You can kiss that slander of Jesus goodbye

Dan Brown claims that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that is 'part of the historical record'. His evidence? One passage from the gospel of Philip. Turn to page ??? in your church bibles. Oh. Ooops. This is not in the New Testament (and why would we trust those eye witnesses anyway?!). And it was most likely written after AD 250 rather than before AD 100 like the rest of the NT. Huh. Things are not looking good for Mr Brown so far.

Well, Mr Brown quotes 'Philip' like this:

And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?'

But Garry Williams quotes it from a scholarly version where square brackets mark gaps in the manuscript, and each word within the brackets is the editor's attempt at reconstructing what should be there: 

And the companion of the  [.....] Mary Magdalene. [...loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [....]. The rest of [the disciples...]. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' 

Professor Teabing says: 'As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse'. But the text of the Gospel of Philip is in Coptic and the word used here is koinonos, borrowed from Greek! The word can mean spouse. It can also mean other things. In Luke 5:10 it is used to describe the relation between fishermen who worked together as business partners. In Matthew 23:30 Jesus uses it to describe how the Pharisees deny that they would have been fellow-murderers with those who killed the prophets. So not exactly an exclusively sexual term then.

But surely the kissing seals that though, right?
Well, yes, except that the gnostics were always kissing each other. And  in 1 Corinthians 16:20, Christians in Corinth are exhorted to do the same thing - in holiness.

To see more I recommend Garry's book. 62 pages. Very readable. This was taken from pages 27-30. The Da Vinci Code from Dan Brown's Fiction to Mary Magdalene's Faith