I have heard (I honestly cannot remember where...) that to be a rabbi a man must be married. Is there any truth to this?
I am more interested in knowing if this was true in the first century C.E. than if it is true today.
I have no reason to believe that there was a change in the standard,but two thousand years is a long time to not image that things might have changed.
Part of the context of this question is that it is written that Jesus was called "Rabbi", yet Christian canon holds that Jesus was never married (a claim of which I am skeptical).
Answer
It was certainly very common, but I can't find a requirement in the talmud (which was written in the few hundred years around your target timeframe), and I find one talmudic counter-example:
On Kiddushin 71b R. Yehudah of Pumbeditha is asked why his son, R. Yitzchak, is not yet married (and is an adult).
Kiddushin 82a does argue that an unmarried man cannot teach children, but this appears to be a concern about the appearance of impropriety, not a question about his ability or knowledge.
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