Da Vinci Code

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Cracking the Code

Mary Magdalene in legend/apocrypha:

• Gospel of Mary (Magdalene)

Discussion whether a woman/Mary should be elevated as a teacher of a certain revelation concerning the ascent of the soul.

• Gospel of Thomas

Jesus insinuates a woman/Mary should "become" male to enter the Kingdom.

• Gospel of Phillip

Jesus may kiss Mary, but all disciples/women seem to receive this greeting of discipleship. If the sketchy translation is true love not agape, the relationship could not have been suppressed from the beginning without some extraordinary explanation.

The overwhelming question in these Gnostic gospels seems to be, could Mary Magdalene have been Jesus’ favorite pupil, and the answer is yes and the real legend is she continued to teach. Could Jesus have been God who mingled, but was foremost a teacher, the Bible says so. One lecturer has stated that there were 480 religious schools in Jerusalem at the time of Paul which gives a feel for the intellectual outreach of the period. Was Galilee any different?

A Catholic priest on NPR was telling his congregation in answer to the "Da Vinci Code" that the appearance of an unmarried man during that era would have been so unusual that it had to be so.

Not so. Not only was celibacy common among the Essenes, Josephus (Wars of the Jews, Bk. II, Chapter VIII, Sect. 13) describes a peculiar sect which parallels the lifestyle of Jesus in his ministry, even allowing for a consort with regular menstruation over three years:

"Moreover, there is another order of Essens, who agree with the rest as to their way of living and customs, and laws, but differ from them in the point of marriage, as thinking that by not marrying they cut off the principal part of human life, which is the prospect of succession; nay rather, that if all men should be of the same opinion, the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their spouses for three years; and if they find that they have their natural purgations thrice, as trials that they are likely to be fruitful, they then actually marry them."

Not to say there couldn't have been relations. My friend and mystic soapmaker, inventor, Dr. Bronner of Escondido CA patented the Essene Birth-Control method of lemon pulp and why would they need it unless it was the fruitful sect so described. And of course there would be no culmination at the Cross.

Coincidence, that the link that started the serious work of translation in Modernity with actual word “pictures” from ancient manuscripts was a Da Vinci exposé website, which linked to Textual Criticism.

[edit] Addendum

At the very least, calling the shot, written here before the May 29, 2006, Newsweek commentary on Mary Magdalene from a professor Kraemer stating, "A freewoman who never married probably would have been exceedingly rare," and not the other way around. Take the only logical conclusion, consort in name only.