The Gospel of Mary of Magdala

This book has the Gospel of Mary in it and the rest of the book discusses that gospel. Parts of the Gospel of Mary are missing including the first six chapters. The book also points out that 85% of the Christian-oriented writings from the first two centuries are also gone.

There's also discussions about Jewish law and what part, if any, Gentiles were expected to obey. Also, just because some people were disciples does not mean that they automatically understand everything Jesus was trying to say.

The book notes that for a long time those who followed the Christian faith had no Bible to follow, no official leaders to follow, no church buildings and no first-hand experience of what Jesus actually said. The writings that did exist didn't always agree with each other, either.

One of the most interesting parts of the Gospel of Mary is when Mary is talking to the apostles and Andrew basically calls Mary a liar and says the things she is saying that Jesus taught her have some 'strange ideas' in them. Peter gets even nastier with her but finally Levi/Matthew comes to her defense.

Sin ends up being defined as people turning away from God and becoming overly concerned with the material world and 'passions.'

Another interesting thing is that Mary of Magdala was at the crucifixion and stayed whereas the apostles all headed for the hills, hiding.

The book discusses more about the difficulty people had, particularly Peter, with Mary being a woman. There was just as strong a prejudice against women back then as there is today. Women were not considered to be the equal of men and whatever they said wasn't to be believed as much as if some man said it.

The book also points out another very major problem. It seems that Jesus did not write down anything which means that everything that he said ended up being interpreted by others. This also means that the exact words he used were altered over time and it's quite possible that much of the original meaning was actually lost if not actually altered. The book also covers some of the problems in the Bible itself in how various gospels do not necessarily agree with each other.

You would think that the men who put the 'official' Bible together would have tried to make sure that was of a whole and parts didn't contradict other parts but apparently they just overlooked all of that.

The book also discusses how the personal of Mary was altered by a Pope who claimed Mary was actually a prostitute. This was a very convenient way to attack her character to make sure that anything she said would not be taken seriously.

There's also still a lot of argument over whether or not Jesus and Mary actually got married. At that time if you were a rabbi, such as was Jesus, getting married was something you pretty much expected to do.

There's lot of other very interesting information in this book. You do have to be open-minded about Christian history and theology, though, to get everything out of the book you could.


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