Posted on 05/08/2006 8:04:49 AM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The fanciful fictions about Mary Magdalene in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" are not the only errors about the biblical saint that modern scholars are seeking to correct.
They are also trying to set straight centuries of erroneous Christian tradition regarding her that developed, especially in the West.
In A.D. 591 Pope St. Gregory the Great preached a sermon in which he identified as one person the New Testament figures of Mary Magdalene, the sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet and washed them with her tears, and the Mary who was the sister of Lazarus and Martha of Bethany.
Although he was only reflecting a tradition that had gained some ground in the West (and was resisted by many of the church's early theologians), the sermon became a reference point for later scholarship, teaching and preaching in the West, Father Raymond F. Collins, a New Testament scholar at The Catholic University of America, said in an interview.
The Greek Fathers -- the great theologians of the early church in the East, who wrote in Greek -- consistently maintained that Mary Magdalene, the unnamed repentant sinner and Mary of Bethany were three distinct women. That remains the tradition in the Orthodox churches.
The identification of Mary Magdalene as a repentant sinful woman was solidified in the Latin Church for centuries by the use of that story, reported in the seventh chapter of Luke, as the Gospel reading for Mary Magdalene's feast, July 22. In fact, in the Roman Calendar before the Second Vatican Council, the day was called the feast of "Mary Magdalene, penitent."
Father Collins noted that this changed in 1969 with the reform of the Roman Missal and the Roman Calendar. Since then the Gospel reading for Mary Magdalene's feast has been Chapter 20, verses 1-2 and 11-18, of the Gospel of John.
The first two verses tell of her coming to Jesus' tomb early Sunday morning, finding it empty and running to tell Peter and John that someone has removed Jesus' body. The second part of the reading tells of Mary staying behind, weeping, after Peter and John leave, and the risen Jesus speaking to her and telling her to announce to the rest of his followers, "I have seen the Lord."
Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a theologian at Fordham University and a Sister of St. Joseph, said the version of Mary Magdalene as "the prostitute to whom Jesus forgave much and who loved him ... took on a profound Christian ideal of a sinner who repents and therefore is a model for Christians in that way. But what got lost in the process was her actual role as a leader of witnessing to the Resurrection in the early church."
Of the repentant prostitute version of the Magdalene, she said, "What a lot of us who've done some work on her say is ... it's a wrong one and in the process it's robbing us of (appreciation of) women's leadership at a crucial moment in the early church. In other words, in a way it's easier ... to deal with her as a repentant sinner than as she emerges in the Gospels in her own right."
So who is the real Mary Magdalene? Father Collins, who wrote the "Mary Magdalene" article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, told Catholic News Service, "Luke describes Mary Magdalene as a woman from whom Jesus cast out seven demons, and that characterization of Mary Magdalene is repeated in the longer canonical ending of Mark's Gospel."
But he noted that in Jesus' time it was not uncommon to attribute physical or mental afflictions to demonic possession and this did not imply that the possessed person was sinful. "Whatever affected Mary Magdalene was considered to be the effect of demonic possession so she would not have been considered a public sinner the way the medieval legends have made her out to be," he said.
He said she is called the Magdalene because she comes from Magdala, "a fishing village up in northern Galilee."
He said one also learns from Luke "that she supported Jesus from her resources," suggesting that she was a woman of some means, and that she was one of several women from Galilee who were disciples of Jesus and followed him.
Luke's Gospel is the only one that mentions Mary Magdalene by name in the narration of Jesus' public ministry. But all four Gospel writers place her as a witness to Jesus' death on the cross, a witness to his burial and the chief witness to his resurrection, making her one of the most significant female figures in the Gospels apart from Jesus' own mother, Mary.
Sister Elizabeth said that when one looks at the Magdalene's biblical role as the one the risen Christ appears to and commissions to announce the good news to the others it has "many implications for how we tell the story of the origins of the church. There is the typical story of where Jesus chose the Twelve and put Peter in charge and the women, you know, were accessories. When you put Mary Magdalene into the picture, you can't tell the story that way so simply anymore."
When asked for her own view of what that should mean for the church today, she said, "I would draw the implication that if the risen Christ saw fit to ask a woman to go and preach the good news of his resurrection, the church should do no less nowadays."
Sounds like Sister Elizabeth wants the Catholic Church to ordain women. It isn't nice to put your own personal political agenda ahead of the Church's teachings and traditions.
Uh, this is about Mary Magdalene, not Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
Even our left-leaning newspaper debunked the Da Vinci Code!
BTTT!
I think what worries me about articles like this and books like the DaVinci Code is that people who are too lazy to study and learn the truth for themselves are tempted to believe such bunk. Mary Magdalene was just another sinner who needed Jesus, just like the rest of us. It is historical fact that her view was twisted by one of the Popes in the middle ages, but it's a beautiful story if you look at it in the context of the gospels. She was the first to see the risen Christ and Josephus has records of her being a strong leader in the early church. If you look at her in the context of types and shadows, she's a picture of what the Church should be--seeing the risen Christ for who he is.
According to Bart Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus, that's an error, inserted to fulfill an ideological religious agenda. If you look at Paul's letters, it is clear that at least some of the early Christian groups were led or co-led by women.
You guys are reading something into her remarks that just isn't there. You don't have to be a priest to "go and preach the good news of the resurrection...". What exactly do you think that non-cloistered nuns have been doing for centuries? And in fact what is required of ALL Catholics--ordained and laity alike.
Wrong Mary.
"Sounds like Sister Elizabeth wants the Catholic Church to ordain women."
Probably not. There are good arguments here to review the traditional biography of St. MM.
However, the first time I heard about this was when the smarmy parish council got our priests to give a homily cribbed from some FutureChurch or WomanChurch website. MM's "misrepresentation" is a talking point for them, though they stupidly attribute errors in her biography to the evil patriarchy's demonization of women, rather than to mistakes arising out of genuine devotion to explaining an admirable woman.
Tradition is more important than scholarship. No scholar is going to 'correct' anything in this area.
I once receied a free CD in the mail trying to get me to sign-up for Famous College Courses or something like that. The Free CD I got was a lecture by Bart Ehrmann. I detected two glaring errors in the first 5 minutes of listening to him. I chucked the CD and I chuckle at the idea his personal opinion about Scripture is normative or orthodox
Doesn't Dan Brown claim in his novel that the Church has tried to suppress the historical role of Mary Magdalene? Well, the Church somehow overlooked her prominent role in the Gospels. Someone alert Dan!
My understanding is that there are about 500 copies of the New Testament dating from around the fifth century, all of which are in substantial agreement.
Mother Theresa and Mother Angelica are two examples of women who spread the Gospel far more effectively than 99.99 % of the bishops and priests who were contemporary with them.
Ugh! Bart Ehrmann and Elaine Pagels are sure getting a lot of air time.
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