{"id":6866,"date":"2014-11-10T12:07:44","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T19:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6866"},"modified":"2014-11-11T15:09:04","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T22:09:04","slug":"jesus-heart-mary-magdalene-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6866","title":{"rendered":"Jesus [Heart] Mary Magdalene (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s get this out of the way first \u2014 yes, the source is the Daily Mail<\/em>, which, I strongly suspect, occasionally makes up “news” articles from scratch.\"lostgospel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And I cannot speak to the quality of research in this new book, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the idea that Jesus was married, perhaps to the woman know to history as Mary Magdalene <\/a>\u2014 who was not a prostitute but, more likely, the sort of well-to-do woman who you often find underwriting spiritual leaders’ work \u2014 seems totally plausible to me.<\/p>\n

The idea of celibacy for spiritual purposes was foreign to Judaic culture (and still is). Assuming that he was a healthy, thirty-ish man, he would have been married. Period. Village culture would have seen to it.<\/p>\n

I think we can say that even while treating as unproven all the hypotheses that Mary M. was a priestess of Canaanite goddess religion (see Robert Graves’\u00a0 1946 novel King Jesus<\/em><\/a>); that she after his death went to the South of France, to Egypt, to Glastonbury, or some other place; that she is connected with the medieval “black Madonna” figures; or anything else.<\/p>\n

Since this book is being released just ahead of the American Academy of Religion \u2014 Society for Biblical Literature joint annual meetings, I expect I might see copies in the book show. Reviews from people who can ready Syriac and Aramaic will follow in due course.<\/p>\n

I have seen some tiny, brownish bone fragments purported to be relics of Mary Magdalene in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Salt Lake City, of all places<\/a>. Maybe Salt Lake could use some Canaanite goddess priestess energy. She happens to be the patroness of that diocese.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s get this out of the way first \u2014 yes, the source is the Daily Mail, which, I strongly suspect, occasionally makes up “news” articles from scratch. And I cannot speak to the quality of research in this new book, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-6866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1MK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4608,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4608","url_meta":{"origin":6866,"position":0},"title":"Evidence of Jesus’ Wife?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"You don't think a good Jewish boy from a peasant culture got to be thirty years old without being married, do you? Now there is textual evidence that suggests that he was. \u201cThis fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,\u201d Dr. [Karen] King said.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=93","url_meta":{"origin":6866,"position":1},"title":"Drat that Mary Magdalene","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More attempted damage control from the Christian right to the fuss raised by The Da Vinci Code, about which I blogged earlier on Dec. 9, 2003. Here, AP writer Richard N. Ostling writes a fairly snide review of Karen L. King's The Gospel of Mary Magdala: Jesus and the First\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7932,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7932","url_meta":{"origin":6866,"position":2},"title":"Assessing a New Book on Jesus’ Wife","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to think that of course Jesus was married \u2014 what normal 1st-century small-town Jewish man would not be married? Answer: most of the Essenes, to name one group. The perennial interest in an actual bloodline of his descendents is periodically stoked by books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1605986100","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":550,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=550","url_meta":{"origin":6866,"position":3},"title":"Voodoo and Halloween and New\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Voodoo and Halloween and New OrleansSome Christian web sites are linking to the ABC news item about Hurricane Katrina allegedly killing the retail voodoo-supply business in New Orleans. Plans for today's celebration continue, however.Some Pagan Witches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast find themselves more accepted after Katrina. Halloween partiers, meanwhile,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":664,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=664","url_meta":{"origin":6866,"position":4},"title":"A Pagan's perspective on The\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A Pagan's perspective on The Da Vinci CodeThe most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper is that a Pagan was asked to join the \"panel of religious experts.\"The most serious problem according to the panel - a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":849,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=849","url_meta":{"origin":6866,"position":5},"title":"Dionysus, Jesus, Castaneda","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"After watching the BBC take on anthropologist - novelist - sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, M. and I rented another documentary about him. Enigma of a Sorcerer was released in 2002. It is available through Netflix, but it is only for the hardcore student of neo-shamanism as phenomenon.Since it is only a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6872,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6866\/revisions\/6872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}