[Vision2020] Was Mary Magdlene a Missionary in France after theFirst Easter?

Tue Apr 22 18:26:08 PDT 2014

Thanks, Nick. You have fueled my favorite rant!! 

 All the "Marys" have been misinterpreted, but the Magdalene has had a totally undeserved  'bad rep' since the Church decided women were unfit vessels for religious teaching and transference of access to the Diety. Even then, the monetary needs of religion influenced who was "good", "bad", or "ugly". From there, it is only steps to subjugation of women as "unclean" and "dangerous" unless "kept in their place" as wholly (holy?) owned property.....nothing new under the sun....

Religious right in the US keeping women in subjugation, Fundamental Islam's denial of women as other than property, the persistent erosion of women's rights in the US, school girls being taken as sex slaves by "religious" groups, mass rape during political unrest.......What are men so afraid of? Could it be our ability to bring life into the world? Could it be fear of The Mother Goddess? Could it be fear that women are just more rational, less prone to violence, and much more willing to negotiate? Who knows...............It might just be that men enmass think with their little head which only gives them minmal information. 

All the real men I know shake their heads and say "This is not the behaviour of REAL men. I'm ashamed for my gender."

Rant done, no replies needed from the religious nutjobs, as I've no intention of getting into it with them on-line. If ya'all want to take it up in person? I'm your gal. Let's have coffee or a drink...
Debi R-S

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nicholas Gier 
  To: vision2020 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 11:02 AM
  Subject: [Vision2020] Was Mary Magdlene a Missionary in France after theFirst Easter?

  Dear Visionaries:

  Christians in Europe celebrated 2nd Easter Day yesterday (and they just had an entire week off last week!), and now I'm celebrating 3rd Easter Day.

  Legends have it that after that first Easter, Mary Magdalene boarded a boat that eventually landed in France in AD 42, where she continued her Christian ministry. 

  St. Augustine, one of the greatest orthodox theologians, called her the "apostle to the apostles," and many medieval theologians followed Augustine in granting Mary this exalted title.  After all, Paul defined apostleship as any person who had seen the risen Christ (1 Cor. 9:1).

  Continue reading below. The longer version is attached as a PDF file.

  Just trying to make Christianity and the study of religion even more interesting than it already is,

  Nick

  MARY MAGDALENE: APOSTLE TO THE APOSTLES

  Legends have it that after that first Easter, Mary Magdalene boarded a boat that eventually landed in France in AD 42, where she continued her Christian ministry.

  St. Augustine, one of the greatest orthodox theologians, called her the "apostle to the apostles," and many medieval theologians followed Augustine in granting Mary this exalted title.  After all, Paul defined apostleship as any person who had seen the risen Christ (1 Cor. 9:1).

  Mary was one of the most remarkable women in the Bible. She is described as an independent woman, who "provided for [Jesus and the disciples] out of [her] means" (Lk. 8:2-3).

  It took two millennia for the Catholic Church to dispose of the long standing myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. In 1969 the Church indirectly removed the stain of her alleged sins by assigning new scriptural readings for her saint's day on July 22.

  Passages from the erotic Song of Songs are no longer read, and the passage from Luke 7:37-38 about "a woman from the city, who was a sinner" is also deleted.  Catholics now read the poignant passages from the Book of John (20:1-2, 11-18), in which Mary is the first to see and talk with the risen Christ.

  The story of Magdalene as a prostitute was the result of mistakenly identifying Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (John 12:1) and an unknown woman "who was a sinner" (Luke 7:37-38), both of whom took oil and bathed Jesus' feet with their hair.

  This conflation of New Testament women was made official in a famous sermon by Pope Gregory I in 591, and was imprinted in millions of Christian minds with paintings of the penitent Mary Magdalene with loose red hair carrying an alabaster jar of ointment.

  Gregory's claim that Mary had "turned the mass of her crimes to virtues" presents to all Christians, as Susan Haskins explains, "the redeemed whore and Christianity's model of repentance, a manageable, controllable figure, and effective weapon and instrument of propaganda against her own sex."

  In the Eastern Orthodox Church Mary was never identified as a prostitute; indeed, they have her preaching in Rome, even before the emperor himself.

  In the Jewish tradition anointing someone with oil is a ritual for making that person a messiah (an "anointed one"), and the priests of Israel and even King Cyrus were messiahs (Is. 45:1). So perhaps it is Luke's unnamed woman who officially makes Jesus the Messiah. 

  In Matthew's account of this story, the woman is not a sinner, and Jesus praises her by predicting that "wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her" (26:13).

  Matthew and John see the woman's anointment not as messiahship but as preparation of Jesus' body for burial, an equally important sacred ritual.  In the ancient Near East anointing with oil was a priestess's job, so it is not surprising that New Testament women play this significant role.

  Women in the early church played significant roles.  Single women traveled and preached with Paul as equals; and Priscilla, who was later martyred and canonized, had a church in her home. 

  John Mark's mother also hosted some of the earliest Christian worship in her home.  In her book When Women Were Priests, Karen Torjesen offers strong evidence that women officiated at the Eucharist in these early Christian services.

  Returning to Mary Magdalene, we need to address the question of why so many women and men are now identifying so fervently with her. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona may have the answer: "[Mary] was an independent woman . . . . she didn't need a child, she didn't need a husband. . . . She becomes the preacher, the missionary, the evangelist, the healer, the miracle worker. . . . These are the things that attract people to her."

  Nick Gier religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  

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