Mary Magdalene, 1st Apostle?

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_SPG
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Re: Mary Magdalene, 1st Apostle?

Post by _SPG »

huckelberry wrote:I have not seen any evidence beyond the words, what if, to indicate Jesus had a connection to the Essenes. It is true that both were Jewish and lived in the same general area and time. So did the pharisees who shared more with Jesus. The Essenes were acetic Jesus was much the opposite. Essenes seperated from others, Jesus did the opposite.

I am not a real scholar. I only play one on Mormon forums. I've read that Joseph and Mary were Essenes, and raised Jesus that way. Of course, Jesus disappeared at 13 and reappeared at 30. He was called the carpenter, which might have been related to a Masonic (builder) cult that was in Egypt.

These same builders might been the ones that moved about Europe building the great cathedrals. The knowledge eventually settling into a version of the modern Mason.

Mary was thought to have moved into South of France, possibly started a group called The Cathars. Some claimed that she had a child(ren) of Jesus and that is where the idea of the bloodline of Christ came from. Some also claim that Jesus, having survived his crucifixion, traveled with her.
_Physics Guy
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Re: Mary Magdalene, 1st Apostle?

Post by _Physics Guy »

The New Testament does not pass the Bechdel test, which is a minimally low bar for gender bias: At any point in the entire work, do any two named female characters have a conversation about any subject other than a man?

(Some people say the New Testament passes because in Luke Mary (Jesus's mother) and Elizabeth converse about their unborn children or because in Mark the women on the way to the tomb ask each other how they'll move the stone. Since both pregnant women have sons, and are portrayed as knowing they will give birth to sons, I don't count the first one. The second one's iffy since it's the tomb of a man, it's hard to suppose the women were expecting another woman to move a stone they thought that they couldn't move, and in the event it's a male angel who moves it. This may be being rather strict, but that's the thing with the Bechdel test. Few works pass it even if you're not strict. If you're strict, a lot fewer pass. Reverse the genders and suddenly everything passes even if you are strict.)

The Bechdel test is a really important idea because although it's a ridiculously low bar—it's hard to imagine any work of art in which no two named men ever converse about anything other than women—it's shocking how few works pass the Bechdel test. Even books and films that are famous for their female characters often turn out, when you get down to it, to have exactly one significant female character who has all her conversations either with men or about men. Yet it's almost impossibly hard to find any film or book in which men never talk to each other except about women.

On the other hand I believe the New Testament assigns a lot more importance to women than most ancient documents. It brings some perspective to realize that under Roman law and custom women might have some property rights but they rarely had individual names. See the Wikipedia article on Roman naming conventions. It was evidently sufficient identification for a woman to say who her father was. So, yes, the New Testament set a precedent of women acquiring importance through their devotion to men. At least it gave women some status, and you really don't have to try all that hard to make it look subversive.

It makes women the first witnesses to the Resurrection. John's gospel has Mary Magdalene as the first human being to see the resurrected Jesus, and it records her conversation with him. The implication in John that the dying Jesus commits his mother Mary to John's care is also arguably profound, because it suggests that the whole Johannine theology of Jesus as co-eternal Word might have come from living with Jesus's mother. However the texts we have were actually made, "Mother behold your son" is the strongest claim that John's gospel makes for its own insider status. And if you can't justify calling Mary Magdalene the first apostle, I think you can make a decent case for her as apostle to the apostles, because they didn't become apostles until they heard about the Resurrection from her.

It's a glass-half-full or half-empty thing, I think. If you look at the New Testament one way, it's a historic turning point for gender justice. That's the way I try to look at it, anyway. If later Christians didn't follow that up, I think they dropped the ball.
_Meadowchik
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Re: Mary Magdalene, 1st Apostle?

Post by _Meadowchik »

"There is "overwhelming evidence" that women served as clergy in the early years of Christianity - and some of the evidence was deliberately hidden by the Vatican, according to ground-breaking new research."

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/g ... 77210.html
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