A THEOLOGICAL SATYRE
BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE
What was the name of the child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, asked a fool. Here is the answer, but only fools take it serious. It is a satyre.
History is written by victors. This applies all the more to the Book of Books, the Bible, which is a unique document for the triumph of an androcentric tradition. Nevertheless, it contains numerous traces of a defeated and, as a result, suppressed gynaecocratic culture. We find indications of this not only in mythological, socio-historical and historical contexts of the Holy Scriptures, but especially in questions concerning their translation. With regard to the NT, it is based on Aramaic and Greek original texts, which were translated into Latin and other languages in the course of time. Already in Greek, the ancient Hebrew Goddess called Ruach - the Ruach Mother - became a neuter, the pneuma, only to be transformed into the male Holy Spirit in the Vulgate. An even worse fate befell the Goddess Sophia, known to us as Lady Wisdom or Chokmah from the wisdom texts of the OT. She was removed from the NT altogether and replaced by the Logos - the Word. So in a correctly translated text, the original name would be Sophia, and the Holy Spirit, the Ruach, would not be male as in conventional Christianity, but female as in Judaism and Gnosticism. And instead of the Kingdom of God, we would find the Jewish Goddess Malchut where it is spoken of. What a different reading of the NT this would produce! In the new translation of relevant passages, the Divine Feminine is given back a piece of its dignity and, above all, the place in Holy Scripture that it deserves.
While looking through the various biblical passages, I noticed that the Ruach mother, like Sophia, seems to have something to do with Mary Magdalene in many places; indeed, one can even go so far as to say that Ruach and Sophia stand almost like a code for Mary Magdalene - not necessarily as a direct substitute, but in any case in some kind of connotation or correspondence. Moreover, it turns out that Mary Magdalene is apparently to be regarded as the mother of the disciple John Mark, and this is of even greater significance when one considers that it was this John Mark, not John the Apostle and Son of Zebedee, who is most likely to be the author of the Gospel of John. For this means, of course, that this Gospel was probably also written under the influence of Mary Magdalene!
Readers who may now wonder about this will see more clearly after reading through this text. The restoration of the Divine-Feminine elements in the NT enables us to gain a very important insight: we have before us not only the story of a Father-God and His Son, but much more that of Mother-Goddess and Father-God as well as their earthly incarnations, who worked together on earth, but in the course of time the feminine part was suppressed. This realisation is already based on the OT, on the traditions of the Elohim, i.e. the Goddess Eloha and the God Eloh of Genesis, Yahweh and Chokmah, as well as Yahweh and the Goddess metaphorised to the People of Israel“.
The particular focus of this work is on the Gospel of John. This Fourth Gospel in its original version, brings us some surprising, not to say revolutionary, insights and elucidations. First of all, the order not only of the chapters, but often also of the verses, is in many places quite different from that in the text that was later changed by representatives of the apostolic tradition, and which is available to us today as the official version. In the original version, after the prologue, which already offers surprising insights, we first find the account of the first sign, which is about the wedding of Jesus. Before the account of this wedding in Cana, which, as we shall see, is Jesus' own wedding, there is in the original text the remarkable story of Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well. This is nothing more than a love skirmish between the Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus! Behind the „woman at the well“ herself, however, is most probably none other than Mary Magdalene. Thus we find a love story both at the beginning and at the end of the Gospel. For the meeting of Jesus and Mary Magdalene after the resurrection in chapter 20 is interpreted in the sense of a hierogamy. It is fitting that the text contains allusions to the Song of Songs and Genesis.
Another striking feature of the Gospel of John is that the original text does not know the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Also, as in the Gospel of Mark, the narrative of the Virgin birth is missing, and the text knows nothing about the number of disciples being twelve. There is no Eucharist at the Last Supper, nor is there any indication that Jesus or his fosterfather might have been a carpenter. With regard to Mary Magdalene, the second name „Magdalene“ is missing from the original text, whereas in the text of the final editing the name of the town of Magdala, which was not known by that name at the time, was incorporated. This will be discussed later.
In any case, it should be noted here that with regard to Sophia and Ruach, this work is primarily concerned with the passages which originally addressed the said goddesses by their names, which was only obscured by mistranslation, rather than with those in which the identity of these goddesses is determined by their characteristics and derivations from this.
First of all, it is necessary to correct a statement. At that time, I still assumed that the apostle John wrote the Gospel named after him. Thanks to the more detailed reading of H*'s book Four Original Christian Parties and their Union into the Apostolic Church, however, it became more and more clear to me that it must not have been the Apostle, but John with the surname Mark, to whom this Gospel goes back, albeit based on an original writing by the Apostle John. Before I present important parts of the Gospel of John in a new translation and with necessary commentary, it is necessary to say a few words about the prehistory of the NT, especially with regard to the figure of Mary Magdalene and John Mark. For, as will be shown, not only the passages about Sophia ultimately aim at her, in the sense of a kind of coding, but also those about the Ruach mother. This coding, which does not apply to all passages, was possibly done in order to conceal numerous traces of Mary Magdalene in the NT. It is important to filter out the crucial passages by working out the relevant passages about Sophia and Ruach and classifying them correctly.
The oldest source of the canonical Gospels is the so-called Source Q, written in Aramaic, that is, the Logia Source or Logia - a kind of diary of Jesus, written in the period 29-33 by Matthew, a disciple of the first hour, later translated by John Mark. The second original scripture is the Primordial Mark, written down in Greek in 43 by John Mark and dictated by Peter. The third scripture is Source Z - a scripture by the Apostle John entitled „The Twelve Signs of Jesus the Messiah“ written in 44, probably originally in Aramaic, then written down in Greek by John Mark. What is remarkable about this writing of the Zebedaid and apostle John is that the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus are completely missing! John Mark expanded this work from the year 65 onwards into the Primordial-John (Source V), and in the period from 92 to 96 it was edited primarily by Judas Barsabbas, a close friend of Luke, and became the source H-John, the final editing of the Gospel of John. In 48 Luke wrote the first Luke, revised it from about 65 to 70, final editing circa 92-96. In the period 65 to 70 the edited version of Mark appeared, i.e. the final editing of the Gospel of Mark, edited by a Philippian, possibly Aristion. Only a minor role is played by the Gospel of Matthew, a tendency writing from about 70 onwards, which, although it belongs to the Synoptics, was almost without influence on the other Gospels. At least this much can be said here about the various different influences: there is a veritable jumble of influences, but the Gospel of John is essentially a writing of the Johannine, also influenced by the Philippians and by Luke. The final editing of Luke is the most important Gospel of the Roman Catholics, the final editing of Mark that of the Philippians, the first Luke that of the Old Paulines, and finally Matthew that of the Petrinians.
In terms of dating, it is important to note that there are some parallels with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Qumran community was destroyed by the Romans in 68 and their hidden writings were not discovered until the 1940s. The teachings of the Qumrans must therefore have been known to the author of the Gospel of John. The destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 is not mentioned at all, but the Bath of Bethesda is already known. Although the destruction of a temple is mentioned, namely in John 2, 19-22 and 11, 48, this is meant metaphorically and refers, as Jesus himself says, to the temple of his body. A well-founded fear of the Jews is expressed here that an open rebellion could result in the destruction of the city by the Romans.
A theologian points out in his work „The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church“ that the Fourth Gospel was read and referred to by leading forces such as Ignatius and Polycarp even before the year 90, so they had access to the original, as yet unpublished draft.
The textual context of John's Gospel is more coherent and reliable than the rest of the NT. On the back it says „Rylands Library Papyrus 52“, and this papyrus is the oldest canonical manuscript of the NT, dating to the first half of the second century. Its place of discovery is Egypt, so it was probably written in that country.
Apart from John Mark, who is the most likely author, there are other candidates who must also be considered objectively. These are above all Lazarus of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene. In my opinion, however, one cannot exclude the possibility that John Mark wrote the Gospel under the direction of Mary Magdalene - namely, if she was indeed his mother, as some circumstantial evidence suggests.
Lazarus as the author of John's Gospel is the candidate preferred by one theologian. However, he presupposes that this man raised from death by Jesus is not the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany, but the son of Mary - and also the son of Jesus! This also means in his sense that he sees Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene as one and the same woman. For in his view, Mary Magdalene alias Mary of Bethany was married to Jesus. Lazarus, the man to whom Jesus says that he loves him and his sisters Mary and Martha of Bethany (John 11, 5), is also said to be the „beloved disciple“ mentioned in several passages of the Gospel. It is therefore quite possible that Lazarus was related to Jesus. However, a closer look at other passages later on will show that the son of Mary Magdalene and Jesus was not Lazarus, but rather John Mark. This is also supported by the fact that Luke and other apostolic-minded people tried to oust John Mark, and a Roman Catholic tradition was often anxious to connect the house of this John Mark (Acts 12, 12) with the Mother of Jesus. This was done, it may be assumed, primarily to divert attention from Mary Magdalene. The exaltation and veneration of the Mother of God had been a frequently used means of the Roman Catholics to displace Mary Magdalene since the Gospel of Luke and later from the 4th century onwards. Titles of dignity and honour such as that of the Ecclesia and the New Eve first suited Mary Magdalene before they were later transferred to Mary of Nazareth, yes, even the Sulamith of the Song of Songs, who is without any doubt connoted with Mary Magdalene and represents her model, as it were, was attempted to be associated with the Mother of Jesus. Another point is that, apart from John, Lazarus is only mentioned in one parable in Luke, namely Luke 16, 19-31. Poor Lazarus and a rich man die, and they enter the underworld after their death. While the rich man suffers, he has to see Lazarus lying in Abraham's bosom. The author of the parable claims that the rich have to suffer after their death, but the poor are comforted. For the rich had already fared well during their lifetime, but the poor had fared badly, for which just recompense would now be made in the hereafter. Luke does not mention the raising of Lazarus by Jesus. As far as possible other biblical passages concerning Lazarus are concerned, a thinker has to fall back on the speculation of the erasure of this man from the original text. Unlike H* in his exegeses, however, the thinker does not provide any concrete evidence for this.
A renowned U.S. Catholic theologian still held the view in his 1966 work on the Gospel of John that the apostle John the Zebedaid was the author of John's Gospel. Thirteen years later, however, he revised his view and came to the conclusion - like most biblical scholars today - that there was little evidence to support the authorship of this Gospel by the Apostle John. Irenaeus (130-202) had once defended the supposed apostolicity of the fourth Gospel on the grounds that it had connoted a tradition in Asia Minor that had to do with John the Zebedaid. However, Irenaeus' evidence is very shaky: firstly, he confused the apostle John with a presbyter from Asia Minor who was also called John. Secondly, Irenaeus explained that he received his information concerning the authorship at a time when he was still a child, namely from Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna († 156). The whole church tradition that attributes the authorship to the Zebedaid John is mainly based on Irenaeus' childhood memories! So it cannot be surprising that the majority of biblical scholars today assume that this John was not the author of the fourth Gospel.
A key (perhaps the most important) to understanding the authorship of John's Gospel is the so-called „disciple whom Jesus loved“. For as is vouchsafed to us in Jn 21, 24, behind this disciple hides the true author of this work - not behind the final redaction of it, but of the Primordial John, which was written from about 65 onwards.
If we want to assume that the title of the Gospel of John also reveals its author, then this author would have to be a man named John. According to H*, we can exclude with some certainty the Zebedaid, the apostle John, who was murdered in 44. Only the original script „The Twelve Signs of the Messiah“ comes from him, which the other John, the one with the surname Mark, is said by H* to have used as the basis for his Gospel. But is this John Mark actually the beloved disciple, the one who, according to Jn 21, 20, had leaned against Jesus' breast and asked about Jesus' betrayer?
It is rather strange, not to say suspicious, that this important figure is not referred to by name in more detail in Jn 21, 20! Some authors got the idea that behind the „beloved disciple“ was really Mary Magdalene. But can this be true? Let's take a look at the seven relevant passages:
John 1, 35-40: This passage tells of John the Baptist, who draws the attention of two of his disciples to Jesus, whereupon they follow Jesus from then on. Of these two, only one is further identified, as Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. Some conclude that the other disciple is the „beloved disciple“. On an objective view, however, there is no reason for this, and one can relegate this conjecture to the realm of fantasy. The only interesting thing about this passage is that Jesus is already addressed here as Rabbi, so he must have been married at this time.
John 13, 23-26: Here we are actually talking about the „disciple whom Jesus loved“. This is the passage that is also alluded to in John 21, 20: The disciple who lay by Jesus' side at the Last Supper, leaning against his breast and asking about the betrayer. Here one has quite the impression that (if one does not want to accuse Jesus of homosexuality) it is either a son of his, or in truth Mary Magdalene, whose name was subsequently removed from the text.
John 18, 15-16: Here it speaks of an „other disciple“ who follows Jesus together with Peter. This „other disciple“ is said to be acquainted with the high priest Caiaphas and is also allowed to enter his courtyard, while Peter has to stay outside. This passage refers to the „beloved disciple“. We will see that John Mark's house was on a property whose neighbouring property was that of the high priest Caiaphas. So if this passage does indeed refer to the „beloved disciple“, we would thereby have an indication that this was John Mark.
John 19, 25-27: The beloved disciple is standing here under the cross with Jesus' mother, Mary Magdalene, and one or two other women. The later elaboration of the original text and the exegesis of this passage will prove that the beloved disciple is John Mark, the son of Mary Magdalene. For the question of authorship, however, it is important to note that the beloved disciple and Mary Magdalene are named as two different persons. This also applies to the next biblical passage:
John 20, 1-11: In this passage, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb at dawn and sees that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb (verse 1). In verses 2-10, after Mary Magdalene has notified the disciples, the so-called race to the tomb takes place between the „disciple whom Jesus loved“ and Peter. Then in verse 11, Mary Magdalene stands weeping before the tomb. Apart from the fact that here again Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple appear as two different persons, this passage offers other problems. There were an astonishing number of inconsistencies which point to changes made by an editor using mutually inconsistent material. A woman suggests that this pericope contains both high dramaturgy and confused choreography. After Mary Magdalene has notified the disciples and they have visited the tomb, it is unclear how she herself got back to the tomb. For while Peter and the „beloved disciple“ hurry to the tomb, it is not mentioned whether Mary Magdalene also comes along. Then in verse 11 she is suddenly standing at the tomb again and weeping. How did she get there, and why is the name of the „beloved disciple“ also withheld this time? Someone‘s argument boils down to the fact that Mary Magdalene's part in the Easter tradition (especially John 20, 11-18) was so strong that the editor could only partially remove her name at this point: She is supposed to be the „beloved disciple“ who hurried back to the tomb with Peter! Now, verses 2 to 10 are almost certainly an insertion into the text, the purpose of which was to place the „beloved disciple“ above Peter. Identifying the beloved disciple with Mary Magdalene would solve the problem of how she got back to the tomb. But, leaving that aside, would Mary Magdalene have notified the man, of all people, who, as we know from his hostility towards her from the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel according to Mary and the Pistis Sophia, was anything but favourable to her: Peter? Hardly. It is more likely that she went to John Mark, and Peter was standing there. Verses 8 and 9 are also significant: the disciple who had come to the tomb first goes in, sees and believes. The author of the Gospel of John emphasises here that it is this disciple who believes first, while the others do not yet understand that Jesus had risen. So there was reason for the later editor to obscure the name of this disciple. However, we do not get an answer to his (or her) identity from this passage either.
John 21, 1-14: In verse 7, the „beloved disciple“ recognises Jesus when he appears to the disciples on the Sea of Tiberias, but the others, especially Peter, do not recognise him! Peter, who is just naked, girds on his outer garment and jumps into the lake. After Jesus tells him to do so, Peter pulls ashore a net with 153 large fish in verse 11. According to the Gematria, as we know, the number 153 points to Mary Magdalene. But does this also mean that we have to see Mary Magdalene in the „beloved disciple“? Chapter 21 of John's Gospel is a later added part of the Gospel, which can already be seen from the fact that we find an epilogue at the end of chapter 20. Was the aim to give Peter a stronger position in the early church? Did they obviously also want to grant Peter an appearance of Jesus? If so, it would not be surprising if the editor had deleted Mary Magdalene from the text and replaced her with the „beloved disciple“. However, what we read in verses 20-24 speaks against this:
John 21, 20-24: The „disciple whom Jesus loved“, the one who had leaned against Jesus' breast at the Last Supper and asked about the betrayer, follows Jesus, whereupon Peter asks what is to become of him. Jesus replies to him in verse 22: „If I want him to stay until I come, what is that to you? But you follow me!“ Despite this statement, the opinion spreads among the disciples that that disciple would not die. This is followed by the indication that it was this beloved disciple who witnessed and recorded all this.
After considering these biblical passages, it will hardly come as a surprise that the author of John's Gospel wanted to keep his authorship a secret. So was it John Mark or Mary Magdalene herself? The previous data are not sufficient for a precise clarification of the question of authorship. However, we gain a new perspective on the mystery if we assume that John Mark was the son of Mary Magdalene. Therefore, it is important to prove that exactly this is probable. Then we will also be able to recognise that John Mark wrote his Gospel according to the information given by his mother. It will then also no longer be necessary to assume deletions of Mary Magdalene from the text or even gender changes from this woman to the „beloved disciple“, and also the apparent contradiction that early church fathers such as Eusebius attributed the authorship of the Gospel of Mark to John Mark will be cleared up to the effect that it was merely the person who wrote down this Gospel according to Peter's dictation, i.e. that he was not responsible for the content.
The first chapters of the original John, which after the prologue deal with the betrothal and wedding between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, are events that were concealed by the apostle John and the other evangelists, or were only reproduced in a distorted form. John Mark, who could hardly have been an eyewitness to the engagement and wedding of his parents, had to draw on the information provided by his parents, among others, for his descriptions. It can therefore be assumed that the passages in question were written indirectly or directly by Mary Magdalene, if not by Jesus himself, or rather by a disciple who recorded these things according to her information.
According to the hypothesis of H*, who spent his whole life studying the question of the origin of the apostolic church, Mary Magdalene had a son named John Mark, clearly distinguishable from the apostle John and identical with Mark the Evangelist. For the mother of the Apostle John, the Zebedaid, was called Salome.
A first inkling that Mary Magdalene could have been the mother of John with the surname Mark already arises from the two names, John and Mark:
John is the masculine form of Johanna and derives on the one hand from the ancient Babylonian fish god Oannes, and on the other hand from the name of a goddess. The mystery of Oannes lies in the reference to the fish, which both Jesus and Mary Magdalene have. In the secret script Gematria, the initials of Jesus' name add up to 888 and correspond to the Greek Ichthys = fish; the name of Mary Magdalene, read in Latin as "H Magdalhnh", is 153. If one multiplies an eight of the 888 by 153, one arrives at 1224 = Ichthyes, i.e. fish. The Hebrew Aramaic spelling of „John“ is Joannes, or for „Joan“ Joanna. In the Sumerian and Syriac languages, „Anna“ means Goddess and is related to Inanna, and the „Jo“ comes from the Greek Goddess Io, the beloved of Jupiter. According to legend, Io, also known as the goddess of the moon and water, settled in Egypt and became the first queen of that country. When her son Epaphos was kidnapped, she swam through the sea looking for him. The reference to Mary Magdalene here lies in the aspect of the search. But there are other connections from Io-Anna to Mary Magdalene. The name „Joanna“ in Luke 8, 2-3 and Luke 24, 10 is symbolic of Mary Magdalene and points to her as Io-Anna (Goddess, Queen and Great Mother). He thus understands Joanna not as a disciple but as a term circumscribing Mary Magdalene. The references to Mary Magdalene continue to the Queen of Sheba (alias Sulamith), who was renamed Sulamith by the Israelite editors of the Song of Songs, and to the Ethiopian Queen Makeda (alias Magda): Before Saba became Meroe, it was called Saba Magda (or Makeda), and when it was known as Saba, Meroe Magda. So we see that there are quite a few references to Mary Magdalene, and it is fair to assume that an educated woman, such as Mary Magdalene undoubtedly was, who named her son John, must have been aware of the divinity of this name!
Mark is very reminiscent of „Mary“ and suggests that John Mark was named after his mother, also with regard to the epithet. If this is true, she was a woman named Mary. Reason enough to investigate the matter! In this investigation, three lines of evidence emerged with regard to the biblical passages:
The first passage is about the women who accompanied Jesus or supported him, namely Luke 8, 2-3. The text corrected by Luke after the final editing reads there:
„Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuzas, an official of Herod, and Susan...“
In this version we would have three women listed here. However, a different view emerges if we consider the same passage of Luke from its main source, the so-called Q-source, from which the Gospel of Luke derives:
„Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, the mother of John, and the wife of Chuzas, an official of Herod, and Susan...“
In the original version, therefore, only two women are named, and Mary Magdalene is described as John's mother! Luke thus had reasons for concealing Mary Magdalene's identity as the mother of this John and introducing a Joanna instead. Exactly the same procedure can be found in Luke 24, 10, where Mary Magdalene originally also appears as John's mother, but this was later changed and a Joanna was inserted in her place! As we have seen, the divinity of Mary Magdalene as Io-Anna is hidden behind this supposed disciple, with all the connections shown above. Whether one bases the question of divinity on „Joan“ or „John“ is secondary. The result is the same! Twice the same change cannot be a coincidence, of course, and speaks fully for the fact that Mary Magdalene was the mother of John Mark to be hushed up. Apart from that, the wife of Chuza is Susan, not Joan.
Another relevant change that also points to Mary Magdalene as John Mark's mother is found in John's Gospel in the passage John 19, 25-27. The surviving text after the final editing reads:
Standing by Jesus' cross were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother, and with her the disciple whom he loved, he said to his mother, Woman, behold, your son! Then he said to the disciple, Behold, your mother! And from that hour the disciple took her to himself.
In this version, the text seems unambiguous. Under the cross here we find Jesus' mother, Mary Magdalene and the wife of Clopas. But how did the mother Mary end up under the cross, since she was not mentioned at all by the Synoptics, who must have been interested in it? For if John Mark, who is silently assumed to be present in this scene, was the author of both the original Mark and the original John, there should actually be a correspondence here. Since this is not the case, we must once again assume arbitrary adaptations. H* points out that the usual interpretation is not at all self-evident. According to him, it does not say that the beloved disciple should henceforth be the son of Mary of Nazareth, nor that she should be his mother! Jesus is not addressing his mother here in one version, but a woman (γυνή). Obviously, „woman“ was mistakenly translated as „mother“, which, by the way, has a counterpart in John 2,4, where we have exactly the opposite case: What do you want from me, mother? would be correct there. In the crucifixion scene, Jesus directs the attention of a woman to her son and that of the beloved disciple, her son, to his mother. The reconstruction of the original text in the original John results in the following wording:
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus the disciple whom Jesus loved, his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the daughter of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw the mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he says to the mother, Woman, this is your son! Then he says to the disciple, This is your mother!
The „disciple whom Jesus loved“ is John Mark, and Mary Magdalene is his mother! Admittedly, this passage is not quite easy to understand, and that is because Mary Magdalene is mentioned twice here and is thus given special emphasis: First as the mother of the disciple whom Jesus loved (her name is not mentioned there) then again. John Mark, who is himself the beloved disciple and the son of Mary Magdalene, and who wrote John 19, 25-27 himself, has followed the words (omitted by the editor), the disciple whom Jesus loved, first with his mother and then with his mother's sister, first with her proper name and then with the proper name of his mother, of whom he also immediately continues. John Mark probably wanted to make sure that she was not only mentioned as his mother, but also by name. So he had a great interest in seeing Mary Magdalene as a witness under the cross!
This would give us the explanation for the double mention of both women, and thus we would have the second proof that Mary Magdalene was the mother of John Mark.
The said relationship also results from Acts 12, 12, where „John is called by the surname Mark“, and from which it appears that his mother's name was Mary. That this Mary is Mary Magdalene we know, as pointed out earlier, not only from Luke 8, 2 (the source Q) and Luke 24, 10, but also from the fact that in the parallel passages Mark 15, 40 and Matthew 27, 56, especially in the original Mark, the name of Mary Magdalene is linked with the attribute „mother of John“. For H* arrives at the view that in the original Mark initially „the mother of John“ must have stood in the same place that can be inferred from Luke 24, 10, i.e. as an apposition to Mary Magdalene.
From Acts 12, 12, which is also not entirely unimportant, another insight can be gleaned. The passage reads:
When he had made up his mind about this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, surnamed Mark, where not a few were gathered and praying.
Where else could Peter find a greater number of Christians gathered in the middle of the night (Acts 12, 12) than in a place where the congregation, or a part of it, was accustomed to assemble regularly for prayer? According to church tradition, the mother of Jesus had lived in this house after the death and ascension of her Son. This attribution was obviously made in order to divert attention from the Christian grouping around Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem. But this Mary is in fact Mary Magdalene. The house of this mother Mary is apparently also the place where the Last Supper took place. It is an the evidence that this house was the only church of Christianity in Jerusalem in Hadrian's time (117-138)! The „Mother of Churches“, the „Great Most Holy Sion“ was built on this very spot in the year 340. Thus Mary Magdalene has a connection to both the first Christian church in Jerusalem and the first Christian church in Glastonbury.
With regard to John Mark's social position, it is noteworthy that the house of the high priest Caiaphas stood on the property that bordered Mary Magdalene's house, so John Mark may have been acquainted with him (John 18, 15). This is all the more obvious if, as is handed down, he was of priestly lineage.
An interesting aspect of the founding of the first Jerusalem community around Mary Magdalene is the date: It is 4 April 33, but this day is now a Saturday, because the crucifixion of Jesus was on Friday 3 April 33, a day on which Jerusalem was darkened by a solar eclipse in the afternoon. How could the community around Mary Magdalene have been constituted by the resurrection experience still on Saturday, if the resurrection supposedly only took place on the third day? For according to tradition, the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene is supposed to have taken place only on Sunday, the later Easter Sunday! The explanation for this is as simple as it is little known: For the Jews, a day always lasted from six o'clock to six o'clock, regardless of whether it was six in the morning or six in the evening. Night was also considered a day, and therefore Friday was the first day, the night on Saturday the second day, and Saturday itself the third day! That is the correct understanding of „risen on the third day“! But who could have had an interest in introducing the Christian Sunday as Resurrection Day? The answer is: the twelve male disciples who had fled to Galilee on the day of the crucifixion, and who returned from there to Jerusalem with the news of the resurrection. Peter's arrival took place on Saturday night. He was jealous that the Lord came first before Mary Magdalene, and had only appeared to him and others later. So that no one could later say that Jesus had not appeared to him at all, the Petrines placed these apparitions on the day on which the competing community to the Magdalene community was founded, Sunday, and in the course of time thus created the Christian Sunday. In these events we have the cause of later discord and the ousting of Mary Magdalene as well as her son John Mark.
If Mary Magdalene and her son John Mark lived in the said house of Acts 12, 12, they were wealthy people. Nevertheless, John Mark was a modest man who was reluctant to put himself forward in his writings. In Mark 14, 13 Jesus uses a mystery to designate the house where the Last Supper is to take place, and a man with a water jug plays an important part in this. „Water jug“ in Aramaic is marqa, or with a Greek ending also marqosh, and this of course subtly points to Mark. So if John Mark was the adult son of Mary Magdalene's house, it goes without saying that he also took part in the Last Supper. Even the number of participants, limited by Matthew and the redactor of Luke to twelve, is no obstacle here, since Jesus' word from the Logia referring to the twelve had only fallen after the departure of the traitor Judas, thus there were only eleven apostles in the room, plus the head of the household (Mark 14, 14) John Mark. The fact that the young man tenderly lays his head against Jesus' breast strongly suggests that none other than Jesus himself is his father - and thus also Mary Magdalene's husband! In addition, H* also identifies the „young man, clothed only in a cloak“ who wants to follow Jesus to Gethsemane, as well as the „other disciple“ who, according to John 18, 15, follows into the courtyard of the high priest, with the master of the house of the Last Supper, i.e. John Mark.
Luke was not fond of the constellation that John Mark was the son of Mary Magdalene. For it was due to Luke's influence that John Mark was, and demonstrably so, twice deleted from the Gospel (Mark 14, 51f.; John 18, 15) and treated unkindly in Acts 13, 13. Nor does Luke mention the appearance of the Risen Lord to Mary Magdalene, not to mention the defamation as the woman from whom seven demons came out. Luke and Judas Barsabbas (the editor of the Corpus Johanneum), who collaborated greatly, were keen to obscure John Mark's part in favour of the apostle John. The dubious chapter 21 of John's Gospel goes back to Judas Barsabbas, and Luke even deleted the early martyrdom of the apostle John for this purpose.
In Acts 13, 13 John Mark separates from Paul and his companions and returns to Jerusalem for a time. That this could be due to complications with Paul is revealed to us in Acts 15, 37-39, where Barnabas wants to take John Mark with him, but Paul insists on not taking him because he had left them in Pamphylia (13, 13). Apart from the fact that this does not exactly paint a good picture of the vindictive Paul, there is a heated argument in 15, 39, at the end of which Paul separates from Barnabas and John Mark and the two then sail to Cyprus. I would not be at all surprised if the dispute had been about John Mark's mother, Mary Magdalene, and perhaps she was also the reason why John Mark had gone to Jerusalem. For the separation had to have an important reason, and this could well have been the presence of his mother in Jerusalem!
The more you look into it, the more the importance of John Mark and his mother must become clear to you, all the more so if you suspect Jesus to be his father!
If what has been established so far is correct, then there would have been an interest in exalting the mother of Jesus quite early, namely in the time of the redaction of the Gospel of John, which happened mainly through Luke, in order to displace the son of Mary Magdalene and also herself in return. This is also supported by Luke‘s tale of the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth, of which we find no trace either in the original Mark or in the redacted Mark, and which clearly contradicts the femininity of the Holy Spirit, the Ruach Mother.
At the time of Jesus' crucifixion, on 3 April of the year 33, the crucified one, who probably survived this ordeal, was 39 or 40 years old, Mary Magdalene therefore probably a little younger, and her son John Mark will have been about 15 to 20 years young. In the year 43, John Mark is said to have written down the original Mark on the basis of information that came from Peter, and a year later the so-called source Z, the basis for the later original John, was written by the apostle John. The astonishingly exact dating results from the fact that John Mark was in Jerusalem from 43 to 44 and had contact there with Peter and the apostle John, who was killed a year later. Through this contact, John Mark also had the original Z and thus the basis for his original John, which came into being in 65. Now Peter, as we know from the Gospel of Thomas and the Pistis Sophia, was not exactly a friend of Mary Magdalene, and this explains why the so-called secondary conclusion of Mark - Mark 16 ,9-20, where the resurrection of Jesus before Mary Magdalene is reported - was initially omitted. The same Peter also left aside the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, attested in the tradition of the Jerusalem church, and told only of his own appearance. The obvious conclusion is that Peter did not want to admit that the first Christian community in Jerusalem had formed without him. It was obvious envy of the young disciple John Mark that the latter was allowed to witness the crucifixion but he himself was not. It is all the more regrettable that it was precisely this Peter who had a decisive influence on Paul, who had just been converted in 34, and who reproduced the list of appearances communicated by Peter in 1 Cor 15, 5-9. The fact that the First Epistle to the Corinthians was not written until 53 proves that Peter, Paul and their grouping had an obvious interest in reproducing the appearances without Mary Magdalene if possible during this period of about 20 years. This is also a reason why the original Mark ends at 16, 8 and Luke already in the original Luke, written in 48, tries to downplay the importance of Mary Magdalene.
A question that now arises is: Why did John Mark have no or only little information from his mother Mary Magdalene, respectively from his father, and wrote the original Mark according to the dictation of Peter, who had left with his group to Galilee and later - after he had learned of the founding of the Jerusalem group under Mary Magdalene - returned? This could be due to the fact that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had both actually fled from Jerusalem to Gaul and in the year 36 from there to Britain - with or without their son. It is striking that both Jesus and Mary Magdalene disappear after the resurrection and apparitions. The direction of Gaul and Britain is also supported by the prayer rug discovered around 1990, the so-called Exile Rug, acquired at the time by an American antiquities dealer. The carpet, dated by the radiocarbon method to the year 150 to 180, which makes it one of the oldest testimonies of Christian prehistory, figuratively describes the story of people with halos travelling in a boat - Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their family on their way west?
In 43, Britain was invaded by the Romans. Was John Mark, now about 25-30 years old, taking the risk of returning to Jerusalem in that very year? He must have been there that year. In any case, the stay of the Holy Family would explain the time gap of ten years between the crucifixion and the first writing of the original Mark. Of course, we must not forget that John Mark was a man who sought his own ways, and one of these ways led to his later writing the original Gospel of John. For John Mark was not only the author of the original Mark and translated the source Q, but also wrote the original John, which has its beginnings around the year 65 - interestingly enough, in a period of time after his main opponents Peter and Paul had met their deaths in the arena of the Circus Maximus in Rome - and three years after the beginning of the War of Liberation against the Romans in Britain (62), one to two years before the building of the first Christian church in Glastonbury (63/64). Paul is said to have been executed in 58, Peter in 64, both during the time of Nero's persecution. The year 65 fits the news of Eirenaios, Bishop of Hierapolis, that John Mark had written the original John after the death of Peter. When John Mark had written down the original Mark more than 20 years earlier under the influence of Peter, he was still very young and also very impressed, both by the experiences and the pressure of the authorities Peter, Paul and probably also Luke. However, as soon as Peter and Paul were dead and many things must have become clear to him, it was time to write the true Gospel, the original John, even though it was later changed again by other authors such as Luke. In any case, one has the impression that the deaths of Peter and Paul had lifted a burden from John Mark's shoulders and that he now felt encouraged to bring the original John into being in order to counter the original Mark and its edited version as well as the original Luke and the beginnings of Matthew with a better version of the events of Jesus' life.
As already mentioned, John Mark initially had before him a writing by the apostle and Zebedaid John entitled „The Twelve Signs of Jesus the Messiah“ (the original John), which the apostle John had written after the original Mark. John Mark then expanded this by adding the prologue as well as the account of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, thus creating the original John, the core of the later Gospel of John.
One problem that many readers will notice is the different portrayal of Jesus' first appearance to Mary Magdalene and the disciples in the original Mark and original John respectively, both in the sequence of the account and in terms of the people involved. John Mark, who died in the persecution of Christians under Emperor Domitian (ca. 92-96), proved to be such a reliable reporter that H* does not believe him to have deliberately concealed the „other Mary“ in the original Mark. In the original John, John Mark inserts himself as „the disciple whom Jesus loved“. This passage is followed by the narrative of Jesus' anointing by Mary Magdalene (alias Mary of Bethany), and in the scene of the crucifixion John Mark names only his mother Mary Magdalene as a witness to the open tomb. According to him, it is she alone who encounters the resurrected (or rather, resuscitated) one and reports to the disciples (John 20, 11. 14-16. 18). The addition of Peter and „the disciple whom Jesus loved“ (John 20, 2-10. 12-13. 17) is the result of an editorial change in the final version of John's Gospel, which was made by Luke. By „the disciple whom Jesus loved“ Luke admittedly means the Apostle John, the Zebedaid, who had already been killed in 44, of course not John Mark. The fact that the apostle's early death was rediscovered, however, becomes his undoing and reveals the truth and identity of the real John.
John Mark's intention had been to give back to his mother what had been tried to be taken from her: That she had been the only one to experience the appearance of the Crucified, which was tantamount to appointing her as leader over the disciples. For this reason, it was she who founded the Jerusalem community, and it was to her house that the community worshipped (Acts 12, 12). Opposed to this were the interests of Luke, who was left of the main opponents, and his followers, who, after the death of John Mark, revised the original John and thus created the Gospel of John we have today, which, especially in chapter 20, is full of contradictions and additions. The law here is entirely on the side of John Mark, for it was he who had witnessed the events, not Luke and his men!
It must already be clear from these facts that certain forces in the early Christian parties had an interest in the displacement of Mary Magdalene and her son John Mark. However, mother and son as well as their early church in Jerusalem were of such great importance that a complete erasure from the scriptures was no longer possible. It is quite conceivable, however, that Mary Magdalene in particular, who, as suggested not only by the Gnostics but also by some church fathers such as Hippolytus or Augustine, was to be associated both with Sophia and with the Ruach mother, who was often regarded as identical to this, in this way hushed up the fact that instead of her name, that of Sophia or Ruach was used in certain passages in the Bible.
The Fourth Gospel was initially accepted by heterodox rather than orthodox Christians. The oldest known comment on this comes from the Gnostic Herakleon († 180), and the Valentinian Gnosis appropriated the Gospel of John to such an extent that the church father and heretic fighter Irenaeus felt compelled to refute their exegesis of this scripture. One wirter notes „rich evidence of an early Christian Gnostic familiarity with Johannine ideas in the Gnostic library of Nag Hammadi.“ At the same time, he also emphasizes that the use of the Gospel of John by orthodox sources is difficult to prove. This seems to suggest that for some reason the contents of the fourth gospel were not very attractive to the orthodox Christians, but very interesting to the Gnostic Christians.
At some points in his work, one theologian points out that the Gospel of John had a particular influence on Gnosis. This applies in particular to the Gospel of Philip, in which Mary Magdalene appears in two places as Jesus' partner, and the Gospel according to Mary, where she is Jesus' intimate confidante, bearer of revelation and herald of his message, and the Pistis Sophia, where she is also of great importance as Jesus' confidante and Lady Wisdom. As in Gnosis, in the Gospel of John the world (the cosmos) is considered inhabited by the sons of darkness (12, 35-36), the world is incompatible with Jesus (16, 20; 17, 14.16; 18, 36) and with his spirit. The world hates Jesus and those who follow him (7, 7; 15, 18-19; 16, 20); Jesus refuses to pray for the world (17, 9), but rather overcomes it and drives out the satanic prince of this world (12, 31; 14, 30). Moreover, as Jesus says very clearly, according to 8, 44 the father of the Jews is Satan, and the Gnostics regard Yahweh as the demiurge Jaldabaoth. Given so many parallels to Gnosticism, one has to ask how it came about. Early on, the Johannine Christians had a hard time with Judaism, or rather with the Yahwist religion, which even led to their being expelled from the synagogue, possibly in 85. One reason for this might also be that in the original text of John, where we read „Messiah” in the text of the final editing, Jesus is almost always referred to as „anointed one“. This is not in the sense of the eschatologically shaped Jewish theology with the Messiah expectation of the end times. It also puts more focus on the women who anointed Jesus and thus made him the Christ, which many of the Jewish rabbis may not have been too enthusiastic about either. However, one must not overlook the fact that the Jewish tradition in which the Ruach mother and Sophia were worshiped could hardly have been affected. After all, there is some evidence that Jesus grew up in such a tradition that was more dominated by women.
We will see that Mary Magdalene belonged to a pagan religion and even worked as a priestess of one. And one has to assume that people from their circle of acquaintances came across the early Christians, especially the Johannine community, and had a significant influence on them. Because the three synoptic gospels and their adherents were primarily writings for Jews of the most diverse groups, and thus primarily of interest to this clientele. The Gospel of John clearly breaks with Yahwism, especially in 8, 44, and thus inevitably with much of Judaism as well. This is hardly surprising when we compare the personality of Jesus with that of Yahweh: here the woman-friendly, gentle and wise man Jesus, there the short-tempered, destructive and domineering Yahweh. Even common sense tells us that Jesus can never in life be the son of the Jewish Father God!
A writer divides the development of the Johannine community into three stages:
The original grouping of this community was led by Mary Magdalene and Jesus. It has its roots already shortly after the resurrection of Jesus. After the period of exile in the British Isles, it found its continuation again in the Middle East, probably in the 50s, and lasted until the late 80s. It was also interesting for believers who did not belong to this community from the beginning, especially when Mary Magdalene was first a pagan who became a Gentile Christian after marrying Jesus. Fundamental to this community of faith was first and foremost the fact that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to Jesus' resurrection - if not the woman who had brought him herself from death to life! For the community, the element that Jesus had brought important teachings to this woman, which she then passed on to various disciples, was also certainly of quite decisive importance, which is reflected in the later Gnostic gospels. That this significance is not limited to this, we also see from the fact that Mary Magdalene was recognised as an apostle by various church fathers.
The second phase of the development of the Johannine community lasted from the 80s to the beginning of the 90s. During this period, which probably also includes the death of Jesus' wife, the Johannine community certainly already had a first version of their Gospel. A schism existed in this community, which probably had its cause in an internal dispute over high Christology. The community divided into two main groups: The secessionists, who later mixed with the Gnostics, and the apostolic Christians, who identified more with Jewish eschatology and Messiah expectation than with the idea of the Divine pre-existence of Jesus, that is, the belief that not Yahweh but Jesus himself as the Heavenly Christ is the Father-God.
In the third phase of development, which a wirter estimates from the early 90s to the turn of the century, a clear opposition to the secessionists had emerged. When the young church became an institutional organisation, it still lived in fear of ostracism and persecution, so it sought union with the leaders of the institutional church. The Gospels, including the Gospel of John, were revised by several editors to bring their content into line with the teaching of the apostolic church. Luke, who himself had never been a witness to the events of Jesus' life, probably played the main role in this. It was difficult for this church to accept that a community existed alongside it in which a woman had played a very important role alongside Jesus. With regard to the Gospel of John, the result of this development is the text we have in its present form.
Why the epithet Magdalene is not found in John's Gospel - and why her hometown Magdala was later assigned to her: As can be seen from the original text of John's Gospel, the surname „Magdalene“ is not found there. In the text of the final editing, however, it is mostly „Mary of Magdala“. What is the reason for this? In order to find out more, this byname must be examined more closely, and with it the various names of the hometown assigned to her:
Mary's byname „Magdalene“ was added later to the text in the three synoptic Gospels, that is certain. But why is it missing in John? Well, as I have already explained, „Magdalena“ or its prefix MAG has a number of meanings that are not readily apparent to everyone. In addition to the meaning of the name Mary, which clearly identifies the great bearer of this name as the Mother of the All and female counterpart next to the Creator God - contexts which must undoubtedly have been known to many Gnostics - its Indo-European root MAG, which together with her origin contributed to the formation of the epithet „Magdalena“, is also of utmost importance. It means „excellent, splendid, great“ and is a reference to the „Daughter of Sion“, which suggests a direct reference to the Great Pyramid or Tower of Giza, some 400 kilometres away from Jerusalem.
MAGdal refers to tower or to phallus, which has a remarkable parallel in Sanskrit: Lińgam can equally mean tower or penis, comparable to the Hebrew „migdal“ and the Greek „magdala“. Thus we have another possibility, which could have formed the basis for Mary Magdalene's later defamation as an alleged prostitute.
„MAGdal of Sefech (Seven)“ is an Egyptian term that corresponds to the „Tower of the Seven“ mentioned in Ezekiel, and this in turn is none other than the Tower (or Pyramid) of Giza. Hence MAG implies the „daughter of Sion“, i.e. the daughter of the Great Pyramid, but also the seven demons that Jesus is said to have cast out of her could be based on the number seven mentioned here.
We will encounter a number of roots and related words and terms concerning Magdalene. We will then speak of these in the appropriate context.
The city of Magdala. Since this was not known by this name at the time of the writing of the Gospels, it is worthwhile to trace this question a little. With regard to this question, a lady has done an excellent job, and I am therefore following her trail here:
Once Saint Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, had travelled to the Holy Land to „Mejdol“ in Galilee, located on the north-west coast of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), and claims to have discovered the house of Mary Magdalene there.
An older variant of the name Magdala is Migdal or Migdol. The Hebrew term migdal, migdol (מגדּלה מגדּל, מגדּל מגדּול, Hebrew „tower“), is related to the Greek word for „watchtower“ magdylos (μαγδωλος). It primarily means a tower or a tall or large building. Physically it means a fortified city, fortress or castle, geographically it can mean an elevated island in a river or high land in general. Joshua refers to a fortified city of Judah, another, in Naphtali, is called Migdal-El („Tower of El“), which has to do with the ancient father-god El (Joshua 19, 38). Also worth mentioning is a hill called Migdal Ha'emek on the Kishon River, this because it lies to the west of Nazareth and could thus have a reference to Jesus. Symbolically-etymologically, the name Migdal/Migdol suggests a reference to Mary Magdalene. But is this also the case with the name Magdala?
From 43 BC to AD 53, the city bore the Greek name Taricheai and was a prosperous Greek city with 40,000 inhabitants, 230 fishing boats and extensive orchards. It was located on a site apparently also claimed by a fishing village called Magdala Nunaiya (an Aramaic name). The name means „tower of fishermen“ or „fish tower“, had a fortress in earlier times and a significant fishing industry. Salted fish was produced here.
In Mark 8, 10 the city is mentioned under the name Dalmanuta: Immediately afterwards he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the area of Dalmanuta.
So Jesus, after feeding the four thousand, goes with his disciples to the town where Mary Magdalene was based! The name Dalmanuta is mentioned in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospels and is replaced by Magadan (Magedan) in Matthew 15, 39. Strangely, Matthew changes the name found in Mark just after the event in which loaves of bread and fishes had been multiplied. Perhaps the feeding of the people belongs less to the realm of miracles, but the wealthy Mary Magdalene living nearby actually provided the people with bread and fish. Leaving aside the question of how far this can be historically true, we will see the two fish in fact symbolise Mary Magdalene and Jesus.
The Talmud Taanit states that the prosperous and immoral Magdala was destroyed because of the spread of prostitution. But the claim of „prostitution“ is more symbolic than literal. The background is that the city had been Hellenised for a long time, had adopted Greek morals and customs, which was naturally a thorn in the side of the Jews. This could be one of the reasons for the later defamation of Mary Magdalene as a sinner.
In the earliest Greek manuscripts, the city on the Sea of Galilee, Dalmanuta, from Mark 8, 10 was renamed Magadan in the similar passage in Matthew 15, 39. A later, probably Greek-speaking copyist of this text, apparently influenced by Mary Magdalene's call, made it Magdala. This change is found as early as the fourth century, namely in the Babylonian Talmud, which mentions the Aramaic city of Nunaiya. Unfortunately, this error spread, especially in the translations of Erasmus, Martin Luther and the King James Bible, all of which reflect the corrupted language that Jesus went in a boat to the shores of Magdala. The corrupted version of the Matthew passage was widely disseminated through many vernacular translations by the Reformers. They all followed the text of a Greek manuscript used by the Greek Orthodox Churches called Textus Receptus from 1516, a text which ignores the reading Magadan and reads Magdala instead. The Roman Catholic Church ignored the older sources and also followed this Textus Receptus, and even in the Bibles of the Reformation the name Magdala survives to this day. However, there are also rays of hope. In „The five gospels“, a translation of the four canonical gospels and the Gospel of Thomas by the 74 scholars of the Jesus Seminar, Matthew 15, 39 is translated Magadan instead of Magdala. Apparently, the error was recognised there as well.
But why was Mary Magdalene named after the Aramaic name (Magadan, Magdala) of a Greek city (Taricheai)? If a city called „Magdala“ did not exist in Jesus' time, and if Jesus never visited a „Magdala“, but the city of Magadan was later renamed Magdala, one suspects that this renaming has special reasons. It is an attempt by the Christian side to assign a birthplace called Magdala to Mary with the title Magdalene. The true meaning of Magdalena was to be covered up, and zealous Christians searched for a town whose name had a similar root. In the process, their attention fell on the fishing village of Magdala Nunaiya, which was supposedly destroyed because of its sinfulness and prostitution or idolatry. This is how the reputation of the alleged sinner came about.
It is obvious that the name „Magdalene“ was a thorn in the side of an editor of John's Gospel, and he chose the wording of „Mary of Magdala“ instead.
When considering the subject of Magdala, the ancient garrison town of Magdolum should not be overlooked. In the letters of Šuta, which date from 1340 BC, a city called Magdalu (or Magdolum) in Egypt is mentioned. Located on the north-eastern border of Judea, this ancient city was the last encampment of the Israelites before they crossed the Red Sea, according to the Book of Exodus. The name Magdalu probably derives from the Hebrew gadal, which means „to exalt“ in size or importance. Jeremiah 44, 1 says that Migdol (as he and Ezekiel call the city) and other nearby Jewish communities had important colonies of Diaspora Jews. These Jews built a temple on the Nile island of Elephantine, a replica of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Jewish emigrants worshipped the goddess Anath there together with Yahweh (the latter under the name Yahu). The sanctuary is probably the temple called Beth-Anath, mentioned in Hosea 19, 38, and Beth-Anath derives from Bethany, which is a reference to Mary of Bethany or Mary Magdalene. In Jeremiah 44 the cult is described in detail, and it seems that the Anath there is the Queen of Heaven. The Egyptians destroyed the temple in 410 BC, but Onias IV rebuilt it at Leontopolis, near Magdalu, north of Heliopolis. The Qumran texts, as well as classical Jewish literature such as the Juhasin, link it to the Samaritan Temple on Mount Garizim. Despite the destruction of the temple by the Egyptians, there were alliances with them, especially those directed against Rome. There is a high probability that Jesus and Mary Magdalene stayed there and that they were familiar with the Egyptian language. Some passages in John's Gospel, especially where it is about the resurrection of Mage, are said to speak for this. Anath, the Queen of Heaven, initially suggests only a mythological-symbolic association, although this is hardly more than a suggestion, with Mary Magdalene. It is interesting, however, that the ancient classical Jewish book Juhasin associates the temple of Anath Jahu on Elephantine with the Samaritan temple on Mount Garizim. And this would be an indication that Mary Magdalene had something to do with the cult of the dove goddess Ashima in Samaria.
O goddess of the doves and the deafs, I adore thee!