The mammoth success of The Da Vinci Code book and movie has propelled into the spotlight one of the world's most interesting figures, Mary Magdalene. In the gospel story, it is not to any of the apostles that the risen Jesus first appears but to Mary Magdalene, a momentous occasion that surely should have cemented her place as one of the most important people in history. The fact that it did not speaks volumes about the blatant disregard for women within the major monolithic religions, even in the face of the reverence for the Virgin Mary within Catholicism. Obviously, a "virgin mother" must be much more highly regarded than a common prostitute, which is what Mary Magdalene is assumed to have been. The recent fracas surrounding The Da Vinci Code revolves around the tradition that the precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ not only associated with this prostitute but married her and sired children with her. Nevertheless, despite all this intrigue, is Mary Magdalene really a "historical" character? It appears that the Magdalene is in reality one of the Triple Faces of the Goddess, worshipped within so-called Pagan cultures long before the Christian era.For the rest of this article, please see Who was Mary Magdalene?
4 comments:
Mary was given the name 'Magdalene' because, though a Jewish girl, she lived in a Gentile town called Magdalene, in northern Galilee, and her culture and manners were those of a Gentile. St. Luke records that she was a notorious sinner, and had seven devils removed from her. This is the type of phobic reaction that the Patristic Church has exhibited from the second century when the gentile church of Paul seized control from Peter and James, Jesus own brother. In the Pauline method of obfuscation, a few centuries after the idea of Mary as being anything besides a whore has taken firm root. The words of Pope Gregory I in 591 AD speak volumes: "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark."
As Jesus made his way up the path of progression after his death from Man, to Teacher to Prophet to the Messiah to the Son of God and finally to God; so to did Mary-- only in the other direction- from apostle and most loved of Jesus, to the apostle to the apostles, to a "follower" of Jesus, to a Sinner and eventually a "prostitute." After Mel Gibson's unbiblical farce of Jesus death, more Christians than ever have decided to again push this paternalistic agenda, but then Mel's belief system is pretty much bronze-age at best. The Eastern half of the Early Church had a very different idea of who Mary was. They believe that she went to Ephesus with the Jesus' mother after the crucifixion. We might ask what would merit this favor from Mary the mother of Jesus? If Mary and Jesus were married, it is easy to explain. The Orthodox faith's refusal to mistreat Mary has lain at the heart of many attacks by the Roman Church to this day. There is A French tradition that Mary, her brother Lazarus, and Maximinus, one of the Seventy-Two Apostles and some companions, fled persecutions from the Jerusalem around the year 34 AD, traversed the Mediterranean in a and came to the place now known as Sainte Marie-de-Mer near Arles. It is widely believed, (and I must say that after much research I too am starting to lean in this same direction), that Mary Magdalene came to what is today Marseille. Between the years 745-746, the chronicler Sigebert wrote that the remains of Mary had to be moved to Vézelay because of the Saracen invaders. Still, we must ask ourselves why would these remains have become so important that after nearly 700 years they would merit such attention? we can make a choice with Mary, neither of which will effect the facts: we can either choose to study and research for ourselves, and decide if Mary was the wife of Jesus and the mother of his child, that the Church has taken enormous steps to suppress any evidence of her relationship to Jesus and has caused the deaths of millions of people in the pursuit of dominance, or, you can choose to believe that Mary was just a whore; that Jesus was never human and that the Church is simply the victim of heretics evil doers. The choice is yours. I have made mine.
W. Sumner Davis, Th.D
Author of HERETICS
Good call. Yupper, there are already people claiming to be "channelling" or "speaking with" Mary Magdalene, so she can set the record straight. Hunh. I wonder how a fictional character does that. The human mind is endlessly fascinating, isn't it? Funny how MM was so quiet until the past couple of decades. Do you suppose she's been up to her eyeballs in heavenly childcare and couldn't get around to phoning home?
The movie sucked. The book was MUCH better.
Hey check out my blog. The Famous "Pyromania" Story has been posted.
Archarya S:
It wondered me_in the King James 'family' Bible I inherited after the death of my parents, Jesus is spoken of as being a 'Rabbi'. "Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life" is one of the better known questions directed to Jesus. Does a Rabbi have to be married? There are only 'theological' justifications-empty rhetoric,in the world of "Christian" discourse. But, even taking some savour of the 'official' stories in the New Testament, did not Jesus live as a Jew and die as one? So, I wanted to ask a Rabbi-(the more 'Orthodox' the better since their belief systems are closer to the Judiasm as practiced in Jesus' time) a question: Does a Rabbi have to be married? Is there any such thing as a permanent bachelor, 'unmarried rabbi'? The answer I received from four orthodox rabbis I asked in the website "www.askarabbi.com" was in all cases unequivocally a practicing or 'ordained' Rabbi MUST be married. This was so from the time Jesus was said to walk the earth-and before-up to today. All orthodox Rabbis I asked concured in saying a permanently unmarried or 'bachelor' Rabbi was and is an impossiblity and is not permitted. I asked one ultra orthodox Rabbi living in Jerusalem what was the longest time between the time a once Rabinnical student was 'ordained' or "seen" as an active Rabbi and assigned a temple or Synagogue to get married if he was still a bachelor through his seminary studies?(a very small minority, according to this Rabbi) This elderly gentleman said in his sixty years of practice as a Rabbi he had never heard of this time being over one year;in this case the young Rabbi's marriage was forstalled by health and family problems-life's misfortunes-and was not the young Rabbi's intent. By the observations of these learned men, MUST Jesus have been 'married' during his "official" three year public teaching/ministry because he was himself a Rabbi? Could the wedding at Cana where he did his first 'miracle'-turning water into wine-have been his own wedding and the subsequent stories of his preaching and life if we take the 'official' stories in the New Testament at their face value-been his "career" as a legitimate, established Rabbi?
Also one last passing thought-the religious Christians take Paul as one of the twelve disciples, yet Paul was not one of the original circle when Jesus was alive-according to the official New Testament accounts. Could the Rabbi Jesus' wife-said by some to be Mary Magdaline-have been one of the twelve, and she was written out of the later Vulgate or Bible which we know today whose text was finalized in 404AD by a comittee or 'synod' of bishops chaired by Saint Jerome?[ie: The Jerome Vulgate]
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