do not weep nor grieve nor be irresolute, for his grace will protect you and will entirely be with you for he has the gospel of mary suggests that mary s relationship with jesus is resented by peter. once mary s finished instructing, a full scale argument breaks out between mary and peter. did he prefer her to us? what do you think? that i made this up in my heart, that i am lying about the savior? this is clearly a fight between the disciples for supremacy, for who is going to be the chief disciple and who properly carries on jesus teachings and missions. peter might have felt that it was his rightful role to be the leader and it might very well have had to do with the fact that he was a man than any other factor. the conclusion of this gospel
mary. so all those tantalizing theories about jesus and mary magdalene being lovers really jumped from this one passage, right? this is the juiciest stuff that we ve got. this is ground zero for those conspiracy theories that there was some sort of relationship between jesus and mary magdalene. in the early christian communities, for the most part, the missionaries were missionary couples. so it makes sense that jesus himself could have been part of a missionary couple. as a first century jewish man, it would have been incredibly likely that jesus would have been married during his lifetime. this is high stakes stuff. so if jesus, the son of god, was married, maybe he had children. if he had that kind of an intimate relationship, people would want to know. and if he had children, that means there might be people wandering around today with sort of holy blood in them. there s one page in particular i m very excited to
fallen woman, but a myth begins to grow that the sinner in this important story is mary herself. the idea of mary magdalene the prostitute who repented gives us a character who shows by her penitence that everybody can make it into the kingdom of heaven. all four of the canonical gospels, matthew, mark, luke and john, tell us of a woman that comes to jesus and anoints his feet with expensive perfume. not one gospel of the four canonical gospels identifies that woman as mary magdalene. how, then, did mary s name come to be wrongly associated with this famous episode from the new testament? the answer, it seems, can be found five centuries later with this man, pope gregory the
one of the things about jesus is that he has very inclusive group of disciples. it s a very open kind of movement and included women who a lot of the time might have felt themselves somewhat marginalized. being with jesus gave them a sense of identity and self-worth in a way that they often didn t find in ordinary society. mary magdalene seems atypical for a jewish woman of her time. most jewish women in the galilee would have been in some kind of domestic setting, either as a daughter or a mother or a wife, but to be out in the wilderness with a itinerant preacher with a name that does not link her to any man is unusual. but in the case of mary, it seems her role goes well beyond that of a simple spiritual follower. one of the things that mary brought to the jesus movement was she had money, she had
great. the reason why people think that mary magdalene was a prostitute is because in the sixth century gregory the great gave a homily in which he equated mary magdalene with the sinful woman who anointed jesus feet. since that day, christians thereafter have thought that mary magdalene was a prostitute. i think pope saint gregory the great was not trying to be mean to mary magdalene or women. i think it was probably the result of poor scholarship. by the time we get to gregory the great, we not only have a collection of four gospels that circulate together, we have a tradition that says it s okay to blend these stories together. it is from this mistake that the image of mary magdalene as a sinful prostitute emerges. it is a myth that has concealed the reality behind why she became so devoted to jesus and played a central part in his life and resurrection.