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…
“There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.” Gospel of Philip 36 According to the Coptic Gospel of Philip, found in Egypt…
Back in 2015 I published a piece in the Huffington Post dealing with what I consider to be reasonably strong evidence for a “married Jesus” and within hours it drew thousands of responses and hundreds of comments–positive, negative, and even threatening and denunciatory. Clearly this is a topic that generates more heat than…
Birger Pearson’s piece at the BAS Web site addressing the questions of whether Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife? and Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute? is really well done in my view. It is short but to the point. I see it as an advance over the article he did some…