13th Apostle

[woodchip]

CNN ran a little special this morning presenting the view that Mary Magdalene (sp?)may very well have been a apostle of Christ as much as Peter or Paul. Information was based on some text found in the gnostic scriptures.
If she was, how does this reflect on a male dominated catholic church which has presented Mary as a trollop and condone paintings that, shall we say....were graphically revealing. So for those of you who are technically knowledgeable, enlighten me as to the veracity of Mary being the 13th apostle.

[Flabby Chick]

Didn't the da vinci code run along more or less the same lines? Mary getting a raw deal that is. Sounds a lot more plausable than the "good book"....imho.

[Xamindar]

eh, I don't think she was an apostle, more like Jesus' wife.

[bash]

No, she was The Holy Grrrl!

[Will Robinson]

What's the criteria for being an "apostle" anyway?

According to Webster:
1 : one sent on a mission: as a : one of an authoritative New Testament group sent out to preach the gospel and made up especially of Christ's 12 original disciples and Paul b : the first prominent Christian missionary to a region or group
2 a : a person who initiates a great moral reform or who first advocates an important belief or system b : an ardent supporter : ADHERENT
3 : the highest ecclesiastical official in some church organizations
4 : one of a Mormon administrative council of 12 men

And by the way, what did Mary think of Jesus' close buds anyway.
Most mothers wouldn't have liked a bunch of unemployed friends taking her only child off on some road trip that ended with them slinking away while her son gets crucified!
Maybe she had some harsh words for the whole lot of them and so they didn't give her a big part in the write up.....

I know if it had been my mom she'd have told them to get me down off that cross quickly or there would be hell to pay! (oops, freudian foreshadowing there maybe)

[woodchip]

Will, you misconstrue. We are not talking about Mary the mother of Jesus, but rather his girl friend/aquaintance/sleeze. You know...the "other" Mary.

[Will Robinson]

...You know...the "other" Mary.

Uh, no, I didn't know. Never heard of her!
She needs a new publicist

[Top Gun]

Note: this is a response to woodchip's initial post. Just as I was attempting to post it, the forums decided to crap out on me.

I'll give this a few days before Lothar comes in and lays the royal smacketh down. In the meantime, I'll try to set a few things straight. First of all, the gnostic writings are not recognized as canon by any major branch of Christianity; i.e., they are not held to be divinely inspired text. Second of all, Mary Magdelene is not treated as a "trollop," as you put it. She is shown as an example of a repentant sinner, a signal of the fact that Christ welcomes all people, even those whom many would consider to be the dregs of society. Mary Magdalene was one of the women specifically mentioned as being at the foot of the cross, and she also aids in Christ's burial.

As for her being an apostle, there are only twelve mentioned in the four Gospels, one of whom, Judas Iscariot, betrays Christ. After the Ascension, another man, Matthias, is chosen to succeed him. Paul is often referred to as an apostle, but he was not one of the original Twelve; he is named as such due to his extensive missionary work to the Gentiles and because of his personal calling by Christ in the form of a vision by the roadside.

As for the Da Vinci Code, it's a total load of ficticious bullcrap with no basis in reality. There are plenty of "conspiracy" specials like the CNN one produced, but they don't serve any real purpose than to incite a little controversy.

[Tyranny]

As for the Da Vinci Code, it's a total load of ficticious bullcrap with no basis in reality. There are plenty of "conspiracy" specials like the CNN one produced, but they don't serve any real purpose than to incite a little controversy.

Do I even need to point out the irony of what you just said? hehe

[Duper]

Mary M. would not have been assigned as an Apostle as authority was given to men, not women.

It's that simple. Paul discusses this in a couple of his epistles.

The Da Vinci code is non-sense. period.

[Foil]

Top Gun's post above is exactly correct. Mary Magdalene (not Mary the mother of Jesus, whom she is often confused with) is actually not mentioned very often in the New Testament. She is traditionally seen as a close friend and follower of Christ, having been saved from her outcast life.

As far as we know, she was not among those Christ called to go with him in his travels during his years of ministry. But in the sense that Christ had many followers after 'the twelve' (see Acts for mention of numerous such people during that time), I would consider her at least a 'follower'.

Mary M. would not have been assigned as an Apostle as authority was given to men, not women.
It's that simple. Paul discusses this in a couple of his epistles.

Ummm, I think I understand what you're saying, and maybe you didn't mean it, but... that sounds a bit like you're using the common mis-interpretation of Paul's intent (where women are held to be less moral, less 'made in the image of God', and less spiritual than men) to say that Mary M. didn't have the right "qualifications".

I mean, take a look at the twelve! These were not the spiritual elite from the outset, by any means! You had a tax collector ('tax collectors' were typically power-abusing greedy types, and are mentioned along with 'sinners' multiple times), and some religiously uneducated fishermen, among others. They often miss the point of Christ's teachings, they argue amongst themselves over personal position, they run away when things get tough, Peter denies he even knows Christ, and last but not least, Judas completely betrays him and commits suicide.

But in the end, the Apostles are shown to be extremely special; they have a huge role in the growth of the early church, many were martyred, and despite their early weaknesses they still serve as inspiration for us today.

Mary M. had her history, too, but in the end she is seen in the same light: a person desperately in need of God's grace and love, who was changed by the life of Christ.

[Drakona]

I don't have much to add to what Top Gun and Foil said, just a couple things...

As I understand things, the office of apostle is reserved for those personally called to teach and taught by Jesus himself. They spoke with great authority because their experience with Jesus was firsthand--if they faithfully represented his words and ideas, what they said was trustworthy. It's more than just having been an original witness to what Jesus said and did--it was being personally prepared by him to teach the gospel.

That limits it to his twelve disciples, with the exclusion of Judas (who was later replaced by Matthias), and Paul as well (whose firsthand experience with Jesus came in the form of visions). In fact, it's instructive to see how Paul defends his apostleship: See Acts 9 for Paul's conversion; see Galatians 1:11 - 2:21 for Paul's defense of his apostleship, emphasizing that his message is from Jesus himself, not learned from the other apostles; see as well 2 Corinthians 12:1-7 where Paul comments on various visions he has had.

Could Mary Magdalene have been another apostle? Strictly speaking, it's possible that she was personally taught and commanded to teach by Jesus--though scripture doesn't record that; it would be speculation. But if she was prepared and commanded to be an apostle, she did a poor job of it: it wasn't exactly a private thing. Having left so little in the way of legacy in the church, it's awfully unlikely.

There are gnostic texts that are supposed to contain secret messages given by Jesus to Mary Magdalene--at least, so Google tells me. I've never payed much attention to that. One of the essential elements of gnosticism was the idea of secret knowledge given only to the elite. Thus you have claims of a secret, more elite gospel whispered by Jesus to Thomas, which none of the other disciples were in on. That always strikes me as suspect, compared to the traditional gospels, which are both written by eyewitnesses and appeal to fellow witnesses at the time to confirm what Jesus said publicly. Moreover, reading those gnostic secret texts doesn't yield anything enlightening: the ones I have read are full of vacuous riddles, and not at all similar to the plain-spoken and profound style of Jesus.

There are scholars who really like the gnostic gospels, and suppose they present a more accurate picture of Jesus. If you believe Jesus was the sort of person who spoke in vacuous riddles, and all the beautiful and profound truths attributed to him were added later, I can see why the gnostics might appeal to you. But they really aren't very scholastically trustworthy, from what I've seen. (Based as they are on secret witnesses, changing as they do from century to century).

Probably the most laughable assertion of those who like the gnostic gospels are the occasional suggestions that certain truths were suppressed by the early church, and that's why we don't read them in the gospels. While I was googling for background on the idea of Mary Magdalene as an apostle, one of the sites I ran accross suggested that she had a foundational and extremely influential role in the early church, but that influence was suppressed and downplayed by the later patriarchal church. Such an idea might appeal to those familiar with the church of the middle ages--heavily patriarchal, tightly doctrinally controlled, etc. They're funny attributed to the church of the first century, though: extremely liberal in issues of gender, geographically widespread, constantly under persecution. The early church battled many heresies, and had neither the power to suppress them nor the authority to expunge them from history--could such a church really have convincingly rewritten its own history and utterly suppressed any knowledge of a widely influential founder?

There are those who think that it is evidence of their intelligence that they disagree with tradition. That's empty scholarly vanity. I think it accounts for a lot of odd academic theories about the origins of the church, the origins of the Bible, or the "real" historical Jesus. I think it's the same thing that drives some academics to support terrorism as ethical: the idea that disagreeing with the common knowledge is evidence that one is elite. I suppose I would (admittedly, cynically) put this down to that as well: it doesn't seem to me a theory that could withstand much scholarly skeptecism.

------------

On a tangent, Top Gun and Foil mentioned women's position in the church. It's sort of relevant to the topic here, because the church has historically had a hard time treating women fairly. That gives support to people who claim that a male-dominated church suppressed knowledge of female teachers and apostles. If that's true, it did a sloppy job of it: Jesus in the gospels goes out of his way to teach women with the same respect he teaches men, and Paul in the epistles often refers to women as fellow workers.

Women's role in the church is actually the subject of contemporary debate. On one side are the egalitarians, who argue that the church ought to make no distinction between women and men, and cite verses like Galatians 2:28--"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." I can't recall what the other side of the debate calls themselves, but they make any number of restrictions on womens' role in the church, citing such passages as 1 Timothy 2:11-12: "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

It's a curious and tangled debate these days, with different denominations and individual congregations taking different views of womens' role in the church. The church I grew up in only allowed male pastors and elders; the church Tom grew up in allowed married couples to serve as elders together. The church I grew up in allowed women to teach womens' adult classes and children's sunday school, but not adult mixed Sunday school (though I don't know if that was disallowed, or if no one ever asked...). Then again, I've taught adult Sunday School at the church I now attend, and nobody seems to mind.

One reflex outsiders have looking in on the debate is to suppose half of the church thinks women are worth less than men. That's entirely untrue of all but the most extreme positions: everyone agrees that women and man are of equal value as people, and before God. What the church is trying to do is simultaneously embrace the equality of men and women without the gender-blind equivalence the rest of the world endorses (and as well, it's trying to obey some rather difficult-to-understand commands). Everybody has good points and is arguing in good faith, and there are many varied positions to take on various stands of principle.

Orthodoxy these days seems to be that women shouldn't be pastors, and shouldn't be "the man" in a marriage. Just about everything else--from who women can teach to how they can serve administratively in the church--is up for debate. It's still an issue I'm working out for myself, so I can't say I can even give a fully formed opinion on the matter--though as someone who wants to teach, and has a lot to say to the church, it's certainly an issue close to my heart, and one I've given a lot of thought to.

[Edit: Discussing this with Tom, he pointed out that "orthodoxy" is too strong a term to describe the position that women shouldn't be pastors. As it stands, it's something that's debated in mainstream circles, but--to quote him--"nobody's really willing to push the line." That's probably more accurate... on that one, it's more a case of common consent and quiet debate than a matter of orthodoxy. However, the term "orthodoxy" is appropriate to describe the other position ("women shouldn't be 'the man' in a marriage"). ]

[Mobius]

It's all a moot point: The Bible is a human-written, human-inspired, human-edited (hundreds of times) work which is only interesting in that it has some historical fact woven into the fiction that is "the bible".

Because god does not exist, it really doesn't make any difference at all.

[Lothar]

The Bible is a human-written, human-inspired, human-edited (hundreds of times) work...

Mobi: you are completely clueless when it comes to the history of the Bible. Do you even know what language it was written in? Do you have the slightest clue what manuscripts exist in what languages and from what periods of history?

You've made this assertion time and time again, but you can't back it up because it's not true. You say things about where the Bible came from, but you simply don't know. You remain ignorant because you don't listen when you are corrected, time and time again (see: this thread, where you got owned over this very same remark.)

You love to come in to these discussions and post "the Bible has been edited countless times", yet you refuse to even attempt to stick around to discuss this. Really -- if you have evidence, enlighten the rest of us. You've got a thread right here to do it in. Post the evidence -- what manuscripts, from what eras, make you think the text has been edited "hundreds of times"? If you don't have any evidence, stop pretending what you're saying is fact.

Back up your claim, or retract it. I'm waiting.

[TigerRaptor]

Mobius youâ??re way over head here. Why even start an argument on something you canâ??t even comprehend.

[fliptw]

Mobius youâ??re way over head here. Why even start an argument on something you canâ??t even comprehend.

His sheep told him to.

He never posts rebuttals to anything he posts, so why waste the effort?

[Lothar]

Now, to respond to woodchip's original point: the short response is, don't trust anything based on the gnostic scriptures. If someone makes a claim about anything relating to Jesus, and they use anything gnostic to back it up, you can pretty much ignore the claim.

To flesh that out a little:

1) The gnostic writings are historically suspect. In the thread I linked above in response to Mobi, I mentioned a little bit of the history of the gospels in the Bible. We know the approximate dates they were written, and even the most liberal scholars can't push those dates farther than about 100 AD without a great deal of academic dishonesty. The most reasonable interpretation is that the gospels were written within a generation of Jesus' time, and they've been preserved fairly well throughout history. You can look at different manuscripts from different regions, and do some pretty impressive historical reconstruction in the few places where the manuscripts differ. The texts make reference to places, people, and events that can be verified from sources outside of the Bible, and they speak of Jesus' public teachings.

The gnostic writings, on the other hand, actually can have each of Mobi's criticisms applied to them. Most were written in the 150's or 200's AD, long after Jesus' death. There are only a few manuscripts, in most cases, and they often disagree with each other in significant ways. For the most part, they don't record any sort of historical events that can be verified, and most of their content is about what Jesus supposedly taught in private to specific individuals -- "secret sayings" that no others heard or could verify. There isn't any historical reason to believe the manuscripts were written by people who lived in Jesus' time (and it's especially unlikely they were written by the people whose names are assigned to them.)

2) The gnostic writings are culturally suspect. If you read the gospels in the Bible, it's pretty clear Jesus is a Jewish teacher. He talks about subjects like the Law and the Prophets, Jewish traditions like Passover, Jewish celebrations, etc. It's often stated that he was at some famous Jewish landmark, or interacting with some famous Jewish teacher, or whatever. But in the gnostic gospels (at least the ones I've read), there's very little Jewish flavor to anything. They have a much more Eastern feel, like what you might expect if Buddhist or Taoist concepts were rewritten using Christian/Jewish terminology. The Biblical gospels connect fairly well with the Jewish scriptures -- it's clear they were written by Jews, because they teach about things in the Jewish scriptures. The gnostic gospels don't connect with Jewish scriptures very much at all, and when they do, it seems forced. The teachings are clearly not Jewish (and, in fact, a number of gnostic writings say things about the Old Testament God being a fake -- hardly the sort of thing a Jewish teacher would say!) They're rarely even written as narratives; more often than not, they're just a bunch of individual sayings without any structure to them whatsoever. Culturally, I have a hard time believing any of the gnostic works I've read were written by Jews.

3) Conspiracy theories about the early church vastly overestimate its power. In particular, those who assert the early church covered up some particular incident or person's influence... simply don't understand the history. If someone was an apostle, they would have had influence on the early church, and the church in future generations would not have been able to cover that up. This is especially true because of the number of writings from early Christians outside of scripture itself -- early Christian leaders referenced each other in letters all the time. But there was no central authority; the scriptures were replicated in a distributed manner, and letters from church leaders were passed from city to city, so it would be extremely difficult to wipe out all evidence of anyone who was big in the early church. You'd need an organization at least as powerful as the CIA to do that, and the early church definitely wasn't. (It would be especially strange to wipe out all record of a female apostle, yet leave Biblical teachings about women -- which were very liberal compared to the surrounding cultures -- in the text.)

As Foil and others have pointed out, Mary Magdalene certainly was a follower of Christ, and could have even taught others. But apostleship is a high office, and with no record of her as an apostle except for in gnostic writings from hundreds of years later that don't even sound Jewish, it's highly doubtful that she actually was.

[Duper]

Ummm, I think I understand what you're saying, and maybe you didn't mean it, but... that sounds a bit like you're using the common mis-interpretation of Paul's intent (where women are held to be less moral, less 'made in the image of God', and less spiritual than men) to say that Mary M. didn't have the right "qualifications".

no... I DO mean it. And no, I wasn't quoting Paul. Although I know the passage you're talking about. It's in his letter to the Corinthians. It's a given precept and "natural" order that is demonstrated and described in several places throughout the scriptures. I don't expect you to agree with me nor really understand why I say this.

I'll read over more of what is posted here and add more. I was just tossing in my 2 bits.

[Edit]

It may have been that Mary taught women. That would have fallen well within the custom of the Jewish culture and law. We have no record of that, that is relyable. Nor does it hold any real importance.

When we die, there is no male or female or marrage. But here on earth, structure and order has been set. While clothes may be uni-sex, spiritual and physical responciblities are not. <<<< descriptive anology to sumerize my understanding and ment to abbreviate an otherwise much more involved topic that at this time i am much too tired to go into. I'll write up a much better response later.

(ps. My daughter seems to think that it's ok to buy a bracelette from THIS site.) yeeeeshhh..

[Flabby Chick]

As a historical comment upon the time of an influential Jewish leader that romped around the countryside i can see from my front room window? I'll accept. The son of a God and all the baggage that comes with it, i can't. There's no point in saying more because our walls are too high to peer over.

[TigerRaptor]

Mobius youâ??re way over head here. Why even start an argument on something you canâ??t even comprehend.

His sheep told him to.

He never posts rebuttals to anything he posts, so why waste the effort?

I know his little game, but it had to be said.

[Drakona]

The origin of the Bible (and the nature of Jesus and the history of the early church...) is one of those topics on which there are completely separate and non-interacting academic communities. The religious scholars assume the Bible is true and work from there; the secular scholars assume it's (at least partly) false, and work from there. The religious scholars look rediculous to the secular ones for embracing miracles without good reason, and the secular scholars likewise look rediculous to the religious for denying miracles in spite of all good reason. They, um, don't talk to each other much, as you can probably imagine.

What's striking to me on this topic is the difference between the two communities. A general heuristic for me (that is, a shortcut to truth, even though I acknowledge that there are no shortcuts to truth) is that good assumptions make good theories, and bad assumptions make messes. I have rarely seen a starker contrast between "good theory" and "mess" than on this topic. The religious guys are comparing manuscripts and dating letters and collating historical and cultural evidence with theological conclusions. The secular guys are talking about secret authors and mass hallucinations and conspiracies, and seriously crazy stuff. I kid you not: the going secular theory on the origin of the old testament involves detecting multiple anonymous authors and redactors, in a historical vacuum, completely from an analysis of the vocabulary!

Needless to say, I follow the religious academic community on this topic a lot more closely than the secular one. I look on secular studies of the origins of the Bible these days with much the same attitude as atheists look on creationist scientists: it's, um, entertaining at times to see just where their assumptions lead them, and I'll study them out of a desire to be a balanced scholar and listen to all sides of an argument... but for the most part, the tangled stories they spin only end up confirming to me that they started off on the wrong foot.

All of that is to say, I don't know if you had a particular theory in mind, Mobius, or if you were just reflexively thinking, "The scholars have proved the Bible is bunk!" But--as someone who studies this stuff, trust me on this--you really are a lot better off in the long run just saying, "I don't know where the Bible came from" and leaving it at that. There are topics on which I'll berate the Christian scholars for doing a bad job, but this is one topic on which they really do pwn.

[CritterB]

I'm with Flabby but I have to mention a line from a movie I just watched yesterday so it is still fresh in my mind.

"God is just an imaginary friend for grownups."

Classic, from The Big Bounce.

[Foil]

My wife was just reading through this thread, and pointed out one of the relevant passages (which she just recently read):

1After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; 3Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod's household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

Not really much there, I know. But at least we can gather that Mary Magdalene, among others, was there during part of Christ's ministry. She was also there at the cross (Matthew 27:56, Mark 15:40, John 19:25), at his burial (Matthew 27:61, Mark 15:47), and saw him after the resurrection (John 20:1-18 ).

I tend to agree that she was not one of 'the Apostles', but I also think that there's some importance to the fact that she's mentioned as such a firsthand witness to those events. Who knows, maybe her personal experiences made a compelling story that some in the early church really related to. There's no record of this, I know, so I'm only speculating; but it makes me wonder...

[bash]

Somewhat off topic... I was reading an Easter sermon (on Donald Sensing's blog) and he referred to Gospel about the discovery of the Resurrection. In the passage cited Peter is mentioned by name as one of two apostles running to the tomb after being informed by Mary Magdalene that it was empty. However it never mentioned the name of the apostle accompanying Peter. It just referenced him as something along the lines of *the beloved disciple* or *the one loved by Jesus* (can't recall precisely). Why is the second apostle not referenced by name and who was it?

[Lothar]

The other disciple is John, and he always refers to himself as "the disciple Jesus loved" or some variation, rather than by name. If he says "John", he's referring to John the Baptist.

[Beowulf]

Where the hell does one gather that Mary Magdeline was Christ's "girl/love interest" or whatever?

Someone want to enlighten me?

[Duper]

it's from the de vinci code. The books states that Jesus was actually married to her and it's a "big secret" handed down though the genereations via the "Church Illuminati". The book is a fictional work that suggests that its ideas are actaully fact. Much like Farenheit ... or however you spell it.

Mary M., if you look at it carefully, IS used as a representation of the church on whole. I'd explain, but I'm late for work.

Maybe later if I'm not dead tired.

[roid]

The book is a fictional work that suggests that its ideas are actaully fact. Much like Farenheit ... or however you spell it.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
'tis a classic book with an interesting censorship based plot.

[Lothar]

I think he was hinting at F911... you know, a fictional work that suggests that its ideas are actually fact

[Duper]

I think he was hinting at F911... you know, a fictional work that suggests that its ideas are actually fact

LOL Thanks Lothar. It didn't occur to me that someone would have thought i ment 451. ... which is a great book btw. .. unfortunately.. all or much of Bradburies works deal with cencorship.

Sorry Roid. THat movie got a lot of attention here in the states. Kinda "common knowledge" here.... and you of course are not here.