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.