Mary Magdalene

I am no scholar, but I thought the only information on her was non-historical, that found just in the New Testament.

There's a Legend of someone called Mary arriving somewhere in the South of France with another woman and a girl called Sara. However, the girl happens to be a servant they picked up in Egypt and the legend is just that. Even the people who celebrate the legend through some traditional festival-type thing admit the legend isn't real.

And if Mary was bearing the son of someone whom Rome had executed, she wouldn't have gone west further into the territory of Rome. She would have gone east along the Silk Route.

Thing is, the Gnostic Gospels found in Egypt actually give Mary more of an important role than the canon Gospels found in the New Testament.

So if someone says that Mary's role was downplayed by a misogynist Church, they might have something there.

The Gnostic tradition in Christianity was more open to women participating in ritual, there were even women priests. This outraged those more socially traditional trinitarians who followed the Pauline teachings of Christianity which were blatantly misogynous. The Pauline view eventually won out.

mary
does it matter if jesus had a child , big deal it doesnt make him any less or any more , most people had kids

Re: mary


i agree, weather he did or didnt its still all the same

Maybe Jesus' son was immaculately conceived, no?

Angel -- I don't think it matters in the least whether Jesus had a child or children. Those in favor of this idea cite the fact that Jews at that time favored marriage and that there -- allegedly -- is no word in Hebrew to signify the single male.

edgar -- There is the Gospel of Mary, part of a codex discovered -- perhaps, purchased -- by a German scholar late in the 19th C but not translated until the middle of the 20th.

Mary of Magdala -- and there seems to be quite a bit of scholarly contention whether Magdala was the name of a village/town, in which case, the word Magdala is Aramaic or whether Magdala is derived from the Hebrew word migdol, meaning tower -- is supposed to be the author of the Gospel of Mary.

According to a legend, Mary set sail for France, landing near Marseilles. Now, Marseille was a Greek colony in the Celtic territory that was prehistoric France. There is a woman/goddess figure among the Celts dubbed the Sovereignty Goddess in the middle of the 20th C, most likely by Proinsias (Francis) McKenna (I may have mispelled his last name). This female emblem grants the king the right to rule.

The daughter of the Celtic chief at the settlement near Marseille chose one of the Greek settlers as husband, legitimizing the Greek claim to what is now Marseille.

The sites associated with Mary Magdalene -- La Madeleine -- are generally associated with Black Madonnas.

Margaret Starbird, who is the chief American drum beater for La Madeleine, says that the preadolescent Sarah was not a servant but Mary's daughter, born in Egypt, most likely at Alexandria, traditional refuge of the JEws.

Newsweek recently ran a very interesting article on Mary. It is still available online here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12893635/site/newsweek/

Wolf -- Why do you think she would have gone east along the Silk Road? Because it was into the Indo-European heartland?

There are many reasons why France would have been welcoming, most of them bound to the Celtic culture.

We have to stack the notion of Madeleine against the legend of Ste. Anne, the grandmother of Christ and mother of Mary who became the patroness of Brittany. I suggest that as these people become exposed to Christianity -- which succeeded to some extent by being an adaptive religion -- that Anne and Mary Magdalene sounded like women that were already part of their story and they simply adopted them.

Joseph of Arimathea allegedly journeyed into Arthurian country but he isn't worshipped as a saint in England, and, I suspect he would not have been, even if the Reformation and Henry VIII hadn't "happened."

Thanks for posting the Magdalene story from Newsweek.

I thought the quote, allegedly from Mary, that Peter "hates our race" was intriguing. Who is the we? Jesus and Mary or Mary and the other women? If the former, is our race the line of David or speakers of Aramaic and if the latter is our race women?

Dan Brown credits Margaret Starbird as his source. She credits the team of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, who sued Brown for plagiarism as her inspiration. There is another writer on these matter -- Laurence Gardner -- who is really out on a limb.

Didn't I state in my original post? No? Okay then, let me state it again here.

Going west was risking being intercepted by the Romans. Going east had none of those problems and was far safer, not to mention easier.

There is a mention of Jesus among the Tibetans, I think, could be wrong.

I'm not entirely certain how powerful the Romans were. Now, I'm not talking heresy here. Consider the river gorge in France that is called The Grand Canyon of Europe. Is it a gorge of the Lot River? Can't quite remember. ANyway, it remained unknown until the 19th C. and it is in Magdalene territory.

The port of Marseille was in an area particularly sympathetic in cultural terms to strong women and was marked by an ability to assimilate. It was a Greek foundation and, I suspect, a place where someone leaving the Levant could be lost easily, hidden from the Romans.

Anyone interested in this should read Jean Markale's 1998 book, The Church of Mary Magdalene."