Jaguar Prince

I wonder whether it is still possible to have a serious and scholarly discussion on Mary the Magdalen ("Magdalen" is a title like "Christ") after the publication of the Vatican-sponsored Da Vinci Code. Anyway, I'll try my luck and if I ruin my reputation, I hope IIDF posters will show me more forgiveness than their TWEB counterparts.

I think there is an awful lot to be said and to be discovered on the Magdalen although she doesn't seem to be a prominent figure in the Gospels. Therefore in this thread I will be content with raising only a small corner of the veil that covers her.

Let me say that my main interest is to illuminate what "John" (quotes because I don't believe John, the son of Zebedee, is the author of this refined piece of theology) thought she was, and in so doing to demonstrate that the feminine played a great role in the "Johannine" communities. I am not interested in the question of whether the Magdalen really was what "John" thought she was, because I don't take the Gospels literally or better said, I don't regard them as historical biographies. For me the Bible is mainly myth, in the noble sense of the word.

I want to discuss with you, irrespective of the idiocies spouted by Magdalen-haters and worshipers, the meaning of verse 2 of chapter 20 in the Gospel of "John":

2
Then she runneth
And cometh to Simon Peter
And to the other disciple
Whom Jesus loved
And saith unto them
They have taken away the lord out of the sepulchre
And we know not where they may have laid him

3
Peter therefore went forth
And the other disciple
And came to the sepulchre

I would like here to focus on the interpretation of the set of words:

the other disciple whom Jesus loved

In the past, whenever I dared to suggest to my Christian interlocutors that the beloved disciple could have been the Magdalen, I was invariably presented with the same four arguments:

-the beloved disciple is always referred to with masculine pronouns in Greek
-the presence of the Magdalen is not mentioned in the Last Supper narratives
-the Magdalen, being a woman, could not have accompanied the naked disciples on their fishing expedition in John 21
-and finally John 20:2: how could the Magdalen have run to her own place and spoken to herself?

Let us concentrate on Jhn 20:2 and remark what most have never paid any attention to: the verse doesn't say:

"she ran to the disciple whom Jesus loved"

but

"she ran to the OTHER disciple whom Jesus loved"

This is a crucial difference and one that some translators have tried to lessen by rendering the phrase as:

"she ran to the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved..."

This by the way implies that Jesus had only two disciples: Peter and the disciple whom he loved above all others, which is absurd.

But in Greek there is simply "the other disciple whom Jesus loved"

ton allon matheten on ephilei o Iesous

With no commas!

Now my contention is that if one comes to this passage without any bias, one must infer from the very words themselves that there apparently were two disciples whom Jesus loved. Another important and logical conclusion is that the first disciple whom Jesus loved must be mentioned in the verse: it is either Peter or the Magdalen. Since Peter is never described in the NT as Jesus' beloved disciple, the first favorite disciple must be Mary the Magdalen.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the verb "to love" in John 20:2 is ephilei from phileo, to love a friend or relative, and not egapa from agapao as in John 19,26 and elsewhere. Whereever the phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" appears we find the imperfect of agapao, except here.

Why?

Is it mere coincidence or is it a pointer? I think the latter is the case. The second disciple whom Jesus loved was one of his relatives.

Discuss with erudition, humor and benevolence.

Thank you!

Jag :devil3:

andrewcriddle

In ton allon matheten on ephilei o Iesous the use of the relative pronoun on in accusative singular form makes 'whom Jesus loved' into a sub-clause modifying 'the other disciple'

ie 'the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved' is a perfectly straightforward rendering of the Greek and I have doubts whether your alternative 'the other one of the disciples whom Jesus loved' is a possible alternative.

Andrew Criddle

Peter Kirby

The comma wasn't used in ancient manuscripts; it hadn't been invented. Thus it is odd for you to put, right after a transliteration of the Greek, "With no commas!"

best,
Peter Kirby

Amaleq13

Did you really intend to use "sponsored" here rather than "opposed", "despised", "reviled" or the like?

Jaguar Prince

I am perfectly aware that there were no commas in the Greek, which means that modern translations using commas to make the phrase more consonant with the usual identification of who the beloved disciple was are simply no more than the reflection of that interpretation.

It is absolutely legitimate to leave the original text without any commas and to render the phrase as "the other disciple whom Jesus loved", which can be interpreted as meaning that there were two beloved disciples in Jesus' entourage and not just one.

Jaguar Prince

It would be more accurate to say that the use of the relative pronoun in accusative singular form could make "whom Jesus loved" into a subclause modifying 'the other disciple'. There are tons of similar constructions in the NT where the translator would not even dream of transforming the Greek into a more complicated phrase.

It is obvious (to me at least) that the reason why the translator chose this quite un-straightforward translation is because he thought he already knew who the disciple is and wanted to prevent readers from interpreting "ton allon matheten on ephilei o iesous" as meaning what I say it could mean, namely that Jesus had two beloved disciples.

I don't think this is a straightforward translation at all. "Straightforward rendering" is the shorter "the other disciple whom Jesus loved".

You have doubts but do not substantiate them nor seem particularly keen to remove them.

Jag

Jaguar Prince

In politics and other areas, things usually aren't what they appear, as George Orwell showed in his masterly work 1984.

I think the church has every reason to rejoice that people are avidly reading the Da Vinci Code. The blatant idiocies about Jesus and the Magdalen in the book aren't going to damage the dogmas and the creeds because of their obvious fictional character. Who is going to believe that stuff? The Da Vinci Code is a novel and nothing more.

What would have really damaged the church is a serious study of the Magdalen in the gospel of John. But thanks to the Da Vinci Code, most people, specially within the Church (and these are the people the Church cares about most), are no longer going to pay any attention to the hypotheses of serious researchers like Esther de Boer.

Mary Magdalene by Esther De Boer

That alone is the dangerous stuff and it has been deftly neutralized. Magdalen research will never be the same again because of the Da Vinci Code.

Even atheists must be glad because the Da Vinci Code gives them more reasons to ridicule the gospels. Therefore everyone is happy: the church is happy and the anti-church (the two are really the same) is happy.

In the field of UFO research, you find the same phenomenon with people creating false and absurd stories in order to discredit the serious ones.

It may be that the authors didn't receive money from the Vatican, but for me one thing is sure: they deserve it. They should even be canonized.

Satan is the greatest (unknown) saint of the Christian churches.

Politics and religion are ugly games.

andrewcriddle

IIUC we agree that the passage at least could mean 'the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved'.

Could you provide examples in the NT or other Greek literature, of similar constructions where your type of interpretation is clearly correct ?

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

I think that if in John 20:2 the author had meant to say 'the other one of the disciples whom Jesus loved' then he would probably have written

'ton allov twn mathetwn (h)ous ephilei (h)o Iesous'

(with the genitive plural of 'disciple' and the accusative plural of the relative pronoun)

Andrew Criddle

Chili

. . . but Magdalene was not a relative and two examples come to mind here that show this. One is the 'depth' of the water in the well and the other is her role as Martha in the Mary an Martha parable.

The favorite disciple was John who was a bosom buddy of the Jesus now crucified and raised as Christ. John was born from the netherworld where also Mary the mother of Christ was from. John was John but Christ became known as Jesus on account of his dual nature of which the human nature just got nailed to the cross in effort to set the Christ identity free. So inasmuch as Jesus was not Christ was he not Jesus and the question becomes: who was this Jesus they crucified?

He was neither Adam nor Christ but John as the completion of Father and Son in the mind of Joseph who came to be known as Jesus Christ.

The women at the cross are there to show that they were the effective cause sharing in the victory of this comedy here now shown to be without purpose (or the first disciples would be there, I mean, it is over when it is over and faith, hope and charity have no place in heaven.

It is further impossible for Magdalena to be loved by the 'raised' Jesus prior to ascension to the Father for the simple reason that Magdalene was earthly in origin.

Mary Magdalena was Eve as the mother of the living while Mary theotokos was the mother of Life. Both are depicted as serpents in Gen.2:15 where they are the chain of command that is needed to motivate 'Adam' while outside Eden. You must see Adam as the president of tree of knowledge that itself was a "blank slate" at birth = without substance and therefore banned from Eden (hence the blank slate). Opposite Adam is Christ and he is the President of the Tree of Life that has substance. This substance is called the netherworld from which, in time, John was sent to the TOK to announce the change of leadership in the TOK with the announcement of the birth of Christ -- who was therefore the second Adam with Mary being the second Eve. Ie. Mary from inside Eden would strike Eve outside Eden who in her turn would strike at the heel of Adam here called Joseph. This would come across to Joseph as his own idea that motivated him towards discovery outside Eden (I am a strict Determinist here).

Yes, this makes Adam, Eve, Christ and Mary titles with Joseph-hero being the human mind wherein this fransformation takes place.