Bible Review

Mel Gibson makes that identification in his movie, The Passion of the Christ. On the tendentious conflation of traditions, see esp. Schaberg, Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, pp. 65–77, 82.

In a secondary ending to the Gospel of Mark, it is said that Jesus “appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons” (Mark 16:9). The secondary ending is probably dependent upon the Gospel of Luke. As the best manuscripts attest, the earliest versions of Mark end at 16:8.

See esp. Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 19–40.

Reference to seven demons may mean that she was totally possessed. On the seven demons see Esther de Boer, Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), pp. 48–55.

On that town, see esp. Jane Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 47–64.

Luke 23:55 refers to “the women who had come with him from Galilee” without naming any of them.

For example, Origen, a third-century Alexandrian.

The prohibition is absolute in Mark and Luke, while Matthew adds a loophole: “except for unchastity.” Matthew’s version is probably secondary, and reflects the Pharisaic teaching of the “School of Shammai.”

My translation. There can be no question that Jesus modeled his own prayer (“the Lord’s Prayer”) on the Kaddish.

New Testament quotations are from the Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise specified.