[UA] Quadruple Goddess?

[thanatos]

>===== Original Message From Greg Stolze <ua at lists.uchicago.edu> =====
>>I find Mary Magdalene a fascinating figure (ha, look at my name) in the
>>NT writings. She's clearly a whore, but she's also clearly welcome in
>>Christ's eyes. I doubt he would reject her, but she did more. Of course,
>>being the "whore" she's probably used to doing all kinds of things for
>>guys, but that's beside the point. She's more of a transitional than an
>>actual whore as per a potential archetype, I think.
>
>Now, lessee... if I remember the whole Magdaline thing right, there's no
>SCRIPTURAL basis for assuming that she's a whore.  Culturally, she's been
>conflated with the Woman Taken In Adultery (who's unnamed) and I think that
>some pope may have even said "Yeah, that's the same woman" -- but was he
>speaking infallibly?  Anyhow, the main support I've heard for the Magdaline
>= Whore argument is that she (and her sister Martha) are the two who paid
>Jesus' bills.  Apparently some Bible scholars just assumed that Mary must
>have been a prostitute 'cause, hey, where else would she get money?

Unca Cecil did a great article on this:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a980918.html

Highlights:

For centuries many have assumed that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the 
prostitute were one and the same. Indeed, this was made a matter of Christian 
dogma in the sixth century. You can see what it all adds up to. Mary M. is a 
sexually licentious woman, but Jesus forgives her and loves her. She watches 
him die, finds his body gone, sees him but fails to recognize him. Mary. 
Master. Noli me tangere. Once I was a man, now I am thy God. It's a powerful 
story of erotic denial and spiritual redemption. A Mary Magdalene cult arose 
in the Middle Ages and flowered during the Renaissance, when artists depicted 
her as a beautiful woman, generally in various stages of undress. Only in 
fairly recent times have people speculated that Mary and Jesus were lovers, 
e.g., The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Baigent et al, 1982), the dream 
sequence in The Last Temptation of Christ. But the undercurrent of sexual 
desire has been there for a long time.

It's probably all crap. Scholars have believed for a long time that Mary 
Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the prostitute were three separate women. In 
some ways Mary Magdalene comes off better in this interpretation, since she's 
stripped of the erotic baggage and emerges as arguably Jesus' most devoted 
disciple, a witness till the end. But the story doesn't work as well on an 
emotional level. Hey, my job is popping bubbles, so consider this one popped. 
But writing at the remove of two thousand years, I can also say: coulda been.

The Empire Never Ended.
  -- _Valis,_ Philip K. Dick


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