
Friday, March 5, 2010
A Case of Mistaken Identity
In my New Testament classes at Liberty University the students have to write a final paper for me, and one of the options is to do a “Character Study” on a New Testament character that figured prominently in Jesus’ life and ministry. Every term several choose Mary Magdalene. For
centuries she has been one of those New Testament figures about whom much speculation has swirled. Thanks in part to fanciful theories about her relationship with Jesus (see, for example, Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, and Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code), Mary of Magdala continues to command curiosity from students and scholars alike.

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7 comments:
Thank you for untangling the knotty problem of the three Marys. The gospel writers bear some of the responsibility for the confusion and not simply because Luke introduces Mary Magdalene right after the anointing story. Is it just a coincidence that Jesus is anointed at the home of a man named Simon in all three synoptic gospels or that Matthew, Mark, and John agree that the anointing took place in Bethany? Although there are some differing details, the stories are quite similar. Is it irreverent or illogical to conclude that there was an anointing story based on one historical event, which each evangelist retold differently to suit his own rhetorical purpose?
One of the problems we moderns have in understanding the Fourfold Gospel Tradition is that we are afflicted with what I sometimes call "The Sergeant Friday Syndrome." You may remember the old Dragnet television series (That's right...I really am that old!) in which Sergeant Friday would investigate some crime, and there would be an hysterical witness blurting out his/her "take" on what had happened, complete with a lot of information Sergeant Friday regarded as either irrelevant or unnecessary or both. Finally, in exasperation, he would tell the eyewitness: "Just the facts, ma'am. Just give me the facts."
Sometimes we read the Gospels as "Sergeant Friday" looking only for the facts without remembering that the Gospels were composed by believers for believers...people who were not trying to be "objective" by modern standards (the quotation marks being intentional), but were rather witnessing to their faith in Jesus in ways with which their audiences could connect and relate. That doesn't mean that they were not telling the truth; they were, and any honest and fair attempt to assess ALL the evidence (even by modern evidentiary standards) will, I am convinced, bear that out. But what it does mean is that they were not dispassionate or disinterested observers uninvolved in the events to which they were bearing witness, engaging in what one has called "drive-by reporting." Rather, they were first and foremost believers in Jesus Christ. And because both writers and audiences differed from Gospel to Gospel, the tone and texture, colors and hues, of their witnesses were crafted by and shaped for their peculiar purposes.
Through the years, the way I've explained it to students is by asking them to think of the Gospels more as "portraits" than "photographs." If I were to give four different people cameras and ask them to take a photograph of the same subject, all things being equal, the photographs should be identical. But if I were to give them a canvas and paints and ask them to paint a portrait of the same person, I would get four recognizable, but somewhat different, portraits of that person, each portrait revealing BOTH the subject and the painter; that is, his peculiar skill, emphasis, and perspective.
Of course one must also take into account the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the production of the Gospels (in ways I believe but cannot fully explain), and, of course, any analogy will break down if pressed too far; but this illustration does justice both to the fact that God's Spirit inspired the Gospel writers and also worked through each one's individuality in providing for the Church four different "portraits" of Jesus. That is to say, in the Gospels we see the real Jesus, (not a "made up Jesus" on the one hand, or four different "Jesuses" on the other); but because we're looking at Him through the medium of each Gospel writer's "portrait," we see Jesus through the eyes of the individual Gospel writers, each one choosing which aspects of Jesus he will emphasize in his "portrait."
Perhaps that will help. If not, you needn't bother with it a moment more.
Yes, the witnesses of the gospels are anything but dispassionate. Jesus came to mean everything to them and He was the way they came to understand and interpret God and their relationship to Him. Their ultimate concern flows through history to this very day.
I think the analogy of "painting" vs "photography" is a good one to explain the four canonical perspectives on Jesus. I think scholars are still trying to figure out if the artists were more like Bonheur, Van Gogh, or Pollack.
Wayne, I do find your comments helpful. I was reacting to your statement: “The confusion, unfortunately, continues to be perpetuated by uninformed persons who pass on the misinformation.” I don’t think all of the confusion is caused by ignorance. Some of it is the result of the synoptic problem itself. Like most conservative scholars you posit two very similar anointings, which both coincidentally took place at the house of a man named Simon—one in Galilee in Luke, another in Judea in Matthew, Mark, and John. If that works for you, fine. You still have discrepancies among the non-Lucan accounts to sort out, which may be due to artistic license as your portrait analogy suggests. I want to push your analogy a bit further. John is the only evangelist who identifies the woman as Mary of Bethany and John’s gospel was written after (perhaps long after) the synoptics according to Bible scholars. Is it possible that John attributed the story to Mary for rhetorical, not historical, reasons? Or would that be pushing your portrait analogy too far?
J. Travis,
I for one do not know if you have pushed the analogy too far or not. However, I think you have moved from Bonheur to Van Gogh.
My! Lots of interest in this! Glad to see that ministers are still reading the Bible! Encouraging.
Don't know, Travis, whether the accounts can be harmonized or not; don't know who knows. That was not my point or purpose. My point was that there is no basis in the text of the New Testament for the false tradition that Mary of Magdala was a "loose woman" or worse, a prostitute. Best we can tell, that whole thing got started as a result of a sermon by Pope Gregory in the 6th century and has been perpetuated ever since. It still amazes me at the lengths to which Christians will go to avoid actually reading the text!
Wayne,
Well, even more than ministers read the Bible. How about a retired CPA? I do not know if that is more or less encouraging. However, I think it is a small minority of people who actually read it for themselves. More people read or have it read to them in church. Even more people in the western world have an opinion about it. Few try to understand it in its original context (to the extent that it is possible to do this). Personally, I do not get very far without having my own perpective or tradition creeping into the picture. Of course, the post-modernists keep telling us that we have no other choice.
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