Course: Two Marys
Lecture #1: Introduction
MARY MAGDALENE AND THE VIRGIN MARY
Introduction
There are actually 3 Mary's mentioned in the New Testament writings. Mary of Magdala, The Virgin Mary and the sister of at Martha, Mary of Bethany. There have been times when the two Marys, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene, have been thought to NOT Known For sure be one and the same but this is-doubtful. I will go into more detail on this later.
Why the two Mary's? Very simply, it is these two women, Mary of Magdala and the Virgin Mary who had cults develop around them in the later church. How and why, and why the Virgin Mary seemed to "win" the cult contest is going to be part of this course.
Fact is, that Mary of Magdala was by far the most important and the early front runner as far as popularity is concerned How this changed and was deliberately manipulated by the church, will also be part of this course.
Because of her early importance, I will spend the first several weeks dealing with Mary of Magdala, after and introductory lecture today dealing with women in society at this time, the goddess and other relevant ideas of this time period.
I will cover how the Mary's influenced art and more recently, drama, novels and movies. IE, how they are portrayed. This is especially relevant for Mary Magdalen.
Also relevant to Mary Magdalene is the stories of the Holy Coming From, Grail, the secret of Rennes les Chateau of southern France so a good bit of time will be spent on these very interesting ideas and theories. Was Jesus Married? Did he have kids? etc.
As for the Virgin Mary, we will deal with her in art, both especially we will cover the various appearances of the Virgin Mary using films, and narrative. This will take a session alone because of the extensive appearances especially this century.
Hopefully, by the end of this course you will have a better understanding of the theology involved in elevating and de-elevating persons in a cult and the way the "popular" mind looks at cults, as well as how the church manipulates ideas to impose their own theological viewpoint.
With this, I will now go to the introduction which will include women's role in ancient cultures, the goddess and how she was replaced in a patriarchal society but never totally destroyed, only tamed.
AN OVERVIEW OF WOMEN AND THE GODDESS IN SOCIETIES
History is generally defined as beginning around 3000-2500 BCE with the rise of civilization and of course writing. The history of what women and men have accomplished, of course, began much earlier than that. In fact, women's greatest accomplishments were made in the period before history.
The patriarchal family was unknown as it is today as descent was traced thru the female, a matrilineal custom which still persists today in many tribal societies.
Women were considered to be the sole creators of life before agriculture and the domestication of animals gave understanding.
AGRICULTURE OR THE NEOLITHIC AGE BEGINS
Ironically, women invented planting, and the result was they became property. Women learned how to cultivate and plant and harvest, etc. To accomplish it women had to invent many other things including hoes, poetry that would hold water, construct looms for weaving, better home building methods, tools for grinding, ovens and yeast for bread making.
Women also established trade between other villages and became priestesses who conducted religious rituals.
Men began to take over many of the functions and add to the knowledge of the women (such as the potter's wheel). Women were the first farmers and industrialists; the first scientists, doctors, nurses, architects and engineers; the first teachers, artists and linguists and historians. Will Durant writes: "most economic advances in early society were made by women rather than men. While for centuries he clung to his ancient ways of hunting and herding, she developed agriculture, rolled thread into cotton cloth, developed sewing, weaving, basketry, potter, woodworking and building."
Around 6000 BCE women began to domesticate animals. With this turn, men no longer had to hunt. Men began to take over cattle raising from the women and their status had to do with how many cattle they owned. The very economy which women developed destroyed their equality with men.
Thus, cattle were the first property of man which elevated him above women. It is the pastoral peoples who became the first patriarchal peoples. Women became chattel (same root as Cattle).
Agriculture while generating civilization led not only to private property but to slavery.
Why did women let it all go? One woman historian, Elise Boulding, suggests that women may have been suffering from work overload. Apparently, the women did not shift to the necessary new perceptions of their activities and of the total organization of village life soon enough to prevent loss of "political power."
Knowledge of paternity was also part of this downfall of women. With the domestication of animals, men figured out their biological importance in human reproduction. Result: men began to take all the credit and women only a vessel (Aristotle, 400 BC). It was only in 1843 that the fusion of the male and female cells was understood.
With this knowledge, men began to lay claim to their children and give property to their sons. Women's sexual freedom vanished with the need-to-know paternity. This also gave birth to prostitution since male chastity is irrelevant but female virginity was imperative.
Where there had been no such thing as illegitimacy in hunting gathering societies, with the advent of property, children born to an unmarried woman were often near outcasts in society.
Regardless of why the social life of humankind changed with the coming age of cultivation and its attendant knowledge of paternity and the value of property, the fact is, agricultural and herding societies became patriarchal when they had previously, at least somewhat, been matriarchal or at least matrilineal. The family as we know it makes its appearance with the arrival of the value of property.
GODDESSES TO GODS
Among our ancestors in Western and Northern Europe as elsewhere, it would appear that formerly religious and priestly functions belonged originally to women.
Until paternity was known, women were considered sacred since they could produce other human beings.
The earliest places of worship have been found in the Ukraine and Russia going back to 30,000 BCE. Goddess figurines have been found all over the area from Russia to Spain to the middle east.
The metaphysical supremacy of the female principle has asserted itself wherever horticultural production and human reproduction were linked. This is not to say that women had more actual power than men, but women were given great respect being judges, legislatures and even military generals.
In southern turkey, 3 towns have been unearthed. Catal Huyuk, dating back to at least 6500 BCE, in which excavation was begun in 1961 and still continues, was woman dominated. James Mellaart, the archeologist in charge, wrote in 1966 that Catal Huyuk was not only a matriarchy but a utopian society. There had been no wars for a thousand years, there was an ordered pattern of society, there were no human or animal sacrifices. no evidence of violent death. They kept pets and were mostly vegetarian.
Women were the heads of households and were reverently buried, while men's bones were thrown into a charnel house. Above all, the supreme deity in all the temples was a goddess with an all-female priestly class.
Why have we never acknowledged that there probably were matriarchies at some point in history? Simply, the most formidable barrier is the reluctance to accept the maternal class as a unit of society that proceeded the "father-family." This would invalidate the claims that male supremacy has always existed because men are physically stronger and therefore socially superior to women, and that women as child-bearers are the weak and helpless sex and have always been dependent on men for support.
Anthropology does not bear this out. Communal production was accomplished by collective childcare. What sealed the doom of women was the coming of slavery and/or serfdom, which ended both collective ownership and the matrilineal clan system. This gave way to the individual family based on private property.
ANTIQUITY - WOMEN AND CIVILIZATION 2500 BCE — 400 CE
Civilization dates from about 2300 BCE when Sargon conquered and united the cities of Sumer, and with other lands he had conquered, established the first empire in history. It only lasted about 100 years but was followed by many others, mostly short lived.
In 1750 Hammurabi of Babylon conquered Sumeria and it was henceforth known as Babylonia. At this point, women still had many rights including a dowry which she controlled and could give to her children. She could conduct business, keep slaves but adultery for women meant punishment by death.
There were many goddesses, most prominent Innana (later Ishtar) and priestesses to serve her. As male power and wealth grew and shifted from city state to city state, women's status was reduced. Women enjoyed a higher status in the earlier Sumerian years than in the civilizations later years.
Under Hammurabi, priestesses could still inherit and bequeath property. Women still had a good and independent legal position at this time (1750 BCE). Women kept their dowry, custody of the children when divorce occurred, and women could be judges, elders, witnesses and scribes.
INDO-EUROPEANS (Aryans)
From about 2000 BCE to 1000 BCE Indo-European tribes who were warlike and patriarchal moved into the fertile crescent. These were many tribes including the Hittities, the Hurrians, the Luvites (Levites?), and Kassites. With them they brought their own priesthood and gods. It was about 1500 BCE that the myth of the God Marduk who slay the goddess Tiamat was written.
It is this kind of "myth of transition" which shows how the goddess was replaced all over the near east at this time.
ASSYRIA
The Laws of Assyria show this transition. Dating from between 1450 and 1250 while under Indo European control they reflect a male dominance in which women lose status.
This was a warlike empire and thus encouraged a high birth rate because of its need for soldiers. Women who bore sons were honored. Any attempt at abortion was punishable by death.
Wives could not go out un-veiled, and strict fidelity was expected of them though their husbands had no restrictions. A husband was legally justified in killing another man making love to the husband's wife, a custom that has come down thru history.
JUDEA - Abraham (@2200 BCE - 70 CE)
The Jews were a semitic people (referring to their language) who looked back to Abraham, his son Isaac and then Jacob's 12 sons for the 12 tribes.
The cult of YHWH dates to Moses, probably the 13th cent. BCE. With the giving of the covenant at Mt. Sinai (Horeb), and 40 years "wandering", they finally settled in Palestine about 1200 BCE.
The male god YHWH was the primary god in a henotheistic society.
This definitely reflects the Indo-European attitude towards women and in fact, Jewish law is some of the harshest concerning women. This did not change even at the time of the New Testament and our two subjects, Mary of Magdalen and the Virgin Mary.
Until the Babylonian exile of 587—537 BCE did not exclude other deities. It only meant one was to worship YHWH if you were an Israelite.
In the popular mind, however, YHWH had a consort and stelle have been found speaking of Asherah as his consort. It took the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah after the return to Jerusalem to end this and bring about Judaism as we know it today.
The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was inferior to the position of wife occupied in the great countries around Israel. A husband could divorce his wife but not the other way around. The wife had to call her husband Ba'al (master) or Adon (Lord). The law includes a man’s wife as one of his possession -- She remains a minor all her life.
The wife cannot inherit from her husband, nor daughters from their fathers, except when there is no male heir. A vow made by a daughter or married woman has to be validated by father or husband. A man has the right to sell his daughter.
There was no room in society for the unmarried man or woman. Marriage was for legal heirs and to ensure a man's child was his. A woman had to prove her virginity at marriage on pain of death.
A woman's greatest value was as a mother and fruitlessness was a disgrace. Hebrew law assumed polygamy for men and was not ended totally till 1947.
EGYPT 3200- 30 BCE
It is a toss-up as to which civilization developed first: the Tigris/Euphrates valley or the Nile. However, Egypt lasted longer though divided into three time periods: the Old, Middle and New kingdoms, a total of almost 3200 years till Rome made it a province in 30 BCE.
ISIS: Tho there were many other goddesses (and gods) in Egypt, Isis overshadows all the other goddesses. She was the sister wife of Osiris. She represented creativity, and rejuvenation, and the origination of leadership of women in tilling the earth.
Isis gained so wide an influences that she passed from country to country absorbing all the local deities. She was identified with Demeter, Aphrodite, Juno, etc. She figures large in some of the gnostic literature coming out of Egypt and her cult was still alive in 500 CE in much of the world.
Isis as sister to Osiris is the religious reflection of the shifting from brother/sister clan partnership of prehistoric times to the husband/wife relationship emerging w/ civilization. Isis personified the full transition from maternal clan to father family.
Women's religious and political activities were the greatest before 1300 BCE and the influence of the Indo-Europeans (who, as I mentioned, also influenced Moses and the Israelites). By 1300 BCE women were not even part of temple life.
However, up until this time women owned property in Egypt to such an extent that in some households the husband was practically a boarder. In the marriage contract, the husband deeded all his property to his wife. His children thru her could inherit property otherwise his sister's children would inherit.
No people, ancient or modern, has given women so high a legal status as did the inhabitants of the Nile Valley. And no place was so slow to take away those rights.
Why? Possibly because Egypt never became as militarized as other societies, just as it never became urbanized, so the loss of status of women was more gradual and never went as far as it did elsewhere.
QUEEN HATSHEPSUT
Only a man could be a Pharoh, but one woman actually ruled as a Pharoh for 20 years by declaring herself a man, wearing the traditional false beards and declaring she was a god.
Since matrilineal descent of inheritance persisted in Egypt and she was the daughter of Tuthmosis I she felt her claim was greater than her half-brothers.
She ruled from 1489 - 1469 BCE and was one of Egypt's most successful rulers. She restored the ancient ruins and established peace, opened trade routes and built two obelisks at Karnak.
QUEEN CLEOPATRA was actually Greek and an astute politician, the oldest daughter of Ptolemy XI. Julius Ceaser helped kill her elder brother and proclaimed her queen.
She took her youngest brother, Ptolemy XIII as husband in name at age 11 and at 14, when he demanded to rule, had him poisoned.
After Ceaser's death and a romance with Mark Anthony (aka: Richard Burton) she killed herself (by snakebite) as the victorious Octavius defeated Anthony. She preferred death to sharing her throne with a conqueror or being taken captive back to Rome. With her death, ended what little there was of Egyptian queens who actually ruled.
GREECE (@1200 Troy, to 332 After Alexander)
The Indo European tribe, the Dorians, conquered the Mycenaeans, Crete, etc. by 1200 BCE and Greece passed thru a dark age till about 750 BCE. This was a period of destruction of temples, purposeless pillaging, disintegration of civilization and skills such as architecture, writing, recordkeeping, metallurgy, shipbuilding, and surgery.
Athens became the refuge for Mycenaeans fleeing the Dorian invaders and Sparta became the Dorians homeland. Athens, to maintain civilization established an elite minority from which slaves, freedmen, outlanders and women were excluded.
The so called "golden age" lasted from 500 to 400 BCE but was "golden" for only one sex. This is, of course the age of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. Athens became more arrogant, and her neighbors asked Sparta for independence to all Greek cities. Pericles refusal led to the war of 432 BCE called the Peloponnesian wars.
Sparta and her allies defeated Athens in 404 BCE but both were weakened and Athens never regained her power of the golden age. By 146 BCE Rome reduced Greece to one of their provinces.
RELIGION: When the Dorians conquered Crete they supplanted the more matriarchal religion with their own patriarchal mythology. They installed Dyaus-pitar, literally God-Father, Zeus or Jupiter in Rome, as the chief. Thus, the gods of Olympus are Dorian deities married off to the Mycenaean and Minoan goddesses that were conquered.
This, again, was done in myth. As Zeus throws his Minoan "father" Chronos, into the ancient Hell and takes almost all the local goddesses as his consort and dropping Children all over Greece until descent from Zeus came to be a way of authenticating heroes and founders.
Hesiod explains how Zeus establishes his patriarchal government on Olympus, becomes the father of the Hours, the Fates, the Muses, and the Graces, denying any power to females.
He even takes away women's power to bear children when he himself gives birth to Athena thru his head. Thus, Athena is able to affirm that the father is the true parent of any child.
Later Aristotle reinforces this myth when he scientifically reasons that only the father is parent of a child. This was further reinforced by Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 CE) and is considered dogma in the catholic church to this day.
Three of the five Olympian goddesses are virgins: Athena, warrior, judge and giver of wisdom; Artemis, the huntress and warrior; and Hestia as the respected old maid. The two non-virgins come off no better. Aphrodite is pure sexual love w/o responsibility, and Hera (one of the original goddesses of ancient Greece), wife of Zeus must remain faithful while Zeus is promiscuous. It is not a happy marriage.
A myth that mirrors this social shift in Athens if the rivalry between Athena and Poseidon. In this myth, the men all vote for Poseidon and the women for Athena. The women have one more vote so Athena wins. However, to diffuse the anger of Poseidon they punish the women threefold. They lose their vote, Their children were no longer to be called by their mother's names, and they themselves were no longer to be called after their goddess.
During the "Golden age" 80% of the women were slaves. but, citizen women were restricted to their homes. They did not go shopping because business transactions were considered to complicated for women and because it was believed she needed to be protected from the eyes of strangers and from dealing w/ men.
Courtesans, prostitutes, lower classes and slaves were free to come and go, unveiled and unchaperoned. Citizen women's purpose was to give birth to blue-blooded children. After the age of 6, boys were brought up by men and virtually had no association with females till grown.
SPARTA: was somewhat more enlightened but women's purpose was to bear strong future warrior sons. Baby girls were inspected by a group of old men to determine if they would be allowed to live.
Girls married later, around 19 or 20 and usually knew the boy, unlike in Athens. Married women could inherit estates on equal footing with brothers.
Since the emphasis was strong children from strong parents, married or not, there were few family ties, no adultery, no illegitimacy and no need for divorce.
WOMEN IN GREEK HISTORY
The Pythagorean Society founded by Pythagoras about 550 BCE received both men and women into his "schools" for a curriculum of geometry, athematic, astronomy and music. Even his wife.
Women poets are headed by Sappho from the island of Lesbos. She headed a girl’s school and is credited with inventing the personal lyric style of poetry. She is one of the 9 muses. Of the other 8, none came from Athens.
The Hetairae were a class of women, educated and free to associate intellectually and socially with citizens in Aspasia. One is credited with teaching Socrates the art of rhetoric.
Hetairae could attend the academy of learning and "participate in lectures and discussions on an equal footing with men" Two of Plato's best-known pupils were from this group.
Hetairae offered citizens a companionship that the secluded, uneducated wives could not. Almost all the important men of Greece had a Hetairae for a companion in the golden age.
ROME (April 22, 753 BCE - 476 CE)
Rome was founded by the sons of Mars and a vestal virgin, Rhea Silvia. Romulus and Remus, suckled by a female wolf grew up and killed Amulius, who had tried to get rid of them.
Rome is made up of three original tribes: The Latins, the Sabines and the Etruscans. Beginning in 753 under a succession of kings, Rome built its future organization.
The citizenship was restricted to males 15 years or older who were not slaves or aliens, and who were descendants of, or had been adopted into one of the first three tribes.
Women’s place in ancient Rome was better than in Greece though they were not as respected as they were in Egypt. When a civilization is developing it seems, women contribute the most but as men's sphere increases, women's decreases, and this is the case in Rome.
As the civilization declines, the freedom of women is often blamed for the downfall of the empire, and this is the case with Rome.
Women did have the right to divorce, to work but not belong to the guilds. Some worked as Gladiators. Some spoke out against injustice to widows, and won. Compared to Athenian women, Roman women were liberated, but compared to Roman men, they were not.
However, many wielded power, especially culturally. They dined with their husbands, attended parties, games, shows and political gatherings. They had access to money and power and their fortunes were linked to the men in their lives.
RELIGION Romans subscribed to three religious institutions: the vestal virgins, the Sibylline oracles and the emperor.
However, as early as 496 BC the goddesses and gods of Greece came to Rome and renamed with Latin names. Zeus-Jupitar, Hermes-Mercury, Athena-Minerva, Ares-Mars, and Artimis-Diana. just to name a few.
The nearest equivalent in Rome of the old high priestess roles of the Eastern empires was the Vestal Virgins. Their lives were regulated but they were also the most emancipated women in Rome. It was believed that the welfare of the state depended on their performances and on their virginity. There was anywhere from 1 to 6 serving at a time.
The Sibyls were wise priestesses of the God Apollo, prophetesses, responsible for creating the books of divinely inspired answers to worldly questions. None of the 9 books survives.
THE CULT OF CYBELE
Cybele was not a native of Rome but was brought from Pyrgia in 202 BCE when the Sibylline Oracle foretold that Hannibal was going to attack Italy and bring Cybele to Italy would defeat him.
She is the Great Mother Goddess of Asia. There are many versions of the death of Attis, her son/lover (a fertility story) but the important thing is her cult was celebrated in Rome with great processions and festivals till 268 AD ( the demise of Julian the apostate).
Her cult was embraced by Augustus and, in 51 CE was made the official religion of Rome by Emperor Claudius, After an edict that all Jews must leave Rome because of "Christus."
We can only guess at the influence this had on the Christian religion as it was developing. The effigy of the son (Attis) was first tied to a tree and then buried. Three days later a light was said to appear in the burial tomb and Attis rose from the dead, bringing salvation in his rebirth. Her priests castrated themselves and then wore women’s clothing to perform their rites.
Her temple was destroyed about 550 CE and the Vatican now stands where her temple did.
THE CULT OF ISIS already mentioned but it was the Roman empire that spread her cult. By 200 CE Isis temples had spread from Rome to France, Holland and England. The hope of immortality was the main thrust.
She was the ideal wife and mother and appealed mainly to women who had few goddesses among the Greek or Roman pantheon.
There were both priests and priestesses who led worship. She was the all-powerful queen of heaven, earth and the underworld, giver of health, beauty, love, abundance, wisdom. Time and again decrees were passed banning her worship but it always returned.
Isis was the original "black Virgin" and Horus her son the prototype of later art with Mary and Jesus. It is she that the church replaced with the Virgin Mary.
CHRISTIANITY COMES TO DOMINANCE
Christianity appealed to the people of the Roman Empire because, among other things, it was an alternative to the worst side of Roman life. It offered hope, especially to the poor and women. Jesus was seen as bringing together a new family for a new society, and sex was just not relevant.
The earliest rituals were freely participated in by everyone, not distinction in authority or status, women included. This scandalized the Romans and Jews. Jesus seemed not to distinguish and has been called history's first feminist.
After 70 CE, the inevitable break of Christianity with Judaism occurred and by 90 was complete. This took away their legal status in which they were considered a Jewish sect.
Women's status in the church declined rapidly after this separation. By the beginning of the 2nd cent. CE, Bishops, deacons, etc. were the rule and women were told as deaconesses by Ignatius of Antioch (117 CE) to not preach, serve at the altar, etc. and deacons could excommunicate deaconesses.
The biological fact of menstruation is the main obstacle to women's participation in liturgical functions. The demand for cultic cleanliness won out against the deaconess.
EARLY CHURCH LEADERS such as Paul, Tertullian, Origin and Augustine were all concerned with the fall of man as a result of Eve tempting Adam. This had not been central to Jewish thinking, but Christianity introduced sexual shame.
Pauline letters dating from 90-110 CE silenced women but later leaders such as Tertullian spoke of women as the gate by which the demon enters." and "it is on your account that Jesus Christ died".
Origin had himself castrated so he would not be tempted, though by the 4th century the church condemned castration. It is Augustine in the early 5th century, who developed the doctrine of original sin which the western church has been saddled with ever since, saying that lust is the punishment for the sin of disobeying God.
TO SUMMERIZE the church adopted many things from Rome including the stole, the garments of pagan priests, incense, holy water, the Latin language, burning candles, architecture, and church canon law was based on the structure of Roman law.
As the Roman empire disintegrated, people turned more and more to the church. In about 400 years the church had grown from a small, unpopular sect to a massive, sustained movement. As the Barbarians became Christian, the Pope became the high priest, censor, judge, and divine monarch whose influence extended in the west far beyond the range of the old Roman Empire.
As with the development of civilization, so in the church: Women contributed the most and were treated with equality in the beginning. When Christianity was securely established, men reserved the important functions for themselves, conferring power, privileges, and prestige on men, subordinating and restricting women.
A FEW NOTABLE WOMEN
THECLA: a follower of Paul who had an apocryphal book (the Acts of Paul and Thecla) named for her. Considered an Apostle and still accepted as such in the Eastern church. The book was accepted as authentic up until 590 CE.
She was used to show the power of virginity in the early church as she escaped fire, lions, rape, etc. always remaining a virgin with healing power.
LADY FABIOLA: founded a hospital and is said to have revolutionized health care in Rome.
PELEGIA passed as a hermit in a cell on the mount of Olives and was widely venerated as Pelagius. It was not discovered till her death that she was a woman.
EUGENIE a Greek and Latin scholar whose studies led her to Christianity in the 3rd Century and who cut her hair and entered a monastery as a man. Many years later, after serving as abbot, her sex was discovered.
MACRINA sister of St. Basil who is claimed to be the author of the Rule of St. Basil supposed to be the first formally enunciated monastic rule; her brother took it over from her when he founded his monastery several years after she founded hers.
CONCLUSIONS:
Why all this background? It all feeds into the rise of the cults of Mary Magdalen and later, the Virgin Mary. These reflect the attitudes of society and church as it developed