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As the scene opens, a young royal couple are about to consummate their marriage. The groom, thinking that he is going to meet his wife, ‘raised the curtain of the bridal chamber, that he might bring the bride to himself.’46 He is, to say the least, surprised to find Jesus already in bower with his wife. Jesus, it transpires, has materialized there so that he can give the newly married couple a lecture on celibacy – and then promptly does so. Settling himself down on their marriage bed, Jesus tells the now slightly less happy couple to sit on two nearby couches, then proceeds to explain, at length, why they should not have sex. His reasoning is forceful. Children are without exception awful, Jesus says: they ‘become either lunatics or half-withered or crippled or deaf or dumb or paralytics or idiots’, while their tedious parents become ‘grasping’.47 If you do have children, then there will be no rest for either party, for children inevitably do ‘unprofitable and abominable works. For they will be detected either in adultery or in murder or in theft or in unchastity, and by all these you will be afflicted.’ Therefore refrain, Jesus warns them, ‘from this filthy intercourse.
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Catherine Nixey (Heretic: An Intriguing Exploration of Early Christianity, Diverse Interpretations of Jesus, and the Evolution of Singular Christ in Ancient History—An ... Magazine and UK Times Best Book of the Year)