Thank you, Diana, for highlighting Elizabeth Schrader's work and supporting her thesis of Lazarus having only one sister and of Mary of Magdala taking the role of a prophet to anoint Jesus as the Messiah and King. Note: Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus - Christian Feminism Today aka EEWC-CFT, to whom you spoke at our 2016 conference in Indianapolis, awarded its 2020 Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship to Elizabeth Schrader to honor her work as a promising doctoral candidate at Duke University. The theme of the 2016 conference was "Prophets in Every Generation." You, Diana and Elizabeth, are certainly among them. https://eewc.com/
i too read around commentators and reached the same conclusion - I had the notion that the Mary was indeed Mary Magdalene, and the analysis you gave backs this. I ended up preaching on bodies and skin on skin and oil and hair; and that all the action is around what people do with bodies, including worship.
In our 5th Sunday of Lent service, the minister took the theme, Love pushing forward in relation to this passage in John. She said, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus' mother pushed him into his role when he was hesitant to use his powers for community. His mother knew he was ready.
Similarly, Mary, poured out her love and devotion for Jesus and his ministry by anointing him. This loving act could strengthen him, giving the encouragement he needed at a time when he had to push through the terrible experiences ahead of him as he encountered the wrath of both the religious leaders and the imperial order so aligned against him.
I look forward to listening to Elizabeth Schrader's lecture a bit later. For now, let me just make two comments:
1. As the traditional text of John's Gospel stands (which may very well need to be changed, thanks to Prof. Schrader's scholarship, but one step at a time), there is nothing unusually disruptive about the narrative flow in John 11. The introduction of Martha and Mary is not a problem especially to people familiar with Luke's Gospel, as probably the Fourth Evangelist and many others in the Community of the Beloved Disciple were (that community is usually situated in Ephesus, the Big Apple of the Aegean basin, and Luke had written his gospel ten or so years earlier also somewhere in the Aegean, perhaps even Ephesus; we should note the features the two gospels have in common, such as the prominence of the Holy Spirit, and the beginnings of the cult of the Virgin Mary). IMHO the biggest narrative problem in John 11 is verse 35, "Jesus wept" (or in NRSV, "Jesus began to weep") -- quite out of character for Jesus as he is presented in this gospel, and not even consistent with how he behaves earlier in the same chapter.
2. We should not make too much of Martha's (or Mary Magdalene's?) confession at 11.27, "You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world." Already at 1.41 somebody had called Jesus the Messiah. In fact both places are instances of what John does a few times in the first section of his gospel, chapters 1-12, presenting a character who offers an OK but inadequate or limited christology. The only one who understands who Jesus is is the Beloved Disciple; but the Evangelist wants to recognize Christians of other "flocks," especially those whose narrative traditions are more in line with the Synoptic Gospels. In fact Martha's confession at 11.27 shows she does not truly appreciate what Jesus had just said about himself at 11.25, "I am the resurrection and the life."
Nevertheless we carry on! I'll do some Schrader homework and return soon. Thanks very much for opening up this fascinating discussion.
Hello there Mark! Thanks so much for these interesting comments. I'm interested in your firm dating of Luke in the first century - note that due to Luke's apparent familiarity with Josephus, many are dating Luke-Acts to the early second century (see esp. the work of Steve Mason). As for the narrative flow of John 11, many have noted the strange duplicate quote of Martha and Mary in John 11:21 and 11:32 - this is why redaction critics like Fortna and Rochais had argued for the addition of a second sister as far back as the 1970s.
As for Martha(?)'s confession in John 11:27 - the issue here is its similarity to Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16. The two confessions have been compared since antiquity and their similarity is still acknowledged by most commentators. The question is whether the Christological confessor in John 11 might have been seen as a competitor to Peter. As for who understands Jesus best in John, I recommend Francis Moloney's NTS article "Can Everyone be Wrong? A Reading of John 11.1–12.8." The exegetical landscape is of course changed if we consider that in some ancient textforms, the Johannine Christological confessor was identical to the anointer. I hope this clears up the stakes of the discussion :) I'm happy to discuss further!
Hello Elizabeth (or Libbey?)! I just had the pleasure of watching your Vanderbilt lecture, so I have the advantage of you in a way, knowing what you look like and what you sound like. I'll comment on it in a reply to your post above, where you provide the link to the video. What a happy event!
As for what you've written here, I am not committed to any absolute chronology, and just trust the majority of scholars. My understanding is there are some big difficulties with dating Luke/Acts after 100 CE, but I don't know the specific arguments. Nor do I know what in Josephus is supposed to give Luke/Acts a terminus post quem. Anyway it does not seem altogether certain that the composition of Acts must have followed at once after the completion of the gospel, or even that Luke had from the beginning conceived of a two-part literary project.
I'm really interested in relative chronology, because my critical approach is to move beyond redaction criticism and try to appreciate the evangelists as independent literary artists. So I have no problem with the currently accepted vaguish dating of the four within definite ranges of years, with the sole big difference -- and here I believe I am absolutely all on my own in all the world, an army of one -- that I firmly believe that Luke was earlier than Matthew, and that Matthew composed his gospel in conscious opposition to what he saw Luke to have done with his traditional materials. I'd be glad to explain my reasoning if you're interested, when and where it is ore convenient..
I'm not very bothered by the duplicate quote. It comes across as indicating no more than that the sisters are on the same page, they think alike. You're quite right, though, that it should elicit the curiosity of source critics, as you said in the lecture.
On the confession of Jesus as Messiah at John 11.27, that's exactly right, it's similar to Peter's. And my understanding is that one of the purposes of this gospel is to give expression to the faith of the Community of the Beloved Disciple, but also to assure them that they can live in peace alongside Petrine Christians -- and I imagine members of the two groups must have met each other often in the streets of Ephesus, maybe even in the house-churches, or wherever they held their meetings and liturgies. As for paranoia about women leaders, especially besetting male church authorities later on when the manuscripts were being copied -- and tampered with? -- , I'm sure that's possible, but I don't know enough about it.
I'll look for Francis Moloney's article. It sounds interesting. Thanks very much for the delightful discussion, from which I am learning a lot!
This reply makes me a little giddy ... in that I made the connection to Peter's confession in my sermon on Sunday *before* I had read Dr. Bass' essay or your replies to the comments (which I'm only getting to now).
Thank you for this perspective. I focused on the unifying theme of “God does a new thing” for this Sundays readings. Isaiah and the psalmist peg it to water in the desert and overturned oppression. And each time the kings of Israel became new pharaohs that same throne toppling power showed up, with warnings from the prophets. God is the constant deliverer. Paul was delivered from his pride and violence. Mary does the nes thing shocking to all in the room and Jesus dethrones the power of Caesar, yet another pharaoh, by his own death, not by assassination. God is the great innovator.
Y'all make sure to read the comments on this post. Libbie Schrader has chimed in on several to answer questions and clarify some text issues - well worth reading both the questions and her replies. GREAT STUFF! Thank you, Libbie!
Some further thoughts - even if it is the case that Martha was essentially created by the author for the John 11 story, and Lazarus just had the one sister, why would we posit that this Mary is the same person as Mary Magdalene? I am not saying this to minimize the importance of Mary Magdalene to the early church, or to dispute that she was a disciple of recognized authority. I would note that we have four versions of the anointing of Jesus in the four gospels, and there continues to be a fair amount of debate as to the relationship of each recounted story to the source story. The woman doing the anointing is only named in the Gospel of John, and she anoints Jesus' feet, not his head. In what one would think would be the earliest anointing story - Mark 14.9 - the woman is anonymous and anoints the head of Jesus, which is what would be expected in the case of a royal anointing. The fact that the woman is unnamed did not hamper the story's significance for Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza in "In Memory of Her," one of the great pioneering biblical interpretations. Indeed, for Fiorenza, the anonymity of the anointing woman is a powerful symbol of how many women were critical to the formation of the early Jesus movement, and how their roles were later suppressed by patriarchal leadership. Do we inadvertently minimize the roles of women of prophecy in the Jesus movement by speculating that the anointing Mary in John 12 must have been Mary Magdalene? In other words, by magnifying the role of Mary Magdalene, is there a risk of overlooking what other women contributed to the movement?
Hi Dan! Thanks so much for your continued engagement here. Your question is answered starting at 33:00 in the lecture I sent you - I do hope you get a chance to watch it. You will see that my conclusion is based on the many exact textual parallels between John 11-12 and John 20, which would raise the question for ancient readers of why the "Mary" from John 11 is portrayed so similarly to Mary Magdalene. There are also many ancient authors (Hippolytus, the Manichaeans, Ambrose) who assumed that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene. I hear what you're saying about Mark; many have suggested that John was deliberately "correcting" Mark's interpretation (which Papias said originated with Peter...who may have had a reason for omitting the identity of the anointing woman!!).
As for the "risks" to women in the Jesus movement, I suspect the bigger issue is the identity of the Christological confessor in John 11:27 - which is today a named woman, but she is a minor character. What would the response be to a text where Mary Magdalene was understood to speak this confession - especially from followers of Peter who wished to highlight the importance of Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16? Just a bit of food for thought. :)
I hope this answers your excellent question - and I do hope you get a chance to watch the lecture, since it will likely address any other questions that you might have!
Libbie - Thanks again. I have really enjoyed this discussion, and you have certainly identified a number of interesting and important questions with your research.
The name Martha appears eight times in John 11. Given the prevalence of that name in this chapter, shouldn't we explain the revision of "Mary" to "Martha" in the earliest manuscripts as being a case where a scribe realized that Mary had been written by mistake in the verse you cite (instead of Martha) and that the scribe was now correcting that earlier mistake? I think your theory that Martha was essentially created out of whole cloth for this story would be more compelling if her name didn't appear so frequently in this chapter.
Thanks for your response! The whole issue is very interesting, and I look forward to watching your Vanderbilt lecture. By the way, given all the work that Bart Ehrman has done on the problems of textual variants, I think it would be fascinating to see a dialogue between the two of you on this particular issue.
Best wishes! Bart Ehrman is my favorite NT scholar working today, and my second favorite ever, the first being Raymond Brown. Ehrman has done magnificent work with manuscript traditions, and no doubt he is quite pleased by your own researches. Brown disagreed with him on one matter, I recall, Ehrman's reconstruction of what is going on in Luke's version of the "agony" at Gethsemane (which we'll soon be hearing in church). I am torn over which is right, but lean toward Ehrman.
Hi; 2 things: Mary Magdalene is from Magdala, on the Sea of Galilee ( thus her name), not Bethany, the home town of Martha and Mary. The towns are 50-60 miles apart.
And, this story invalidates Jesus’ own reported comments on the event, regarding his having been anointed for his death in advance ( remember, the Romans didn’t generally allow crucified bodies to be reclaimed).
I feel like 2,000 years of redaction history are being undercut here for the sake of a compelling story. John knows very well who Mary Magdalene was and is; she’s first to the grave in chapter 20. Why would he, or any copyist, have been that confused?
Once you see the changes in the manuscripts, you will realize that the argument is not that John was confused - rather, it is that copyists of the Fourth Gospel may have interfered with the Evangelist's intention. I appreciate your expertise and willingness to look at this new information. Thank you so. much, Rev. Dougherty.
Thank you so much for writing me, and for including your lecture. I’m going to acknowledge I’m writing on my wife’s phone, and am not Pam, the subscriber name on this account. I did not set up an account to answer as myself by e-mail (that would be tdougherty@ovpc.org), for fear of losing the thread.
I’m also at home, without my Nestle-Aland, which would be my best reference for following your citations. I have not operated at this level of textual criticism/redaction/comparison; indeed, I am a middling student of Greek, and Latin is a distant memory (Shakespeare’s opposite). I’m fascinated by what you’ve so generously shared, and will follow up as best I’m able. I would only add that in amongst the questions following your presentation, you touched on the Peter/John nexus/rivalry, with Mary super-added, and that’s compelling.
Jesus’s own free acceptance of women as wise, capable, and, I think, equal was emphatically countercultural. That either of his designated “successors”, and their communities, might draw back from this, or that later texts might emend relationships to better suit cultural norms ( however unfair) would surprise me not a bit.
You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I thank you for not disregarding my initial response as closed-minded.
Thank you for your kind words, Rev. Dougherty! I especially appreciate your willingness to watch the lecture and consider the questions that were raised there. If you have further questions, feel free to follow up with me at Elizabeth.schrader@duke.edu. And many thanks to Diana for facilitating this conversation!
So glad you pursued your questions here, Terry. I'm only a middling Greek student myself -- and can follow Libbie's articles well. She's a marvelous teacher and gives us all much to think about. (And I didn't think your original question was close-minded!)
Also, my interpretation in no way undercuts the idea that Mary anointed Jesus for death. Her anointing both re-enacts the anointing of Israel's kings and prefigures Jesus' death at the hands of Rome. In the case of this scholarship, yes, history of interpretation is being overturned -- because the text was corrupted early in Christian history and we're now recovering what very well could have been the original dimensions of the story in the first century.
Actually, Libbie Schrader has done work on this very point. She and other scholars of early Christianity now argue that Mary Magdalene wasn't from Magdala. Rather, her name means "tower," as in "Mary the Tower." This parallels "Peter the Rock."
Thank you, Diana, for highlighting Elizabeth Schrader's work and supporting her thesis of Lazarus having only one sister and of Mary of Magdala taking the role of a prophet to anoint Jesus as the Messiah and King. Note: Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus - Christian Feminism Today aka EEWC-CFT, to whom you spoke at our 2016 conference in Indianapolis, awarded its 2020 Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship to Elizabeth Schrader to honor her work as a promising doctoral candidate at Duke University. The theme of the 2016 conference was "Prophets in Every Generation." You, Diana and Elizabeth, are certainly among them. https://eewc.com/
This was a most astonishing and soul-opening musing...it has brought me to new soil and journey potential...🌿
i too read around commentators and reached the same conclusion - I had the notion that the Mary was indeed Mary Magdalene, and the analysis you gave backs this. I ended up preaching on bodies and skin on skin and oil and hair; and that all the action is around what people do with bodies, including worship.
In our 5th Sunday of Lent service, the minister took the theme, Love pushing forward in relation to this passage in John. She said, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus' mother pushed him into his role when he was hesitant to use his powers for community. His mother knew he was ready.
Similarly, Mary, poured out her love and devotion for Jesus and his ministry by anointing him. This loving act could strengthen him, giving the encouragement he needed at a time when he had to push through the terrible experiences ahead of him as he encountered the wrath of both the religious leaders and the imperial order so aligned against him.
I look forward to listening to Elizabeth Schrader's lecture a bit later. For now, let me just make two comments:
1. As the traditional text of John's Gospel stands (which may very well need to be changed, thanks to Prof. Schrader's scholarship, but one step at a time), there is nothing unusually disruptive about the narrative flow in John 11. The introduction of Martha and Mary is not a problem especially to people familiar with Luke's Gospel, as probably the Fourth Evangelist and many others in the Community of the Beloved Disciple were (that community is usually situated in Ephesus, the Big Apple of the Aegean basin, and Luke had written his gospel ten or so years earlier also somewhere in the Aegean, perhaps even Ephesus; we should note the features the two gospels have in common, such as the prominence of the Holy Spirit, and the beginnings of the cult of the Virgin Mary). IMHO the biggest narrative problem in John 11 is verse 35, "Jesus wept" (or in NRSV, "Jesus began to weep") -- quite out of character for Jesus as he is presented in this gospel, and not even consistent with how he behaves earlier in the same chapter.
2. We should not make too much of Martha's (or Mary Magdalene's?) confession at 11.27, "You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world." Already at 1.41 somebody had called Jesus the Messiah. In fact both places are instances of what John does a few times in the first section of his gospel, chapters 1-12, presenting a character who offers an OK but inadequate or limited christology. The only one who understands who Jesus is is the Beloved Disciple; but the Evangelist wants to recognize Christians of other "flocks," especially those whose narrative traditions are more in line with the Synoptic Gospels. In fact Martha's confession at 11.27 shows she does not truly appreciate what Jesus had just said about himself at 11.25, "I am the resurrection and the life."
Nevertheless we carry on! I'll do some Schrader homework and return soon. Thanks very much for opening up this fascinating discussion.
Hello there Mark! Thanks so much for these interesting comments. I'm interested in your firm dating of Luke in the first century - note that due to Luke's apparent familiarity with Josephus, many are dating Luke-Acts to the early second century (see esp. the work of Steve Mason). As for the narrative flow of John 11, many have noted the strange duplicate quote of Martha and Mary in John 11:21 and 11:32 - this is why redaction critics like Fortna and Rochais had argued for the addition of a second sister as far back as the 1970s.
As for Martha(?)'s confession in John 11:27 - the issue here is its similarity to Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16. The two confessions have been compared since antiquity and their similarity is still acknowledged by most commentators. The question is whether the Christological confessor in John 11 might have been seen as a competitor to Peter. As for who understands Jesus best in John, I recommend Francis Moloney's NTS article "Can Everyone be Wrong? A Reading of John 11.1–12.8." The exegetical landscape is of course changed if we consider that in some ancient textforms, the Johannine Christological confessor was identical to the anointer. I hope this clears up the stakes of the discussion :) I'm happy to discuss further!
Hello Elizabeth (or Libbey?)! I just had the pleasure of watching your Vanderbilt lecture, so I have the advantage of you in a way, knowing what you look like and what you sound like. I'll comment on it in a reply to your post above, where you provide the link to the video. What a happy event!
As for what you've written here, I am not committed to any absolute chronology, and just trust the majority of scholars. My understanding is there are some big difficulties with dating Luke/Acts after 100 CE, but I don't know the specific arguments. Nor do I know what in Josephus is supposed to give Luke/Acts a terminus post quem. Anyway it does not seem altogether certain that the composition of Acts must have followed at once after the completion of the gospel, or even that Luke had from the beginning conceived of a two-part literary project.
I'm really interested in relative chronology, because my critical approach is to move beyond redaction criticism and try to appreciate the evangelists as independent literary artists. So I have no problem with the currently accepted vaguish dating of the four within definite ranges of years, with the sole big difference -- and here I believe I am absolutely all on my own in all the world, an army of one -- that I firmly believe that Luke was earlier than Matthew, and that Matthew composed his gospel in conscious opposition to what he saw Luke to have done with his traditional materials. I'd be glad to explain my reasoning if you're interested, when and where it is ore convenient..
I'm not very bothered by the duplicate quote. It comes across as indicating no more than that the sisters are on the same page, they think alike. You're quite right, though, that it should elicit the curiosity of source critics, as you said in the lecture.
On the confession of Jesus as Messiah at John 11.27, that's exactly right, it's similar to Peter's. And my understanding is that one of the purposes of this gospel is to give expression to the faith of the Community of the Beloved Disciple, but also to assure them that they can live in peace alongside Petrine Christians -- and I imagine members of the two groups must have met each other often in the streets of Ephesus, maybe even in the house-churches, or wherever they held their meetings and liturgies. As for paranoia about women leaders, especially besetting male church authorities later on when the manuscripts were being copied -- and tampered with? -- , I'm sure that's possible, but I don't know enough about it.
I'll look for Francis Moloney's article. It sounds interesting. Thanks very much for the delightful discussion, from which I am learning a lot!
This reply makes me a little giddy ... in that I made the connection to Peter's confession in my sermon on Sunday *before* I had read Dr. Bass' essay or your replies to the comments (which I'm only getting to now).
Dr Schrader replied directly to me. Thank you too for your comment. I will take this onboard for my own writing.
Thank you very much for your helpful comment, Dr Schrader! I will take it onboard for my own writing.
Thank you for this perspective. I focused on the unifying theme of “God does a new thing” for this Sundays readings. Isaiah and the psalmist peg it to water in the desert and overturned oppression. And each time the kings of Israel became new pharaohs that same throne toppling power showed up, with warnings from the prophets. God is the constant deliverer. Paul was delivered from his pride and violence. Mary does the nes thing shocking to all in the room and Jesus dethrones the power of Caesar, yet another pharaoh, by his own death, not by assassination. God is the great innovator.
I love this article… thank you!!
Absolutely well done. Thank you. I am also currently listening to your book Finding Jesus and finding it truly amazing.
Well that makes sense!
Will I see you next weekend?
Yes!!!
Y'all make sure to read the comments on this post. Libbie Schrader has chimed in on several to answer questions and clarify some text issues - well worth reading both the questions and her replies. GREAT STUFF! Thank you, Libbie!
Are you familiar with “In Memory of Her” by by Fiorenza?
I am currently in the middle of grading 16 papers about Fiorenza's "In Memory of Her"! 🤪
And I just reread that book last week!
Libbie-
Some further thoughts - even if it is the case that Martha was essentially created by the author for the John 11 story, and Lazarus just had the one sister, why would we posit that this Mary is the same person as Mary Magdalene? I am not saying this to minimize the importance of Mary Magdalene to the early church, or to dispute that she was a disciple of recognized authority. I would note that we have four versions of the anointing of Jesus in the four gospels, and there continues to be a fair amount of debate as to the relationship of each recounted story to the source story. The woman doing the anointing is only named in the Gospel of John, and she anoints Jesus' feet, not his head. In what one would think would be the earliest anointing story - Mark 14.9 - the woman is anonymous and anoints the head of Jesus, which is what would be expected in the case of a royal anointing. The fact that the woman is unnamed did not hamper the story's significance for Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza in "In Memory of Her," one of the great pioneering biblical interpretations. Indeed, for Fiorenza, the anonymity of the anointing woman is a powerful symbol of how many women were critical to the formation of the early Jesus movement, and how their roles were later suppressed by patriarchal leadership. Do we inadvertently minimize the roles of women of prophecy in the Jesus movement by speculating that the anointing Mary in John 12 must have been Mary Magdalene? In other words, by magnifying the role of Mary Magdalene, is there a risk of overlooking what other women contributed to the movement?
Hi Dan! Thanks so much for your continued engagement here. Your question is answered starting at 33:00 in the lecture I sent you - I do hope you get a chance to watch it. You will see that my conclusion is based on the many exact textual parallels between John 11-12 and John 20, which would raise the question for ancient readers of why the "Mary" from John 11 is portrayed so similarly to Mary Magdalene. There are also many ancient authors (Hippolytus, the Manichaeans, Ambrose) who assumed that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene. I hear what you're saying about Mark; many have suggested that John was deliberately "correcting" Mark's interpretation (which Papias said originated with Peter...who may have had a reason for omitting the identity of the anointing woman!!).
As for the "risks" to women in the Jesus movement, I suspect the bigger issue is the identity of the Christological confessor in John 11:27 - which is today a named woman, but she is a minor character. What would the response be to a text where Mary Magdalene was understood to speak this confession - especially from followers of Peter who wished to highlight the importance of Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16? Just a bit of food for thought. :)
I hope this answers your excellent question - and I do hope you get a chance to watch the lecture, since it will likely address any other questions that you might have!
Libbie - Thanks again. I have really enjoyed this discussion, and you have certainly identified a number of interesting and important questions with your research.
Dan
Libbie-
The name Martha appears eight times in John 11. Given the prevalence of that name in this chapter, shouldn't we explain the revision of "Mary" to "Martha" in the earliest manuscripts as being a case where a scribe realized that Mary had been written by mistake in the verse you cite (instead of Martha) and that the scribe was now correcting that earlier mistake? I think your theory that Martha was essentially created out of whole cloth for this story would be more compelling if her name didn't appear so frequently in this chapter.
Thanks
Dan Kueper
Hello Dan! Thanks for this thoughtful comment. I notice that your critique seems to assume a stable text of John 11, with a few changes of "Maria" to "Martha" in ancient manuscripts - yet this critique does not address the ancient evidence that is unrelated to the similarity between the two names. For example, how do we explain the splitting of one woman in two in Papyrus 66's correction of John 11:3? Or the manuscripts where Lazarus is listed first in John 11:5? Or the early artwork of the Raising of Lazarus where only one sister appears? If you'd like to get a better sense of the overall problem around Martha throughout the entire text transmission, feel free to watch the lecture I delivered at Vanderbilt on Wednesday: https://vanderbilt.zoom.us/rec/play/oGqkwavIrr3H59zCsxLkdD5MKbt37wlP02NQ4fJPb5dDkVxYceDp3iJhXNVjL0aDHFkcZ5Lh_xf2VXt3.OuVzhoqxOXdH8FwR?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=WiZEp1nLTi2I8gTpzDHPWQ.1648733789115.992f69f17a590d0e08ad20afb6b4d4be&_x_zm_rhtaid=241&fbclid=IwAR2bByqF74CnUsmpv6oTw9Sd61-lP-vvPvjKXAfuB18Fbxv7sPIZDHgnA_g
Thanks so much for your interest in this research!
Thanks for your response! The whole issue is very interesting, and I look forward to watching your Vanderbilt lecture. By the way, given all the work that Bart Ehrman has done on the problems of textual variants, I think it would be fascinating to see a dialogue between the two of you on this particular issue.
Haha he is on my dissertation committee ;)
Best wishes! Bart Ehrman is my favorite NT scholar working today, and my second favorite ever, the first being Raymond Brown. Ehrman has done magnificent work with manuscript traditions, and no doubt he is quite pleased by your own researches. Brown disagreed with him on one matter, I recall, Ehrman's reconstruction of what is going on in Luke's version of the "agony" at Gethsemane (which we'll soon be hearing in church). I am torn over which is right, but lean toward Ehrman.
😊
Hi; 2 things: Mary Magdalene is from Magdala, on the Sea of Galilee ( thus her name), not Bethany, the home town of Martha and Mary. The towns are 50-60 miles apart.
And, this story invalidates Jesus’ own reported comments on the event, regarding his having been anointed for his death in advance ( remember, the Romans didn’t generally allow crucified bodies to be reclaimed).
I feel like 2,000 years of redaction history are being undercut here for the sake of a compelling story. John knows very well who Mary Magdalene was and is; she’s first to the grave in chapter 20. Why would he, or any copyist, have been that confused?
Rev. Terry Dougherty
Dear Rev. Dougherty,
Thank you so much for your reflections here. You have obviously thought about this text carefully (and probably preached on it many times)!
The manuscript research Diana discusses was recently peer-reviewed and published in the Harvard Theological Review, so it's understandable that it hasn't made its way to you yet. I also have an article co-written with Joan Taylor in the December issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature that seriously challenges the idea that Mary Magdalene comes from Magdala by the Sea of Galilee (no author made that claim until the *sixth century*!). I realize that peer-reviewed research is often dense and difficult to keep up with; however I'm grateful for Diana's willingness to call it to the attention of her many well-educated subscribers. If you'd like a quick synopsis of my findings in the world's oldest manuscripts of John's Gospel, feel free to check out my lecture at Vanderbilt Divinity School, which I delivered on Wednesday: https://vanderbilt.zoom.us/rec/play/oGqkwavIrr3H59zCsxLkdD5MKbt37wlP02NQ4fJPb5dDkVxYceDp3iJhXNVjL0aDHFkcZ5Lh_xf2VXt3.OuVzhoqxOXdH8FwR?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=WiZEp1nLTi2I8gTpzDHPWQ.1648733789115.992f69f17a590d0e08ad20afb6b4d4be&_x_zm_rhtaid=241&fbclid=IwAR2bByqF74CnUsmpv6oTw9Sd61-lP-vvPvjKXAfuB18Fbxv7sPIZDHgnA_g
Once you see the changes in the manuscripts, you will realize that the argument is not that John was confused - rather, it is that copyists of the Fourth Gospel may have interfered with the Evangelist's intention. I appreciate your expertise and willingness to look at this new information. Thank you so. much, Rev. Dougherty.
Thank you so much for writing me, and for including your lecture. I’m going to acknowledge I’m writing on my wife’s phone, and am not Pam, the subscriber name on this account. I did not set up an account to answer as myself by e-mail (that would be tdougherty@ovpc.org), for fear of losing the thread.
I’m also at home, without my Nestle-Aland, which would be my best reference for following your citations. I have not operated at this level of textual criticism/redaction/comparison; indeed, I am a middling student of Greek, and Latin is a distant memory (Shakespeare’s opposite). I’m fascinated by what you’ve so generously shared, and will follow up as best I’m able. I would only add that in amongst the questions following your presentation, you touched on the Peter/John nexus/rivalry, with Mary super-added, and that’s compelling.
Jesus’s own free acceptance of women as wise, capable, and, I think, equal was emphatically countercultural. That either of his designated “successors”, and their communities, might draw back from this, or that later texts might emend relationships to better suit cultural norms ( however unfair) would surprise me not a bit.
You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I thank you for not disregarding my initial response as closed-minded.
Thank you again, Terry
Thank you for your kind words, Rev. Dougherty! I especially appreciate your willingness to watch the lecture and consider the questions that were raised there. If you have further questions, feel free to follow up with me at Elizabeth.schrader@duke.edu. And many thanks to Diana for facilitating this conversation!
So glad you pursued your questions here, Terry. I'm only a middling Greek student myself -- and can follow Libbie's articles well. She's a marvelous teacher and gives us all much to think about. (And I didn't think your original question was close-minded!)
Also, my interpretation in no way undercuts the idea that Mary anointed Jesus for death. Her anointing both re-enacts the anointing of Israel's kings and prefigures Jesus' death at the hands of Rome. In the case of this scholarship, yes, history of interpretation is being overturned -- because the text was corrupted early in Christian history and we're now recovering what very well could have been the original dimensions of the story in the first century.
Actually, Libbie Schrader has done work on this very point. She and other scholars of early Christianity now argue that Mary Magdalene wasn't from Magdala. Rather, her name means "tower," as in "Mary the Tower." This parallels "Peter the Rock."
https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/was-mary-magdalene-really-magdala-two-scholars-examine-evidence