The Sexual Nature of the Divine: Reexamining Jesus and John Through Ancient Texts

In my book Cosmism: A New Hope for Humanity, I explore one of the most controversial yet largely unexamined aspects of early Christianity: the sexual nature of spirituality in the New Testament, including the possible homoerotic or pederastic dimensions of Jesus's relationship with his "beloved disciple," John.

The Evidence Hidden in Plain Sight

The New Testament itself contains passages that, when examined without modern assumptions, reveal an unmistakably intimate relationship between Jesus and John. Consider these textual clues:

John's Self-Designation: John refers to himself as "the elder" and imagines the church as the "chosen lady" and "bride" of Christ (2 John 1, 5; Revelation 21:9; John 3:29). This positions him as the first among the community of "wives" awaiting their spiritual union with Jesus.

The Virgin Males: Perhaps most tellingly, in Revelation 14:4, John describes the specially selected community as men "who are virgins and have not been defiled with women." This creates an unmistakable homoerotic undertone to the fellowship with the Messiah.

The Language of Union: Paul repeatedly uses explicitly sexual metaphors for the relationship between Christ and believers, speaking of becoming "complete through your union with Christ" (Colossians 2:10) and presenting believers "as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:2).

Historical Parallels: David and Jonathan

This relationship pattern wasn't unprecedented in Hebrew scripture. The relationship between David and Jonathan involved "more than brotherly love." Their covenant is described with striking intimacy: "the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1-4).

When King Saul discovered their relationship, his rage was explicit: "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?" (1 Samuel 20:30). The biblical vocabulary—"perverse," "nakedness," "shame"—strongly implies sexual intimacy.

The Secret Gospel: Jesus and Lazarus

Perhaps the most explosive evidence comes from the excised portions of the Gospel of Mark. In 1958, Professor Morton Smith discovered a letter by Bishop Clement of Alexandria acknowledging the existence of a "secret gospel" of Mark. Clement admits that these passages were deliberately removed because they carried "more than a hint of the hierophantic and homosexual nature of the 'lord.'"

The hidden text describes Jesus raising a young man (identified by John as Lazarus of Bethany) from the tomb: "The youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him...And after six days, Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God."
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Even in our canonical gospels, traces remain: Mark mentions a mysterious youth wearing only a linen cloth who follows Jesus after his arrest—when the mob tries to seize him, "he left the cloth behind and ran away naked" (Mark 14:51-52). John writes three times about Jesus's love for Lazarus, noting that "Jesus wept" for him and that witnesses said, "See how much he loved him!" (John 11:3, 5, 35-36).

The Parable of the Ten Virgins

Jesus himself used sexually charged imagery in his teachings. In the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13), five wise virgins meet the bridegroom at midnight and enter the marriage feast behind locked doors. Jesus explicitly identifies himself as the bridegroom and the virgins as his disciples awaiting his return.

What kind of feast, I ask, occurs between a lord and five virgins at midnight behind locked doors, with no bride mentioned?

The Anointing at Bethany

The ritual anointing of Jesus carries significant sexual symbolism. In Hebrew scripture, "feet" is often a euphemism for genitals. When John writes that Mary anointed Jesus's "feet" with expensive spikenard—an aphrodisiac associated with fertility and eroticism—after dinner in the home of "the people Jesus loved," the sexual implications become difficult to ignore.

Religious scholars have compared this anointing to the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) fertility rituals of other cultures, where a priestess anoints the genitals of the chosen king before ritual intercourse.

Why This Matters: Truth, Justice, and Liberation

I didn't write Cosmism simply to be provocative. This book emerged from my own journey through what I can only describe as an otherworldly concentration camp of injustice—years of being wrongfully targeted by a legal-penal system corrupted by racial and gender bias, where brown-skinned men are automatically cast as villains regardless of truth.

Just as the early church censored and rewrote the gospel to hide Jesus's full humanity and sexuality, our modern systems of power continue to suppress inconvenient truths. They silence voices that challenge dominant narratives. They punish those who refuse to accept comfortable lies.

Understanding the sexual nature of spirituality in early Christianity isn't just academic—it's about recognizing how power structures manipulate truth to control people. Bishop Clement advised his disciple to deny the secret gospel "even under oath, for not all true [things] are to be said to all men." This is the same logic used by corrupt systems today: hide the truth to protect institutional power.

My justice vigil isn't separate from this scholarly work—it's the same fight. Whether it's revealing the censored intimacy between Jesus and his disciples or exposing how the legal system crushes innocent people while claiming to pursue justice, the struggle is for truth, transparency, and liberation from systems built on lies.

Conclusion

Whether Jesus had a pederastic relationship with John or Lazarus, we cannot know with certainty. What we can know is that the New Testament is saturated with sexual imagery, that early Christians engaged in practices we'd find shocking, and that church authorities deliberately censored these realities.

The same impulse that led Clement to hide the secret gospel—protecting power by suppressing truth—operates in our justice systems today. True spiritual relationship with the divine requires honesty about our nature, including our sexuality. True justice requires the same courage to face uncomfortable truths.

If we want rehabilitative and restorative justice rather than mere punishment, if we want systems that serve truth rather than power, we must be willing to examine everything we've been told with fresh eyes—including the whitewashed version of Christianity we've inherited.

The prophets—Jesus, Buddha, Socrates—were troublemakers who challenged their societies' comfortable lies. In that tradition, my work continues.

Posted by: Jude Thangarajah (aka Yoda the Prophet)