Mary Magdalene - Feminist and Heroine, Part One

Not much is actually known about Mary Magdalene. She wrote a gospel, which ended up in the Apocrypha or was otherwise excluded from the canonical Bible, possibly because it was so fragmented as to be unusable. She hung around with Jesus and the other disciples. For centuries, she was assumed to have been the adulteress whom Jesus saved from the mud pit, and a prostitute, and there are those who speculate that she was actually Jesus' wife. So there are a couple of speculative points that I would like to make because Mary figures prominently in Book Two.

In First Century Israel, as in most centuries before the first century in Israel, people were known by their first name and the name of their father. Simon Peter was actually "Shelomon bar Yonas," or "Solomon the son of Jonas."  The Virgin Mary would have been "Miriam beth Issac" or possibly "Miriam beth Joseph" to show that she was of the House of Issac or the House of Joseph, just as Queen Esther was originally Hadassah beth Avigail. And, for the sake of argument, Jesus was "Yeshua bar Yosef," or "Jesus the son of Joseph," or "Jesus bar Abbas," as in "Jesus the Son of God."  The "bar," ben" and "beth" conferred legitimacy.

But what if one were illegitimate?  There would be no father's name to attach at the back of one's first name, because that father was unknown. This was the case when it came to Leonardo DaVinci, who was illegitimate and came from the town of Vinci. He was, basically, "Leonardo of Vinci." The town of Vinci was adopted as his last name.

Now, there are several disciples who didn't have last names, and one could assume from this that they were illegitimate. Philip did not have a last name. Neither did whichever disciple it was who had a twin. (I would look it up, but I'm lazy.)  And neither did Mary. The name "Magdalene" refers to the town in which she lived - Magdala, which is either Greek or Latin. If she had been legitimate, she would have been listed as "Mary beth _____" (fill in the father's name there) as Matthew was listed as "Matthias ben Alphaeus."

Mary was also for years and years assumed to have been a prostitute. This assumption started, I understand, rather belatedly in the Middle Ages, when the chauvinistic Catholic Church was at its prime. (The Catholic Church also conveniently forgot that there were other Jewish women's names than just "Mary," and don't even get me started on the whole mishegoss about the Virgin Mary.)  In my book, however, Mary is a working girl who makes a living in the fish market making garum, a very stinky precursor of Worchestershire Sauce. (Look it up. Worchestershire Sauce has anchovies.)

Now, I used to live near National City, California, at a time when one of their biggest employers was the tuna industry. Tuna boats went out, fishermen caught tuna, brought their haul back to port, and it was made into Bumble Bee Tuna or maybe Chicken of the Sea. But aside from providing jobs to National City, what the tuna industry mostly contributed to the general ambiance of the town was the overpowering smell of fish. I am sure that the fishermen and the people who turned it into cans of tuna absolutely reeked of fish, morning, noon and night, even after a hot bath and layers of cheap perfume, because fish is oily and the oil can get into the skin. Since Magdala was a major fishing town on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, it would be fair to assume that it, too, reeked of fish. Probably even a tower of fish. (Magdala's real name, in Aramaic, was Migdal Nunaiya, which means "Tower of Fish.")

And what does fish smell like?  Well, I don't mean to be indelicate here, and meaning no disrespect, but fish can smell like certain women's private parts. Hence, the mythic and historical connection between sailors, fishermen, the Sea and the Goddess of Love and her surrogates, the prostitutes.

Furthermore, it doesn't seem that Mary was married, because she seems to have had the time to wander throughout Galilee and Judaea with Jesus and his other disciples, and she couldn't have done that if she were married, much less married with children. And single women, especially of a certain age, are suspected of all sorts of immorality and indecent behavior, even now, when idiot male politicians seem to think that women in general are incapable of knowing what is best for themselves and their own bodies. And a single woman, especially one who doesn't have a father, doesn't have to ask any man for permission to do anything. Therefore, if Mary wanted to wander around the countryside with thirteen men to whom she was not related, well, she could, but people, being as nasty-minded then as they are now, would assume that she was sexually servicing those same men. Therefore, even without smelling like fish, it would naturally be assumed that Mary was a prostitute, or at least a very easy lay.

In my book, however, Mary is more of a nun. Her mother was a prostitute, which is why Mary doesn't have a legitimate last name, but in my book, Mary defied the assumed and degrading course laid out for her and worked at the fish market instead of on the streets. This would also explain why Mary doesn't hold men in particularly high regard, but considers herself equal to them, or better, and she especially doesn't want to be sold into marriage or in any way beholden to a man. She is proudly independent, self-sufficient, brilliant, ambitious, and testy, as any woman with half of a brain would be testy given such an repressive and chauvinistic environment. Additionally, while I don't know if Mary was originally called "Mary of Migdal Nunaiya" and that this was shortened to "Mary the Nun," but it is interesting to speculate. Regrettably, I did not include this insight in my book because I just thought of it and the book has been out for months.

There is one last reason why Mary might have been considered a prostitute, quite aside from the fishy smell and her tendency to hang out with a bevy of unrelated men. She was beautiful. Drop dead gorgeous. With the kind of body that just naturally made men think of sin. I'm thinking Sophia Loren-like, a statuesque and very curvy beauty. This was both a blessing and a curse, because no matter how moral and upright and saintly a woman is, if she is built, and I am talking built, then men will naturally assume that she is just as interested in having sex with them, as they are in having sex with her. Especially a gorgeous woman who wanders around the countryside with a bevy of men, unchaperoned. And onlookers will see her and think that she is in some way sexually active and predatory, whether she really is or not. This happens now, and since people haven't changed in tens or hundreds of thousands of years, it is very probably that they thought so, then.

There has been some suggestion, by those who have read my book, that Mary was gay. Now, that would be an interesting twist, and one that would turn the Catholic Church and the evangelists on their ear. And I did suggest that, at the time, the people who met this very independent, self-sufficient, testy woman thought that she was a prostitute, a Sapphic (a lesbian), a witch and possessed by seven demons because she refused to conform to the norms of the time (get married, have kids, be a perfect cook and housewife, etc..)  And she does get chummy, in my book, with Martha the sister of Lazarus. But I don't come right out and say that she is gay, any more than I say that she has a sexual history with men. Some secrets are meant to be kept.

To be continued.

9,000 Year-Old Stone Judaean Masks

http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-masks-display-jerusalem-160209806.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory

Interesting story about eleven stone masks, dating from 7000 BCE, found in the Judaean desert. These eleven human faces, graven in stone, varying in their appearance, seem to have holes at the base so that sticks can be inserted. What the article did not say was how much these masks weigh. They look fairly heavy, so it is unlikely, in my opinion, that they would be hand-held during rituals, but might have been put on sticks and propped up as part of the scenery or background, although the scientist who found them did not seem to think so. They do not have the megaphone mouths of later Roman or Greece mask design and appear to have been unpainted. (Neolithic people had access to natural pigments and were prolific colorists.)

Given that these masks date from 7,000 BCE, these masks were made at roughly the same time that small figurines were made of the white clay in the area later known as the District of Galilee. They pre-date the prohibition of the making of "graven images."

Foods Never to Eat

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/8-animals-eaten-alive-around-232347504.html

And of course, none of these are kosher.

Once More into the Breeches, My Friends!

So you know how, in all of the religious movies and pictures, Jesus and his friends are all wearing ankle-length tunics and an open coat or sometimes a toga?  In my book, however, Jesus and his working-class friends, with the exception of Mary of Magdala, wear short tunics and cotton breeches. Pants, in other words. Short pants, long pants, puffy pants, Bermuda shorts, or whatnot, but pants. "Pants?" you might ask?  "Why pants?"

Well, there are many reasons here. First off, togas.  Togas, those things that drape over the shoulder like a bed-sheet, were worn by the Romans, usually Roman citizens and senators. Slaves, provincials and non-citizens were not allowed to wear togas. Some of the Jewish aristocracy, aka Sadducees, wore togas, but only if they were Roman citizens, which was something that was conferred upon them after the payment of many shekels, like getting a knighthood bestowed upon one by the Queen because one has contributed to the glory of the British Empire, or because one has paid a ton in taxes. So, since Jesus and his friends were not Roman citizens or senators, they didn't wear togas. Couldn't. Weren't allowed. Doing so might result in their arrests if for no reason than on suspicion of putting on airs.

Secondly, the Persian Empire had conquered Israel several hundred years before Jesus' time, and those people wore pants. Puffy pants, but pants. Check out the pictures of ancient Persians. (Or for that matter, cavemen and the people who inhabited Britannia.  Pants have been around for a very long time. They're not hard to make.)  Probably even the Hittites and the Sumerians wore pants. Pants are infinitely more masculine and modest than skirts or long tunics. Ask any Scotsman and he will tell you that this is true, especially in a high wind. Furthermore, many of the Persian kings and emperors were friendly toward the Jewish people, the Book of Esther notwithstanding. And the Jewish people were very modest. The Romans, not so much. So it is entirely possible that the Jewish people adopted the Persian habit of wearing pants, and why not? They had more ethnically in common with the Persians than they did with the Romans, who were the enemy de jour, after all.

Thirdly, there are no pictures of First Century Jewish people in Israel, at least not that have been dug up so far. Mosaic Law forbade Jewish people from painting pictures or carving statues or engraving images of people lest they be worshiped as gods. Major no-no. And Jesus was Jewish. So the earliest pictures that we have of First Century Jewish folk came about through Christian artists after Jesus' death, usually by several hundred years. And all that the artists of that time had to go on, when it came to fashion, were pictures of First Century Romans, slaves and Gentiles, all dressed in Roman garb with nary a pair of pants in the bunch. Therefore, it is entirely possible that First Century Jewish men wore pants since there is no proof that they did not. And if they did, then probably Jesus did, at least most of the time.