First Century marriages had unique rules all their own.  Unlike depictions of matchmakers like Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof, matchmaking in Jesus’ day was controlled by fathers or the male head of the family.  After a marriage deal was struck between the respective heads of the households, marriages then occurred in two stages.  The first stage was the agreement to the match, sealed with dowry money paid to the father of the groom.  Dowry money was determined in a particular time and place with the understanding that adding another woman to the family would cost the man’s family to keep her.  After stage one the two children did not co-habit (which made Jesus’ mother’s pregnancy a major slipup, incidentally.)  Today we would refer to stage one as a couple being engaged.  The second part was the week-long party of the wedding celebration itself, as described in the wedding at Cana.  The bride and groom then moved in together to the groom’s father’s home. 

When a “this century” fundamentalist Christian boasts about the sanctity of marriage in Jesus’ time, he or she don’t know what they are talking about.  First century marriages do not reflect the Leave it to Beaver family.  They were continually trying to make good economic gains for their respective families and not let their money stray too far from them.  Although young boys were often contracted to be married when the girl was still a pre-adolescent child, he usually took his bride home when he was about 18 after the second stage of the wedding.  Girls were often promised in marriage when they were children and the second part of the celebration occurred whenever menstruation began.  Incidentally, that form of arranged marriage (waiting to co-habit until she was old enough) has been implemented continually down through the ages.  In our Canadian heritage, Samuel de Champlain married a 12 year old girl (Héléne Boullé) but he did not cohabit with her until she was an older teenager.  In the meantime, she lived with the nuns in a convent in Quebec City.

Back to the wedding ceremony - it must be understood that during the wedding celebration proper, all festivities were controlled by the mother of the groom; this opens the story of the wedding at Cana to some interesting speculation.  For all intents and purposes, she was the wedding planner.  That was her job! 
When looking at the wedding at Cana, judging by the reaction of Mary (aka “the wedding planner”) to the celebrants having run out of wine, the wedding may well have been for one of her own sons.  Running out of wine at a first century Jewish wedding was a faux pas of gigantic proportions, especially if you were the groom’s family.  Family honour was at stake.  And there was an order to the quality of the wine served.  Good wine was served first then followed by the plonk after the guests were tipsy.   Was the wedding at Cana for one of Jesus’ brothers?  He had four: James, Joses (a form of Joseph), Simon, and Jude.  Or could it have been for Jesus himself?   
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What other evidence is there?  In John 20: 17 Mary Magdalene is described as “clinging” to Jesus. In first century Jewish culture, women touching men was only done between married folk.  But the most powerful evidence comes in two ways: in the first place, none of the gospels ever say Jesus was NOT married.  In a day and age when most men were married, can we assume that he was by the silence from of the gospels?   The second indicator can be seen the morning after his death.  Mary Madeline is first at his tomb.  Every one of the four gospels has her there.  In the first century, it was the wife’s responsibility to prepare the body for burial.  The body had to be washed, anointed with perfumes, and wrapped in linen cloth before it could be placed in a burial place.  So why was Mary there on that first Easter morning?  Could she have been his wife?
Over the 20 centuries, much has been written and many theories have been developed as to the marital status of Jesus of Nazareth.  These are, at best, theories.  In the end, if I had to answer the question, “Was Jesus married?” my answer would be: “I don’t know.”  Perhaps he was, and perhaps he wasn’t.  That’s what makes this such an interesting question.

Question:  I get the sense that there were several groups of Jewish believers in Jesus’ time, each believing in the fundamentals of Judaism with unique added perspectives belonging to each individual group.  Who were they, and what did they believe?

It is interesting that we know so little about the persons who were the people of Jesus in his time.  Like modern day Christianity, there were many different groups of believers who all contributed to the mosaic of the society of the day.  Their differences were based on their view of religion or their birthright.  Generally, the majority population were too engaged in the struggle to feed themselves and their families that they didn’t have a specific religious group; this is much like it is today, where many people do not necessarily support a particular Christian denomination.  2000 years ago, all the groups below were made up of men.

Pharisees:  I put Pharisees first because when the diaspora occurred - when Rome expelled most of the Jewish population from the Holy Land in the year 70 CE - the Pharisees took over the religious leadership of the displaced Jewish population.  In Jesus day they were the rabbis, the teachers in the synagogues.  Jesus was also referred to as a rabbi, so he quite possibly was himself a Pharisee.  They believed in the resurrection of the body after death.  They were also known as legal experts.  Jesus criticized the Pharisees when they were too legalistic and put fancy arguments in place of human needs.  Some Pharisees were also part of the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious group in the Temple.

Sadducees:  They tended to be wealthy and of the elite class.  They did not accept any interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) that was not written down in the verses themselves.  They rarely went out and were closely tied to the Temple.  They made animal and plant sacrifices in the Temple and were concerned about Temple purity (I wounder what they said about Jesus’ rant against the money changers in the courtyard of the Gentiles).  The Sadducees were also influenced by Greek culture and education.

Zealots: They were not so much tied to a religious doctrine but rather promoted the concept of a free Israel and Judea, especially free from Roman occupation.  Many were caught and crucified as being enemies of Rome.  Consequently, many Zealots walked around armed.  It is believed that Simon, one of Jesus’ disciples, was a Zealot and belonged to this group.  In 66 CE the Zealots rose up and took the city of Jerusalem.  Four years later the city was recaptured and destroyed, along with the Temple.

Essenes:  In the 1940s and 1950s – in my lifetime - an incredible discovery was made in caves near the Dead Sea.  The discovery was the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Found by a shepherd, the clay containers held Old Testament scrolls, the oldest in present day history.  They were the library of a community called the Essenes who lived an austere life in the desert.  John the Baptist seems to have been a member of this group. 

Priests:  They were usually wealthy and occupied an upper-class positions in the country.  They believed only in the written Torah, aka the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).  They rejected any oral tradition.  Many priests were also members of the ruling body called the Sanhedrin. 
Levites:  They were part of the tribe of Levi and inherited their status as a birth rite.  Levi was the third son of Jacob and Leah.  The Levites worked in the Temple when Jesus was alive.  Jesus used a Levite in his parable of the Good Samaritan as someone who should have known better. 
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Scribes:  Men who were able to write in Hebrew.  At the time of Jesus, the language of the day was Aramaic.  It was the Scribes who could write in Hebrew.  They were passionate about their craft and their exclusive knowledge.  A lot of their time they spent as copyists, creating new scrolls as the old ones wore out.  

​The Promised Land took up very little geography when compared to other nations of the Mediterranean Region.  Rome controlled every nation boarding on the Mediterranean Sea.  There were between 40 and 50 states.  Why was the Mediterranean Sea so important?  Because it was the Roman Empire’s superhighway system transferring both goods and ideas.  Today it would be the Internet and the Amazon Delivery system.  It was also about control and having the ability to get troops around to ensure the vassal countries were following Rome’s rules.  Later, Rome built a road system where the Mediterranean Sea did not exist.  Roads crisscrossed all over the Empire.  People could move about and ideas could spread with ease.  Evolving Christianity used Rome’s roads and sailing vessels. 

What did the Promised Land have which made it so important to the Romans?  The Children of Israel lived at the crossroads of caravan routes from the east.  It was a transfer point.  There was lively trading between the far east and the Mediterranean shore.  Judea was the trans-shipping point for goods, transported from land to water.  Spices, silks, incense, mastic (as a medicine), tea, dyes, perfumes, porcelain and other Far East goods were highly valued in the west.  It was a lucrative trade.  Countries who allowed caravans of trade goods to cross their land could also exact a percentage of the value of the goods for simply crossing their land.  Taxes!  The population of Israel (Galilee) and Judea was not large enough to muster an army to beat off the conquerors.  So, the people of the Promised Land became subjects of a conquering nation like Rome.

The problem of Roman conquest in the Holy Land was two-fold: people who had faith in one God were conquered by a pagan nation and this did not mesh with Israelite faith rules; and Rome treated the land and people as a vassal state with the purpose of providing food for Rome, especially grain.  In the Promised Land, most farmers enjoyed farming their own land.  Farms were small.  Farmers could grow enough to feed themselves and their own families and have a little left over to sell.  Taxation, before the Romans, collected a per-capita “poll tax”, as well as an income tax paid in flour, meal, cattle, sheep, fowl, and other provisions.  There was also a Temple tax.  People could afford the taxes.  After the Roman conquest, there was an additional poll tax and a percentage tax as high as 3%. on crops.  This proved to be a tipping point for the local farmer and many were forced to sell their farms simply to pay their taxes.  As a consequence, farms became very large and many farmers were absentee landlords.  Local farmers became share croppers. 

When we think of industrial size farming, with specialized crops, we think of the 21st century.  Not so!   In Jesus’ time, in the Promised Land, many farms were owned and controlled by men who held the debts of Judean and Galilean framers.  The farms grew in size.  As a result, the farms were turned to specialized crops to satisfy the needs and demands of the Roman population.   This specialization focused on grain crops, olives, grapes for wine making and certain spices. 
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Because of this large-scale farming, old traditions of the Children of Israel were lost.  There was a tradition where, every 50 years, one year would be set aside to forgive debts and return land and property to original owners or to their descendants, among other merciful acts.  These so-called “Jubilee years” went undeclared under Roman rule.  Many other rules that the Israelites and Judeans had which governed their day-to-day lives were lost as the Promised Land became more Romanized.  By the year 70CE, when Rome burned the City of Jerusalem and expelled the majority of the Jewish people to the hinterland of the Empire, all rights were lost until 1948, when the modern state of Israel was born.    

Over the years colours have been added to the worship service.  It is especially evident when looking at a minister’s stole – the strip of colourful fabric worn over the shoulders and hanging down to the knees. When I was growing up our minister did not wear a stole of any colour.  He wore a black academic gown with three stripes on each arm (he was a Rhodes Scholar.)  I do remember a coloured cloth hanging from the pulpit or scripture lectern.  Other than that, the sanctuary was colourless except for the flowers in the front of the church.  Today churches are much more colourful.  In fact, there are seasons of the church, and each has now been ascribed a colour.  In the United Church of Canada, they are as follows:
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Blue:  Included the First Sunday of Advent until December 23.  
White: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Baptism of Jesus, Transfiguration Sunday, Easter Season and Trinity Sunday, All Saint’s Day and Reign of Christ Sunday.
Green:  It is the most prevalent colour in our tradition.  It includes all ordinary times: Seasons of Epiphany and Pentecost but not the day of Pentecost which is red.
Purple or Black worn from Ash Wednesday and all through Lent.
Red from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday
Black is worn from Good Friday to Holy Saturday
Red is also worn on the Day of Pentecost and any special services.
Orange is Creation time which begins in September and runs until Thanksgiving Sunday

The colours in this Blog represent the seasons of particular events in the Christian calendar.  For
example Easter events are colour coded purple.   

In 1963 I attended Sir George Williams University in Montreal as an adult student.  Adult Student was a code word for this guy never went to high school or never completed high school.  I majored in Geography because I was good at shading maps.  I took two important courses back then which led me to write this blog today: geomorphology and glaciation.  Understanding these scientific principles directed me to a fuller understanding of Noah and his story.  The question is:  did the flood Noah and his family endured in Genesis actually happen?

During the last ice age glaciers covered almost one-third of Earth's land mass, with the result being the oceans were about 400 feet (122 meters) lower than they are today. During the last global "warm spell," about 125,000 years ago, the seas were about 18 feet (5.5. meters) higher than they are now.  As a matter of interest, people lived where the English Channel and the Mediterranean Sea are today before they were then flooded.  There is also compelling evidence that there was a natural dam across the entrance to the Black Sea which held back millions of gallons of water from the Mediterranean Sea.  The dam suddenly gave way allowing a massive flood of water which flooded where people lived.  The Mediterranean stories of a flood like Noah’s have an excellent historical origin.

Christians who are more fundamental accept the story of the Great Flood as a tale which cast Noah and God as a team to save all the good of the world.  A story of a flood like this is incorporated into every faith boarding on the Mediterranean Sea.  In Greek mythology, Zeus decided to destroy all life with a flood.  The king Deucalion was charged with building a boat.  The religions of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers also had a flood story.  Stories like Noah’s are by a group of civilizations who would have suffered from extensive flooding at some point in their collective history.

At this point I would like to talk about civilization and glaciers.  The last continental glacier melted over the course of thousands of years, finishing up about 10000 years ago.  Civilization – an advanced state of human society - was born in three places in the world: The Fertile Crescent which included Mesopotamia to Egypt (approx. 8000 BCE),  Central America (approx. 8000 BCE), and Yellow River in China (5000 BCE).  Writing was an invention of civilization; prior to this, the only way to communicate history was orally. 

Our ancient brothers and sisters needed a way to explain the misconstrued happenings of history.  The puzzling question of who we are and how we came to be here is answered in Genesis 1.  Adam (meaning earth or soil) and Eve (life) filled the void of ignorance until the science of Darwin began modern history.  Bishop Ussher began his timeline of the world calculation by adding the ages of the twenty-one generations of people of the Hebrew-derived Old Testament, beginning with Adam and Eve.  He calculated the first day of creation to be October 23, 4004 BCE.

What evidence is there that melting glaciers had anything to do with Noah and his flood?  Nothing specific.  However, in a time when oral tradition was the only way to communicate history, the records of sea rising would have carried over hundreds of years by one generation to another and remembered through oral history.  There is one catastrophic event in the Middle East which may explain the flood, as I alluded to before.  The melt water from the glaciers raised the ocean levels including in the Mediterranean Sea.  At that time, about 9000 years ago, the channel between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (known today as the Bosphorus Strait) was still an earthen dam.  Under the weight of the glacial melt water, the dam gave way and sent millions of litres of water into the Black Sea.  This event may have been the seed of the Noah Story. 

Let’s look at Noah’s journey.  Prior to Noah being chosen to lead the rescue of two of all creatures, he was the only righteous man in God’s kingdom.  Noah found favour in the sight of the Lord.  So, Noah built an ark to hold the animals of the earth.  When the rains came, the ark floated and began its 40-day journey.  Now we need to understand that whenever 40 is used in the scriptures, it means an estimated time, not a literal time.  For example, 40 days means a long time.  Forty years means a really long time.  There was no rudder in the ark so Noah was at the mercy of the winds and currents.  He was there but going nowhere.  Life is like that for some people including the people left on the earth after the rains commenced.  
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We have never found the remains of his ark.

Good question!  People in the first century were certainly no different than we are today except we now have advances in public health.  Medical interventions in the western world give us a much better standard of health.  We also live much longer today, despite the Old Testament claims about the longevity of Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah who died at 969 years.  In Jesus’s time, curing illness was much different than today.  People depended on faith healers.  Jesus was one of the many faith healers who journeyed throughout the countryside healing the sick.  As far as we can ascertain Jesus never charged for this service; other faith healers of his time did require payment.

People thought that all diseases were triggered by an evil demon which possessed a person.  In order to be cured, you needed to have the evil demon cast out of you.  In other words, you needed an “illness exorcism”.  There are still a few pseudo-Christians around today who will perform this service for you, usually at a cost, and most often without documented success.    

In the Old Testament, Psalm 90 talks about human beings making it to three score years and ten (age 70).  A few more might make it to 80 years of age.  In the Old Testament there are fictional characters like Methuselah (Genesis 5:21–27), the imaginary grandfather of Noah, who supposedly lived to 969 years.  In reality, when Jesus was crucified in his thirties, he was already considered to be in society’s older age group.
All first century people, from the emperor in Rome, to the lowest slave in the tin mines in Greece, had external parasites such as lice.  There was no way to control them. Public health was not a known practice.  As well, people thought that parasites did nothing except make you itch.  Today we know that parasites cause some serious health issues.  People also suffered from internal parasites like worms.  I remember 60 years ago some of my friends, living on farms, having to take worm medicine.  In Jesus’ day, dysentery was prevalent and often killed people.  Diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating, and nausea were all common symptoms of internal parasites.  Malaria, common in the Middle East, was caused by a parasite as well.

Medical knowledge was generally unknown in the first century.   How the body worked was a mystery to people.  For example, pregnancy was a great mystery for all people and the answer they came up with was wrong.  The general misunderstanding most people had, that in order to have a baby, all that was needed was for a man to plant the seed into the woman, much like planting a pumpkin seed in the raised bed in the back yard.  She provided nothing more than a warm and fertile environment for the seed-child to grow.  I don’t know how they explained a child born that resembled its mother.

This was the world of first century Palestine where Jesus found himself.  So how does one explain such miracles as curing blindness by spitting into some dirt and rubbing it on the blind person’s eyes (John 9:1–12).  That probably did not happen.  However, today there are occasionally stories told where people are suddenly cured of a disease for which there seemed to be no cure.  These are called spontaneous remissions.  You have often heard the expression “mind over matter”.  There are instances today where people get in touch with their bodies and literally “will wellness”.  I think first century had the same sorts of miracles.

I have often heard the expression “there but for the Grace of God go I”.  What it means is that God intervened on your behalf to relieve you of something which could have been much worse.  This is the whole basis of the business of sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.  Pope John Paul 2 was beatified on the evidence that a nursing sister, who had Parkinson’s Disease, prayed to him after his demise, and was cured of Parkinson’s Disease by the late Pope’s heavenly intervention.  Why would God choose her over the hundreds of other folks who also suffered from the same disorder?  It seems a little unfair to me.  
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I suspect Jesus was able to help many in his day who were suffering from some sort of illness.  He was a man of faith who was able to reduce anxiety by reassuring his followers that God was with them.  

Before Christianity became the official church of the Roman Empire, Paganism was the faith of the Empire and the people.  Paganism has numerous gods, each of whom govern different aspects of daily life.  The deities of the Roman Empire borrowed heavily from the older Greek pantheon - for example, the king of the Gods on Mount Olympus was Zeus (Roman Jupiter), Poseidon (Roman Neptune) was the ruler of the sea, and so on.   Jupiter was the boss god in Rome.  The return of the longer days after the winter solstice was celebrated at a festival to the Roman god Saturn, the god of agriculture, time, and renewal.  This festival, held on December 25, was called Saturnalia; later, Christianity would co-opt this celebration and designate it Jesus’ birthday.  During the first few centuries of the common era, every town had a shrine to their local pagan god and visitors would go to these community shrines and pay their respects (that is, all visitors except Christians and those belonging to the Jewish tradition.)

Christianity really took off when the Roman Emperor Constantine was persuaded by his wife to adopt the Christian faith as the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Constantine himself converted to Christianity in 312 CE.  The faith he converted to in that year was a hodge podge of different beliefs, rituals, and structures.  For Christianity to become a common faith, there needed to be a common point of belief.  Up until the early fourth century, there had been many churches with many different beliefs.  In the year 325 CE, Christian leaders from far and wide were summoned to a council by Constantine; the Emperor hosted this meeting to lay out the common ground of this new religious faith.  The Trinity is a concept which came out of this meeting, known now as the Council of Nicaea.

Trinity doctrine is commonly expressed as the statement that the one God exists as or in three equally divine “Persons”, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  It is a hard concept for people today to accept and was equally difficult for people 1700 years ago.  In fact, non-Christians in the 4th century often accused Christianity of having three gods.  So why did the people at the Council need to develop the idea of the Trinity? 

The answer is convoluted.  How do you explain the concept of the Father (God), the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Lord and Giver of Life?  I think you can also extend to the meaning of the Holy Spirit the creative teachings of Jesus.  The only time we see the three parts of the Trinity together in the gospels is in Matthew 28: 19 when Jesus tells us to go out and baptise the nations in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Perhaps my hesitancy at accepting the Trinity on its face rests in that the Trinity makes little sense to me.  I see no need for it except to explain away a question asked many years ago.  It is also such a complicated notion that it is often incomprehensible.  So, when Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark 14:36, who is he praying to?  Himself as part of the Trinity?  God?  The Holy Spirit?  In the original Greek writing, he addresses God as Father – Abba ho Pater - both in Aramaic and Greek.   

The notion of the Trinity is becoming less and less frequently used today.  In my experience, preachers and congregants pay less and less attention to it.  Once we sang hymns about the Trinity but less so today.  So where is it used?
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In Baptism the Trinity plays a front and centre role.  In my denomination, I speak the words for baptism clearly as follows, “I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” The World Council of Churches have decreed that the words of baptism shall be so.  Although the Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the World Council of Churches, they are observers.  Our Catholic brothers use the same words for their baptism as do the Protestants.  Because we use the same words The Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches accept each other‘s baptisms.