. This is all spiritual symbolism, true, but would Jesus have portrayed Himself the Elect's Bridegroom without mirroring the same virgin estate in His own natural ministry? Of course, we could say that the Nicean villains inserted (read: made up) the Bridegroom material in order to better hide Jesus' actual non-celibate estate. But does that make sense? Did they - could they - create out of whole cloth a metaphor running through the Gospels, and the Epistles of Paul, and the Book of Revelation? Clever editors those Niceans!

Or take the Epistles of Paul in which he frequently alludes to matters of sex and marriage, and mentions his own state of celibacy, as well as his right in the Lord, if he were to so wish to take a wife (I Cor. 9:5). In speaking of his own celibate estate, Paul does not mention being like Jesus in that condition; and in talking about his right to take a wife, he does not say "…as did our Lord." The Nicean fathers could have easily excised the latter or inserted the former - why didn't they? In fact, if they had added something coupling Paul's celibate estate with Jesus' in I Corinthians 7:7 (making the verse read: "For I would that all men were even [unmarried] as I myself" in imitation of our Lord and Savior…) the case would have been forever sealed. Again: why didn't they? The most logical reason was that the passages were so well-known that to tamper with them was quite simply impossible. The question arises: if these passages were so well-known and accepted that the flagitious Niceans did not dare to touch them, why are we supposed to accept Brown's other contentions about their handling of the new Testament canon?

End of digression; let us now look at the Old Testament Messianic passages to discover if, in the light of them, Jesus would have considered an earthly marriage arrangement.

EXAMINE THE OLD TESTAMENT

It is true that in both the Targums and in the Qumran literature (the ancient Jewish rephrasings of Scripture and the Dead Sea Scrolls) there is not, at least from my own explorations, any allusion to the expectations of the Jews in regard to the married or unmarried estate of the Messiah. So we must turn to the actual text of the Hebrew Scriptures with the implicit understanding that Jesus knew them by heart or nearly so and (if He was not truly the Messiah) was interested in strategizing the events in His life to fulfill the messianic promises. Obviously, if He truly was the Messiah, the prophecies would fulfill "by themselves" without any "help" from Jesus other than to obey the Father. Would Jesus Himself have seen any such prophecies which more or less clearly state He would not commit to an earthly marriage? I believe that there are.

Look first of all to Isaiah 53:8 & 10 which reads in the Authorized Version as follows:

"He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken.
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, he shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand."

Despite the best efforts of many to demonstrate that Isaiah 53 does not refer to either the Messiah or Jesus, it was clearly the belief of the early church that the chapter was one of the best proof texts to establish Jesus' identity. Though a suffering Messiah was not what most Jews expected, it was certainly what Jesus expected and intended to fulfill. Verse 8's "…who shall declare His generation?" and the following declaration about being "cut off from the land of the living" communicates a clear understanding that the Messiah would not, or would not be able to, marry and raise up natural physical offspring. Verse 10's "…He shall see His seed" then refers to some other kind of offspring coming into being following His being "cut off" which the church would identify as those who believe into His Name and are "born again." It is simply not logical to imagine that Jesus seeing this chapter and knowing it referred to His death would adopt some parts of it and ignore others. No, seeing He was to NOT have natural offspring because of being cut off from the land of the living, He most naturally would have assumed He was NOT to marry.

Earlier in Isaiah, the Prophet refers to his natural children by marriage:
"Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion." Isaiah 8:18

This is fairly straightforward and seems hardly messianic in tone. But the early church as recorded in Hebrews 2 (vss 10ff) beheld in this verse a prophetic type or picture of the "many sons" which the Resurrected Son of God would "bring to glory" because of His sacrifice. If the "many sons" being brought to glory by Jesus are spiritual, are we not being inconsistent to imagine that Jesus would engage in a bi-polar family project by having natural children on earth and thereafter spiritual children?

Part of the Old Testament allusions mentioned in Hebrews 2:10ff refer to Psalm 22. Here too we have both a clear messianic passage (Jesus quotes the first verse of the Psalm from the Cross) and an equally clear allusion to the Victim's looking to spiritual offspring.

In Hebrews 2:12 we read:
"…I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee"…

which is a direct citing from Psalm 22:22:
"I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee"…

and which is elaborated upon in verse 25:
"My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear Him."

True, brethren are not children; for offspring we look at verse 30:
"A SEED [i.e. offspring] shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation."

This seed that serves the Lord clearly comes into being following the afflictions of the first 20 verses. Again: If Jesus saw in this Psalm a clear allusion to His own atoning work (on Calvary) which He must fulfill, with the concomitant promise of "seed" to result from that Work, does it make sense He would allow Himself to be diverted from His appointed course by the responsibilities of an earthly marriage? Especially if "children" or "seed" of a much higher order than natural offspring from a purely physical relationship would be the result?

Much additional evidence from Ezekiel 36, Isaiah 54, and other passages, could be adduced to demonstrate the higher order family Jesus wished to create by His atoning work. Mr. Brown's work is a novel, but purports to present truth in novel form. The evidence against his thesis has risen to such levels that at this point Brown's only safe move is to say something like, "I told you it was a novel…even the portions which I called `fact' were just a part of the novel; get it?" If he says something like that, then he might get away with a mere "flesh wound" to his reputation. However, if he is indeed serious in his assertions, then, in between trips to the bank, he should search out and read carefully that verse somewhere in the New Testament which describes the fate of those who "love and make a lie." How will his present day fame and fortune avail him then?