46. Mary Magdalene: From sinner to saint!

The Curious Case of Mary Magdalene: From Sinner to Saint

Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=1285143176741563 Luisa Omielan 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/marymagdalene.shtml
https://broadview.org/mary-magdalene-easter-story/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/192913/1/Final%20Submitted%20Mary%20Magdalene%20-%20Warren.pdf

This video explores the life and legacy of Mary Magdalene, a significant yet often misunderstood figure in Christian history. Originating from biblical texts, Mary Magdalene was a wealthy, loyal disciple who witnessed Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. The script delves into how her reputation was tarnished over centuries, notably by Pope Gregory I, who labeled her a sinful prostitute. The narrative also uncovers Mary Magdalene's leadership role and significant influence through the rediscovery of the Gospel of Mary in 1896. The discussion highlights the enduring impact of patriarchal narratives and the importance of revisiting historical figures to uncover their true contributions.

00:00 Thanksgiving and Grand Prix Dilemma
01:13 A Coffee Shop Story
02:36 Introducing Mary Magdalene
03:48 Mary Magdalene's Role in Christianity
08:06 Pope Gregory's Influence
15:28 Mary Magdalene in Art and Culture
17:24 The Many Marys in the Bible
17:56 Confusion and Misidentification
19:29 Cultural Impact and Misconceptions
19:51 Modern Reassessment of Mary Magdalene
23:22 The Gospel of Mary: A Hidden Text
25:07 Mary's Leadership and Influence
26:10 Controversy and Jealousy Among Disciples
31:54 Mary Magdalene's Legacy and Modern Interpretations
37:22 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

audio1837662765: 0:08

I think it was Grand Prix. I saw it was Grand Prix, but we, yeah, my God. Because of Thanksgiving preparations. I didn't remember that. It was Grand Prix. And keeping track of that is a job I have elected to take responsibility for. Okay. So my sister-in-law yesterday went, so did you guys get up at four and watch the Qua and you're like, no, I completely forgot. And then this No, I was distracted by Turkey. Yeah. Distracted by Turkey and pumpkin pie. And then. The today was the actual race. And so our Thanksgiving dinner, so to speak, was yesterday and last night we were all sitting around playing cards and we started playing at like nine. And the question was, do we then get up at four in the morning? Mm-hmm. Or three 30 in the morning to watch the race at four. And by midnight we still hadn't finished the card game. And by 1:00 AM we were like, no, we are not getting up in three hours. So it was getting closer. It was terrible. We ended up watching the recap. It was. Brilliant. That's okay. That's fine. I'm still in it. Everything you, that's why to have to recap. Yeah, exactly. That's what it's for. Percent. What have you been up to while we've been having Turkey and pumpkin pie and playing cards? Nothing is exciting. Oh, I went to a coffee shop yesterday. That was it. I went to a coffee shop. Come on. New coffee shop, I did go to a coffee shop and I did write as a story. Would you like to hear it? I certainly would. We are going into new territory. Cara, we are venturing religion. We have never done a religious Um. No. And, I first heard about this story from a comedian of a fabulous lady called, Louisa Olin. Um, have you heard of her? Mm-hmm. Now I think you'd really like her. She's, I don't understand why she's not on the mainstream. I don't understand why she's not. Have I got news for you? Um. What's that lie one, would I lie to you? She should be on all those shows all the time. I don't understand how she hasn't cracked'cause she's been on my radar for year, like about 10 years. But yeah, I don't understand. Maybe she's opting out of that. Maybe it's choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But she's fabulous and she got me through lockdown. A lot of things. So I found this story from her and I was like, well, I've not heard of this lady. Jamie had heard of this lady. So you may have as well, um, I just hadn't for whatever reason. So this is, the story of Mary Magdalene in the Bible. She was a wealthy, loyal disciple, the chosen witness to the resurrection. She was the messenger to the messengers, a saint. But for thousands of years, the world knew her as the weeping anonymous sinner. A scandalous prostitute erased from power. So how did one woman's story splinter? So, and why did a single sermon change her reputation without rebuttal? This is the curious case of Mary Magdalene. The woman who gave birth to a religion yet is still fighting for her place in the world today. So it's curious. It's curiouser and curiouser. Obviously I've referenced Louise Olin. She does an amazing, hilarious sketch about this. I loved it. I've relied very heavily on a BBC article on Christianity, specifically Mary Magdalene. broadview.org. Smithsonian Magazine had an article. I kind of struggled with it if I was honest, but I've used a couple of bits in there at Wikipedia just to check up on some bits and a white R academic paper. So. Who is Mary Magdalene and what does she do? So to understand Mary, we kind of have to ignore what we think about her. So a little bit like Catherine the great, you know, when we've got this idea in our head, we're kind of just gonna have to rip that apart a little bit. We can look at what actually was written in the Bible because the Bible still exists. It's just great news. So. Name is Mary of Magdala, which suggests her hometown was Magdala, which is a village, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is modern day Palestine. So we're kind of around that area. Some scholars suggest, Magdala means tower in Aramic, which makes her kind of the watch tower. So Mary the Watchtower, which makes sense because, her and Jesus very close, very close, and she was kind of watching out for him. So that's kind of where that kind of theory comes from, regardless of kind of what her name means. The thing we need to know is that she was a disciple. And she was one of the leading disciples, among Jesus's followers. And, she was very much, it's not a question of whether she was there or not, she was definitely there because she's mentioned so many times throughout all the gospels. So she's mentioned in four gospels, which is a record. Not many people are in all four gospels I know in total she was mentioned 12 times. So this is a lot. So it is just kind of a character to take notice of, right? Yeah. Important note, is that she was rich. She was a woman of some means, whatever that meant 2000 years ago. In the Gospel of Luke, it tells us that Mary and other women, including Joanna and Susanna, which I didn't, I did know they were religious names, but I find it fascinating that Susanna is a religious name. I find it hilarious. Anyway, so they. Accompanied Jesus and the texts explicitly states that they provided for themselves, okay? They weren't relying on handouts. They followed Jesus and they funded their own trips. Never thought before about the fact that the disciples kind of following him around. On the preaching trail would need just admin, like somebody's gotta pay for the, the stable or the room or the food. Yeah, like, yeah. So these are women obviously who are capable of just not working, going out on the road and. You know, fan 10 girling, um, Jesus for, and Jesus and his mission basically, they were seen as radicals of their time because they were traveling independently, without a dad or a chaperone. You know, they were kind of doing their own thing. I., They're described by Louisa Olin in her sketch as like Kim Kardashians of the day. So like, they were prim, they were ready, they had money, they were just gonna go and this is what they wanted to do and they were gonna go make it happen regardless of what. So that's the kind of vibe we've got about Mary. We dunno much about her history, basically, Most famous thing we know about Mary is that she is referenced as, Mary from whom seven Demons had got out. Okay. Wow. So that is so important. Demons quite a strong word. Yeah. Quite strong word. What do we, what do we mean here? What we don't know? What do you think? That's the, that's the, this is the whole point of this story is that we dunno what demons are and this just shows that some of these texts can't be trusted. Right. That's, we not always a hundred percent sure what they mean. Yeah. Like you're not seeing that on an NHS, um, medical history or, you know what I mean? Like, it's not, it's not quantifiable with science, but it, it obviously meant something when they wrote it and people would've gone, oh yeah. Seven demons. Oh, you know, it could be like a, um. Uh, a, a physical disability, um, some disabling factor in some way. The problem we've got is, nobody's a hundred percent sure, but people assume what that means. That's the problem we've got. And in classic fashion, it is a. Man who makes this assumption. Oh, okay. And let me introduce you to Pope Gregory the first. Okay. He is offered called Gregory the Great. Um, oh, he sounds amazing. I mean, that's, that's a so far strong name. Strong name. What? What's he got to back it up? What's he bringing? Um, he was around in the late five hundreds to six hundreds. He's kind of over that century crossover. He, was a very popular pope and, he was pope at a time where obviously the Pope has a lot of power now, but it was, it was strongly like at the height of that time, he. Bob along, to a sermon one day and preaches to his people, as he preaches to, and he says the following words, whom Luke calls, the sinful woman whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven demons were ejected according to Mark. Okay, so that language isn't language that we would use today because it's years ago, but the key word that I want you to pick out there is sinful. She whom Lukes calls the sinful woman. Alright. We have no indication that this woman is sinful. There is nothing in that original quote that indicates sin, but what Greg? Greg has done is make that leap. He's made the leap from diman to sinful and sinful at a time. Kind of means moral failure. It means bad. Yeah. It means you are weak. Okay. And it is very short leap from sinful to prostitute. Okay. Which is very on brandand for Christianity at that time. Okay. So what Oh, Greg has done, has taken some words, twisted them, popped them out, and used them for his own agenda. Okay. Which makes sense. That is what the patriarchy does. Sexuality in Christianity is often brandished as a kind of negative thing. Mm. Louisa on Milan, references this very briefly at the end of her Mary Magdalene sketch, and I just wanna bring her interpretation into it because it's very different so he could read that Sex has been weaponized to use for shame to belittle and control when it's the most natural thing in the world. Which is very different. It's a very different interpretation of sexy times compared to Greg. And, she goes on to do this really hilarious bit about the clitoris, which I will not try and do here because it's, it's just too funny. You'll have to go and watch a sketch, we'll pop it in, our show notes. So not only is Greg made this huge assumption, he's. Taking the word demon, added sin for giving it connotations to prostitution. He did this speech on Good Friday. So this is one of his biggest speeches of the year. He is the sole proprietor of the audience. They are only listening to him. He is the pope. It's his good Friday. This is a big deal. Okay. So he spreads those lies and he spreads them wide throughout. But there is nothing in the original text to support. Pope Gregory, the first theory scholar state, like I said, generally agree that seven demons could be, an ailment, like a physical maybe, a psychiatric illness, maybe something like seizures, for example. So to understand the true impact of what Grego did, we kind of need to understand the big part of Mary's story. So we've kind of jumped a bit. We've kind of gone from this is who Mary is, this is what happened to her 500 years later. But to bring it back so. In the scenes in the Bible, it's really interesting'cause one women are always in the scenes of the Bible. Really fascinating. They were at these biggest moments, if you like, in religion. They were there just like women were at war, just like women were. Yeah. In royalty. It's like they've always been there in all parts of life. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. All been there. So that was interesting, first of all, but her biggest strength, Mary. To have throughout her story is loyalty. Okay. When Jesus faced mortal danger, the men in his company, his disciples, they did abandon but Mary and was one of the women who stayed with him. He all the way up to the point of crucifixion, right? She was there. She witnessed his death and she was present at his burial. We know this, it's in the text. Her courage and, fidelity is very different to how those men reacted in that same situation. Okay. So that's just, you know, it's interesting that that is her character through. And then came the moment that actually cements her role. She was present at the tomb. Often with other women in that scene. And the big scene is described in the Gospel of John, which this quote is from a, the BBC article, but it takes quotes from the Gospel of John read that. Mary is Alone when someone asks her why she's crying. She believes it's the gardener and says they have taken my Lord's body and I do not know where it is. The figure says her name and then she sees Jesus. She's overwhelmed and says master, and goes forward to reach out to him, but he stops her. He says, don't touch me. Instead, she must go to the others and tell them that he has risen from the dead. It's an awesome moment. Jesus stands before her, yet he's beyond her reach. She witnesses his redemption. Okay. She is the one who. Was there at the time and then is tasked with, go and spread that word. Okay. She's tasked to be the messenger. This is quite a big deal in Christianity. This is like the underpinning moment of Christianity. This is the pivotal moment of what them is given to a religion. And that all happened, that moment happens because she she's there, she witnessed she she went back to see him. Not everyone was doing that. She took the message and then she spread it. Okay. So she's absolutely the central character to redemption and basically the birth of Christianity it today. She became what the early church later called, um, a spot to the Apostles. How are we saying that? Apostles to the Apostle apostles to the apostles. I was raised Catholic, so this is all very much my. Million. Brilliant. Yeah. So she's known as the messenger to the messengers. Right? That is a pretty big deal. the Orthodox Church recognized her equal to the Apostles. This is the, she basically, she's the founding father of Christianity. That's what I'm trying to get at. These are big swings that is taken to this female character. Right. Then. She's branded as a sinner later on. Okay. It's curious. It gets curiouser and curiouser. Okay. So why does she have these different interpretations? Okay. Yeah. Why in the text is she one person? Yeah. Her reputation is completely different in popular culture. Another example of how her reputation is tarnished through society and culture is the numerous paintings of her. All religious paintings are all a bit question marky because of whitewashing. But often in these paintings, she's seen as weeping. She's seen as cowering. She's seen as, feeble Really. And this is in Renaissance and Baroque paintings, including a painting by, Artesia, who we covered in a previous episode. Yeah. So really interesting that we've got another crossover, which is fabulous. So I've given you a couple of, um, Artesia paintings there. Of Mary, and you can kind of see that this is not that brave, courageous, loyal, defy person that we were just talking about. This is a very, depicted as something else here. I think grief, it seems, she seems so sad. Mm-hmm. there could be a couple of reasons for this. Basically, one is quite simply the patriarchy. So this idea of deliberate political campaigns carried out by men in power to consolidate authority, control the narrative, and allow those pivotal moments in history to be given two men. That's very simply probably what Gregory was doing. The other is probably laziness to be honest. Um, often this is like branded as confusion in the articles and the research that you do. And I don't think it's confusion. I think it's people not reading properly. So. Mary's a popular name. Okay? It is like today's Olivia, right? We have lots of Mary's, um, Mary crops up again and again in the Bible. Again, that might not even be her name. Mary might have been just a thing that was added later down the line. We don't know that. But regardless, in popular culture, there's Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene. And, um, Mary, the sister of Martha, okay. And they all do similar things in terms of very, basically they all are loyal to Jesus, right? That's very similar. That's kind of their theme. But what happens is, assumptions are made and things are crossed over. So there's a little quote here about that quote unquote confusion. Okay? Um. Mary Magdalene became confused with the two other women in the Bible. Mary, the sister of Martha, and the unnamed sinner from Luke's Gospel, 7 36 50, both of whom washed Jesus' feet with their hair. It's a weird thing to do, but it happens. It's something Mary Magdalene did do earlier on in her story. Um, and with that and, Gregor's assumption of her being a sinner, um, that is what has maybe confused them a little bit. Okay. So there was a sinful woman, who was unnamed. There were two people called Mary, that washed and. It's possible that Greg got confused and called this Mary the sinner. But again, there's no scriptural connection between Mary Magdalene and this a named sinner. But it's important to know that these stories were originally passed down orally. They were written down decades later. Narratives and threads can become blurred. Right. Especially with the name, repetition and yeah. I mean. I am not trying to throw shade on Old Gregory, but if he's a kind of a mind of one woman's very much the same as another, it doesn't take a huge leap for him to go out. Well, yeah, it was probably her and yeah, laziness is, is a good as explanation as any really. Right. Greg in my eyes, is very much the enemy of this story. He's the villain, right? He is today's villain. So this idea of Mary becoming the sinner, then, travels through the ages. This fallen woman weeping, often depicted in caves, for example, repenting of the viewer's leisure. Her body was even turned into holy pornography, in art, because lots of that happens in art all the time. People have a boob. Yeah. Okay. But it wasn't until. Really late in the day, so 1969 and then again in 2016 that the Catholic Church actually acknowledged that maybe we need to do something about this. So this prostitute sinful reputation that Mary Magdalene has had persists for over a thousand years. And then it was in 1969 where they actually were like, no. We've checked the text, we're gonna separate them. Mary Magdalene is someone completely separate. That originally happened, Kara, in 1969. Okay. The, the wild thing about that, Vicki, is that mm-hmm. I was as, as I was just saying to you, I was raised Catholic, I went to Sunday school, I was confirmed, so I was 18 and I, and I was learning. Poorly. I wasn't a great student because I, it wasn't for me, but fine. So that would've been in the 1980s. And if you asked me then or yesterday, who was Mary Magdalene? I would've said she was a prostitute who hung out with Jesus and his pals. I wouldn't have said she was an apostle. I wouldn't have said that she had been found to be someone other than who, the text I was taught. Maybe through my own misunderstanding, but I wasn't going looking for that information. It was just what I imbued from what I was taught. So yes, perhaps in 1969 the Catholic church took a look, but it didn't filter down to Rhode Island in the eighties. I will tell you that much wild. That's so funny. Um, but also I love that we've kind of. Because I was wondering whether to even bother with this episode because everyone knows about her because she is not necessarily a known, but actually maybe she's known, but her story's unknown. Maybe that's the, yeah, like Catherine, the Great again, you think you know, but you don't. Yeah. So that 1980s anecdote was very validating for me. Thank you. Um, yes. So this cultural image persists today, right? It persisted to you yesterday. It persisted to Jamie at lunchtime today when I was talking to him about it. Like it's definitely still in the cultural, not because I'm not being funny. 1969 to today. Compared to old Greg in 1591 or whatever it is to 1969, it's not the same time. No, it's not the same time period that we've had to correct this narrative that she's in. She was, depicted a saint. So she actually literally went from sin to Saint. That is her trajectory, which is pretty cool, isn't it? Um, there's a quote there about her sainthood, read that. Mary Magdalene is considered a saint by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches with a feast day on the 22nd of July. The Eastern Orthodox churches also commemorate her on the Sunday of the Mur Bearers, which is the second Sunday after Kasha Easter. She is also an important figure and the Bahai faith. Oh yeah. So she's got reputations, she's got roles. At least on paper nowadays is cemented as that role. Right. She's been through a lot, Mary in the past 1500, 1900 years. She's done a lot. Okay, but that's not where it stops. There's a little extra twist for you here, where it gets stranger and stranger. So. Again, let's jump from when she, again, it's really interesting that so much of this happens after her death, essentially. So now we're in 1896. I'm gonna take you to the. Bustly Streets of Cairo at a local bazaar. Think of the smells, think of the shouting. Think of the sand and your feet at the heat. It's gorgeous. So there's tons of industry and busyness of, markets and in one of those market stools in Cairo's Bazaar is a German scholar who happened to come across a curious, Papyrus book, bound in Leather and written in, Coptic. This was the Gospel of Mary. Oh yes. Mic drop. Yes, mic drop. So, okay. But illogically, of course there was, if she was a disciple and you have the Gospel of Luke, the gospel of Mar, the Gospel of, of course there's one of Mary of course, but it's just because she's a woman. But it doesn't exist anymore. Women can't write. Everyone knows that like, this is the gospel accord according to Mary Magdalene. And it is considered, an apocryphal text. So the story within it does begin after the resurrection. The disciples are having visions of Jesus at this point. Jesus has encouraged his disciples to go out, preach his teachings to the world, but a lot of them, and this harps back to the crucifixion redemption story, are afraid to do so because they're worried they're gonna be killed for it. It's classic, it's your classic, Harold situation. Um. And they say if they killed him, they're gonna killed us too, because he, you know, was killed originally, blah, blah, blah. But who defies this shock horror? It's Mary, the courageous. Okay. So there's another quote there about what Mary did next. It's Mary who steps forward and says, don't be worried. He promised he would be with us to protect us. It says she turns their hearts towards the good and they begin to discuss the words of Savior in texts like the Gospel of Philip. Mary was presented as a symbol of wisdom. However, in the Gospel of Mary, she's the one in charge telling the disciples about Jesus's teachings. she's the one Cara. Go on. Mary. Yes. This matches her loyalty from earlier, but it also gives her character look another, facet, another dimension. And that dimension is leadership and influence. Okay. It's at this point that Peter asked Mary to tell them some things that she might have heard, that the other disciples haven't. Yeah. And she was like, yeah, I'll tell you. She talks about a vision that she had of Jesus and a conversation that she had with him. As the gospel tell tells it, Mary then relays, the details of these conversations. But at this point, controversy arises, and she's basically undermined a guy steps in this guy called Andrew. Um, and basically says, I dunno what the rest of you think, but these is very strange to me that she's got these teachings. You know, I mean, and I don't have And then, Peter, who's basically second in command, I think classically it was, are we now meant to listen to you, Mary, why would, why would Jesus talk to you? And rather than talk openly to everyone, did he prefer Mary? To me, it's just classic be, oh, professional jealousy, little high school beef gettings hurt. Yeah, it's classic high school beef. And this is. Not a surprise because what has happened is that in a room of men, a woman has been given power or has elicited herself to power. And either way she's got that status in that room. Um, and I don't. The room turns. Yeah, the room turns on you. It's a classic. I have seen this happen, this exact conversation happen in 21st Century corporate UK Classic. Mm-hmm. Okay. So why wouldn't it have happened back then? Yeah. You know, if anything more so to me this tracks. Yeah. All this tracks to me. Then you've got this little guy, Matthew, he defends Mary, um, Peter's still a taxer and they all kind of jiffies off. Peter sees Mary's a rival for the leadership of the group and, it's very John Lennon and Yoko. That's kind of how I felt when I was reading it. Kind of a little bit like author's girl on the scene, blah, blah, blah. Peter is the main major disciple figure and she's been kind of a side figure, quote unquote up till that point. Because she. Because the story is about Jesus really. It's a side character to Jesus. Um, you know, big shoes. But one of the really fascinating things about this gospel that was found is that, it gets us to rethink about the story about Christian history is that were the disciples always on board? Did they get it? Did they need convincing? Were they loyal? You know what I mean? Did they really understand and did they really preach the truth? And also, how was this damn gospel not uncovered until 1896? This isn't, ugh, literal millennia had passed. Okay? For womens who cement themselves in the race. There is the BBC article does explore, explore a little bit, you know, maybe the Gospel of Mary was too radical. Um, it presents Mary as a teacher and a spiritual guide, that she isn't just a disciple, but she's more than that. Mm-hmm. She kind of, like you were saying in the quote, is almost like an author, almost one of the writers in this as well. The Gospel of Philip, goes even further describing Mary as Jesus' quote unquote companion. Um, which is kind of what I think you kind of alluded to with your memory is that, um, they, they were, they were very close. They were little, little, you know, little love birds. Yeah. There was, yeah, there was a film that was called something like The Temptation of Christ or something like this that was out in, I wanna say it eighties. And I think I never watched it because it was just beyond the realm of possibility to watch something so controversial and dark. But it was controversial. And I think that the implication of the film was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had. Had a romantic relationship, I guess you'd say. And I think, I don't think that the Catholic teachings that I received really touched on that. It was more like she was a sinner and a woman of, you know, ill repute and Jesus forgave her. And so there was still that like. Dichotomy, but, but she was, you know, she was unclean and he saw beyond that sort of thing. Whereas I think what you're talking about there smacks very much of this chick is getting too big for her boots. What is the fastest way to discredit her? I'm gonna say I saw. I saw Goodie Mary kissing Jesus. Like it's, it's, I love it. It's so funny. So classic smear, but why they're bringing Jesus into it, I don't quite know. But yeah, I don't know, man. And again, this is her reputation versus what we actually know. So it does say in the gospel of Philip Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, this again links very nicely to Louisa on Milli Ellen's standard routine where, um, it's seen in her standard routine that they were very much together. They were like banging all the time. They were inseparable. It was full on. Very much making heaven on Earth is what she says. Belinda Carl Lyle ROPs up. It's a whole thing. Okay. Definitely watch it. It's very, very funny. But this intimacy, whether it's physical, whether it's spiritual, like you said, whatever it is, made her rivals. Okay. Which she was a rival to Peter. That also leads into another reason where maybe she disappeared from history. Okay. Was maybe that's another reason because it was pure jealousy. Especially when she was so close in that inner circle for us to know so little about her. It's, it stinks of Let's cut her. Let's literally write her out of history basically. Yeah. Mary Magdalene was essentially made to disappear from the inner circle just as women were disappearing from the church's hierarchy, throughout the retellings. And it's no wonder that a patriarchal, religion might have felt threatened by gospels that showed a woman as such a strong role. Regardless of it coming out in the 1890s So. They are the threads of Mary Magdalene. Her story is a profound lesson in how history is written, remembered, but also weaponized and how we need to call it out even today. So even in, um, Louisa Oland's, standard routines. She is actually doing a musical called God is a Woman, which is originally was one of her standup shows. And it's, got so much critical acclaim already, even though it's only in development phase. So I definitely, that's one to watch out for. Mary's identity can be rooted in her scriptural actions. A wealthy, dedicated and loyal disciple who stayed with Jesus through to the bitter end, and most importantly, the one chosen by Christ to carry the message of resurrection. This single act is how she changed history, serving as a foundation of Christian belief itself. Mm-hmm. I don't think this is the end of Mary's interpretations. I've probably missed some in my, research, but she is one of those characters that just keeps giving. There are plenty of papers out there about how she's depicted in modern feminism in white feminism today. In some, relics, she seemed as powerful, autonomous, very important. But it's this weird kind of complexity and kind of mysteriousness that makes her weirdly like relatable. She has a lot of contradictions. She's gone up against slander, which many of us have. She's been erased from rooms, which many of us have. And this has gone on throughout history, even when we've spoken about, like the paintings from Artes Time and again, we question who gets to tell the story, who is the story and who gets to tell the story. So hopefully this podcast is one way of evening, the balance of that story and the curious case of Mary Magdalene. Wow. Thank you very much for that. That's a little nudge, isn't it? Just a little nudge to question what you hear. Mm-hmm. And think about, think about why and where these sort of truths have come from. I mean, absolutely. Had never stopped to question beyond the kind of basic questioning of whether any of it was in any way true or meant anything at all. Mm-hmm. You're just sort of presented these figures and told, this is a good guy, this is a nice woman, this is a bad sinner, and this, you know, you think, okay, fine. But yeah. The. The fact that her entire character might have been undermined because some dudes got ambitious is, yeah, horrendous. Um, such an interesting point you made too, about the fact that these disciples. Are assumed to all just fully believe the same thing and have the same unifying outlook and go out into the world and actually they might have been jerks or jockeying for a position, or it reminds me of conclave. I don't know if you watched that, but that, what was that? It's the film that was out this year. I think it was a Robert Harris novel about the election of a pope within the Catholic church. Oh, interesting. Oh, but it's the same, it's kind of same. Yeah, you vote in the stone, you think, you think, oh, they're all just working together. And then you watch this movie and you're like, no, these are human people. Yeah, that's right. With ambition and agendas and different perspectives on what might be right. And some of those guys who Mary was sort of speaking to in her, in her gospel probably were like, wait a minute, I thought I was gonna be, yeah. You know, the next big. Cheese and really super important. I've got all these ideas that are gonna benefit humanity. Piped down over there. Yeah. And like, yeah, trying to put her in her place. That's, that's enough to think about. It hasn't. If that is the case, humanity has not changed one bit then. No, we are right. Yeah. Regardless of this religious structure, like whatever political structures, corporate structures, family structures, even like, you know, head of the family kind of thing. You know, it's fascinating, isn't it, that actually how we evolved, but how we use the same basic tools to try to, oh God, you know, kind of. Dominate somebody else and yeah, like squash their point of view. And if that someone happens to be a woman and you happen to have access to sexual slander as a, as a tool, then hey, that's, that's been effective. Which is exactly what old Grego was doing 500 Yeah. That's so disappointing. He wanted something to back up his agenda and found that. I know gr I know they're so grim, but Yeah. But thank you for your 1980s reference points. I enjoyed. They were brilliant. Well, if me having to sit through Sunday school every week can't come up with something. Yeah, well thanks very much Kara. Thank you to you.

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