In our New Testament gospels there are four women named Mary who are closely associated with Jesus:

• His mother, first and foremost, who raised him and a large family of four other boys and at least two girls (Mark 6:30
• Tradition has it that the names of his two sisters were Mary and Salome (Mark 6:3; 16:1; Epiphanius, Pan. 78.8,1 & 78.9, 6)
• Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Luke 10:38-42; John 11:1-5; 12:1-3; Mark 11:11-12)
• Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:1-3; Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1; Matt 28:1-10; John 20:1-18)

Three of these Marys, in particular, are singled out in early Christian traditions as having “always walked with him.” As the Gospel of Philip puts it, “His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary” (59, 12). Mary, is the English form of the Hebrew Miriam, the name of the sister of Moses and Aaron (Exo 15:20). It comes down to us in several forms in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek: Mariam, Maria, Mariame, Mariamne; but in English the name is commonly rendered simply “Mary.” If one tabulates all the references to Jewish names of women from archaeological and literary sources from Palestine in late antiquity (Tal Ilan’s Lexicon), the name Mary occurs 70 times of the 320 total examples of female names. That means we can estimate that approximately 21% of Jewish women were named Mary. This popularity might have to do with Miriam the sister of Moses, but it also has been traced to the women in the Hashmonean or Maccabean line who favored this name. It seems that names of the Maccabees, both male and female, were extraordinarily popular in late 2nd Temple Palestinian Judaism, perhaps for patriotic reasons.

As far as these Marys, we know precious little about any of them, and whether historian or devotee of Jesus, we wish we knew much more. Mary Magdalene, first witness to Jesus’ resurrection according to Matthew and John, is perhaps the most intriguing, both to scholars and the public alike. A Google search for “Mary Magdalene” yields over a million and a half “hits.” An Amazon search registers over 15,000 books that are in some way related to her. The titles say a lot:

The Secret Magdalene; The Crucifixion of Mary Magdalene; The Magdalene Legacy; Secrets of Mary Magdalene: The Unfold Story; Searching for Mary Magdalene; The Magdalene Code; De-coding Mary Magdalene; Unveiling Mary Magdalene; The Complete Idiots Guide to Mary Magdalene; The Everything Mary Magdalene Book; Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, and so on.*

The Wikipedia entry, Mary Magdalene, provides a good overview to what might be called the “Mary Magdalene” craze. Dan Brown’s novel, The Davinci Code (and the subsequent film) has now spread a version of the popular fascination with Mary Magdalene around the globe in every marketable language.

No one could possibly keep up with the popular phenomenon and even getting a hold on the more academic and scholarly treatments of Mary Magdalene is a daunting task. So where does one even begin?

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For those interested in some of the chronological matters related to the discovery of the Talpiot tomb in 1980 it just so happens that the days of the week and days of the month coincide on the Jewish calendar for the year 1980 and this year 2007. That makes “today” the anniversary date of the first report of the opening of the Tomb.

Gregorian/Jewish Years: 1980 (5740) and 2007 (5767):

Passover began/begins on Monday night, Nisan 14th

Tomb reported to IAA by building crew on previous Thursday, Nisan 10th

Initial inspection by Amos Kloner, Friday, Nisan 11th

Tomb open and unattended over Shabbat (Shabbat HaGadol in Jewish tradition), Nisan 12th

Active beginning of the excavation by Yosi Gath with Shimon Gibson and three workers, Sunday, Nisan 13th

For a fuller discussion of what we know of that weekend in 1980 based on the original excavation notes of Joseph Gath see my March 21, 2007 post, A Passover in 1980.

The late great Hebrew University scholar Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), who devoted his life to the study of Jewish mysticism and messianism has been quoted as having once said:

“Nonsense is nonsense, but the academic study of nonsense is legitimate scholarship.”

I can’t remember when or from whom I first heard this, or even if I read it years ago*, but it always stuck with me as a particularly wise observation. I find it more than appropriate to my own specialty, a historical study of the apocalyptic Jesus movement in its wider ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Such a study involves one in a thick complex of overlapping areas including magic and miracles, angelology and demonology, journeys to heavenly realms, revelatory epiphanies, messianism, and a range of cosmological and eschatological models of world transformation. These and many other related categories seem to have one thing in common. They involve “imagining the world” based on claims of religious experience that tend to move outside the purview of a scientific understanding of reality. Indeed, for many post-Enlightenment thinkers they involve a way of thinking about the world that can best be described as “fantasy,” or if taken seriously enough, outright delusion.

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Bruce Fisk has posted a thoughtful treatment of the view of Paul and other early Christians on the “physicality” of the notion of resurrection of the dead by Robert Gundry. Prof. Gundry focuses on the the issue of the resurrection of Jesus in particular, but then extends his analysis to cover Paul’s more general notion of the resurrection of those “dead in Christ” when he returns from heaven. Gundry offers a critical evaluation of my views as published in The Jesus Dynasty as well as here on my Blog. I appreciate the input and the respectful consideration and I want to take up some of the issues he raises in subsequent posts on this Blog.

I am in the process of writing a book on Paul (working title: The Paul Dynasty: A New Historical Invesigation of Paul’s Program of World Transformation) that will offer a sustained interpretation of Paul’s career, mission, and message, the outlines of which I hinted at in chapter 16 of The Jesus Dynasty, and the foundation of which I published in Things Unutterable (1986).

The issues that Prof. Gundry highlights relate directly to the notion of finding a Jesus Family tomb, including an ossuary with the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, and what that might say about the development of early Christian views of Jesus and the Messianic Kingdom that he intended to inaugurate. So much of this depends on how we can reconstruct the days and weeks following the death of Jesus. The amalgamated accounts of Luke and John, both of which stress “physical” (or quasi-physical) appearances of Jesus in Jerusalem to his disciples over a period of weeks following that fateful Passover, have become the unconscious master “Easter narrative” in our heads, much like conflated versions of the Christmas Story. Backing off a bit, and sorting things out, is difficult, but it can be done, if one gives careful attention to our sources, particularly Mark and Q, but also the development of the “resurrection” story in Matthew as well, as a backdrop to what we find in Paul.

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There has been a lot of discussion regarding statistical methods as applied to the names on the ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb. I offer here a short clarification, and refer folks to more extensive discussions, if anyone is interested, on earlier entries on this Blog. These are easily located by a search for the term “statistics.”

The confusion, as I understand it, has had to do with the use, or perceived misuse, of “statistics” on onomastic data of this type. Dr. Feuerverger does not need me to defend him or his incredible accomplishments and intellect. His Bio speaks for itself. I regret that things got very confused with the way in which Feuerverger’s work was intially reported by Discovery. That has now, thankfully, been clarified on both the Discovery Web site and the home page of Dr. Feuerverger thanks to the helpful input of Joe D’Mello and other statisticians who contacted both Dr. Feuerverger and Discovery.

I am not a statistician but I have consulted with several, including Feuerverger, as well as a half dozen others who have been critical of his conclusions, as well as my own posts on the subject. We have had an exceptionally open and friendly give-and-take through private e-mail over the past few weeks. My own position is the following.

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