Is it possible Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are the same woman?

Earlier this year I expressed the opinion that they are probably not in Bethany and The Mount of Olives.  But then I considered that they could be briefly in The Sisters of Jesus.  Well here I want to consider how plausible this is independent of the greater points of either of those posts.

First of all, if you're thinking "the whole point of calling them Magdalene and Of Bethany is to distinguish between different women with the same name", congratulations, you just demonstrated some casual Biblical Illiteracy.  The Text of the Gospels never actually uses "Of Bethany" as an epithet for anyone, we call Mary of Bethany that because we encounter her there, and "John" 11 & 12 implies that's where she and her siblings live.  But no title is ever used of Mary of Bethany in any scene viewed as being about her, she's just Mary if she's named at all.

Tradition isn't very helpful here.  Eastern Orthodox tradition distinguished them.  Western/Catholic tradition often merges them but also throws in women I strongly view as separate, in my view neither Mary can be Identified with the accused Adulteress of John 8, and I'm likewise skeptical of doing so with the woman from Luke 7.  And most traditions have the Bethany siblings traveling to other regions like the Twelve did while I believe their remains can be found in the Dominus Flevit Church on the Mount of Olives which means they probably never lest Judea, but it's not impossible.

Luke and "John" are the primary Gospels that need to be investigated here.  Matthew and Mark's account of the scene from "John" 12 doesn't mention the woman by name, and in every Gospel but Luke the epithet Magdalene isn't used prior to The Cross.

The Gospel According to The Beloved Disciple (commonly called "John") can definitely be argued to make the most sense if the Sister of Lazarus and Martha is also the Mary called Magdalene.  I have come to support the theory that Lazarus is the Beloved Disciple (though maybe sometimes that designation can be expanded to include his Sisters, but it can't include any of the Twelve), which makes it seem natural to conclude that one of the Marys in Chapter 19 Verses 25-27 is his sister.  Or even more so if Mary rather then Lazarus is the one being called the Disciple whom He Loved there.  And then in chapter 20 when the word "other" is added to a verse with Mary Magdalene implying two people in that verse are a "disciple whom Jesus loved".

Luke is basically the source of every argument against them being the same woman.  Well I have some thoughts on that.

First of all, we proponents of Luke's reliability as a Historical document point out how he claimed to have gathered his information by interviewing multiple Eye Witnesses.  So it's possible he himself may not have always known if some of the stories about characters with the same name were really the same person or not.  Luke uses the title Magdalene only in verses that also mention Joanna, so it could be Joanna called her that but his source for the story about Martha & Mary in chapter 10 did not.  And this could also explain the same characters being named in some scenes but not in others.

Luke 8 associates Mary Magdalene with Jesus Galilean ministry, while "John" 11-12 is taken as making it seem like the Bethany siblings were not involved in the Galilean ministry.  But the Bethany siblings seem to be pretty well off financially given how the Ointments Mary used were so expensive.  So maybe this house in Bethany wasn't their only residence but one they used mainly around the time of the Pilgrimage Festivals.

Bethany isn't mentioned in Luke 10, indeed just reading it in the context of Luke's narrative without bringing in assumptions from elsewhere it seems like this is in Galilee as much as everything around it was.  The Synoptic narrative is uninterested in the Judean ministry prior to them arriving there for Passover.

Analyzing Luke as a stand alone document, the only real argument against Magdalene and the sister of Martha being the same Mary is a face value assumption that Luke 10 is painting Martha's sister as awfully passive compared to the active Disciples introduced in Luke 8.  But that misses the actual point of what was going on in Luke 10.

Luke 8:1-3 is clear that there were more women then just the three who are named here, likewise with 24:10 and the other Synoptic accounts of the Myrrbearers.  Maybe what goes on in Luke 10 explains why Mary but not Martha would be mentioned by name in those passages.

Some people do think the Penitent Woman in the house of Simon in Luke 7 is another account of the Anointing incident from "John" 12, Mark 14 and Matthew 26.  I think there are too many important differences for them to be the same event, but the idea that they involve the same Woman isn't impossible.  Well the argument for that woman being Mary Magdalene is that she's the first woman named in Luke 8 which immediately follows that story.

So looking into all the available information, it is certainly possible they are the same, but by no means proven beyond any doubt.

The Whore of Babylon is Capitalism

This is not in conflict with my prior posts on Mystery Babylon, but a separate aspect of what Mystery Babylon is.  So what I've said about how Revelation 17 relates to The Bride of Christ doctrine, and whether or not Revelation 18 is geographically linked to Mesopotamia remains the same.  This is about what the Sin of Mystery Babylon is.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Capitalism is the Whoredom of Babylon.

I did a post on how the words translated Fornication and Fornicator refer to Prostitution.  They like the words for Whore/Harlot come from a root that means "to sell off".  People seek to justify their broader interpretations of those verses by saying how words related to Prostitution are sometimes used euphemistically for sexual promiscuity that isn't about money.  But the opposite euphemism is also used, people will say they feel like they're "whoring themselves out" to express the idea of "selling out".

Well if you break down Revelation 17 and 18 and look at the context outside of these "pronos" words.  There is not anything that implies sex, but a lot about economics, about buying and selling.

I've been expressing my opposition to Capitalism a lot lately on my other blog.  There are people like the YouTuber Renegade Cut who want to make any and all Futurist/Pre-Millenial views on Bible Prophecy seem inseparable from Right Wing politics.  And yet it is exactly a Futurist and Pre-Millennial view of Revelation that makes chapters 17 and 18 a blatant condemnation of Capitalism.  Also Post-Millennialism was invented to justify theocracy.

There is no labor going on in New Jerusalem, New Jerusalem is the return to Eden, it's a Communist Utopia.  The founder of Communism was Gerard Winstanly in the mid 1600s who certainly held a Pre-Millenial view of Revelation.  Communism is an inherently Christian ideology, it was in the 1700s that Atheists and Deists started forming a Secular version of it that was then further secularized by Karl Marx and the Bolsheviks.

Many of my fellow Anti-Capitalist might not like the implication of making Capitalism a Whore, they might prefer characterize Capitalism as a Pimp.  Well the thing is Porneia as an ancient Noun form of the word for Prostitution was associated with all people taking part in that Sin.  Babylon being called the "Mother of Harlots" may well imply she's a Madam rather then the Proletariat of Whoredom.

The Far East and The Lost Tribes

In the KJV of Genesis 9:27 Noah prophecies that God shall "Enlarge" Japheth.  The traditions identifying Japheth mainly with European nations have taken this to refer to Europe's political dominance of the rest of the world over the last 500 years or so.  While those who seek to associate Japheth mainly with the Far East say it refers to Japheth's descendants becoming the most numerous.

Asia east of Iran and south of the former USSR is less then an Eight of the Earth's Surface but contains over half of the population of Humanity.  And that's not even counting how the Native Americans are now mostly agreed to have previously been in this region.

Here is the problem though.  "Enlarge" is a mis-translation in that verse.  The Hebrew word is Pathah which is also the root the name Japheth comes from.  But that word as a verb occurs many times in the Hebrew Scriptures but is translated "Enlarge" only here, other times you see "enlarge" or a form of that word in the KJV it's a different Hebrew word.  Pathah is usually translated allure, persuade, entice, and in negative contexts deceive.  In Genesis 9:27 this is followed by saying Japheth will dwell in the Tents of Shem, it was also in Shem that YHWH set up His Tabernacle.

As far as Bible Prophecy predicting certain people to be the most numerous, those promises are made exclusively to certain descendants of Shem.  In Genesis 15:5 and 22:17 Abraham is promised his Seed will be multiplied as the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea shore.  And this promise is repeated to Isaac in Genesis 26:4, and to Jacob in Genesis 32:12, and it's reaffirmed in Exodus 32:13, Deuteronomy 1:10, 10:22, 1 Chronicles 27:23, Nehemiah 9:23 and Isaiah 10:22 (quoted in Romans 9:27), and Hosea 1:10 which is specifically about the Northern Kingdom, and Hebrews 11:12.  (Jeremiah 33:22 even says this specifically of the Seed of David, via Solomon's Daughters in 1 Kings 4 David's Seed did exist among the Northern Kingdom's population, but this promise's applicability to David could be fulfilled in how all Christian are made the Seed of Jesus regardless of actual biology).

Also Genesis 24:60 foretells Rebecca's Seed will be Thousands of Millions, that's Billions.

But we can get even more specific then that.  Deuteronomy 33's blessings on the Tribes seem to give a particular promise of large populations to three of them.  First in verse 6 "Let Reuben live, and not die; and let not his men be few."

Then verse 17 talking about Joseph seems to predict Ephraim to have a much larger population then Manasseh, which is also consistent with Genesis 48.  But this never happened during the recorded Old Testament history of the Tribes, every Biblical Census has Manasseh being larger then Ephraim in population, and Manasseh also had twice the land Ephraim did being on both sides of the Jordan.

Finally verse 20 says Gad will be enlarged, and this Hebrew word does mean that, being translated that way most of the time in the KJV.

I've talked before on this Blog about how the Deported Northern Israelites were most likely taken east of the Euphrates River.  But also how it wasn't really all of the Northern Kingdom deported by Assyria.  The first Deportation was of Naphtali and the Trans-Jordan Tribes, and the second focused on part of Ephraim and some of Western Manasseh near the border with Ephraim.  The Trans-Jordan Tribes were Reuben, Gad and the eastern half of Manasseh.  Gad as I've talked about before is often who the Japanese are identified with.

Now I do think Japheth and Ham probably both contributed to the early populations of the Far East.  The deported Israelites were mingled among the Gentiles.

Maybe The Wedding Feast isn't in Heaven like we assume?

I was watching this Sermon of Peter Hiett.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3NX-XG6dgA

Now he and I don't agree on Revelation, he isn't a Futurist so he's not likely to agree with the title of this post.  But he and I agree on the subject of Universal Salvation and because of that common ground I'm still able to gain many spiritual insights watching his Sermons.

Technically this Sermon may not actually say anything to help what I'm arguing here at all.  But it was on the Wedding Banquette parable from Matthew 22 so it had me thinking about this subject.  And it brought up what I'd already heard before of Jewish Wedding Feasts sometimes lasting seven days.

In the context of what I've argued about The Bride of Christ, and my conviction that the Seven Years that Revelation 6-19 will play out over Nisan-Nisan years, including suggesting Jesus will have a second Triumphal Entry in the Nisan that ends this time period.  It has me thinking about the Wedding Feast being the Seven Days of Unleavened bread.

We tend to think Revelation 19 is placing The Wedding Feast in heaven, including me talking about this subject in the past.  But it doesn't say that, verses 7-9 say the time for the Wedding is come, then in verse 11 Heaven is opened and the Rider on the White Horse invades The Earth.  And in verse 14 the armies following him are dressed the same as the Bride in verse 8.

This suggestion can be interesting to compare to me is The Rider on The White Horse someone other then Jesus theory.  Especially since The Son of Man already came riding on a Cloud back in Chapter 14.

Jacob Fathered Two Sets of Twins

Read Genesis 29 and 30 carefully and you'll notice most of the time each child's birth is preceded by an account of that child's conception.  But Chapter 30 has two exceptions to this, Asher in verses 12-13 and Dinah in verse 21.

Now with Dinah it's tempting to say the patriarchal bias of the culture was less interested in detailing her birth, but why record her birth at all given I feel there is later evidence she wasn't Jacob's only daughter?  It could be because she's important later to chapter 34 but David's daughter Tamar didn't need a prior account of her birth.

So I think Gad and Asher the sons of Zilpah were twins, and later so were Zebulun and Dinah who were borne by Leah.

Why not detail their twin births the way Jacob and Esau or Pharez and Zarah were?  Those are narratives about issues complicating who would qualify as the first born.  None of these were eligible to be a paternal first born.  With Zebuln and Dinah we're dealing with possibly Leah's last children, and Zilpah's were going to be kind of counted among Leah's so wouldn't have likely had even a Maternal first born status.  The significance of being a Maternal firstborn isn't about any kind of inheritance.  And regardless if there was no ambiguity on who came out first it wasn't an issue.

Similar logic to what I just argued can be used to say Cain and Abel were twins.  Which of course is a claim that gets used by Serpent Seed theorists but with the intent of saying they didn't have the same father.  The text of Genesis 4:1-2 is if anything the opposite of them on who was definitely fathered by Adam, it directly attributed Cain to Adam more then it does Abel.  I'm certain Abel was also Adam's son however.  I've already refuted the Two Seedline theory.

The births of Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim are not recorded in a similar manner to these two chapters at all.

Apparently the odds of conceiving twins if you are a twin yourself are not higher for identical twins but are for fraternal twins.  Jacob we know was a Fraternal Twin.  And some rabbinic traditions suggest Leah and Rachel were also twins.

When Mazzaroth theorists are trying to align the Zodiac constellations to the Tribes of Israel, different models get proposed.

The first version I stumbled upon identified Levi and Simeon with Gemini not because of any evidence they were twins but because their role in Genesis 34 can be compared to Castor and Pollux killing Theseus over his abduction of Helen, and because of that incident Levi and Simeon are grouped together in Genesis 49, and Levi had no land allotment or camp surrounding the Tabernacle since Levi had The Tabernacle itself (and Simeon is mysteriously absent from Deuteronomy 33).  If it's Dinah who was a twin that would be interesting, given how Helen is said to be a twin of Clytemnestra.  I have argued for possibly linking Clytemnestra to Athaliah who was a daughter of the house of Omri.  The Tribal identity of the Omrids is never clearly stated in Scripture, but Jezreel was in land originally allotted to Issachar who's often grouped with Zebulun.  Also Omri first appears in the narrative as an army commander of the Issacharite House of Baasha.

I have not seen a version make any of the three sons I have argued could be Twins the Gemini, it seems sometimes Benjamin is Gemeni which I don't get at all.

Genesis 24:60 destroys Preterism and Amillennialism.

Or at least many forms of them.

You see I've seen a common argument that all Bible Prophecy must have been fulfilled by 70 AD.  And well that's just not workable with this verse.

And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, "Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them."

A Thousand Millions is a Billion.  The entire world's Population didn't reach even 1 Billion till the 1800s.  And Human population tends to reproduce exponentially, meaning it doubles about every 50-70 years, or broadly speaking a generation.  Which means there is certainly no way descendants of just Rebekah (Israelites and Edomites) reached at least 2 Billion before 70 AD.

Another factor to point out about population growth is how both Genesis 48 and Deuteronomy 33 foretell Ephraim to dwarf Manasseh in population.  This never happened in the recorded Biblical History of Israel, every census had Manasseh significantly larger in population then Ephraim.  These Prophecies clearly expand into the post exile history of the House of Joseph.

The Flood did not Destroy The Earth, it Saved The Earth.

The Last verse of the First Chapter of Genesis.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

The Hebrew word for "good" there also gets translated words like bountiful, prosperity and welfare.  I've seen one scholar say that the Hebrew of this verse can be translated as saying the Earth was Good for Man to live in, that it was habitable.

In the blog post where I explained why I now support a Sethite view of Genesis 6, the last part of it is me emphasizing how Genesis 6 interprets itself and explains the reason for the Flood was the Earth being filled with Violence.  Among other things I mentioned Tubal-Cain briefly which I want to elaborate on.

Genesis 4:22.

And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah.

The word translated "instructor" is no where else translated something implying a type of teacher, elsewhere the KJV translated the word sharp, sharpen, sharpeneth and whet in Psalm 7:12 "If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready."  In this context it would be actuate to translate it sharpener.

The word for artificer here is very similar to the Hebrew word usually translated artificer but different, it appears only in this verse.  And it has me wondering if this word doesn't refer to persons but to objects and perhaps should be "artifice".

The word for Brass is again similar to other words for Brass but distinct mainly in that it ends with a t/th.  The word Iron is the standard Hebrew word for Iron (Daniel uses the Aramaic word in chapters 2 and 7 however).  But it's notable that in a few places it's clearly used directly of some type of weapon being translated in the KJV as "ax head".

Genesis 6 verses 11-12 use in the KJV "Corrupt" twice and "Corrupted" once, all three are the same Hebrew word.  A Hebrew word that is also translated waste/waster, spoiler, perish, spill and destroy/destroyer/destruction.   That means the text is arguably saying The Earth was already destroyed before God even sent The Flood.

Genesis 6:12 is a parallel to what's said at the end of Genesis 1.  Except now instead of being "very good" the earth is "Corrupt".  I used to read "corrupted his way upon the earth" as referring to God's way, including when I made that Sethite view post last December.  But I now realize it's man's way on the earth that has been spoiled or destroyed.  The Earth has become Uninhabitable.

Verse 13 uses "destroy" in the KJV but it's in the Hebrew the same word used for Corrupt/Corrupted in verses 11-12.  God is saying what Man has done to the Earth, He will do to Man using the Earth.

What God says to Noah is that the End of All flesh is already come, it's already inevitable, Man's Violence has rendered the Earth no longer habitable for organic life.  Mankind was already dying off.

The Flood didn't destroy The Earth, it was The Earth's Baptism, it cleansed and purified The Earth of it's corruption. Towards the end of 1st Peter 3 the Flood of Noah seems to be compared to Baptism.

This pretty plain reading of Genesis is not a common interpretation of Genesis.  Because in the ancient world men could use violence to destroy each other and other flesh, but not The Earth itself.  But we have no clue what the Antediluvian world was like.  And today it is possible, the potential to render the Earth uninhabitable totally exists, just watch the historical fiction animated movie Barefoot Gen.

Jesus said in Matthew 24, "as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be".  But before that He had said "except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.".