Mary Magdalene
 

what do you think?

i'm bored in work and i apologise in advance for the fact that sonicl and myself will most probably turn this thread into a Man U / Chelsea slagging match.

oh fine then, nobody answer my fuckin poll, yer all to busy been fuckin handcuffed to a celebrity.

i'm fuckin outa here

oh ok, sorry about that sway.

how are you today anyway?

what about that Mother of yours huh?

my Dad is a God-head also, he's pure nutz.

Sorry, I don't have time to vote. I'm busy sticking pins in the little plasticene model I made of Chrissy Ronaldo.

i'm awful for keeping reciepts.

http://home.skysports.com/list.aspx?hlid=460638&CPID=8&clid=1&lid=4161&title =Ronaldo+signs+new+United+deal

i hope that model is as good lookin as out number 7.

aww look at him there signing another contract for 5 more years, is there anything he cant do.

Roman Ambramovich has that problem too. But on the rare occasions that he buys something that's not quite up to the job he'll just buy another one to replace it.

I'll bet he fell over twice while signing it.

be honest... would you loose yr reciept for this?

i'd bring that suit back also its awful.

I would vote, but I don't agree with either choice!

I think the church portrayed her as a whore because they couldn't handle the concept of women "in power". I'm pretty sure that Jeebus' message of tolerance was thrown under the bus (er....or chariot) in favor of mysogamy.

i like whores

She inspired a lot of nonsense for sure.

She wasn't either.

She was exorcized of demons by jesus, she provided him and his disciples with supplies, she was in jesus's posse when they went to jerusalem, she witnessed the crucifixion, she was the first to notice his tomb empty, and the first to seem him resurrect.

All the rest is speculation.

whore-turned-missionary

I've known a few of those...


There has always been a dispute over whether or not she was really a prostitute. It's safe to assume, however, that she was a "lowly" woman not promised to any husband.

After Christ's death, certain gnostic sects that allowed women ministers, perhaps for their own beneift (but perhaps not), wrote a Gospel Of Mary Magdelene as a apocryphal book that never made it officially into the Bible.

There is some biblical evidence and much apocryphal evidence that Mary Magdelene, along with Judas, was Jesus' closest companion and that she was, in fact, (later on) a preacher. Of course, whether it's true or not, the Catholic Church could have none of that, and effectively squelched the Gospel of Mary Magdelene along with many other books.

I didn't vote for the same reason.

There isn't really any decent evidence to suggest that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute; some exegetical construction and synthesis of personalities is required*, and it never reaches a satisfying point. The sad fact is that after the death of Jesus, His treatment of females became ignored by people who wished to maintain women as an underclass**; to portray the most important female follower (and indeed one of the most important followers of Jesus generally) of Jesus as a 'prostitute' was a good way of achieving this aim.

There is also no real evidence at all to suggest that she was the 'lady of Jesus' in the sense of being His lover, although certainly she was enormously important to Him; she is a witness of Jesus, she is placed first on lists of women following Jesus*** and was of course chosen by the risen Christ to tell of the ressurrection (thus becoing the mediatrix of His word and of phenominal importance).

I say leave the wonderful Mary Magdalene alone.





* The "question of the three Mary's" involves the unnamed sinner in Luke 7:36-50, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene. To approach an even slightly convincing level in the Mary-as-Prostitute paradigm, one must: take the unnamed sinner from Luke 7:36 - 50 and suppose that John 11:2 refers to same thing, making Mary of Bethany 'the sinner' in Luke; deciding that demons infesting women is a consequnce of sin, and that that sin is prostitution; and deciding that because the 'sinner' is in more than one account that Mary of Bethany must also be Mary Magdalene. Basically, nonsense.

Of course, you may want to forego the evidence-based approach and base a view of Mary as prostitute purely on tradition. Tradition itself can carry a lot of weight and a great deal of truth, but on this matter there is simply too much gender politics involved.

** See a large number of incidents in church history for examples.

*** Mary Magdalene is first in lists of women present at the passion in the gospels of Mark, MAtthew and Luke. Outside of the synoptics, John lists her second to Jesus' mother and aunt, but the fact that he names her together with Jesus' close relatives is another, albeit slightly different, indicator of her importance.

Noone can be sure if the person to the left of Jesus in The Last Supper is John or Mary Magdalene. Leonardo didn't leave us much of a clue, but the figure sure looks feminine. If it is her, then maybe, just maybe, she was a devoted disciple, and not a lady of the night.

I don't think there's any doubt that da Vinci painted a female figure there (there are similarly controversial early depictions of female figures - including, it is belkieved, Ms Magdalene - in the catacombs beneath Rome). Of course, by the time of the last supper she wouldn't have been a lady of the night, having been saved. And a saved person is a beautiful thing.

But she still wasn't a prostitute.