The mysterious woman, otherwise unknown in our New Testament texts, Mary Magdalene, briefly appears and disappears toward the end of Jesus’ life in all four of the New Testament gospels. As this video makes clear, it is Mary Magdalene who is the KEY figure in our historical reconstruction of what…
I have written quite a bit about the mysterious Mary Magdalene on this blog over the years, with an extensive new treatment on “How I changed my mind and why” in my book, The Jesus Discovery. I hope you will read the book if you have not. It has been…
Breaking news–many of my readers know of the 1st century synagogue at Migdal or Magdala discovered in 2009 during a salvage dig conducted by Dr. Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority at the location of a new hotel at Migdal Beach, the site of ancient Magdala. The breaking news out…
There is a most intriguing stained glass window in the Kilmore church (“Church of Mary”) in the village of Dervaig on the Scottish Isle of Mull. The scene shows a Jesus figure in a most intimate pose with a woman named Mary who appears to be pregnant. Under the figures…
Over the years I have written quite a bit about Mary Magdalene and her possible relationship to Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and their brother Lazarus–who has a prominent role in the gospel of John (11:1-44; 12:1-8), is also mentioned once in Luke 10:38-42, but nowhere else in the…
Clearly in Mark the Twelve male disciples are complete failures and are never presented as heroes, even at the end. However, what we do find in Mark, in stark contrast to this chosen group, are three unnamed women who become Mark’s heroines and carry the core message of the entire…
I am contacted two or three times a year by various student directors of campus chapters of an international organization called Ratio Christi. Usually these students email me to ask if I would be willing to have a public debate with one of their associates, most often on the topic of…
I have written several posts recently on the different Jesus traditions reflected in Mark, our earliest gospel, and John, our latest, namely on The Last Days of Jesus, A Wedding at Cana, The First Burial of Jesus, and Comparing our Earliest and Latest Sources. If you missed any of these and…
And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. –Jesus of Nazareth One of the more intriguing stories that Mark preserves is that of an unnamed woman who anoints Jesus’ head with an…
Our Gospels present us with not only a profoundly “male” story, but it is also a profoundly asexual one. Theology is one thing, history is another, and on these matters of sex, birth, and death there can clearly be a conflict but little contest. I have written a variety of…