| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
30 Nov 2003 06:55:31 PM |
| Object: |
And the Catholic 'telephone game' continues. |
And the Catholic 'telephone game' of revision continues.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/999077.asp?vts=113020031519
Author Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School sees Mary Magdalene as
the target of jealousy
The Bible’s Lost Stories
Fueling faith and igniting debate, a new generation of scholars is
altering our beliefs about the role of women in the scriptures
By Barbara Kantrowitz and Anne Underwood
NEWSWEEK
Dec. 8 issue — The year’s surprise “it” girl is the star of a
mega best seller, a hot topic on campuses and rumored to be the “special
friend” of a famous and powerful man. Yet she’s still very much a woman
of mystery. For close to 2,000 years, Christians have known her as Mary
Magdalene, but she was probably named Miriam, and came from the fishing
village of Magdala. Most people today grew up believing she was a harlot
saved by Jesus. But the Bible never says that. Scholars working with
ancient texts now believe she was one of Christ’s most devoted
followers, perhaps even his trusted confidante and financial backer.
THIS REVISIONIST VIEW helped inspire the plot of “The Da Vinci Code,”
which has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 36 weeks, with
4.3 million copies in print. Author Dan Brown draws on some credible
discoveries about the first followers of Jesus as well as some rather
fantastical theories about Mary Magdalene to suggest that she was far
more than the first to witness the risen Jesus (her most important role,
according to the New Testament). The blockbuster novel has enraged many
theologians who consider it anti-Catholic, but it has also added new
force to an already dynamic debate among women who see Magdalene’s story
as a parable for their own struggles to find a place in the modern
church. None of this would be possible without a new generation of women
Biblical scholars who have brought a very modern passion to the ancient
tradition of scriptural reinterpretation—to correct what these scholars
regard as a male misreading of key texts. It has not been easy work.
Despite the undeniably central role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, the
Biblical focus has largely been on what God has accomplished through the
agency of men—from Adam to the Apostles. Of some 3,000 characters named
in the Bible, fewer than 10 percent are women. Female scholars are
trying to redress the imbalance by unearthing narratives that have been
overlooked for centuries and reinterpreting more-familiar stories,
including Mary Magdalene’s and even the story of Eve (where, one could
argue, the problems really began). And they are rigorously studying the
Biblical period to glean what they can about the role of women in
ancient times.
Across the country, fresh research is inspiring women of all faiths.
Evangelical Protestant women hold their own Bible-study groups where the
distaff version of history is a major draw. Jewish worshipers now add to
the litany of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the names of their wives: Sarah,
Rebekah and Rachel. In addition to Moses at Passover, some celebrate his
sister, Miriam, who defied a powerful and tyrannical ruler to rescue her
baby brother from a death decree and became a prophet and leader in her
own right. For Roman Catholics in particular, Mary Magdalene has emerged
as a role model for women who want a greater church presence after the
wave of sexual-abuse scandals. “I want my daughter to feel that she is
as equally valued as her brother in terms of her faith,” says Dr. Jo
Kelly, 38, of Sinking Spring, Pa. Not long ago, Kelly’s daughter, Mary
Shea, 7, told her mother she wanted to be a priest. Kelly, a
pediatrician who belongs to a religious-discussion group, didn’t
discourage her. “Keep believing that,” she replied, “and maybe we can
change people’s minds.”
Mary Magdalene inspires, these women say, because she was not a
weakling—the weeping Magdalene whose name begat the English word
“maudlin” —but a person of strength and character. In an era when women
were commonly identified in relation to a husband, father or brother,
she was identified instead by her town of origin. Scholars believe she
was one of a number of women who provided monetary support for Jesus’
ministry. And when the male disciples fled, she steadfastly witnessed
Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection, providing the thread of
continuity in the central story of Christian history—an extraordinary
role in an age when women generally provided legal testimony only in the
absence of male witnesses. Tradition, however, has consigned Mary to a
lesser role. “Instead, we’ve been given the image of Mary as a forgiven
sinner,” says Sister Christine Schenk, cofounder of FutureChurch, an
organization calling for women’s equality in the Roman Catholic Church.
“Well, Peter was a forgiven sinner, too, but that’s not what we remember
him for.” Schenk helped institute nationwide observances of Mary
Magdalene’s feast day, July 22.
To honor their heroine, Catholic women like Kathy Kidder and her
friends in Gainesville, Fla., are forming reading groups to discuss the
dozens of new scholarly and literary books about her and debating her
role on religious Web sites like Magdalene.org and Beliefnet.com. The
new insights they gain can shatter old beliefs, but often also help them
deepen their faith. College student Frances Garcia, 26, of Orlando,
Fla., was raised Catholic, but now attends a Baptist church. “The Da
Vinci Code” raised troubling questions for her about how women’s
contributions to early Christianity were suppressed by church leaders.
“My faith was really shaken,” she says. “I started doing a lot of
research on my own.” Learning more made her feel “closer to God,” she
says.
What started out as scholarship with an openly feminist political agenda
has evolved into serious and respected inquiry. To understand this
change, consider what has happened to the field during the career of
Bernadette Brooten. As a graduate theology student at Harvard in the
late 1970s, Brooten was told that scholars already knew everything there
was to know about women in the Bible. Yet Brooten, now a professor of
Christian studies at Brandeis University, made the remarkable discovery
by reading older versions of the Bible that Junius, one of the many
Christian “Apostles” mentioned by Saint Paul, was in fact a woman,
Junia, whose name was masculinized over the centuries by translators
with their own agenda. Brooten’s discovery became “official” when
Junia’s real name was incorporated into the New Standard Revised Version
of the Bible, which came out in 1989.
Today, there are female Biblical scholars at dozens of institutions,
and at least two universities—Harvard and the Claremont Graduate
University in California—offer degree programs on women in religion.
These scholars have produced a new dictionary called “Women in
Scripture,” a woman’s study Bible, and feminist commentaries to various
books of the New Testament and early Christian literature. “There are
increasing numbers of resources concerning Biblical women that are
making their way into libraries, classrooms and bookstores,” says
Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt
University Divinity School. “They’re no longer just cleaned up or
romanticized stories, but rigorously historical, imaginative,
cross-cultural collections.” These insights are also filtering out into
popular culture with a slew of literary interpretations of women’s Bible
stories in the wake of Anita Diamant’s 1997 best seller, “The Red Tent,”
including many about Mary Magdalene.
The fascination with Magdalene has a long and rich history of its own.
Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, a cultural historian at Georgetown
University, curated an exhibit last year of Magdalene portraits at the
American Bible Society in New York. “She’s gone through conflations and
misinterpretations and reinterpretations and retrievals,” she says.
“I’ve seen her represented in every medium of art through every
Christian period—as the witness to the Resurrection, the seductive
temptress, the haggard desert mother signifying penitence, the beautiful
woman reborn signifying new life.” But for most people, the image that
sticks is the rehabilitated prostitute. Scholars blame Pope Gregory the
Great for her bad rep; in A.D. 591, he gave a sermon in which he
apparently combined several Biblical women into one, including Magdalene
and an unnamed sinner who anoints Jesus’ feet. Although the Vatican
officially overruled Gregory in 1969, the image stuck until quite
recently. “It became a snowball that grew and grew until her name in
legend and art history evoked the *****,” says Jane Schaberg, professor
of religious studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and author of
“The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene.”
Part of the problem may stem from what scholars have called “the muddle
of the Marys.” There are a lot of women named Mary in the New Testament,
and it’s not always clear which is which.
But some scholars also think mary Magdalene was defamed because
she was a threat to male control of the church. As the “Apostle to the
Apostles”—the first to encounter the risen Christ and to take the news
to Peter and the other male Apostles—she was clearly more than just an
ordinary follower. In several Gnostic Gospels—written by Christians
whose alternative views of Jesus were eventually suppressed as
heresy—Mary Magdalene rivals Peter for the leadership of the early
church because of her superior understanding of Jesus’ teaching. The
Gospel of Philip, for example, describes her as Jesus’ close companion
whom he often “used to kiss.” Karen King of Harvard Divinity School,
author of “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala” and a leading authority on
women’s roles in the early church, sees her as a target of jealousy
because she threatened Peter’s status. By transforming her into a
reformed *****, King believes, the church fathers “killed the argument
for women’s leadership”—and for recognizing women as fit recipients of
divine revelation. King says the transformation also created a powerful
symbol of the prostitute as redeemed sinner, the female version of the
Prodigal Son. If Jesus could accept her, he could accept anyone.
In “The Da Vinci Code,” Brown suggests that she still had one
more hold on Jesus—as his wife. That theory has been circulating for
centuries. Some historians think it is possible because Jewish men of
that era were almost always married, but many others dismiss that
reasoning. Some argue that Jesus wasn’t conventional in any other sense,
so why would he feel the need to be married? Others say that relegating
her to the role of wife is belittling. “Let’s not continue the
relentless denigration of Mary Magdalene by reducing her only importance
to a sexual connection with Jesus,” says John Dominic Crossan, professor
emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago. “She’s
not important becaus
she was Mrs. Jesus. That’s like saying Hillary
Rodham Clinton is only important because she’s married to Bill Clinton.
Both women are important in their own right.”
That’s certainly true for the women who see in Mary Magdalene’s
rediscovered importance a pathway to their own new roles in the church.
Mary Magdalene’s story gave Maggie Albo, a 49-year-old volunteer hospice
chaplain from Spokane Valley, Wash., the courage to lobby the Diocese of
Spokane for space in local Catholic cemeteries to bury abandoned remains
from the county medical examiner’s office. “Mary has taught me to step
out in faith to do the work of Jesus,” she says. “I aspire to be a Mary
of Magdala... a woman unafraid to speak up.”
Mary Magdalene is not the only Biblical heroine to benefit from a
modern makeover. A number of scholars have gone back to the original
Hebrew texts for a clearer understanding of Eve, the original woman in
the Bible. The popular conception of Eve is the product of centuries of
myth and artistic interpretation. One widely held misconception is that
the fruit Eve offered Adam in the Garden of Eden was an apple. In fact,
scholars say, the Bible never states that. “Just because Milton mentions
it in ‘Paradise Lost’ or some Renaissance painter puts it in a picture
doesn’t make it an apple,” says Carol Meyers, professor of Biblical
studies at Duke. Meyers says that not only is the apple missing from the
story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, but there is also no mention of the
words “the temptation of Adam,” “seduction,” “curse of Eve,” “Fall of
Man,” “sin” or “original sin.” And yet the Creation story has
traditionally been the basis for the argument that women are responsible
for sin and should therefore be subservient to men. This error “has
oppressed both women and men,” says Phyllis Trible, professor of
Biblical studies at Wake Forest University, “because the master-slave
relationship isn’t a relationship of freedom for either party.” Trible
gives a more egalitarian rendering of a passage that has long troubled
many women readers.
When God tells Eve “Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall
rule over you,” Trible sees a patriarchy turning description into
prescription. In the original Hebrew, Trible insists, “it doesn’t say he
shall rule over you. It just says he does rule over you—a description of
the way things are.”
In the ancient cultures where the Bible was formed, men did indeed rule
over women. They owned and sold them, often as slaves. One slave in
particular, Hagar, has captured the imagination of contemporary Hispanic
and African-American women. Just as women’s perspective is not
necessarily the same as men’s, minority women do not necessarily share
the same perspective as white women. According to the Bible, God
promises Abraham land and a multitude of offspring. But because he and
his childless wife, Sarah, are old, Sarah suggests that he father a
child with Hagar, her Egyptian handmaiden. After a son is born, Hagar
feels superior to the jealous Sarah, who in turn abuses her
handmaiden—forcing Abraham to send Hagar away. Eventually God addresses
Hagar directly (the first woman after Eve so honored), names her child
Ishmael and encourages her to return. Later, Sarah also conceives and,
at the age of 90, delivers Isaac, through whom Jews claim their
spiritual lineage to Abraham. Hagar’s has always been the lost voice in
this narrative, but no longer. “Her character resonates by ethnicity and
class—as an African and a slave,” says Renita Weems, an associate
professor of the Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt Divinity School. “And we
understand slaves.” Similarly, Megan McKenna, author of several books on
Biblical women, found that the figure of Hagar powerfully appealed to
the Hispanic maids in her Bible-reading group at a California motel. She
remembers one illegal immigrant from El Salvador saying in halting
English: “Oh, now Sarah knows what it’s like to be treated like dirt all
the time.”
Equally appealing to modern women looking for inspiration are
overlooked stories that celebrate the bravery of women. In the Book of
Joshua, it is Rahab, a prostitute, who helps Joshua conquer Jericho by
hiding his spies in her house. For her courage, she and her children are
the only ones spared in the Israelites’ sacking of the city. One of the
most prominent warriors in the Book of Judges is Deborah, a military
commander and judge who leads an army into battle because her general
will not go without her. Deborah predicts that only a woman will capture
the enemy leader, Sisera. That woman, it turns out, is Jael, into whose
tent Sisera flees for refuge. Jael feeds him, puts him to bed and then,
as he sleeps, picks up a mallet and drives a tent peg through his head.
Perhaps the most striking protofeminist text in Scripture is the Book of
Judith, wholly devoted to a heroine who saves Israel. “She’s like Wonder
Woman, only Jewish,” says Vanderbilt’s Levine. Judith’s moment comes as
Israel is being threatened by a neighboring power. The male Jewish
leadership prepares to surrender, but Judith, a beautiful and pious
widow, has another plan. Dressed in her alluring best, she enters the
enemy’s camp. The general, Holofernes, becomes infatuated and plans to
seduce her. But when she is alone in his chambers, Judith decapitates
Holofernes and takes his head home in her food bag. The enemy flees. All
of Israel, including Jerusalem and its temple, are saved, and Judith,
whom scholars see as a personification of Israel, returns to her
previous life.
The spotlight of new scholarship has even revealed the human side of
the most revered female in Christianity—Mary, the mother of Christ. Next
to her son, Mary is probably the best-known character in the Bible, but
for many, she is an alabaster figure. Some theologians have been looking
for a more multidimensional Madonna. “Let’s stop treating her as this
virgin mother we have no relationship with, that we can’t touch and
understand because she’s so different from us,” says Weems, author of
“Showing Mary: How Women Can Share Prayers, Wisdom and the Blessings of
God.” Weems starts her reinterpretation not with Mary the exalted and
untouchable Queen of Heaven, but with Mary the simple teenage girl. On
that fateful day when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her and told her
she would carry the Son of God, Mary was terrified—just as Moses, Isaiah
and Jeremiah all protested that they were too young or not worthy of the
task when presented with their own challenges from God. But Mary put her
trust in God and was rewarded for it. God gives her the much-needed
companionship of her older cousin Elizabeth, a long-barren woman who was
also suddenly and miraculously pregnant and ultimately gives birth to
John, a prophet who would be called “the Baptist.”
Embedded in the story of Mary and Elizabeth is a theme, finally being
openly explored, that speaks directly to the experience of contemporary
women. Unlike other Biblical figures, Mary is not bowing to the demands
of a patriarchal society by providing her future husband with a male
heir. On the contrary, she has scandalized her betrothed, Joseph, by
freely accepting God’s will that she bear a child by the power of the
Holy Spirit. In the Mary and Elizabeth visitation scene in Luke’s
Gospel, Mary has come to visit her cousin for three months. As Luke
paints it, this is more than just a domestic interlude. Through
Elizabeth, the history of the Old Testament will end with the last of
the Hebrew prophets, John. Through Mary, a new history of salvation will
begin with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In a powerful
closing hymn, Mary glories in a God who often uses the
powerless—especially women—to accomplish His purposes. Acknowledging her
“lowliness” as God’s “servant,” she goes on to predict—rightly—that
henceforth “all generations will call me blessed.”
Mary and Elizabeth’s dependence on God and each other—a Biblical example
of sisterhood in action—contrasts with the struggle of their spiritual
ancestress, Tamar, who has to rely only on herself to outwit the
patriarchal social structure. As her story is told in Genesis 38, her
first husband dies, leaving her childless. According to the law of the
time, she is then married to her husband’s younger brother in order to
produce a son who would continue her husband’s lineage. It is not to be.
God strikes her second husband dead for practicing coitus interruptus in
order to avoid fathering a child who will take away his inheritance. By
law, Tamar should then have been married to the third son, but her
father-in-law, Judah, suspects that Tamar herself is behind his sons’
deaths. He declines to give her to his third son, who is underage, and,
at the same time, won’t declare her a widow—which would leave her free
to marry again. Instead, he sends her back to her father’s house, where
she must remain chaste while she waits for Judah to give her to the
third son. Eventually, Tamar tricks Judah into impregnating her himself.
It ends well when he accepts her and Tamar gives birth to twins—two sons
to replace the two he has lost.
Tamar has to deceive the most powerful man in her life in order
to get what she deserves. Her Biblical sisters have had to wait
thousands of years for their day in the sun, but their voices, too, are
finally being heard. No one is trying to claim that the women of the
Bible were anywhere near as powerful as the men in their world. But
neither were they weak and passive. Perhaps they were just
misunderstood. And ignored. Take the story every Sunday-school kid has
heard about how Jesus fed a multitude of 5,000 with just five loaves of
bread and two fish. What the Bible really says is that there were “five
thousand, not counting women and children.” In other words, assuming
there was a wife and at least two children for every man, Jesus actually
fed 20,000 people. Why didn’t the man who recorded this tale capitalize
on the opportunity to make Jesus’ miracle seem even more impressive? It
seems that women and children were simply too unimportant. “The amazing
thing is that there are any women at all in the ancient texts,” says
Deirdre Good, professor of New Testament studies at General Theological
Seminary. As the scholarly debate continues, one thing worshipers might
keep in mind is how often these marginalized characters prevail and are
entrusted to deliver the Word of God. From Eve to Miriam to Mary, they
were all players—and are , in our unfolding spiritual drama.
With Pat Wingert and Karen Springen
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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| User: "Woden" |
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| Title: Re: And the Catholic 'telephone game' continues. |
30 Nov 2003 07:20:08 PM |
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stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote in
news:g82lsvgmdmvc1798jf14a3958ee154trk9@4ax.com:
And the Catholic 'telephone game' of revision continues.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/999077.asp?vts=113020031519
Author Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School sees Mary Magdalene
as the target of jealousy
The Bible’s Lost Stories
Fueling faith and igniting debate, a new generation of scholars is
altering our beliefs about the role of women in the scriptures
(snip article)
This brings two thoughts to mind.
Isn't it interesting that the secular driven equality of women is causing
the "unchanging" word of god to become less misogynic.
Isn't it interesting how much these people (scholars?) can read into a
few references in a book of mythology for one minor character?
--
Woden
"religion is a socio-political institution for the control of
people's thoughts, lives, and actions; based on
ancient myths and superstitions perpetrated through
generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing."
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: And the Catholic 'telephone game' continues. |
02 Dec 2003 11:45:10 PM |
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On Mon, 01 Dec 2003 01:20:08 -0000, Woden <woden@charter.net>, Message
ID: <Xns9443CF2548CC9wodencharternet@216.168.3.44> wrote in alt.atheism;
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote in
news:g82lsvgmdmvc1798jf14a3958ee154trk9@4ax.com:
And the Catholic 'telephone game' of revision continues.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/999077.asp?vts=113020031519
Author Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School sees Mary Magdalene
as the target of jealousy
The Bible’s Lost Stories
Fueling faith and igniting debate, a new generation of scholars is
altering our beliefs about the role of women in the scriptures
(snip article)
This brings two thoughts to mind.
Isn't it interesting that the secular driven equality of women is causing
the "unchanging" word of god to become less misogynic.
Isn't it interesting how much these people (scholars?) can read into a
few references in a book of mythology for one minor character?
Yes to both. Please remember that ***** is very mallable.....
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
.
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