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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums...And then
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Who knew?
Who Was Mary Magdalene?
The whole history of western civilization is epitomized in the cult of Mary Magdalene. For many centuries the most obsessively revered of saints, this woman became the embodiment of Christian devotion, which was defined as repentance. Yet she was only elusively identified in Scripture, and has thus served as a scrim onto which a succession of fantasies has been projected. In one age after another her image was reinvented, from prostitute to sibyl to mystic to celibate nun to passive helpmeet to feminist icon to the matriarch of divinitys secret dynasty. How the past is remembered, how sexual desire is domesticated, how men and women negotiate their separate impulses; how power inevitably seeks sanctification, how tradition becomes authoritative, how revolutions are co-opted; how fallibility is reckoned with, and how sweet devotion can be made to serve violent dominationall these cultural questions helped shape the story othe woman who befriended Jesus of Nazareth.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/#mytoTJUfMqkwPKZM.99
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...And then (Original Post)
sheshe2
May 2018
OP
mcar
(42,210 posts)1. Mary Magdalene got the rawest of raw deals
The prostitute in the NT is never named. She was, at least, a favored disciple. Or, Jesus' wife.*
*Not stating this is all true. But I was educated by the Jesuits and love biblical history.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)2. As to her being a prostitute,
Beginning with the threads of these few statements in the earliest Christian records, dating to the first through third centuries, an elaborate tapestry was woven, leading to a portrait of St. Mary Magdalene in which the most consequential notethat she was a repentant prostituteis almost certainly untrue. On that false note hangs the dual use to which her legend has been put ever since: discrediting sexuality in general and disempowering women in particular.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/#X4hjzeBGirJuiJLv.99
handmade34
(22,755 posts)3. ...