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    Mary Magdalene
    Mary Magdalene
    Mary Magdalene
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Mary Magdalene

    By TempleofMysteries.com

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    Of all the New Testament characters, few - other than Jesus himself - have exerted such an enduring fascination as Mary Magdalene, believed by the Church to have been a reformed prostitute. Yet her never-ending appeal is odd for one who appears so briefly - and then so elusively - in the Bible: so what has made her so entrancing to generations of Christians and non-Christians alike? Was she, as many now argue, actually Jesus’ wife and the mother of his children? And why is she intimately connected with both the cult of the Black Madonnas and the legend of the Queen of Sheba?

    This eBook is the complete and ad-free written work on Mary Magdalene from TempleofMysteries.com

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTempleofMysteries.com
    Release dateJan 25, 2012
    ISBN9781465894755
    Mary Magdalene
    Author

    TempleofMysteries.com

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      Book preview

      Mary Magdalene - TempleofMysteries.com

      Mary Magdalene

      by

      TempleofMysteries.com

      Copyright 2012 TempleofMysteries.com

      Smashwords Edition

      In the New Testament

      Evidence of the Heretics

      The Black Madonna Connection

      Controversies

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBooks may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Introduction

      Of all the New Testament characters, few - other than Jesus himself - have exerted such an enduring fascination as Mary Magdalene, believed by the Church to have been a reformed prostitute.  Yet her never-ending appeal is odd for one who appears so briefly - and then so elusively - in the Bible: so what has made her so entrancing to generations of Christians and non-Christians alike? Was she, as many now argue, actually Jesus’ wife and the mother of his children? And why is she intimately connected with both the cult of the Black Madonnas and the legend of the Queen of Sheba?

      THE MAGDALENE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

      For centuries the Church has fostered the belief that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute - the same as Mary of Bethany, the sinner who anointed Jesus’ feet with spikenard - who was converted by Jesus and spent the rest of her life as a penitent.  Even though this position was officially reversed in 1969, most people still think of her as a repentant whore. What is the truth about her identity? And why was it ‘fudged’ by the gospel writers? What were they covering up?

      Many commentators have noted that there is something suspicious in the way Mary Magdalene is represented in the Gospels: on the one hand she appears to be so well known that, unlike all the other women listed, she is described merely by name and not in terms of her relationship to a man - she is not ‘Mary Magdalene the sister of James’ or ‘Mary Magdalene the wife of John’, for example. This alone distinguishes her as especially significant. And, apart from Mary the Mother, her name always appears first in a list of the women who followed Jesus. Yet there is nothing there to inspire the kind of fanatical devotion that was accorded her by various groups of heretics (see Magdalene of the Heretics) over the centuries - why? What is missing from the New Testament about Mary Magdalene that is known elsewhere? 

      One looks in vain in the canonical books for evidence of her ‘star quality’. Apart from a single appearance in Luke, she is not mentioned again by name until the crucifixion, when she appears to come out of nowhere with her jar of costly unguent - spikenard- with which she  intends to perform the ultimate act of devotion to Jesus, the anointing of his dead body in preparation for his entombment.  The three short verses in Luke (8:1-3) in which she is mentioned, read as follows (the New International Version of the Bible is used throughout):

       ‘After this, Jesus travelled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evils spirits and diseases. Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna and many others. These women were helping to support them of their own means.’

      This short passage is interesting for several reasons: clearly Jesus had female disciples - despite the entrenched argument of the Church to the contrary, there can be no doubt about it - and they kept the menfolk out of their own financial resources. Indeed, if the Catholic Church’s belief that the Magdalene was, or had ever been, a prostitute is correct, then we are faced with the unpalatable suggestion that Jesus and the likes of Simon Peter were happy to live off immoral earnings!  Clearly, she and the other women had access to money, or were independently wealthy. 

      However, perhaps the most important aspect of those three short verses in Luke is, as Carla Ricci says in her book Mary Magdalene and Many Others (1994): ‘Going through the indexes to whole stacks of exegetical and theological writings held in the Pontifical Biblical Institute showed me that these verses were almost left out.’ She adds that ‘little has been written, specifically and purposively, on Luke 8:1-3.’ Is this attitude of the gospel writers merely a reflection of their cultural disregard for Jesus’ women followers, or is there something deeper involved? Is it the fact that they contain the name of the Magdalene, rather than it being simply, if offensively, a matter of male chauvinism?

      If the verses had been left out, she would have barely appeared - by name at least - in the whole of the New Testament, which is very odd, considering how important she clearly was to certain aspects of the Jesus story.  In fact, this omission is downright suspicious, especially when one considers what has happened

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