Jesus was married, had kids, claims Lost Gospel

PARVATHI MENON

The Lost Gospel based on written evidence from third century

“What the Vatican feared — and Dan Brown only suspected — has come true,” Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie A. Wilson, authors of The Lost Gospel write in their preface: “There is now written evidence that Jesus was married to Mary the Magdalene and that they had children together.”

At a press conference at the British Library, the authors — Mr. Jacobovici is a Canadian-Israeli film director, award-winning journalist, and writer; Professor Wilson teaches religious studies at York University, Toronto — presented the evidence, morsels of which had already been fed into the press over the last few days.

The authors claim that an ancient Syriac manuscript called Joseph and Aseneth, which found its way to the British Library on 11 November 1847 from a monastery in Egypt, is a lost gospel that fills in the gaps in the narrative about the life of Jesus, showing him as a human being who courted and then married his wife, had children, and even survived an attempt on his life.

The manuscript is already known to experts in the field of early Christianity, the authors claim, albeit only in the later Latin and Greek translations. They claim to be the first to work with a Syriac version, which they have translated and “decoded” to reach their conclusions.

The manuscript, the authors claim, is dated to roughly the third century. Its content was a direct threat to the authority of the Christian establishment and canonical literature, which by then had succeeded in sanitising Jesus, obliterating evidence of his family life and portraying Mary the Magdalene, who was actually his wife, as a prostitute.

The manuscript, they claim, is accompanied by letters from the person who authorised the translation into Syriac. This person was allegedly aware that the writers were taking a great risk by undertaking this task.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/jesus-was-married-had-kids-claims-lost-gospel/article6591576.ece?homepage=true