lpetrich

In A Magdalene Triptych, Earl Doherty starts out by noting that "Mary Magdalene is in the process of becoming something of a cult figure", appreciated by those who imagine a feminist Golden Age of early Xianity. In such efforts, "we are seeing a reversal of an almost three-millennia campaign by the Jewish and Christian establishment to deny its God a female consort, something that was virtually unparalleled in the religions of the ancient world." Although many pagans were often shamelessly sexist, they were nevertheless willing to acknowledge female as well as male deities. And Xianity itself ended up acknowledging many female saints and even sort-of deifying Jesus Christ's mother. "Women scholars and believers, frustrated by the male-dominant character of their traditional churches, are turning to the figure of Mary Magdalene to create a new role model for their faith and its origins." Someone more activist than the other Mary, Jesus Christ's mother.

ED reviewed two novels, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Ki Longfellow's The Secret Magdalene, and a nonfiction book, Dr. Robert Price's upcoming The Da Vinci Fraud.

ED discusses at the end The Secret Magdalene, and he greatly appreciates that historical novel about the origins of Gnosticism -- the historical background, its characters, etc.

However, ED does not say much about The Da Vinci Code, saying that it is an excellent thriller, and also
ED concludes that the early "Magdalene Church" never existed, because of its lack of mention in many of the earliest Xian documents, like Paul's epistles.

ED then turned to Dr. Price's upcoming book, discussing it at length. Dr. Price first starts with the theorizing behind The Da Vinci Code, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, etc., dismissing it as the shoddy conspiracy mongering that it is. Including falling for a hoax, the Priory Documents.

The Holy Grail legends, a predecessor of this sort of theorizing, are essentially a Christianization of various pagan myths and legends featuring magic cups, like Bran the Blessed's horn of plenty. A further connection on this line is between Arthurian legends and legends brought along by some Sarmatian mercenaries that had settled in Britain, like a special sword thrown into a body of water. But that's another story.

After discussing Gnosticism and its present-day revival, Dr. Price discusses the common belief that Jesus Christ was elevated to divinity only Church Councils contemporary with Constantine. As Price says, this ignores how JC had been portrayed as a divinity all the way back to Paul's epistles. And those councils dealt with questions like what mix of humanity and divinity JC had had, which led Dr. Price to comment
Dr. Price then goes on a lengthy discussion of how the New Testament's contents got canonized, including discussions of the various books that did not make the cut. He concludes that they were composed in much the same way, putting words into the mouths of the authors' heroes.

In the last two chapters, Dr. Price discusses Mary Magdalene herself, comparing the scanty accounts of her in the canonical Gospels to the more detailed accounts of her in some of the non-canonical ones -- accounts that make her a favored recipient of JC's secrets. Dr. Price concludes that the later noncanonical-gospel writers were putting words in her mouth, treating her like Peter and Paul and JC himself.

He then turns to the question of how much JC was like various pagan savior gods like Dionysus, Osiris, Attis, and Tammuz; after rejecting dismissals of such comparisons, he notes an important feature: he notes that the god is revived by his consort:
Osiris by Isis
Attis by Cybele
Tammuz by Ishtar
Dr. Price concludes "that a very good case can be mounted to the effect that Mary Magdalene is a historicized version of an underlying mythic redemptrix like the Egyptian Isis," much like the way that ED has concluded that JC is a historicized savior god.

In my opinion, that is a very important contribution to understanding JC's biography as mythology, since it fills in some important blanks, like who was his consort and why were those women present at his death and resurrection.

I conclude with mention of a proposal that she was more closely involved with JC's resurrection that the Gospels are normally taken to imply. As background, I notice that a mythical predecessor, Isis, revived Osiris by turning into a hawk and flying in place above him, fanning him and thus giving him some "breath". And with noting that the noncanonical Gospel of Philip states about JC that he had lovingly kissed MM on the mouth several times.

The proposal is in a short-short story in Salon some years back about MM's relationship with JC, a story that stated that she had done something like what's in the Gospel of Philip, but in a more intimate location.

jonesg

"Dr. Price concludes "that a very good case can be mounted to the effect that Mary Magdalene is a historicized version of an underlying mythic redemptrix like the Egyptian Isis," much like the way that ED has concluded that JC is a historicized savior god."

The upshot of davinci code is pagans get to believe God is part of creation, that takes power from God because if God is really God then He created creation and is above it. Paganism has the ego as its power center and ego don't like being lower than God. Many gods (many voices) is the ego.

As far as what happened 2000 yrs ago, who really knows.

When people start talking about all those gods with different names, I say fine by me. Now pick one.

lpetrich

None of jonesg's response really dealt with the Doherty-Price mythicism thesis.

And I note that Dr. Robert Price has reviewed The Da Vinci Code here, in "The Da Vinci Hoax". He suspects that a reason for the popularity of that book is
And concludes withMuch of the review I quoted discussed Gnosticism, a movement in Xianity in its first few centuries. However, the Gnostics did not win official favor, and Gnosticism was later suppressed as a heresy, with Gnostic works being known only in quotes in orthodox theologians' works. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls was thus an important step forward; many of those scrolls were Gnostic texts.

Gnosticism has been partially revived in recent years by those that ED calls pseudo-Gnostics, but they might also be called neo-Gnostics in analogy with neopagans, who have invented religions that are vaguely analogous to long-ago paganism.

Gnosticism has also been reinvented by a certain Lafayette Ronald Hubbard; Scientology's theories closely parallel Gnosticism:

Evil god Yaldabaoth = evil space tyrant Xenu
Souls = thetans
Demons = body thetans
The material world = MEST (matter-energy-space-time)
Jesus Christ = L. Ron Hubbard

Shared goal of liberation from this evil material universe that Ialdabaoth/Xenu had imprisoned us in.

Shared secrecy about "inner" doctrines.

And some Scientologists themselves acknowledge similarities to Gnostic writings like the Pistis Sophia.

Which one? Pagans prefer believing in deities other than the Xian God.

I have to chuckle at claims like this, because it's like saying "How powerful we are! We can control Mr. G.!"

And how did you figure that out?

Like how? Are you saying that evidential apologetics are wrong? I mean by that such claims as Jesus Christ had been super-documented.

Why?

jonesg

Because there's only One .

lpetrich

More on Mary Magdalene, who even has her own site: http://www.magdalene.org
And, of course, a Wikipedia article.

Conceptions of Mary Magdalene have varied over time. In centuries past, she was viewed as the archetypical female sexual sinner, having to do penance for her sexuality. She was even identified with the woman about to be stoned for adultery in the Gospel of John. In that story, she got let off the hook with something like "just don't do that anymore"; Jesus Christ had challenged her Pharisee would-be stoners with "let whoever has committed no sin throw the first stone."

But in our own time, many women have become less apologetic about their sexuality, and MM depictions have followed suit. She's nowadays often imagined as Jesus Christ girlfriend or his wife, though someone once jokingly suggested that she was JC's "beard", someone who'd pretend to be his girlfriend as a way of concealing his homosexuality. And some feminist theologians have imagined that she was a big activist, an additional apostle -- something like what some Gnostic writers had imagined about her. Though she may simply have been remade in the likeness of those theologians.

Not surprisingly, such recent treatments have caused certain people to get very outraged; consider the controversy over The Last Temptation of Christ. That movie pictured JC being given the temptation of retiring from his career of prophethood and leading a normal life, settling down with MM and having children; some people were indignant that he was shown making love to MM.

Of course, some people go farther than that. The Salon story depicts MM as helping to revive the resurrected JC by giving him a blowjob. An interpretation I've seen for Isis reviving Osiris, with her as a hawk flapping her wings being a bowdlerization.

"all those different gods, but pick one"
Why?
You'll have to prove it, not aimply assert that it's true. And jonesg, what do your comments have to do with Mary Magdalene?

jonesg

I don't have to do anything. You have no power.

lpetrich

Since jonesg has yet to explain what his remarks have to do with Mary Magdalene, I will not comment on them further.

Now to the origin of that name. Modern English "Mary" is from Old French "Maria", in turn from Latin "Maria", and ultimately from Greek "Maria". However, the Greek original of the New Testament also has "Mariam" for that name, which is what the Septuagint uses for Hebrew "Miriam" (I also used The Bible Gateway and The Blue-Letter Bible).

"Mariam", like several other Old Testament names in the Septuagint and the NT, is indeclinable, while "Maria" is given the usual a-stem declension. It seems as if the NT's writers had tried to make her name a more proper Greek word. Something like me constructing an English plural form, "Maries".

The name "Maria" is also the feminine of the common Roman name "Marius", which is likely derived from the name of the god Mars. That god's name is likely also the origin of the name "Mark", which comes from Latin "Marcus", and was borrowed into Greek as "Markos".

Miriam is not a common name on the Old Testament; the Blue-Letter Bible lists only two Miriams:

1) Elder sister of Moses and Aaron
2) A woman of Judah

However, in the New Testament, there are no less than six Maries:

1) Mary, mother of Jesus
2) Mary Magdalene herself
3) Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha and mother of James
4) Mary, wife of Cleophas/Clopas
5) Mary, mother of John/Mark
6) Mary, a Roman Christian who is greeted by Paul in Rom. 16:6

And not only were four of them in the Gospels, they are some sizable fraction of the named women in those documents, and they include the most important women there! So why all these Maries?

The original Greek form of "Mary Magdalene" is "Maria he: Magdale:ne:", which may also be translated "Mary of Magdala" or "Mary the Magdalian". But that and the abundance of Maries suggest another theory.

I've seen the theory that Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ's mother were originally the same woman. According to that theory, the virgin-birth account had been invented to cover up her being made pregnant by a Roman soldier or someone like that. This theory derives from how the Talmud had called her "Miriam megadla nashaia" ("Mary the Women's Hairdresser"). The "hairdresser" part ("megadla") sounds suspiciously similar to "Magdalene", so Mary Magdalene would be a memory of what a slut and a whore Jesus Christ's mother had allegedly been for having gotten pregnant in that circumstance.

I'm not sure how supportable this theorizing is; it may have originally been thought up by certain of the Talmud's authors to discredit Jesus Christ's virgin birth -- the Talmud's references to JC are very unflattering.

I've tried to track down the original claim that the Merovingians, some kings of early-medieval France, had allegedly been descended from Jesus Christ, but all I got was references to "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", and "The Da Vinci Code". However, if those kings themselves had claimed that, or if anyone back then had claimed that on their behalf, it was likely their invention to "demonstrate" those kings' legitimacy.

Finally, the name Magdalene has such mangled to form names like Maddalena and Madeleine and Madalyn; it's also the source of the word "maudlin", derived from the portrayal of MM as a weepy penitent.

Arken

Yeah, but which one? El? Yaweh? Ba'al? Asherah? Astarte? Anat? Lucifer? Mot? Resheph? Molech?

And that's just a few of the ones in the old testament alone. You should pick one and tell us which is the 'one'...

Amaleq13

The notion that you need to support your claim is not derived from any personal power of lpetrich's but from an assumption that you are attempting to engage in a serious discussion and, therefore, want to be taken seriously. Otherwise, your assertion can be ignored as simply wishful thinking bereft of any rational support.

JohnHud

since she is really Princess Julia Berenice Agrippa and long dead I fail to understand how she can have her own site (-: