How Did I Miss This?

Some things I just take for granted without thinking about them. Here is a case in point:

The Winter 2008 edition of The Priscilla Papers, the academic journal published by Christians for Biblical Equality features the article, "Women Martyrs in the Early Church: Hearing Another Side to the Story" by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari, which dropped a little fact into my lap that overturned something I had always taken for granted.

Molinari pointed out two pieces of Scripture:

Mark 1:29-31
²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. ³⁰ Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. ³¹ So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

1 Corinthians 9:5
⁵ Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

(for those unfamiliar with the Bible, Simon and Cephas are the same guy, more commonly known as Peter)

I've emphasized the bits that were a little paradigm shattering for me. I had always taken for granted that the apostles were all single. I'm not sure where I acquired that idea, but it seems to me that I'm not alone in believing it.

Instead, we know for sure that Peter had a wife (and Molinari's article, which is not about married apostles but about women martyrs, shares her martyrdom story), but according to Paul, not only Peter but "the other apostles" had wives as well, and their wives went with them as they travelled for their ministries.

I don't know about you, but this was a pretty radical new image of the apostles for me, and one that I should have come up with on my own. With all the arguments going on to counter Dan Brown's suggestion that Jesus was married -- i.e. that it was culturally the norm in Jesus' day for Jewish men to be married and that the radicalness of Jesus was that he wasn't, blah, blah, blah -- why did it never occur to me that twelve more guys running around single with Jesus would be even weirder! It made sense for Jesus to be single (ask me why!) but it wasn't necessary for the apostles to be single as well.

Now, this does beg a question: did the apostles' wives travel with them while they were travelling with Jesus? It's another interesting tidbit to consider...

I just can't believe I've always missed this!