ABC 'Jesus' Special Surprises Viewers

by Randall Murphree
November 7, 2003

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(AgapePress) - ABC television received a great deal of criticism and advance protests when the network scheduled Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci. The show aired on November 3 and startled its harshest critics with a fair-handed treatment of the debate at hand -- whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. Their outrage-in-advance was at best an over-reaction, though some still contend that just addressing the question is an offense to the Christian faith.

The myth has its origin in a legend which purports that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife and that they had a child. She and other believers supposedly fled to the South of France shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. The idea of her alleged marriage to Jesus was then passed down through the centuries by a secret society called the Priory of Zion. Artist Leonardo Da Vinci, probably best known for his "The Last Supper" painting -- most familiar of all depictions of the event -- was supposedly a member of this mysterious, secret society.

The legend is not new, but it has generated new interest because of The Da Vinci Code, a novel by Dan Brown. Brown claims the Church, from the first century on, suppressed the "truth" -- that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. Conversely, Brown claims the Church fabricated the ideas that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and that Jesus remained single. Unfortunately for Brown, ABC found only one other "authority" to back him up -- Margaret Starbird, author of The Goddess in the Gospels.

Da Vinci attained a central role in this little drama by virtue of his reputation as one who elevated Mary Magdalene to apostle status. Some look at his "The Last Supper" painting and insist that the man to Jesus' right is a woman. However, Elizabeth Vargas, the show's host, said ABC was able to find only one art historian who believed that to be true.

In speculating on Da Vinci's supposed membership in the Priory of Zion, Vargas acknowledged that the "vast majority" of medieval history experts told her there was no proof that the Priory of Zion ever existed. Among Christian scholars (all PhDs) Vargas interviewed were seminarians Father Richard McBrien (University of Notre Dame), Darrell L. Bock and D. Jeffrey Bingham (Dallas Theological Seminary), Karen King (Harvard Divinity), and Elaine Pagels (Princeton).

The two women were more inclined than were the men to leave an opening for the idea of Jesus being married. And some pointed out that the presumption that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute is not evidenced in Scripture. While the scholars did not agree on all of the details, all did agree that there is no proof -- nor even any compelling evidence -- that Jesus was ever married. As a whole, these scholars came down on the side of historic, biblical Christian belief.

Vargas said, "We found no evidence that there was ever a child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene." She reiterated that fact with yet another statement: "There is no evidence of a child or a bloodline [of Jesus and Mary Magdalene] in any historical documents anywhere." Could it be that the legend was passed on by a myth?