This piece is part of my novel "Antichrist" where God is not exactly the Good guy... The story is told by the protagonist in that novel.
Some will say that this is pure fiction or even blasphemy. All I can say is that I am sorry if you feel that way. Others will say that this is more or less historical fact.
It doesn't really matter to me. I wonder what would be so bad about this story if it were based on the truth. In my opinion, it would not devalue Jesus, on the contrary. It would make him a more human son of God. Not only capable of the great things he did according to the Bible, but also capable of the greatest, the most powerful thing a human being is capable of, love...
"Before I can go into the whole story with the Nefilim, I have to say something about the bloodlines. Remember I said that God blessed one bloodline over and over again?"
Seeing nods in the group, he continued:
"Well, the first of that bloodline was Abraham. And the first true Zealot in the bloodline. God instructed him to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the man intended to complete that sacrifice without blinking or hesitating. Believe me, he was by no means the only Zealot in that cursed bloodline. As you will hear, there were exceptions to the rule, but they were extremely rare. Abraham was, in fact, the progenitor of what would become three God-worshiping movements, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Then came Moses, King David, and King Solomon, among others, and this bloodline became known as the House of David. Somewhere along the way, that bloodline lost the throne, but among the inhabitants of Judea, that bloodline continued to be seen as the pretenders to the throne. Especially after the Romans installed a king who was not from the house of David, and the Jews looked forward to finding a successor to David from his bloodline. Time after time, God blessed a male descendant in this bloodline. Until, at one point, two boys would be born at about the same time, both of whom seemed to be destined to become prophets for His glory. Being the self-centered idiot that he is, he could not decide which of the two yet unborn to bless. Why waste the opportunity to bless two who would sing his praises? This was something that proved once again that God is not as omniscient as he likes to claim in order to frighten Man and Angel. The two would grow up to be polar opposites. One, a true zealot who took the Bible, or better, at that time the Torah, as the literal word of God. The other, a man of love, mercy and forgiveness."
He looked around to read the faces.
"Does anyone have any idea who I am talking about? Miss Lopez, I can see that you know the answer. Why don't you share it with the rest of the class?"
Ella nodded so hard that her ponytail started bobbing up and down:
I think you mean Jesus and Daniel the Baptist."
Alexander smiled warmly:
"Absolutely right. Somebody give Miss Lopez a cookie!"
With a wink to Ella, he continued his story:
"Daniel was married to a girl of 16, not an unusual age in those days, because people considered you an adult. Your life expectancy was much shorter, so you grew up much faster. The problem was that this girl was promised to Jesus in the first place. Today we question this kind of arranged marriage where girls have no choice. Two thousand years ago, unfortunately, it was the most normal thing in the world. Since Daniel and Jesus were both from the house of David, and Daniel seemed to be the more prominent of the two at the time, it was decided to marry her off to Daniel against the earlier promise. Daniel spent most of his time in the wilderness preaching and baptizing. The few times he went home, it was to take his wife to his bed to provide an heir, and not in an romantic way. Sex, the desire of the flesh was a terrible sin in his view. During these visits, he also took to heart the Torah commandment that it was okay for a husband to beat his wife if she had done something wrong. Just thinking she had done something wrong was enough to get physical. So he regularly beat her black and blue. This asshole really hated women. Every fiber in his body believed that they were the cause of all sins because Eve ate the apple and that original sin was passed on to all women."
Jokingly, he continued:
"If he could have thought about the whole apple thing like a normal, healthy man, he probably wouldn't have hated women so much. Come on, be real, Adam was hungry, his wife had food, and she was naked. Does anyone really think he would have thought the situation through at that point?"
He heard some giggling and especially Ella's bright laugh and came to the conclusion that he really, really liked that laugh.
"One time it was so bad that there was a moment of fear for her life if it had not been for Jesus and His healing powers. Unfortunately for Daniel, fate has a way of making what goes around come around. We call it Karma these days. This was one of the few times I kicked back, relaxed, had another goblet of wine, and watched the train wreck unfold in real-time with a lot of schadenfreude. For him, it came in the form of his wife's best friend, Salome. And Salome was more than angry that her best friend had been beaten nearly to death by her husband, who in Salome's eyes was nothing more than a half-savage religious fanatic. Salome was the king's stepdaughter, and Herod was especially fond of her. She was not just a princess; she was a follower of Jesus. Daniel picked the wrong enemy. The man had a big mouth, no filter, and felt empowered because he spoke in the name of God. Herod may have been very displeased with what Daniel had to say about him and his marriage to Salome's mother, but he left him alone. He had no desire to get himself involved with a bunch of religious zealots who did not pose a political or military threat to his Throne. Salome was another story."
He got a very broad smile on his face when he said:
"Damn, that girl was spicy!"
"The end of the story is his head on a silver platter. Meanwhile, his wife was pregnant with a son whom God had to bless again, of course. It is this son's bloodline that naturally dislikes Lucifer and anything that is not in line with the morality that God wanted to force on people. Not much later, the young widow remarried. Anyone want to know who the lucky man was?"
When no one answered, Alexander lit a new cigarette to buy some time. With a thick smirk on his face, he said:
"With none other than Jesus of Nazareth, and the young woman was Mary Magdalene, the Magdala."
"Impossible, everyone knows that Jesus was unmarried!"
Daniel said in disbelief. Ella added skeptically:
"I went to Catholic schools all my childhood and nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about a Mrs. Jesus."
"Is that so?"
Alex asked with a mysterious smile on his lips:
"The Bible as we know it today is nothing more than a book created by a committee. I'll come back to that in a moment. However, in the modern Bible, as you know, there are several passages that point to a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Keep in mind that Jesus was a Jew, so you have to look at these passages through a 2000-year-old Jewish lens. Not from the point of view of this modern society. I'm going to cite only the most famous examples from the Bible, but also from the Gospels found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which archaeologists and theologians have since recognized as authentic. The so-called Nag Hammadi scrolls and the so-called apocryphal books. They are as authentic as the four gospels of the Bible, but there are many more of them. Simply put, they are the writings that were not included in the New Testament but have been scientifically proven to be authentic. How do we know that they are authentic? Well, aside from the scientific tests that have been done on the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as carbon dating, we know of their existence because they are mentioned in other early Christian documents and writings dating back to the first century. Jesus was a rabbi, what we would call a theological teacher and priest in one. A rabbi about thirty years old in the Judea of 2000 years ago, who traveled around unmarried and in the company of twelve men and no women. That would have raised a lot of suspicion and even more gossip. A rabbi was expected, no demanded, to be married. The chances that he could have laid the foundation for his movement with such a lifestyle are virtually nil. The apostle Peter is seen as the first pope, of whom Jesus is said to have said that he was the stone upon which he would build his church. He was the first to have a problem with The Magdala. When I look at the state of that church today, I do not know if Jesus said that to Peter as a blessing or a curse. Remember this guy denounced Jesus 3 times and yet the man himself told him that he would be the one to lead the movement. Or Jesus was a bigger man than me, or he meant it as a curse. Mary's closeness to Jesus led to tensions with Peter because of her gender and Peter's envy of the special teachings given exclusively to her by Jesus and not to the men. I would not be surprised if Peter was the inspiration for Paul when he wrote his infamous letter to Timothy and by doing so put women in the doghouse of the church for almost 2 millennia."
Alex quoted Paul's words with a thick voice as if he was he was a stern teacher of old:
"Let a woman learn quietly with all submission; I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but she is to be silent."
He took a swig of his glass and said:
"Freaking idiot! Peter was not comfortable with the apparent contradictions in Jesus' teachings. On the one hand, he said that he was not there to take away a single word of God, but only to add to them. So everything in the Torah that came before him retained its divine value. On the other hand, he gave knowledge to Mary Magdalene that he did not even give to his male disciples. In addition, he approved of Mary teaching others in the movement and could often be seen silently observing her. Even then, a small group within the movement considered Mary Magdalene to be the most important of the disciples, not Peter. A belief still held by some to this day. Peter once asked Jesus why he held the Magdalene in higher esteem than his twelve male apostles and why he kissed her on the mouth so often in public. An unmarried man kissing a widow in public. In those days? Unthinkable, because at worst it would result in stoning for both of them. The high priests of the temple could have eliminated Jesus in a much easier way than trough Pontius Pilate. All they had to do was prove that he was an unmarried man having an unchaste relationship or doing unchaste things with a woman, and the Torah would give them plenty of cover to put him to death. However, they never accused him of having an unchaste relationship when it was common knowledge and could simply be seen in public that he was kissing a woman on the mouth. Why would they do that if he was not married to that woman?"
He paused his argument for a moment to light another cigarette and take a drag before continuing:
"At the crucifixion, who was sitting at the foot of the cross? Right, Mary Magdalene, while his mother and a half-sister stood at a distance. How do we know this? The colors of their veils. The whole crucifixion is not only described in the four gospels, many people wrote about it and described the colors of the veils of the women present. Unfortunately, all of these other texts were left out when the Bible was compiled at the first bishops' conference in Nicaea in 325, where they had to come up with a unified Bible at the request of Emperor Constantine. The Roman Empire was a hodgepodge of different faiths. Christianity had grown from an obscure little group under constant persecution to the most influential but divided into separate groups. And believe me, once they gained that position, they held on to it tooth and nail, not hesitating to persecute and murder followers of other religions in turn. The emperor wanted to restore order in his empire, and at the urging of his mother Helena, who was a devout follower of Jesus, he decided to make Christianity the first true state religion, and his first act was to unite the factions in the faith. To do this, he needed a single text to which all groups would adhere, the Bible. Of the dozens of gospels, four remained, and the Magdala disappeared from the whole story as much as possible. Mary, the mother of Jesus, always wore blue. Mary Magdalene always wore red. During the Renaissance hundreds of works were created that emphasized the color of the veils. Many of these artists can be seen as rebels. They were able to give the middle finger to Rome in their work, without words, by openly displaying their knowledge of The Magdala, and the Church could not possibly criticize them without entering into a debate in which they would have to recognize the importance of Mary along with the possibility of marriage. This is how Botticelli, De Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and others trapped them. At the crucifixion, who sat at the foot of the cross? At the funeral, who washed and anointed the body? Mary Magdalene, while the other women mourned from afar. According to Jewish tradition, and certainly at that time, it was and is always the wife who washes her deceased husband. Had he been unmarried, the task would have been performed by his mother and sisters. A complete stranger washing an unmarried man for his funeral, impossible! All of this information was removed from the Bible as much as possible, but the information was never really lost. As much as the church tried to suppress this science, it was never forgotten and can still be found in museums around the world. Paintings by world famous painters. Just to name a few; Raphael, Giotto, Botticelli, and Michelangelo. All gave the woman with the red veil, The Magdala, a more prominent place than the woman with the blue veil, Mary, the mother of Jesus. After he rose from the dead, who was the first person he went to see? The Magdala! In fact. A bit strange when you ask me if the Magdala meant as little as the Bible and the Church would have us believe. I would think that if a person could come back from the dead, the first person you would look up would be someone really important to you. And who could be more important than the person you truly love with all your soul, the person who was your true soul-mate?"
Ella sat with her mouth open and nodded. Her image of the Bible and Jesus had just been turned upside down.
" But that's not all. I have another bomb to drop on this holy house. We already know that Mary Magdalene had a child with John, a son named Matz, and that means gift from God. However, she had a daughter with Jesus named Sarah and at the time of the crucifixion, she was pregnant with a son whom they decided to name David. Sarah was also blessed by God, why did he bless a female offspring for the first time? I don't know, something typical God, I guess, because sometimes his thoughts and actions can't be explained logically. David was not blessed because before he was born God had unfortunately found out who or better what Jesus was. However, this one blessing for Sarah was strong enough to be passed down through the ages from mother to daughter in her bloodline, thanks to the fact that her father was Jesus, and even more so because of what her grandfather and great-grandfather were and pumped into her bloodline."