So Jesus was married, huh? And what about his brothers?

I am probably the only person on this rock who hasn't actually read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Oh, I admit it's pure prejudice on my part. I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey, either (but that's more because someone told me the 'Grey' in question referred to 'Lawrence'... thus putting me off breakfast for life...)

Nonetheless it is perfectly true - I have an aversion to the sort of 'herd' instinct that makes people want to read whatever everyone else is reading at the moment. And yes, I have been known to make the occasional exception here and there: Harry Potter was one (though I never got past the fourth book in the series)... and another was Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Luis de Bernieres: a novel I had put off reading for years in protest at the fact that -damn it, everybody else was reading it at the time...even Hugh Grant at the very end of Notting Hill, for crying out loud!

Naturally, in the case of Captain Corelli I did eventually succumb to peer pressure (and curiosity)... and also went on to read nearly all of de Berniere's other books, too. But...

Hang on...why on earth am I writing about books, anyway? Ah yes. It's International Book Week. Or at least, that's what I am told on Facebook (and as we all know, everything you read on Facebook is always 100% accurate... yes, even if it's contradicted by a million other Facebook posts immediately below...) And in any case: what's the point of having an unofficial, non-representative and entirely arbitrary thing called 'International Book Week'... if you're not going to use it as a subtle excuse to give Maltese politics a rest for just this week?

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So back to books. Like I said, I have never read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code... and, unlike either Captain Corelli or Harry Potter (but not unlike 50 Shades) it's not a book I can realistically ever see myself being drawn into later in life. There are plenty of reasons why not: one, because though I have never owned, borrowed, stolen or even so much as made physical contact with an individual copy, I can probably still rattle off the entire plot (subplots and all) by heart.

That's what generally happens when everyone else happens to have already read it, and - for reasons I admit I have never fully understood - actually thought its contents were: a) original; b) plausible; c) interesting; and d) worth divulging to third parties... ALL THE BLOODY TIME.

So for two or three years - maybe more - Dan Brown was something you just couldn't get away from. He was everywhere you looked: not unlike that Jesus Christ fellow he wrote about in the first place (who, as you may remember, was last seen at every single polling station during the divorce referendum, frowning over everybody's shoulder as they voted...).

Actually, let me cut Jesus a little slack here. Dan Brown was much worse. At least, during the divorce referendum campaign you could always get away from JC by simply hopping onto a plane. No such opportunity with the Da Vinci Code, however. Oh no. There wasn't a square inch of the entire planet where you could actually enjoy a Dan Brown-free moment back then.

At one point, global hysteria reached such unlikely levels, that I was almost scared to open the fridge... you never know, the last of Jesus's blessed bloodline might be hiding right behind that tub of 'I Can't Believe It's Not Buddha'... And the worst part of it all? People (well, some people, anyway) actually thought Dan Brown made the whole goddamn thing up himself. Can you believe it? As though the same conspiracy theories Dan Brown merely regurgitated in novel format, had not been previously in circulation (among a far smaller number of people, I admit) for around 20 centuries at least.

Listening to popular critiques of The Da Vinci Code, anyone would come away with the absurd idea that Brown was the first person in history to ever propose that Jesus Christ may have been married (to a reformed prostitute, no less); that he may have fathered children of his own; and that there may be an ultra-secret society, still in existence today, charged with keeping all of the above an impenetrable secret for all eternity... a task at which they evidently weren't very much good (but hey! Neither was Dan Brown's novel - Stephen Fry once famously described it as 'arse gravy of the worst kind', and... for a change I don't think I can really add anything to that myself).

In any case: it took a long time, but the global hullabaloo surrounding this particular example of literary crap did eventually subside, you know. That's the thing with arse gravy: it always subsides in the end (otherwise, we'd be right up shit creek, now wouldn't we?)

So the good news is that I can finally run the risk of opening my fridge again... not that there's much point, as a certain Mother Hubbard (and her dog) would no doubt agree. The bad news, on the other hand, is that... well, the inevitable happened this week. There I was, hopping mindlessly from one Internet page to another without a care in the world... when, all of a sudden and entirely without warning...

Aaaaaaaaargh!

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It's back! The arse gravy is back, I tell you! And this time it's much worse because... there's PROOF! Seriously, I kid you not: some Harvard scholar - no, I don't think it was Alfred Sant - seems to have stumbled upon the fragment of a 4th century Coptic manuscript which indicates that Jesus was, in fact, married. Or at least he makes reference to his 'wife', who is apparently (my Coptic Greek being a little rusty, and all that) even named as 'Mary'.

And predictable as the polls ahead of the next election, one by one all the online  comments start materialising. So, um, gee... Guess Dan Brown had a point after all. Fancy that...

Yikes! Meanwhile, a couple of questions spring to mind. I won't go into the authenticity of this particular fragment, or the translation of the same. But... why should this newfound evidence even so much as raise an eyebrow... when there are entire surviving texts dating back to roughly the same period, which are just as controversial, if not much more?

Not just isolated fragments, but entire manuscripts forming part of what we now call The Apocryphal New Testament - including the gospels of St Thomas, St Bartholomew and St Peter - that have been around for just under 2,000 years, and yet are only ever mentioned in passing in a bid to discredit them.

I find all this particularly odd, especially in view of what these texts contain. St Peter's Gospel, for instance, features some fascinating anecdotes about how Jesus had 'abused' his Divine powers when still a little child (in one episode, he reportedly 'shrivels' another boy's penis as a joke - but being all powerful and all merciful, he unshrivels it later).

Another of these Gospels (St Thomas's, I believe, though this is from memory) has it that Jesus Christ was not crucified at all, but lived the last years of his (long) life in India or thereabouts.

Indeed there are so many alternative versions of Jesus Christ's unofficial biography running around, that one more or one less should scarcely make a difference at all.

And those are just the unorthodox scripts. What are we to make of the often surprising details contained in the 'officially accepted' versions, too? I.e., the Four Gospels of the New Testament, authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

I still remember my own untold amazement when I decided, as a young adult (early 20s, as I recall... and still a believer, if only just), to take a copy of the New Testament off on holiday with me so that I could read it for myself in peace and quiet.

My jaw physically dropped when I got to that part when Jesus was preaching at a temple, and... well, here it is in the original:  "31 And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.' 33 And he replied, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' 34 And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother'." (Mark 3:31-35)

If this were only a one-off allusion to any additional offspring of the Joseph and Mary clan, I'd say... fine, maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding. But this is not the only reference to Jesus having siblings. Matthew even names them, for crying out loud: "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?" (Matthew 13:55)

So Jesus had brothers, huh? And sisters too, according to Mark. And we have this not from Dan Brown, but from no less authoritative a source than that which we so often describe as 'Gospel Truth'.

And this brings me to the overwhelming irony, perhaps best encapsulated by that other, considerably better-known Gospel quote - the one about "seeing the mote in one's neighbour's eye, but not the beam in one's own."

Considering the undeniable existence of a certain breed of Christian (for let's face it: they're not all the same, any more than all Muslims are the same) who takes mortal offence at the idea that Jesus Christ may have been 'married with children'... well, why do these same Christians not even so much as blink, when confronted with such graphic evidence that he was actually one of a number of offspring born to the same woman... which in turn suggests that his mother couldn't possibly have been a virgin till the end of her days, as the official (Catholic) version of events would have us believe right down to this day?

I don't know myself. And to be frank: I'd be very surprised if God knows, either....