This article cites a teeny bit of the academic research that inspired the revisionist scenario of Mary Magdalene in _The Divinci Code_ (although that book goes much further than is supported in the ancient texts!):
http://www.msnbc.com/news/999077.asp "...What started out as scholarship with an openly feminist political agenda has evolved into serious and respected inquiry. To understand this change, consider what has happened to the field during the career of Bernadette Brooten. As a graduate theology student at Harvard in the late 1970s, Brooten was told that scholars already knew everything there was to know about women in the Bible. Yet Brooten, now a professor of Christian studies at Brandeis University, made the remarkable discovery by reading older versions of the Bible that Junius, one of the many Christian �Apostles� mentioned by Saint Paul, was in fact a woman, Junia, whose name was masculinized over the centuries by translators with their own agenda. Brooten�s discovery became �official� when Junia�s real name was incorporated into the New Standard Revised Version of the Bible, which came out in 1989." There's mention of some of the other women, in both Hebrew and Christian testaments. <raises eyebrow> Mary M's feast day is my birthday! I didn't know that the idea that she was a redeemed prostitute "probably began with a sermon by Pope Gregory the Great in A.D. 591 in which he conflated several figures into one. In 1969 the Vatican officially overruled Gregory." Aside: I enjoyed TdVC, but the ending is rather weak. Debbi Heretic Lutheran Deist With Quaker Overtones :) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
