Appendix D

Reason:

Jesus Christ and Paul both traveled with women. They must have provided sexual companionship as well as taking care of other physical needs.

Answer:

The verses referred to about Jesus Christ and Paul are in the gospel of Mark and in I Corinthians.

Mark 15:40-41

There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome.

(Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;) and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem.

I Corinthians 9:5

Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?

There is absolutely not one shred of evidence that Jesus Christ ever had sexual intercourse with a woman. If he had, he would have been required to obey the Mosaic Law on the subject and marry her (of course, if the woman were married, then his intercourse would have broken the Law and Jesus could not have been our redeemer). There is also no evidence for the Apostle Paul's ever having intercourse with a woman.

The biblical culture, both Judean and Greco-Roman, kept woman and men more separated than our twentieth-century culture does. In many cases, only a woman would be allowed to get close enough to another woman to minister to her effectively. Also, the Biblical culture generally had much stricter norms concerning the separation of labor between men and women. Women would minister to Jesus, Paul, and others by doing jobs that would have degraded the men in the eyes of people to whom they taught God's Word.