Ep 12: The Blessing of the Magdalene w/ Elizabeth Schrader Polczer

00:00So, you know, oftentimes people will hold up the Bible and say, "The Bible is clear,"

00:07or "The Bible says this," and people who do that are not always thinking about where

00:13the Bible comes from.

00:14I think on some level they do know that it comes from manuscripts, and they probably

00:21know that there are thousands of manuscripts, but what they might not know is not every

00:27single manuscript was exactly alike.

00:30And finding the ones that are closer to the source, oftentimes those are the oldest manuscripts,

00:36even the best manuscripts, and in fact, several text critics have pointed out that the further

00:40back you go, the more variation you get, which is not what you would expect if there

00:46was this word of God that was carefully preserved.

00:49You would expect that, like, "Oh, down the lines," and people snuck some things in, but

00:52if you go to the very beginnings, you see a lot of textual variation.

01:18Are you doing today, Elizabeth?

01:26I'm doing great.

01:27It's a beautiful day here.

01:28Good to hear.

01:29And where are you located at the moment?

01:30I am in Durham, North Carolina for the next few weeks, and then I'll be moving to Philadelphia

01:35shortly.

01:36All right.

01:37Well, that's trying to think about the difference in weather there.

01:41A few were mountains probably, but...

01:42Yeah, it's a little more humid here, but we got both beach and mountain.

01:45Like three hours west is mountains, three hours east is beach, so all good.

01:46Yeah.

01:47Okay.

01:48I'm very excited to be talking to you.

01:49Well, I am very excited to be talking to you today.

01:52That's longtime viewers, the whole, what, two months that we've been around, will recognize

01:56that we are one Dan Short, and Dan Beacher, alas, indeed, is unfortunately down with touch

02:06of the COVID, down with the sickness, as the great poet once said.

02:10And so he's not feeling up to, he's not, let's say...

02:18I used to say this to my 14-year-old all the time, and now I've forgotten the words that

02:24I use.

02:25Something about being on camera.

02:26I always get a little glitchy, but he's not, he's not dressed to receive.

02:31Let's just put it that way.

02:32Alas.

02:33Well, send him my regards.

02:35I was looking forward to chatting with him, but some other time, perhaps.

02:38Definitely.

02:39Some other time.

02:40So right before we got started here, you mentioned that you are, this is your second career,

02:47and I want to get started into talking about Mary with the fact that you wrote a song about

02:53Mary as a singer-songwriter as part of your previous career.

02:57And did that actually play a direct role in your becoming interested in academically studying

03:03Mary Magdalene?

03:04It was, I always describe it as like a wormhole to another life.

03:08I had been doing the music business for a very long time.

03:12I was in a band, and we toured with people like Jewell and Poe, and we opened for like

03:19Rusted Root.

03:20We did a lot of fun things, and I was on an episode of the Gilmore Girls.

03:26I did a lot of stuff in the music business, and I kind of found that over time there were

03:31diminishing returns in the music business, which, because it's a very, if anybody's noticed,

03:35it's a very youth-oriented culture.

03:38And so sort of as time went on, and I gained more and more experience, it was like less

03:43and less successful, which to me was very irksome, because I knew I was getting better

03:49and better at my craft.

03:51And so at a certain point, I was just feeling very frustrated, and it was around that time

03:55that I was, I've always been a very spiritual person.

03:58I know not everybody on this podcast is a spiritual person, but I have always been a spiritual

04:03person, and I was in a garden dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and I was sort of praying,

04:11and I actually heard words in response to my prayer, and they were, "Maybe you should

04:16talk to Mary Magdalene about that."

04:18And I was like, "Rrrr, that's what I was expecting," and also I don't like hear words

04:24in responses to prayers usually.

04:27So I thought that was very strange, and so I walked, I marched right over to the Brooklyn

04:30Public Library.

04:31And Brooklyn, New York at this time, and I checked out the complete Idiots Guide to

04:35Mary Magdalene.

04:36Okay, that's a good start.

04:38Well, I mean, it was actually, it was a great, it was a great introduction, and then I just

04:41started becoming interested in Mary Magdalene.

04:44But also, as I left the garden, I had this sort of lyric in my head that said, that was,

04:52I went to the garden of the Holy Virgin, and I asked for the blessing of the Magdalene,

04:56and I was like, "Oh, that's kind of cute, that's a cute lyric."

04:59So I went home, and I kind of wrote this song much more quickly than usual, and it only

05:04took me a couple of days to write the song, and I recorded it.

05:07And so then it was, I released a record called Magdalene, and that just caused me to say,

05:13"Oh, you know, I can't release a record about Mary Magdalene without knowing something

05:17about her.

05:18Little did I know that I was stumbling upon what is in fact the world's deepest rabbit

05:22hole.

05:23And now I am a Mary Magdalene scholar, and it is now my profession, and I am now a professor

05:29of New Testament," which is very weird, because I remember very clearly that I was a singer-songwriter

05:34in Brooklyn, not so long ago.

05:36Yeah.

05:37Wow.

05:38That's quite a different life, but hopefully that colors your research and the contributions

05:43that you can make to research in a helpful way.

05:46There are a lot of, once you get to know a lot of biblical scholars, it's interesting

05:52how many other hobbies and other lives there are out there that we don't see on the pages

05:57of the articles and the books that we read.

05:59Yeah, everybody's got a reason for getting into it.

06:03Sometimes they'll tell you, and sometimes they won't.

06:06But mine is very public, you can go watch the Magdalene video, and it was released before

06:10I ever started graduate work, so it's easy to find.

06:12Well, I'll definitely have to do that.

06:14And yeah, rusted root, that's a pretty distinct sound.

06:17When I've got Pandora going, I can tell if a rusted root song has come on.

06:23Yeah, they were great.

06:24It was at the Warfield in San Francisco.

06:26We got, we did some fun stuff when I was in that band.

06:29I bet.

06:30And I seem to recall music kind of changing a little bit.

06:32Was this around like 20 years ago, early, early 2000s?

06:36Yeah, around that.

06:37That's kind of when, for me, music shifted a little bit.

06:40I think it got more, it got slicker, the production change, it took over a lot of the

06:45music.

06:46That's true.

06:47That's true, got more digital.

06:48Yeah, it did.

06:49Well, I don't want to get too bogged down in the weeds of your backstory, but thank you

06:56for sharing that with me.

06:57I did not come across that in the research that...

07:00That's good.

07:01That means that my scholarship is standing on its own, so I'm glad to hear that.

07:07Good.

07:08Well, I wanted to get started talking, starting with about a 40,000 foot view and kind of

07:13zooming in on Mary Magdalene, but you published in the, was it's HDR?

07:20Yeah.

07:21Theological Review, research about Martha of Bethany and her relationship to Mary, but

07:29I want to talk a little bit about textual criticism because this is a question of textual

07:33criticism and something that I run across an awful lot in social media is that a lot

07:38of people don't realize just how much their new testament, their translation of the New

07:44Testament relies on scholars making judgment calls about text critical questions in cobbling

07:51together the source text that we use for the New Testament.

07:56In fact, a lot of people, if they hear me say, and we have an eclectic source text, they

08:03don't even know what that means.

08:06A lot of your work has to do directly with textual criticism.

08:09Maybe you can talk a little bit about why it would be helpful for readers of the Bible

08:13to understand more about what goes into the production of their Bible.

08:18Sure.

08:19Speaking of textual criticism specifically.

08:20So, you know, oftentimes people will hold up the Bible and say, the Bible is clear or

08:25the Bible says this.

08:27And people who do that are not always thinking about where the Bible comes from.

08:32I think on some level, they do know that it comes from manuscripts.

08:39And they probably know that there are thousands of manuscripts.

08:43But what they might not know is how they probably also suspect that because everything was copied

08:50by hand before the advent of the printing press, not every single manuscript was exactly

08:55alike.

08:56But maybe that's where they stop thinking about it.

08:57And they're like, somebody has already figured this out.

09:00And this version in front of me, hopefully not the King James, but maybe it is the King

09:04James.

09:05They're like, this is the word of God.

09:08And what textual criticism is important because it's basically looking at as many manuscripts

09:15as possible and finding the ones that are closer to the source.

09:21Oftentimes those are the oldest manuscripts.

09:24And oftentimes those manuscripts are in Greek if we're talking about the New Testament because

09:30the New Testament was written in Greek.

09:32I'm a New Testament textual criticism.

09:34Of course, Hebrew manuscripts would be, sorry, Old Testament would be in Hebrew.

09:40So for a New Testament scholarship, they find sort of what they consider to be the best manuscripts.

09:47And then when you're looking at the different manuscripts, sometimes they don't all say

09:51the same thing.

09:52Even the best manuscripts.

09:53And in fact, several text critics have pointed out that the further back you go, the more

09:59variation you get, which is not what you would expect if there was this word of God that

10:04was carefully preserved, you would expect that like, oh, down the lines and people snuck

10:08some things in.

10:09And that happened too.

10:11But if you go to the very beginnings, you see a lot of textual variation.

10:18And so it's the job of modern scholars.

10:21People don't think about this.

10:23It's literally the job of scholars that often in Germany, a committee of excellent European

10:32text critics who compare all of these different versions.

10:37And they sort of adjudicate between them and say, well, you know what, I think that this

10:42manuscript has the correct reading.

10:44And it's almost like a legal case has to be made for each variant because somebody could

10:50say, oh, well, the reason that the variant is this way, the reason that we're getting

10:52variation is because we know that there was this early Christian controversy.

10:56I'll give you a simple one.

10:59So in some manuscripts of Luke's gospel, when Jesus is in the temple and, you know, Mary

11:05and Joseph go and look for Jesus because he's, you know, he stayed behind and like, they're

11:11like, oh, where did he go?

11:12I think it's on Luke too.

11:14So they go back and some manuscripts.

11:16So some manuscripts say when his parents went back to look for him, dot, dot, dot, some

11:23other manuscripts say when his mother and Joseph went back to look for him, right?

11:28Yeah.

11:29And so what's going on there?

11:31There's textual variation.

11:32And at first you might just be like, why, why is there textual variation?

11:36But for people who understand what's going on in early Christianity, they know that it

11:42would have been controversial to say that Joseph fathered Jesus, right?

11:46Mary was supposed to be a virgin at the time of conception.

11:50So to say his parents is a controversial reading.

11:54And you can see then why a scribe might want or an editor might want to change the text

12:00to say his mother and Joseph.

12:03Is it, is it Luke where we have the genealogy that talks about Joseph as who is supposed

12:07to have been his father or who is?

12:10Is that the Luke?

12:11That's, you know, that's either Luke or Matthew, one of them says that it's, yeah, one of them

12:16says that it's supposedly his father, but, but basically in Luke, it says the different

12:25manuscripts say different things.

12:26Sometimes it says that Mary and his, sorry, his mother and Joseph, and sometimes it says

12:32his parents.

12:33And so the question that a text critic then has is you have to sort of make a legal argument.

12:37Which one of these is the right one?

12:39And you say, you know what?

12:40I think the one that says his parents is what Luke actually wrote because it's the more

12:44difficult reading.

12:45Yeah.

12:46That's the one that somebody would change.

12:48And that's, so that's how a lot of text critical judgments are made based on what the more

12:52difficult reading is.

12:54But somebody might argue it a different way, you know, and so you can make different legal

12:57arguments, not legal, but like text critical arguments, right.

13:02And then you land on one and that's what gets printed in your Bible.

13:05And I think a lot of people who have some familiarity with textual criticism might hear

13:09about lectio difficiliar.

13:12The more difficult reading is usually the, or a lectio brevior.

13:16The shorter reading is usually, and, and think, oh, that's a, that's a hard and fast rule.

13:21That means that is determinative about this given reading.

13:25But they're more, they're more probabilities in likelihoods.

13:29And so sometimes you have to weigh one against another.

13:32That's right.

13:33Sometimes the shorter reading is, or certainly it's a longer reading is the more difficult

13:38reading.

13:39So so basically it's always a balance of probabilities.

13:42It's often said that textual criticism is an art, not a science.

13:45And so what that's sort of cloaked from you when you're in, when you're looking at your

13:50Bible.

13:51Yeah, because it looks like the text is clear, but in fact, dozens if not hundreds of readings

13:56have been adjudicated.

13:58And sometimes different scholars might come to different conclusions.

14:01And that's actually reflected in different translations, because sometimes a different

14:05translation will choose a different Greek variant.

14:09People say, oh, it's been mistranslated.

14:11I'm not talking about the translation.

14:13I'm talking about the underlying Greek text.

14:16Yeah.

14:17There's different Greek manuscripts to say different things.

14:20And different committees might choose one over the other for different reasons.

14:27I know one that, one that comes up a lot in the scholarship that I work with is John 118,

14:32which is a variant that comes down, right, right.

14:38So it's either the only son or the only God.

14:44And so you have this, there's a, the earlier reading, I believe is, is son.

14:53And this matches what you have every other time this phrase occurs in John.

14:57However, you have some very early readings that also say God.

15:02And so the question then becomes, a lot of people leverage this Lectio difficilliar.

15:10This is, it would be, it's more likely the change would go from God to sun than it would

15:15go from sun to God in this argument.

15:18So I think even within Metzger's New Testament textual commentary, he says that he kind of

15:24advocates for the God reading, but then the editor is like, has a little spot at the bottom

15:29saying, not really, probably not what the author originally wrote.

15:33Well, right.

15:34Yeah.

15:35And so people, I guess what I highlighted in what I just, I just defended my dissertation.

15:39And one of the things that I highlight is that text critics have differing judgments.

15:43Like they, like one text critic might come to this conclusion and another one might come

15:47to that conclusion.

15:48And that's a place where literally what the author wrote, we don't know.

15:52We can't be certain what the author wrote.

15:54You can only argue with differing levels of persuasion for one variant over the other.

16:00And there's dozens, if not hundreds of places like that in the New Testament.

16:04And that is kind of masked from the average reader.

16:08Study Bibles are clearer about it because it'll say, at the bottom of your study Bible,

16:12it'll say like, Oh, some ancient authorities read this other thing or some ancient authorities

16:16lack this.

16:18And they're really talking about some ancient manuscripts.

16:20They say something different.

16:22And that's when we have textual attestation to a reading.

16:26However, there are some reconstructions that are hypothesized rather than, or conjectural

16:32according to the, to the parlance of our times where we, something is fishy.

16:39And we think we have an idea what it probably originally looked like, but we don't have

16:43any manuscript that's definitively points to that reading.

16:48And that's more closely related to the research that you published in Harvard Theological

16:52Review with Martha of Bethany, to some degree, I know there are variations in the manuscripts,

16:59but I think you're advocating for a conjectural emendation to some degree, correct?

17:06That's an interesting thought.

17:07I mean, part of my reconstruction is an eclectic text.

17:10You were talking earlier about eclectic texts, which is when you take, there's no one manuscript

17:16that says exactly what you provide, the Greek texts that you provide.

17:21And this is the same thing for a critical edition.

17:23A Greek critical edition is when a committee of scholars gets together and they look at

17:27all the best manuscripts and they put all the best readings together, like they kind

17:30of cobbled them together.

17:32And there's no one manuscript that reads exactly this, but it's their best guess for

17:38what the author wrote based on their arguments, right?

17:41So I have actually constructed an eclectic text with real readings from real manuscripts

17:48of John 11, one through five that is just Lazarus and Mary.

17:55So we're talking about John 11 here.

17:57This is the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead.

18:00And in the world's oldest copy of John 11, which is Papyrus 66, which is usually dated

18:06to the turn of the third century, though it's paleographically dated, so we can't be certain,

18:10but it is probably our oldest copy of John 11.

18:13So somewhere around 200 CE.

18:15Yes.

18:16You can see in that manuscript that the name Mary has been crossed out twice.

18:22First the name Mary has changed to Martha in John 11 verse one.

18:26And in John 11 verse three, a woman's name is awkwardly scratched out and changed to

18:32say, Hi Adelphi, the sisters, and all the verbs are changed from singular to plural.

18:37So a woman is actually split in two by the scribe.

18:41And then there's another change in John 11 for in Papyrus 66 that sort of cloaks that

18:46Jesus could be speaking with one woman.

18:49And so there's a lot of instability around Martha's presence at the opening of John 11

18:53in Papyrus 66.

18:54If you look at Codex Alexandrinus, which is another really important gospel manuscript,

18:59again, you see the name Mary getting changed to Martha, and you see in John 11 verse one,

19:04Martha wasn't there in the first transcription.

19:07And then there's another old Latin manuscript that in John 11 5 only Lazarus and his sister

19:13singular are listed.

19:15So if you cobble all these together, you get a different text form of John 11 that introduces

19:22Lazarus and his one sister Mary.

19:25Yeah.

19:26And so this was this was influencing manuscripts as late as the fourth slash fifth century.

19:31Oh, so I mean, no, you actually get it throughout the entire textual transmission.

19:35One in five Greek manuscripts has a problem around Martha.

19:39So I've looked at about 280 manuscripts of the gospel of John now.

19:44And you get it in every language.

19:46I just looked at some Ghez manuscripts the other week, which is Ethiopian and you see

19:52that even some 14th century manuscripts, the names Mary and Martha are switched or the name

19:57Mary appears where you would expect only well, either Mary and Martha or just Martha.

20:03So you see that there's textual instability.

20:05It happens in Greek in Latin in Syriac in Coptic in Ghez.

20:12And so the fact that it's happening throughout the entire textual transmission is a clue that

20:18something might have been changed here.

20:20Well, and it sounds like if it's not been standardized, if it's not been smoothed out

20:25over that long a period of time, there must have been some kind of disagreement.

20:30There must have been, there was some reason for that to keep coming up.

20:35There was some reason for that question to not go away.

20:38Have you talked about that?

20:39Well, yeah, I mean, it's I'm basically saying that it's possible that a character, the character

20:44I'm talking about is Luke, sorry, not Luke, it's Martha from Luke's gospel.

20:49So in Luke chapter 10, there's these two sisters, Martha and Mary that Jesus visits.

20:54They don't have a brother in that story, which is really interesting.

20:57And everybody knows this story, Martha's just busy and distracted, Mary sitting at Jesus's

21:01feet.

21:02Martha complains about Mary and Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you were worried and distracted

21:07with many things, but Mary has chosen the better part.

21:09It won't be taken from her.

21:11So I'm saying that someone who had read that story in Luke's gospel might have sort of

21:16imported the character Martha and stuck her into this story of Lazarus and Mary in John's

21:23gospel.

21:24I'm saying that it's possible that as Luke wrote his gospel, there was just Martha and

21:29Mary, no brother.

21:31And as John wrote his gospel, it's just Lazarus and Mary, one sister.

21:38And so it's only because someone had read Luke.

21:41And he plated these Marys.

21:42Yeah, exactly, and they stuck Martha in, but that's actually a huge change to the text.

21:48You're adding a character over the course of an entire chapter.

21:52And so I'm saying that that kind of a massive change to the text is going to have echoes

21:58and reverberations throughout the entire textual transmission, which in fact it does.

22:02Also the artistic record and the patristic record, when you see Church Fathers talking

22:06about it, like Tertullian says, oh, when Mary confessed Jesus is the Christ, you're like,

22:12but Martha confesses Jesus as the Christ.

22:15But Tertullian who wrote in about 208 AD, he says that Mary confessed Jesus is the Christ.

22:19You see the sort of uneven presentation of Martha and Mary literally in every place that

22:25you look to do with the Lazarus story in antiquity.

22:29So that and it sounds like this is a product of trying to harmonize these two different

22:33gospels and trying to take what are ultimately two anonymous, but we don't know precisely

22:39who they are, but they seem to be separate characters and try to mash them together to

22:43make things fit.

22:45And this would fit what we know about a lot of the changes that have only recently been

22:51kind of removed from a lot of more recent translations of the Bible.

22:55There are little over a dozen passages that are found in the textus, Receptus, the much

23:01later manuscript tradition that now many translations just omit altogether, which is causing all

23:06kinds of heartache on social media and people stumble across this.

23:10Like the angel at the pool, the angel at the pool in John five, or Elsa, there's also

23:18the prick of the adulterous.

23:20There's the sweat, the bloody sweat in loop 20, though actually that one's in that one's

23:24in brackets, usually endings of Mark.

23:29Yeah, there are a bunch of examples of these.

23:31The one that I that I always see on social media that somebody stumbles across and thinks

23:35they've discovered either CERN has has altered reality.

23:40And we're in a parallel universe where Matthew, what is it, 1720 doesn't exist, or somebody

23:47is doing something to the Bibles, but that's an instance where we have a passage from Mark

23:53where Luke is talking or not, Jesus is talking about why the disciples weren't able to cast

24:00out certain demons and he says this, this kind doesn't come out, except with fasting

24:04and prayer and that gets written into the margin of Sinaiticus, I think, and then later

24:09manuscripts, it's it's incorporated right into the verse.

24:12And so, so this kind of glosses like somebody, because it's all copied by hand at this time.

24:18It's such a different mindset.

24:19It's very foreign to people who live in a print culture like this text says this, but

24:24if you're copying something by hand, what if somebody's reading it and they put a little

24:28note in the margin and then some later person sees it and they don't, they're not familiar

24:33with the text and they're like, Oh, was something left out?

24:36Oh, I should put this in and it's called a gloss.

24:39And so then you get this extra piece of the story that gets incorporated into the broader

24:43manuscript transmission.

24:45And so then sometimes the text sort of expands, but then if you go to these older copies,

24:50copies like papyrus 66 or Codex Sinaiticus or Vaticanus, these parts are just not there

24:55because they haven't been added to the text yet.

24:57It's only the second, third, fourth century.

24:59They haven't added that part yet.

25:02And John has a handful of literary scenes where it seems like there's something going

25:06on for which we may not really have much evidence.

25:08For instance, there's during the Last Supper, Jesus is like, all right, everybody, let's

25:15get up and get out of here.

25:16And then you have three chapters of sermonizing.

25:18Yeah.

25:19And then, and then the next chapter goes, so they got up and got out of there.

25:23And it comes like two chapters later.

25:25Yeah.

25:26And then there's another, he's in Jerusalem and it's like they crossed over to the other

25:29side of the Sea of Galilee and how did they do that?

25:32Yeah.

25:33Yeah.

25:34And that one's interesting because that's more about source criticism because people who

25:36are studying John, they say, this doesn't make sense.

25:39Like, was whoever wrote this gospel, did they get their pages mixed up?

25:44Did they like lose a folio or did, like, did somebody mix something up?

25:48But that's not a text critical issue because every single manuscript of John, he does go

25:54straight to the Sea of Galilee.

25:56And he does say, you know, let's go.

26:00And then he talks for two more chapters.

26:02So that one is more source criticism.

26:04It's more like, hey, we're intelligent people.

26:06We can see the story doesn't make sense here.

26:08Something happened here in whoever was creating the narrative.

26:12That's different than when the different manuscripts say different things.

26:17Right.

26:18And what's funny is that source critics actually already theorized that Martha was added to

26:21the text.

26:22This is really funny.

26:23John P. Meyer in a marginal Jew.

26:25He says, the first story of Lazarus, he only had only Mary was there.

26:31And he didn't know anything about these manuscript variations that I'm talking about.

26:35The reason he said that is because Martha and Mary say a duplicate quote in John 11.

26:41They say, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died.

26:45And so for a source critic, that's a clue that something was doubled.

26:49But John P. Meyer would have thought that it was the evangelist that doubled the sister.

26:54There's other people like Robert Fortna and Urban Von Walley that work on these sorts

26:59of source critical questions in John.

27:02And they're like, the evangelist had a source that they changed.

27:06I'm saying, was it the evangelist or was it a later copyist?

27:09And the way that you can tell whether the evangelist inherited a story that was that

27:14the evangelist changed versus whether someone interfered in the textual transmission is

27:19whether there are discrepancies in the manuscripts.

27:22There's no discrepancies on when Jesus says, come on, let's go.

27:26And then he keeps talking.

27:27That happens in every manuscript.

27:28But this thing with one or two sisters being there, there are problems around Mary and Martha

27:33and the technical transmission, which suggests that it's not what the evangelist wanted.

27:37It's what a later copyist wanted.

27:39And we've also got a bit of a black hole between the composition of these texts and our

27:43audience.

27:44I always call it a black hole.

27:45I call it a gap or a black hole and, but yeah, that's it or a boy part of black box.

27:51I call it a black box.

27:52Okay.

27:53Yeah.

27:54That's, I, Peter Gurry and I got into it on Twitter.

27:57The other day.

27:58I saw that.

27:59Yeah.

28:00I stayed out of it because Peter and I have very, very different views on religion and

28:06doctrine, but he's a good text critic and I don't recommend getting into Twitter fights

28:13with Peter Gurry about technical criticism because he does know his stuff.

28:16But I think he and I have a healthy mutual respect.

28:20He come to different conclusions about the data, but we both are well aware of what the

28:26evidence is.

28:28Yeah.

28:28He's, I, I appreciated that he didn't get too upset because sometimes people can get

28:34upset on when we get into it on social media, but I'm sure he's used to these kinds of

28:39disagreements with folks.

28:42Yeah.

28:43Yeah.

28:44So I wanted to pivot a little bit and talk a little bit more about Mary Magdalene's origins

28:51because we talked a little bit about John 11 and how we should also talk about why it

28:55has to do with Mary Magdalene because everybody's like, what?

28:57You're talking about Mary of Bethany.

28:59Yeah.

29:00That's not it.

29:01That's not it.

29:02I just skipped over that.

29:03Didn't I?

29:04Okay.

29:05So for, for the whole discussion that I skipped over, what is the relationship between Martha

29:12slash Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene?

29:15Well, so the, the natural question, if I've made this argument, okay, somebody read Luke's

29:21gospel.

29:22They imported the character Martha from Luke 10, stuck her into John 11.

29:26Why would somebody do that?

29:28Like other than just that we're harmonizing and we're somebody named Mary and we're just

29:31trying to like have fun and be creative with our gospel stories.

29:34Why would somebody do that?

29:36And so what I theorized, and of course, this is just one possibility for why there's problems

29:43around Martha in the textual transmission.

29:46I said, well, we know that very early Christians going back as the third or possibly even the

29:51second century thought that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene.

29:56We, we have that on record from Hippolytus of Rome, who is a third century commentator

30:00from the mannequin Psalm book and the mannequians were again in like the third century.

30:05And also from St. Ambrose, who's fourth century, all of these people identify Mary Magdalene

30:10as Mary of Bethany.

30:13So that's, that's interesting.

30:15Why did people think that Mary Magdalene was Mary of Bethany?

30:18It might even go back to the second century because the gospel of Mary, the character

30:23Mary in this, it doesn't say Magdalene anywhere or Bethany anywhere in that text, at least

30:27the surviving text, but it does, there are character traits of both Mary of Bethany and

30:33Mary Magdalene that are found in this character, Mary of the gospel of Mary.

30:38So some people have said, you know, maybe as far back as the second century, people

30:42identified Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene.

30:45And so I'm saying, why would you add Martha to the Lazarus story?

30:50And so one possibility that I put out there is, well, what if the text was what Torthullian

30:56said that Mary confessed Jesus as the Christ?

31:00Yes, Lord, I believe that you were the Christ, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.

31:04That happens to be the central thesis statement of the gospel of John.

31:09And it's called the Christological Confession.

31:12And in every single gospel except John, it is on somebody else's lips.

31:16That person is Peter.

31:18Yep.

31:19Peter gets to be the Christological Confessor in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

31:23And in Matthew's gospel, that gives him sort of the title, you are Peter and on this rock,

31:28I will build my church.

31:29I'll give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.

31:31So because Peter is the Christological Confessor, it gives him this huge authority.

31:37And so I'm suggesting, okay, well, what if John, most people think John had access to

31:42some version of Mark's gospel?

31:44What if John had read Mark and knew that Peter was being identified as the Christological

31:50Confessor and John wanted to give a different narrative and John wanted to give it to Mary

31:59Magdalene, that Mary Magdalene is the Christological Confessor.

32:03But perhaps knowing that this was controversial because Mary Magdalene does seem to have a

32:09lot of controversy around her again as far back as we can trace the record.

32:13So John just calls her Mary and makes her extremely similar to Mary Magdalene.

32:19There's something like seven or eight exact textual parallels between John 11 and John

32:2420.

32:25There's a woman named Mary.

32:26She's crying at a tomb.

32:27That she loves dearly rise from the dead.

32:29Jesus says to her in John 11, "Where have you laid him?"

32:32And then in John 20, Mary says, "I don't know where you have laid him."

32:35It's sort of like this exact same in Greek, the words are the same, where Jesus asks Mary

32:40something in John 11, Mary asks Jesus something when she thinks he's the gardener, Mary Magdalene

32:44in John chapter 20.

32:46And of course, Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus in John 12, and Judas gets mad.

32:53And Jesus says, "Leave her alone, she's done a beautiful thing.

33:00Let her save it for the day of my burial."

33:03And there's only one Mary at his tomb in John, and that is Mary Magdalene.

33:09So there's a lot of suggestions.

33:11I'm not saying that the author of John identifies Lazarus' sister Mary as Mary Magdalene.

33:17But I absolutely think that the author of John has put the question in the reader's mind,

33:23is Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene.

33:26And on two or three reads of the gospel, you might notice how very similar Lazarus' sister

33:30Mary is with Mary Magdalene.

33:32And that may be why people as far back as perhaps the gospel of Mary, but definitely Hippolytus

33:38of Rome, the mannequians and Ambrose, third, fourth centuries, think that Mary Bethany is

33:43Mary Magdalene.

33:44But then, if she's the one who confesses Jesus as the Christ, that means that the person

33:51who gets the central Christological confession also gets the first appearance of the risen

33:55Jesus.

33:57That's a problem, because it gives her a lot of authority.

34:02It means that she confesses him as the Christ, anoints him, stands by him at the cross, goes

34:07alone to the tomb, gets the first appearance of the risen Jesus, and gets the first apostolic

34:11commission, and that would just make her a central character and authority figure in

34:16early Christianity that might have been just a bit too much for this gospel.

34:21Do you think the author of John was censoring himself a little bit and just trying to kind

34:25of put it out there without, you know, I didn't actually say that, but I think John was trying

34:30to make it make the information accessible to the sensitive reader.

34:37That's something that John does a lot, in fact.

34:39That's something that John is well known for, people often say, "Oh, John is a gospel

34:42that a child can wait in or an elephant can swim in," because it has all these levels

34:49of meaning.

34:50And I think, I mean, you can just clearly identify, and in my Harvard Theological Review article

34:54I do, these are the exact textual parallels between John 11 and John 20.

35:00And so because of those parallels, some people, it's not going to be forced upon you, but

35:06if you want to think that Mary Bethany is Mary Magdalene, you're invited to think so.

35:11And maybe it's said delicately knowing that if the Christological Professor is explicitly

35:16identified as Mary Magdalene, that this gospel is not going to be received.

35:23That might have been problematic, and in fact, the gospel of Mary was not at all received.

35:27Nobody even talks about it.

35:28So if you put Mary as too prominent of a character, it's not something that, this is of course

35:34theoretical.

35:35This is like, if there is a copy of John circulating with only Lazarus and Mary, why would somebody

35:42add Martha?

35:42I'm saying, well, maybe because people thought it was Mary Magdalene.

35:46And that was too much.

35:47So they were trying to shore it up a little bit more than the author originally did.

35:52Just a theory.

35:54Well, it's a good theory, a good hypothesis, and hopefully there are future manuscript

36:01discoveries that can help us find some more data that might help us test that hypothesis.

36:08Just to remind me in when Mary comes to the tomb, is she coming to prepare the body that

36:13she had?

36:14That actually, no, that's it's a very important point that you raised there because the body

36:19has already been prepared in John 19 with Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

36:24In the synoptics, it is Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, if it's Matthew, or actually

36:32different manuscripts say different things in Mark.

36:35And in Luke, anyway, Mary Magdalene is always at the tomb.

36:38But again, John is writing for people who have read Mark.

36:41This is something that is well accepted in scholarship.

36:44Some people think that John was sort of supplementing Mark, maybe even Matthew.

36:48So John is writing for people who know that Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb.

36:51And we have in, at the end of John, we have Jesus' feed my sheep to Peter.

36:58So it's not going so far as to supplant Peter's role in the church, is it?

37:05Well, that's another long question that we could get into because source critics think

37:10that John 21 was added later because John 20 verse 31 seems to draw the gospel to a close.

37:17These things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of

37:19God, and that by believing you may have life in his name, which is kind of the same thing

37:23that today Martha says in John 11.

37:27And then it goes on.

37:28It's like, oh, and then Jesus appeared again.

37:29So people wonder if John 21 was added later.

37:33We have in John 21 also the statements.

37:37These are the words of the disciple who loved him.

37:39And we know that they are true.

37:42So somebody, there's definitely a later literary layer there.

37:46Yeah, maybe the question is how far into John does this we stretch?

37:52Yeah.

37:53And again, that's the question of, you know, was it the evangelist that wrote that?

37:57Was it a later member of the Johannine community?

38:00If you believe in the Johannine community, did they do that?

38:03Is it something that was written in the second century?

38:05And we just don't have any manuscripts that old.

38:08So it's hard to know.

38:09But also John 21 is even a little bit cagey about Peter's authority.

38:14If you look at the Greek because what Jesus asks Peter to do, Peter is unable to do.

38:19Jesus says, do you aga pacemé?

38:23Do you love me?

38:24And Peter answers, yes, Lord, you know that I follow you.

38:29So the verb actually changes.

38:31So Jesus asks Peter to aga palo, which is wonderful for love.

38:36And Peter always responds with a different verb.

38:39Yes, I follow you.

38:40And then Jesus asks again, aga pacemé, Peter says, yes, I file you.

38:44The third time Jesus changes his position, Jesus is, do you filéce me?

38:50Do you?

38:51It's a different word for love.

38:53And then Peter's hurt.

38:54Now everybody thinks that Peter's hurt because Jesus is asking three times.

38:58But it is absolutely possible that Peter is hurt because the verb changed.

39:04Even though he's the one who's kind of pulling it back a little bit, that there's something

39:08similar in Spanish, you hear jokes every now and then where somebody will say, tiamo.

39:12And the other person says, ticquiero, which is a very, it's a related verb, but it's not

39:18as strong.

39:19Yes, that is, you know, that's the best analogy that I've heard.

39:23I love that.

39:24That's, and the thing is it's totally masked in your English translation because it just

39:28love, love, love.

39:29Do you love me?

39:30Do you love me?

39:31Yes, I love you.

39:32Do you love me?

39:33Yes, I love you.

39:34It sounds like Peter has proven himself.

39:35But if you look at the Greek, Peter hasn't proven himself.

39:36The thing that Jesus asked him to do, he cannot do.

39:38So Jesus actually changes to meet Peter where he is at.

39:42He says, do you fillese me?

39:44And Peter says, you know everything I follow you.

39:46That's all that Peter can do.

39:47He can only filleo Jesus.

39:49He cannot agapao Jesus.

39:52So that's, but then some people say, oh, they're cognates, they mean exactly the same thing.

39:56And that's another scholarly debate.

39:57But you could argue that Peter is not 100% reconciled even in John 21.

40:03Okay.

40:04Well, that hopefully brings us back around to a little bit more about Mary and her origins.

40:10I'm leaving on tomorrow to go to Israel.

40:16Oh, so jealous going to be leading a tour.

40:20And one of the places we're going to be stopping is Magdala, to which I have been before a lovely

40:25area, phenomenal buildings that we have there and particularly the synagogue with the altar

40:33with the temple imagery on there.

40:35I'm looking forward to that.

40:37But it's Magdala is always introduced as Mary Magdalene's hometown.

40:42But if Mary is of Bethany, then can Mary also be of Magdala?

40:47What a fantastic question.

40:48Well, first of all, I did co-write another article which you kindly highlighted on your

40:55platform with Joan Taylor in 2021 in the Journal of Biblical Literature, where we basically

41:05pointed out that not a single person ever said that Mary Magdalene came from that place

41:12where you're going to visit until the sixth century.

41:15The sixth century is the earliest attestation of anyone saying that Mary Magdalene came

41:19from that place by the Sea of Galilee.

41:22And we also, Joan Taylor, she understands the archaeological stuff more than I do.

41:28But basically that site, which is beautiful, incredible archaeological site with absolutely

41:33first century synagogues, very important archaeological site, that was more likely the

41:37town of Terracay, which was known at that time.

41:40It was discussed by Pliny and Josephus.

41:44It was well known.

41:46It was a big city on the Sea of Galilee.

41:48And no one ever said that that place is where Mary Magdalene is from.

41:54No one ever said that until the sixth century.

41:58Rather, there were lots of towns at that time called Mictal This, Mictal that was Mictal

42:04Gad, Mictal Eater, Mictal El, it just means tower, tower of this, tower of that, right?

42:12And so because there were towers all over ancient Palestine, and there was eventually,

42:19I think it's in later rabbinic sources, there's a place called Mictal Nuneya, which means tower

42:24of the fishes, that was close to Terracay.

42:27But later, really it gained momentum sort of in the 19th and 20th centuries to say that

42:38Mictal Nuneya was Mary Magdalene's hometown.

42:43And there was various reasons for that.

42:46But one of them being that there was sort of a noble desire to separate Mary Magdalene

42:54from the sinful, anointing woman in Luke chapter seven.

42:59So basically in the sixth century, Gregory the Great said, "Following in the lineage

43:05of Ambrose and Hippolytus and everybody else, that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene."

43:10Gregory said that in the sixth century, but he added an innovation.

43:13He said, "And she is that woman who, the sinful woman who anointed Jesus in Luke seven."

43:23He didn't say Luke seven, but he said, "Surely like all of her sins, Mary has seven demons

43:30in this gospel."

43:31What were these seven demons other than the sins of the flesh?

43:35This perfumed ointment was like, you know, it was used in unspeakable acts.

43:39And he's just kind of making it all up.

43:41Basically what he's done is he has collapsed all of the anointing events together.

43:46And my position, and I want to make this really clear, I'm saying that the Bethany anointing

43:54described in John's gospel as taking place by Mary, Mary anointing Jesus, I'm saying that

44:00may well be Mary Magdalene, who anointed Jesus in Bethany.

44:05That is not the same story as Luke's anointing, which first of all takes place in the north

44:11close to a town called Nain.

44:13Second of all, it's much earlier in Jesus's ministry.

44:17It does not inaugurate the passion narrative as it does in Matthew, Mark and John.

44:22Matthew, Mark and John, the anointing takes place in Bethany and it inaugurates the passion.

44:27This is right before the final week.

44:31Correct.

44:32Yes.

44:33Whereas in Luke's, it's kind of, it's in Luke seven, it's early in Jesus's ministry

44:35and it's nowhere near Bethany.

44:37And it's just that Jesus is in the house of a man named Simon and that this, this woman

44:43that's center from the city comes in.

44:45Basically, what I'm saying is that, and it's also very clear in Luke's gospel that that

44:48is not Mary Magdalene because in Luke's gospel, it's an anonymous person.

44:53And Mary Magdalene is clearly identified in Luke's gospel.

44:57So basically what Gregory did is he was collapsing all of the anointing scenes into one, which

45:04caused Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany, who I think that John kind of suggested they

45:11are the same woman and that some commentators already were thinking was the same woman.

45:14It collapses her because there is an anointing event associated with Mary of Bethany.

45:20He draws the other anointing from Luke into that story, even though it takes place at

45:24a totally different time, is a totally different location and has a totally different narrative

45:29around it.

45:30So Gregory collapses all these anointings into one.

45:34And so that's when Mary Magdalene becomes a prostitute or like a sinful woman from the

45:40city starting in the sixth century.

45:43So coming back to why would somebody want to say that Mary Magdalene comes from Magdalene

45:48or that this is sort of a location that she's from?

45:52It has to do with sort of a noble and sometimes feminist scholarship as well has desired to

45:58separate Mary Magdalene from any anointing event.

46:03Strategically, if you say she's from Magdalene, it means that she can't have anything to do

46:08with the anointing.

46:10She can't be Mary of Bethany.

46:11She can't have anointed Jesus because she's from Magdalene.

46:15But the problem with that position is that there's literally no evidence that she came

46:19from that place before the sixth century, first of all.

46:22And second of all, you don't have to separate Mary Magdalene from the anointing in Bethany

46:29to sort of redeem her from this false portrait that Gregory painted.

46:35You can just say there's more, Luke's anointing is not the same as the Bethany anointing.

46:39It kind of throws the baby out with the bath water when you have to.

46:42Exactly.

46:43You do that can be identified and then you have an undesirable association that gets

46:48identified and so you want to just throw the whole thing out.

46:51Exactly.

46:52And so I would say it's partly been strategic on the part of like for instance, Karen King

46:55has a book called the Gospel of Mary of Magdalene, which is a misnomer in several ways.

47:01First of all, because the Gospel of Mary never says the word Magdalene or Magdalene anywhere

47:05in it.

47:06It just refers to a Mary.

47:07First of all, she when you say Mary of Magdalene, you are interpreting for the reader in your

47:15translation.

47:16Isn't it?

47:17The word Magdalene literally just means tower S. That's all that it means Magdalene Aramaic

47:24means tower.

47:25A&A is a Greek ending for a female person, tower S. That's literally the literal meaning

47:31of it.

47:32So if you're trying to say that she comes, so the question is does Mary come from a town

47:35called tower? One of these many towers, Magdalene, Magdalene, Magdalene, there's so many of them.

47:42Are you saying that she comes from a town called tower or are you saying that Mary herself

47:45is the tower?

47:46Kind of how Peter is the rock.

47:49And what our journal of biblical literature article showed in addition to that place being

47:53called terra K in the first century is that there was no consensus on the meaning of her

47:58name for centuries.

48:00There never was Luke seems to think that it's a nickname.

48:04He doesn't think it's a place that she's from.

48:06The way that Luke refers to her Mariah hate Calumene, Magdalene, Mary the one called Magdalene.

48:12That word called is always in reference to people with names or nicknames like Simon

48:17called Peter or Elizabeth called Baron or you have Josephus Jesus the one called Christ.

48:25Well, I actually had checked that in Josephus.

48:29Does he use Calumene us for Jesus?

48:31I'm pretty sure in the, yeah, I'm almost positive he does because it and it gets, I think that's

48:39where it gets manipulated a little bit where the reading of Josephus as we have it now as

48:46I can.

48:47He was more than a human.

48:48He was the Christ.

48:49But I think the other reference where it talks about James the brother of Jesus who is called

48:53Christ.

48:54It's a way to not not endorse the name, but just mention that it is great.

49:01I should look that up and Josephus, I mean, in our article, we were just looking at Luke's

49:04usage in Luke and acts and how he uses the word Calumene, Calumene, Calumene, and that

49:10happens to be nicknames basically.

49:12So Luke seems to think it's a nickname, not where she's from.

49:15You see, yes, it's really funny.

49:17You see this nose, a place called Magdalene and he doesn't associate her with it at all.

49:24And he thinks that the Magdalene that everybody knows is in the south.

49:29He thinks it's in Judea.

49:30So that one actually completely, yes.

49:32So Eusebius is on a masticon says, we know Magdalene, it's this one right here in Judea,

49:37a Magdal Gad.

49:39And it's in the south.

49:40And that completely blows this idea out of the water that we know where Mary Magdalene

49:45was from.

49:46And that just the fact that she's Magdalene means she's from that place by the Sea of

49:50Galilee, Eusebius lived in the Holy Land and the purpose of the Unomasticon was to clarify

49:56who was associated with which places and which locations in his day matched with the

50:00Bible was.

50:01He never once says that Terricae is the same thing as Magdalene, which is the same place

50:05Mary Magdalene was from, not at all.

50:07He says that there is a Magdalene that he knows and she is not associated with it.

50:11And it's in the south.

50:12It's not the one by the Sea of Galilee that you're going to go to.

50:15So apologies to the people in Magdalene because I know they like their pilgrimage site.

50:20And isn't there another site, Magadan or something like that?

50:25Oh, that's interesting actually.

50:26So yeah, there is a place in Matthew 15 where Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee and he lands

50:34in the shores of Magadon.

50:35And that's what most Bibles today would say at Matthew 1539.

50:40But if you go to a King James Bible, it'll say he landed in the shores of Magdala.

50:45So someone who's reading the King James says, Hey, wait a second, there is a place called

50:48Magdala by the Sea of Galilee in the first century.

50:52It says it right here in my Bible.

50:54And I would again say, what manuscript does that come from?

50:58Because King James comes from 11th or 12th century manuscripts.

51:03And literally all of the oldest manuscripts of Matthew 15 have the word Magadon there.

51:09And it is later in the fifth or sixth century that the reading starts to change.

51:15And some manuscripts say Magdala and Professor Taylor and I theorized that this might have

51:20been around the time that people started to find a pilgrimage site for Mary Magdalene.

51:27So in the West, people thought that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene as Hippolytus

51:30of Rome and Gregory the Great.

51:32This is a Western tradition that Mary of Bethany is Mary Magdalene.

51:35In the East, they don't think that Mary of Bethany is Mary Magdalene, but they still

51:39want a pilgrimage site, right?

51:41Everybody wants a pilgrimage site to venerate Mary Magdalene.

51:43So we suggested that it's possible that this in the sixth century, when people start to

51:48say this is where she came from, that there was a little update in the manuscripts.

51:52Like you're copying Matthew's gospel, and all you have to do is change two letters and

51:57Magadon becomes Magdala.

52:00And now you've got your place by the Sea of Galilee where you can have a pilgrimage site

52:03for Mary Magdalene.

52:04And that's where you're going to go when you're in Israel.

52:06It does go back to the sixth century.

52:07It's very old, not first century.

52:10And it wouldn't be the first time that the King James version has misinterpreted something,

52:17a name, particularly.

52:19And there seem to be a couple other places around the Sea of Galilee where the names don't

52:24always line up.

52:26The miracle of the swine, for instance, you have, I think the manuscripts have three different

52:32versions of that name.

52:33Is it the Gatorines and the Gurgassines and the...

52:36Yeah, and then there's another one, Gatorines, the Gurgassines.

52:38There's Beth Zafla and Beth Seda and different manuscripts, say different things, yeah.

52:44So it's always exciting that if a lot of people retreat to the old, if the King James version

52:50was good enough for Paul, or going for Jesus, then it's good enough to know.

52:58Now, is the controversy around Mary Magdalene in this early period?

53:04The reasons why there might have been some apprehension about her leadership.

53:09Does this come down just to simple misogyny?

53:12Is it about getting in the way of Peter?

53:14Do you have thoughts on why Mary Magdalene is a target in the earlier periods?

53:22That's a great question.

53:25And if you could argue that there's controversy around her from the very beginning.

53:33Certainly the Gospel of Mary presents her as a controversial character.

53:36I'm not saying the Gospel of Mary was written by her, definitely not.

53:39It's probably a second century text, but it does show...

53:43And there it's Peter.

53:44Peter is the one who's like...

53:45Peter and Andrew, yeah.

53:46Peter and Andrew are kind of attacking her and Levi defends her, which is interesting.

53:51But the fact, the very fact that she, like her sort of her perspective is presented as

53:58controversial and that it makes Peter and Andrew angry.

54:02And they say, you know, did he speak with a woman?

54:04Did he prefer her to us, you know?

54:07The very fact that she's causing this consternation on the part of these sort of more orthodox

54:13disciples.

54:14Andrew and Peter is telling us that from a very early stage, there's something about

54:17Mary, in this case, probably Mary Magdalene, that is threatening.

54:24And you don't just see it in the Gospel of Mary, also in the Gospel of Thomas, at the

54:29very end of the Gospel of Thomas, the very last saying of the Gospel of Thomas, Simon

54:32and Peter says, "Let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life."

54:37And then Jesus stands up for her and says that she can stay.

54:40But also the Gospel of Philip, it says that the disciples are jealous of Mary because Jesus

54:46loves her more than them.

54:48She's like a soulmate for Jesus in the Gospel of Philip, isn't she?

54:52Yes.

54:53She's...

54:54There's actually two words for it in the Coptic.

54:56One is Koinonos, which is a Greco Coptic word.

55:00It's like a lone word from Greek, which basically means partner.

55:04And Paul uses that word sometimes, like my Koinonos.

55:07But there's also a word "hotre", which basically is more likely to mean twin or even consort.

55:17What's interesting is that in the Gospel of Philip, both the words Koinonos and "hotre"

55:22are, they're both translated as companion, as though they were the same word.

55:26And I'm like, "No, Koinonos means one thing, hotre means something else."

55:30So I would say, anyway, yes, the Gospel of Philip presents her as some sort of companion

55:34or twin or consort to Christ in just this one document, the Gospel of Philip.

55:39And the disciples get really jealous of her in that document.

55:42And then there's the Pista Sofia, where Mary Magdalene is, the star pupil, and she answers

55:46more questions than anybody else.

55:47And at a certain point, Jesus says, sorry, they're dialoguing with Jesus on the mountain

55:51of all of us.

55:52At a certain point, Peter gets mad and he's like, "Let this woman stop talking because

55:56she's taking all the opportunities away from us."

55:59And again, Jesus says, "No, anybody who gets the right answer can come forward."

56:03And then Mary Magdalene says, "Lord, I am scared of Peter because he hates our race."

56:11Probably our race of women or possibly our spiritual race, depending upon how you interpret

56:16it.

56:18But these are four different documents.

56:21The Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip are in the same Codex.

56:23But the Gospel of Mary and the Pista Sofia are in totally different codices, copied in

56:29totally different places in different centuries.

56:32The fact that you have this independent attestation of Peter's hostility toward Mary in several

56:39documents over the course of many centuries, suggested it was kind of widely known.

56:43There was something that was widely known that Mary, whether because she was close to Peter,

56:48whether because she was a woman, whether because she talked too much, Peter did not like her.

56:55And these, you know, Gospel of Mary's probably second century, Gospel of Philip, his maybe

57:00second century, Pista Sofia's third or fourth century, these are old conversations.

57:04And it always irks me when people are like, "Oh, this feminist agenda of like women's

57:09voices."

57:10And I'm like, "This is second century, second, third century.

57:13This is a conversation that's been going on from the very beginning."

57:16And Mary seems to represent something controversial.

57:21And it's hard to know exactly what the problem was with her.

57:24It could be that she was close to Jesus or smarter than the other ones.

57:29And, you know, that made people mad.

57:31Maybe Peter gave her the title "Mary the Tower" similar to Peter the Rock.

57:35Maybe when she confessed to him as the Christ, she became Mary the Tower.

57:39And that caused jealousy or a desire to like, you know, elbow her out of the way.

57:45Peter's like, "I'm the one who's the important one, not you."

57:48I mean, it's hard to know what exactly the issue was.

57:52Some people could say that it might even go back to the first century because Luke doesn't

57:56seem to like Mary Magdalene particularly.

57:59Which is odd because Luke kind of stands up for women and others and others in his Gospel.

58:05It's like, it's almost like he presents the Virgin Mary as like, be this kind of a woman,

58:11right?

58:12You're like, you can talk, but in private at home with your family members and you can

58:19be very valued and venerated for being obedient and doing what you're supposed to do.

58:24And for supporting the men, like financially as, you know, Lydia doesn't even Mary Magdalene

58:30does.

58:31Like, it sort of Luke presents women as in a positive light and pays a lot of attention

58:36to them, but for doing specific roles and it's really interesting about Mary Magdalene

58:42because he's, most women he does present positively, but he's the only one who calls

58:46her a demoniac and he's the only one who takes her away from the scene at the cross.

58:52Luke knows that Mary Magdalene is at the cross because Luke is basing his narrative

58:56on Mark's Gospel and he removes the women's name, the women's names from the cross.

59:02And he also removes the women's names from the empty tomb when the, I think, I think

59:08it's angels in Luke that show up and they are not, their names are not revealed until

59:13they go and then they tell them male apostles.

59:16Once the women tell the men, then Luke says, okay, it was Mary Magdalene and Mary of James

59:20and Joanna and some others, but he, he hesitates.

59:23He doesn't identify them at the cross or at the empty tomb like Matthew, Mark and John

59:28do.

59:29So, he seems to sort of have something about Mary Magdalene that he's, he doesn't like

59:35and especially he doesn't allow her a vision of the risen Jesus.

59:40If you read your Gospels and people say, oh, who did the risen Jesus appear to first?

59:45People, oh, I know it's Mary Magdalene.

59:47Not if you're reading Luke, yeah, Mary Magdalene does not get a vision of the risen Jesus

59:51in Luke's Gospel.

59:53So Luke seems to maybe be uncomfortable with her and that's interesting what you said

59:57about Josephus saying, oh, the one called the Christ.

60:01And it's funny that Luke says, oh, she's the one called Magdalene.

60:04It's this big deal.

60:06Yeah.

60:07I mean, it's, it's possible that the controversy around her even goes back to the first century

60:10and is reflected in Luke's Gospel, but it's hard to know.

60:14It's hard to know what the source of it is.

60:15Yeah.

60:16We know, we know Peter and Paul didn't get along so great, but we also have Paul's writings

60:21and so we have a more of an idea of what's going on there.

60:25Now we hear about other women who are in positions of prominence, positions of leadership within

60:30early Christianity.

60:31Now I understand a lot of them are financially backing the church, providing their homes

60:36for meetings and things like that.

60:38And people say, well, that's not really leadership.

60:40That's, that's something, something different.

60:43Well, I know it's not, but we've heard some, some research in recent years indicating their

60:50inscriptions that date fourth, fifth, maybe even the sixth century that are still referring

60:55to women and positions of leadership within Christian congregations.

61:01And then we have Phoebe and Yuna and others in the New Testament was women leadership

61:08and early Christianity as big or maybe even bigger a deal back then than it was today.

61:14Are they the complementarians that so many people seem to make them out to be?

61:19Or is it a third thing where whatever that relationship was like, it's unknown to us.

61:25We can't really reconstruct it.

61:27What are your thoughts on that?

61:28It's probably the latter.

61:29It is unknown to us and we can't ever be certain.

61:32There are, I would say that there was diversity of opinion at the very beginning.

61:38You know, some would say that Jesus was quite egalitarian, although he does definitely seem

61:43to designate 12 men for one role, but the question is whether women had a similar function.

61:50There's a, there's an interesting, uh, apocryphal book called the Sophia of Jesus Christ that

61:55just refers offhandedly to the 12 men and the seven women and you're like, what?

61:59Like, wait, what?

62:01Um, so, so maybe there were the 12 men in the seven women.

62:04We only heard about the 12.

62:06That's the only tradition that got passed on to us.

62:08Um, but Jesus did seem to make some sort of designation, like some difference between men

62:13and women because there were the 12 men.

62:15Um, but at the same time, it does seem to be somewhat more, like certainly more acknowledging

62:23of women's possible, well, and also even in the, even in the gospels, you get difference

62:29of opinion.

62:30I think, um, as I was saying, I think Luke presents women in a positive, but very specific light.

62:35This is the right kind of woman to be, right?

62:38Whereas John actually, like with the Samaritan woman who goes and spreads the word to the

62:43Samaritans and with Mary Magdalene going and sharing news of the resurrection with the

62:47apostles, it seems that John is open to women having more prominent leadership roles, even

62:53than the other gospels.

62:54So there's sort of a diversity of opinion from gospel to gospel.

62:58And in the letters of Paul, of course Galatians says, there is no male or female.

63:02There is no slavery free.

63:03There is no junior Greek or all one in Christ Jesus.

63:06Whereas later letters of Paul and certainly the pastoral epistles make a really clear

63:10distinction between what women and what men can do.

63:14So some would say that there is some have argued for sort of a narrative of decline where

63:21it starts out as more egalitarian in Jesus's focusing on like women and men having full

63:28humanity and full leadership equality.

63:31And then as time goes on in the context of the patriarchal Roman Empire and like with

63:36certain misogynistic members of the church, women's roles eventually get effaced and erased

63:42and taken away.

63:44And I do, I would say believe in some sort of a decline narrative.

63:48It does seem to me that there was more possibility for women's leadership at the beginning that

63:52was erased eventually along the way.

63:55And that's part of what my work on John 11 is about.

63:58I'm saying it's possible that John presented Mary as a central character and that later

64:02copyists who found that role to threatening diminished her by importing Martha and splitting

64:09Mary Magdalene up into three different women that makes her less authoritative.

64:13This woman does this woman does this thing?

64:15This woman does this thing?

64:16This woman does this thing as opposed to one woman.

64:18Correct.

64:19Exactly.

64:20So I mean, I would argue for that there is some sort of a decline narrative and that seems

64:26kind of inevitable in what was a very patriarchal society at the time as Christianity is spreading

64:32into the broader Greco-Roman world.

64:34There's a lot of patriarchy there.

64:36So it seems to me that's a difficult, would be a difficult thing for them to fight against

64:41and maintain over the centuries.

64:43Yeah.

64:44And you can, I mean, you could even say, I don't know about like slavery, you know?

64:49Same sort of thing with slavery like at first maybe, you know, maybe Jesus didn't want people

64:55to have slaves, but then as time goes on, like eventually they accommodate, you know,

64:59who knows?

65:01That's the kind of thing.

65:02As I said, it's impossible to be certain.

65:04But I think you can make a reasonable case that there was in a, perhaps in Jesus's time,

65:12some more authority given to the women that does slowly get taken away over time and then

65:18eventually forgotten.

65:19And that's why we're so surprised when we find that there was a gospel of Mary.

65:23But, you know, like no church father even mentioned that it existed until it was published

65:28in the 1950s, scholars were completely unaware that there had ever been a gospel written in

65:33a woman's name.

65:34It was a shock.

65:36And it's not that there wasn't, there was.

65:38It's just that it was, you could say suppressed or forgotten or not acknowledged.

65:44And I think they've also found, you know, lots of mosaics with women in sort of leadership

65:50positions and people are like, what is this, what is this depicting?

65:54And it's like, okay, well, maybe there were women in leadership positions and for whatever

65:57reason through forgetting through people disagreeing with it.

66:02It just eventually got forgotten or maybe suppressed over time.

66:06And I think unfortunately that makes it harder for people today who are retrojecting their

66:12conditioning regarding what Christianity looks like into the past to accept some of

66:18those arguments and particularly, for instance, I, your case for Mary of Bethany being Mary

66:27Magdalene.

66:28I imagine there is some pushback among certain segments of the scholarly community from folks

66:35who are a little more comfortable with the church working in a way that serves their

66:40interests.

66:41You know, it's interesting though, the textual critics are more open to it than you would

66:45have thought because you got, as I mentioned, it's happening throughout the entire textual

66:50transmission.

66:51Yeah.

66:52It's a, it's a real problem.

66:54And so like in the textual transmission that any text critic worth their salt will acknowledge,

66:58okay, there's something going on with Martha.

67:01The question is why?

67:03And I would say what's interesting, I get emails from professors in surprising places.

67:09Sometimes at Christian University saying, would you come talk to my class because they privately

67:14say to me, this is causing a lot of people to think.

67:17I mean, so I mean, I've gotten invitations from Southern Methodist University, Pepperdine

67:22University, Wheaton, which Wheaton, Wheaton, which is, which is a Christian school.

67:26These are places that are considered like traditional and conservative.

67:29And they're the ones who are most interested in this.

67:32So I would say there's not as much pushback as you would think.

67:35I think people are interested in this possibility.

67:39And the question is, the way the church turned out, is that the way that Jesus wanted it or

67:45is that the way that Peter wanted it?

67:47That's the real question that's being asked here.

67:50Yeah.

67:51I know.

67:52So who, who's cider we advocating for today, when we look at, and when we try to negotiate

67:58what the, what the church is supposed to look like.

68:01Exactly.

68:02Exactly.

68:03Interesting.

68:04Well, thank you so much for your time.

68:05I've enjoyed it immensely, I've a little bit left out to dry without my, without my co-host.

68:12Yeah.

68:13But hopefully I didn't do too, we'll make sure of that.

68:16But hopefully I didn't do too awfully without.

68:18Oh, you did great.

68:20You did a lot of stuff that I didn't know.

68:21That thing about just this is great.

68:22And now I need to use that Spanish analogy.

68:25I'm going to use that all the time now.

68:27That's great.

68:28I'm glad I could help in some way screw everything up.

68:32If I can help in a couple of ways, then, then I'm happy.

68:35So again, thank you so much, Dr. Elizabeth Schrader-Pulzer for your time.

68:40My pleasure.

68:41Congratulations.

68:42Great to connect with you.

68:43It's great to connect with you too.

68:44I look forward to more work from you and, and digging into more.

68:48Are you working towards publishing your dissertation?

68:51Yes, putting the book proposal together right now.

68:54Excellent.

68:55And that's a fun time.

68:56Yeah.

68:57And it's stressful, but fun.

68:58It is.

68:59People can follow me and any updates for that on Twitter at LibbyLABBIE Schrader, S-C-H-R-A-D-E-R.

69:08And do you have any other social media presences beyond Twitter or is that your main outlet?

69:12I get, I mean, I have Facebook with us just for friends.

69:14I mean, I have my website, Elizabeth Schrader.com, and there's links to the peer review publications

69:19there if you want to read the Harvard Theological Review article or the Journal of Biblical Literature

69:24article.

69:25There's links to it there.

69:26There's links to my upcoming presentations like at SBL or local churches.

69:29I present a lot of people want to find out that's where you can go.

69:33Excellent.

69:34All right.

69:35Everybody, you know where to go.

69:36You can go check out those papers.

69:37And I guess I will see you in San Antonio then.

69:40Yeah.

69:41See you then.

69:42Yeah.

69:43It's not the best venue for a lot of folks these days, but I'm looking forward to it.

69:47It's a place to just see your friends.

69:49Yeah.

69:50Yeah.

69:51I'm looking forward to that a great deal.

69:52Well, thank you everybody for tuning in.

69:53I hope you've enjoyed this.

69:55I hope you've learned something new and hopefully been entertained to some degree at the same

69:59time.

70:00Check out Dr. Schrader Poulter's song as well.

70:03Ah, yes.

70:04If you can find it.

70:05Is it on YouTube?

70:06It's on Elizabeth Schrader.com.

70:07It's on Elizabeth Schrader.

70:08It's on Elizabeth Schrader.

70:09Click on the music tab.

70:10All right.

70:11Click on the music tab.

70:12And as usual, if you would like to help us here at the Data Over Dogma podcast, continue

70:17to make the Data Over Dogma podcast, you can find us at patreon.com/dataoverdogma.

70:24And if you have any questions, comments, concerns, and since we did some Spanish earlier, cheesestays

70:30or cheesemays, you can reach out to us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com.

70:36I hope y'all are having a wonderful week and we will see you next time.