Extract

This volume comprises an extensive study of source material on Mary Magdalene, with a particular focus on the works that link the Magdalene with Mary the mother of Jesus. It is comprised of 24 chapters (and complementary note, introduction, and conclusions), 8 excurses, tables, illustrations, a wealth of footnotes, and extensive indexes of sources and authors. This makes it extremely useful for studies of the ancient material and also some modern reception.

In the first section (‘Évangile et Talmud’, pp. 19–56) Murcia reviews the Gospel evidence and early Christian material, and detaches what he sees as conflations of three different women: an anointing woman in Bethany (Mark and Matthew), Mary Magdalene, and the unnamed anointing woman sinner of Luke 7, arguing that the ‘Mary of Bethany’ character of John 12:1–11 is essentially a fictive creation of the Gospel of John. The detachment of the Western linkage of the three, clearly enunciated by Gregory the Great in 591, is traced in modern writings, and the anointing passages of the Gospels are finely examined. Following this, Murcia goes to the rabbinic works, an area in which he has much expertise, where Mary Magdalene is the mother of Jesus, with her epithet explained as being magaddela (hairdresser). From this the suggestion is that Mary Magdalene was indeed the mother of Jesus.

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