I felt compelled to explore the possibility that one or more of Jesus Sisters who are unnamed in the Synpotic passages (Matthew 13:56 and Mark 6:3) that tell us he had Sisters could be mentioned by name elsewhere. And in the context of that post, the Women at the Cross who later found the Tomb empty are a good place to start For example Acts 1:14 refers to Mary the mother of Jesus and his Brethren. Where are the other women? Brethren can be gender neutral when it's plural so maybe they are all or mostly sisters of Jesus?
Jesus sisters are not defined as disbelieving him the way his Brothers are in John 7, so there is in my view nothing to contradict them being among the women in mind in Luke 8:1-4. And even then I already argued some of those non-believing Brethren might have changed between Tabernacles and Passover. Even my past assumption that James didn't become a Believer till after the Resurrection may have been based on a misunderstanding of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15.
People named only in Luke I think are named only in Luke because they were among the Eye Witnesses he interviewed, which here would be Joanna and Susana. So I'm not gonna argue there is good reason to suspect they were sisters of Jesus as much as it would amuse me for Him to have one named Susana which means Lily.
John's account of the Women at the Cross in 19:25 can be considered the most difficult, how many women are refereed to is disputed, and has lead tradition to assert up to three different women here were named Mary.
The Greek text does not insert the word "Kai" for "and" between the reference to "his mother's Sister" and "Mary of Clopas" (no word for Wife is used there) which has been used to argue they are the same. However the Greek text does still imply a change here in a different way.
I have come to think only two women are being refereed to here. First John tells us two relatives of Jesus were there, then it names them. I think "Mary of Clopas" refers to Jesus mother, not sure what it means to call her that, but that's what I think. Clopas could be a contraction of Cleopatras which means "Glory of the Father". Maybe either Joseph or Heli were among Jews of the time who had both a Greek and Hebrew name.
And now I come to the phrase translated "his mother's sister". In the Greek the word for Sister occurs before Mother but both are refereed to possessively. I think it's possible the intent here was to say "His sister of his mother" as in "His sister by his mother" or "His maternal sister". Meaning John was identifying Mary Magdalene as Jesus' Sister and also the daughter of Mary of Clopas. And it became traditional to interpret it different because even before Constantine the perpetual Virginity doctrine was taking hold.
I'm not the first to argue only two women are refereed to here. Someone wrote a book suggesting a strange theory that the common source material of the Gospels' Passion narrative was a lost Play by Seneca. This author still thinks the Sister refereed to was of his Mother. They were arguing that it's identifying Mary Magdalene with Jesus mother and Mary of Clopas with the Sister. My first objection there is that as common a name as Mary was I don't think two sisters would be given the same name, but being given the name of your parent was just as likely for women as it was for men.
That Author's argument for Mary Magdalene being the Mother was first dependent on them rejecting information about Magdalene unique to Luke and Mark after chapter 16 verse 8 since they wouldn't be in their hypothetical play. And then comparing this verse to a verse in the Iliad that refers to Semele and her sister by first referring to Semele then describing her sister and then referring to Semele again. The difference is in that verse Semele was still named the first time she's mentioned.
I don't think this Author's overall Seneca theory is right either. The Passion narrative makes a good play simply because it was very dramatic. Chuck Missler has suggested Mark's entire Gospel reads kind of like a Screen Play. When I was going to a Catholic school we watched an Actor actually do a one man performance based on Mark's Gospel (it annoyingly ended with 16:8) . Since we're told by early traditions that Mark based his Gospel on what Peter was preaching, maybe Peter performed The Gospel in a similar fashion?
There is another implication of seeing only two people in John 19:25 that author overlooked.
John 20:2 is often seen as refuting any theory that Mary Magdalene is the disciple whom Jesus Loved and so most people who want to argue that say the text of John was changed. First John 20:2 uses phileo not agape as the other references to this disciple do. But more importantly this verse says "the other disciple whom Jesus loved", to which I ask "other then who", elsewhere the disciple Jesus loved is in the same scene as Peter without that being needed. It seems to me like this verse is saying there were at least two disciples whom Jesus loved and they are two of the three in this scene.
If John 19:25 is only referring to two people, then 19:26 saying "Jesus saw his Mother and the disciple standing by, whom he loved" seems logically like it's referring to the same two individuals. "But he uses the word Son not Daughter?" you may ask. It's already the point of this scene that he is giving the responsibility of His Mother's Son to someone it doesn't literally belong to. It's the legal not biological definition of Son that He is using, so why not view gender as equally irrelevant? And the Pronouns may be more gender neutral in the Greek then they are in English.
Now you may grow concerned that I just overlapped my argument with arguments for Jesus being married to her. And indeed the only person before me to say Mary Magdalene was his Sister that I've found was also doing that, because they were comparing them to Osiris and Isis and other examples of Royal Incest. I do not think Jesus was in an incestuous relationship with His younger sister. But I do know that sometimes in antiquity an unmarried King would have one of his Sisters serve the ceremonial and customary role of Queen.
And that sometimes lead to accusations of Incest, that may have sometimes been true but I don't think nearly as often as Tabloid journalist style historians would want us to think. I've become skeptical even of some of the stories about Caligula, but with Caligula what stood out was his favoring Drusilla when she wasn't the oldest. More relevant here would be Herod Agrippa II and Berenice, Josephus seems to ultimately believe the scandalous reports of their incest, but they appear in Acts with Paul commending Agrippa as a student of the Torah, odd thing to do if he was violating Leviticus 18 right in front of him.
But I'm not gonna stress that analogy much since I know of no precedent for it among the Davidic Kings in the Hebrew Bible. Instead I'll just say sometimes Brothers and Sisters are close in a perfectly normal way, depictions of which in media sometimes inspire Fan Fiction, including Christian media like Narnia.
Another thing about the only person before me I found to argue Mary Magdalene was His sister was that they also identified Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany. I just argued against that identification in my recent post on Bethany, but there can be counters to those arguments. So I'm not gonna definitively say one way or the other on that here, just speculate on how compatible it could be with this theory.
My Joseph of Arimathea argument already suggested that some of Jesus Siblings could have moved to Benjamite territory near Jerusalem at some point. Lazarus has been argued to be a nickname and that he's the same as Simon the Leper (or Simon the Jar-Maker in the Aramaic Peshita) of Matthew 26 and Mark 16. And a Simon was among the brothers of Jesus. And the argument for Lazarus being the Beloved Disciple is two verses in John 11 one of which also gives that designation to his sisters Mary and Martha. Maybe the first among His siblings to become believers He sent to live near Jerusalem to prepare things for Him, Joseph the Tomb and then Simon & two sisters their place of lodging.
But I still learn towards them being separate.
Luke twice and Mark in 16:9 (which I believe was always part of Mark's Gospel) refers to Mary Magdalene as someone Jesus cast seven Demons out of. Some might see this as saying this can't be a relative since this incident is implied to be how she became a follower of Jesus. But again John 7 shows Jesus siblings were not believers automatically because they were siblings. It is certainly plausible that Beelzebub would send Demons after Jesus family.
Now I shall address the designation Magdalene. If it does refer to one of the two cities called Magdalla, she could have moved there later, perhaps she married someone there. But the root is just the Hebrew word for Tower, Migdol, maybe Nazareth had it's own Tower? (Or Bethany if she's the same as Mary of Bethany?) Or Maybe it refers to the Migdol Eder in Bethlehem, maybe Mary and Joseph conceived her there before they had to flee to Aegyptos? Or speaking of that, maybe it refers to one of the Migdol of Mizraim the Hebrew Bible refers to? Or maybe it's not a location at all, maybe she was taller then average for a Woman and towered over people? Or maybe the Talmud was right and it means she was a hairdresser?
Well I've spent a lot of time on one Sister. Time I considered more.
The Synoptic Gospels all identify exactly three of the Woman at the Cross/Myrrbearers but also clearly say there were more. Matthew and Mark are the most similar to each other in how they refer to them which is why it's pretty common to believe Salome was the mother of Zebede's Children.
However the other reference to the mother of Zebede's Children is also different in Mark. Matthew introduced the mother of Zebede's children in Matthew 20:10, Mark's account of this same event in 10:35 leaves their mother out of it. To skeptics that would be a contradiction, but since she was asking on their behalf it's easy to see Mark's account as a justifiable description of what Matthew says happened. The key here though is that he would have said Salome here if Salome was simply his name for Matthew's character. And if Mark was Matthew's source material as skeptics claim, why drop the name Salome? I'm saying this even though it doesn't really conflict with anything I'm arguing to name her Salome, it's just an observation I'm making.
I have been considering models for the Nativity that could make Jesus older then we generally assume during all this (I'll be posting more on that in April). And given the Student/Teacher relationship Jesus has with the disciples, and how in Matthew 9:15, Mark 2:19 and Luke 5:34 He refers to the Disciples as children of the Bridegroom, it can be possible to see them as young enough to be Nephews. David gave important positions to his maternal Nephews. So maybe this scene makes a lot of sense if the mother of Zebede's children is also one of Jesus' sisters? Maternal nephews of a Messianic King have been echoed in mythology since, from some of Arthur's being Knights of the Round Table, to Fili and Kili being sons of Dis the sister of Thorin Oakensheild in The Hobbit.
I'm gonna return to the subject of specifically John 19:25.
Some view a second witness for Mary the Mother of Jesus having a sister in the theory of the Elect Lady whom 2 John is addressed to being her, and that lady having a Sister. But I'm not convinced of that theory anymore. I think the Elect Lady is the Bride of Christ, whatever your view on that doctrine is. The Bride does have Children like the Elect Lady does according to Psalm 45 and Revelation 12. And so the Elect Lady's sister and her children I think may represent non Israelite Abrahamic Nations.
I'm gonna mention a Gnostic text here even though I don't like Gnosticism. But I think the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip or our preserved copies of it also represent confusion on this verse of John as you can read on Wikipedia.
There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, who was called his companion. His sister,[60] his mother and his companion were each a Mary.[58]I think it's possible this passage originally simply refereed to Mary Magdalene as His Sister.
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