Mary Magdalene; The Apostle to the Apostles

Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the Gospels as being among the women of Galilee who followed Jesus and His disciples. She was present at His Crucifixion and Burial, and went to the tomb on Easter Sunday to anoint His body. She was the first to see the Risen Jesus, and to announce His Resurrection to the apostles. Accordingly, she is referred to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles."

Orthodox Christianity has paid little attention to Hebrew Scripture that seemed to prophesy a Jewish High Priestess and/or a Goddess:

And you, O Magdalah of the flock, hill of daughter Zion, to you it shall come, the former dominion shall come, the sovereignty of daughter Jerusalem.

As a result, the possibility that prophesy existed – and was fulfilled – has never been explored. Philo’s Method applied to Mark’s Gospel may reveal her arrival at the time of Jesus:

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Salome, brought spices so that they might go and anoint him.

A careful examination of each part of the key Greek words in Mark 16:1 reveals equally valid translation options that carry vastly different connotations. Mark’s opening words in his final chapter were: “When diagenomenou…” Dia-genomenou consists of two parts: dia, was used by Homer and others to identify Zeus. It is also defined as heavenly (of or from Zeus); through (to express conditions or states);^[1] genomenou is defined as to come into a new state of being.[2]

Strong Concordance No. 1096 adds ginomai, defined as properly, to emerge, become, transitioning from one point (realm, condition) to another… a change of condition, state or place (attributed to Vine, Unger, White, NT, 109).[3]

Strong’s concludes with this intriguing option: to come into being/manifestation implying motion, movement, or growth” (at 2 Pet 1:4). Thus it is used for God’s actions as emerging from eternity and becoming (showing themselves) in time (physical space),^[4] Quoting M. Vincent.

Therefore, diagenomenou could be translated as a deity crossed over from the realm of spirit and became visible at a place in time and space.

The word Shabbat, translated as Sabbath is Strong’s Concordance No. 4520. The Hebrew word from which Sabbath is derived is the same word from which the name of an ancient, virtually unknown Hebrew goddess is derived. Her name was Shabbat Hamalka:

Among the goddesses representing either the female side of Yahweh or his consorts, such as Asherah, Shekinah, Anath, and Lilith, Shabbat Hamalka has a unique personality and origin. Her myth strongly influenced Jewish thought, and contributed to the strength of home and family that had improved the odds for physical and spiritual Jewish survival.

The name means Queen of the Sabbath, and the entity is the personification of the Jewish day of rest, Saturday. She still possesses a prominent position in Judaic mythology. For example, Israeli children, even in completely nonreligious surroundings, still sing songs to her every Friday afternoon (in Hebrew “Erev Shabatt” meaning the Sabbath Eve) before the Queen ‘descends’ from Heaven to grace the world for twenty-four hours.[5]

Hebrew words that are similar to Μαρία (Mary) include Merom, defined as exaulted, high; mayim, translated as water; sha-mayim, translated as heaven; meiromai, defined as to get as a section or allotment; a division or share (literally or figuratively).[6]

With these valid alternative definitions – and ancient uses – Mark 16:1 can be re-examined for an esoteric message. A translation – as correct as the traditional version – would be:

Shabbat (YHWH’s consort) crossed over from the realm of Spirit into the visible realm. Mayim (cleansing water) Magdalene (the Watchtower), Daughter Jerusalem, accompanied by Merom mother of James and Salome, took spices to the tomb to anoint Jesus.”

The Egyptian myth from which portions of The Jesus Story may have been borrowed reported that on the third day after Osiris/Serapis’ death, his mother and his wife - the goddess Isis - entered the tomb with healing spices. They were there to bring him back to life. To the Egyptians, the three days in the tomb represented the time it took a small, lifeless seed of grain to break through the earth on its way to becoming their primary source of food. And, as previously noted, the most popular version of the Osiris myth in the first century was written by Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus.

Myths were created to attempt to explain the visible and the invisible realms in stories everyone could understand, remember, and repeat. The purpose was twofold: (1) to create fear (to manipulate the thinking and actions of the fearful masses); (2) to provide answers that would calm those fears (to gain the trust and obedience of the dependent masses).

With the introduction of a fourth sect of Judaism, a Iesous Myth was created to do the same for the Israelites and Judeans of the Roman Empire. YHWH’s temper and punishments put quite a strain on his people, and without the moderating function of a goddess such as Shabbat or Asherah, YHWH’s wrath knew no bounds. The Goddess, often identified with Wisdom, could be used to put YHWH's power to work in ways that were less retaliatory and more constructive.

The evidence in this chapter suggests that the myths of Osiris/Serapis and Isis were woven into the story of the return of the Jewish King who brought with him YHWH’s ancient bride, Shabbat, with a new name which fulfilled the prophesy of Micah 4:8, Magdalah. The Gospel writers added Mayim to her name to signify that she represented the cleansing waters of Baptism and new birth. She was Mary the Magdalene. And she may have been more, a thread that will be picked up in the second part of this chapter, Was She the Anointing Sinner?

For nearly two thousand years, Mary Magdalene has been associated with Luke’s “Sinner” and generally assumed to have been a prostitute. That assumption can be attributed to words written by Luke. He described,

a woman in the city, who was a sinner,^[7]having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.”

It’s easy to see why the Church associated Mary Magdalene with the anointing “Sinner.” It was soon after Jesus was anointed by the woman who was a Sinner that Mary Magdalene began traveling with Him and the twelve. Luke added to the perception when he opened Chapter Eight with,

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages... The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene ... and Ioanna...[8]

The question to be answered: Was Mary Magdalene The Sinner, and if so, was the intent to identify her as a prostitute? Important clues to the answer are found at Luke 8:2-3 and 24:10 where it is written,

Just as Jonah [Gk. Ἰωνᾶ] became a sign to the people of Nineveh,[9] so the Son of Man will be to this generation. The Basilissa of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the Wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! The people of Nineveh[10] will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah [Ἰωνᾶ] is here!

Enigmatically, something greater than Ἰωνᾶ is Ἰωάννα. Ioanna contains a greater number of letters than does Iona. Also notable is that the city of Nineveh played an important role in the story of another first century religious leader - Apollonius of Tyana. Roman Empress Julia Domna (170 – 217 CE) sponsored the reconstruction of the biography of Apollonius which was written in the late second or early third century by a man named Philostratus. His work, Life of Apollonius, was allegedly based on an earlier text curiously titled, Scraps from the Manger, attributed to Apollonius’ loyal companion Damis. According to Philostratus, when Apollonius

reached the ancient city of Nineveh, where he found an idol set up of barbarous aspect, and it is, they say, Io, the daughter of Inachus, with little horns budding on her temples. While he was staying there and forming wiser conclusions about the image than could the priests and prophets, one Damis, a native of Nineveh, joined him as a pupil, the same, as I said at the beginning, who became the companion of his wanderings abroad and his fellow-traveler and associate in all wisdom, and who has preserved to us many particulars of the sage.

Life of Apollonius describes him as the son of a deity and a mortal woman, born at about the same time Jesus was born, celibate, and Pious. The name of the city associated with Apollonius, Nineveh, may have been derived from Nina, one of the Babylonian names for the goddess Ishtar. “The ideogram means ‘house or place of fish.’” and “the Aramaic word, nuna, denotes

Nineveh is also the city associated with the apocryphal story of the faithful Israelite Tobit. It was where he and the Israelites were exiled, where his son was married, and where he himself died and was buried. Tobit bemoaned the fact that his kindred sacrificed to the calf that King Jeroboam of Israel erected in Dan and on all the mountains of Galilee. He was greatly distressed that he alone went to Jerusalem for the festivals, as prescribed for all Israelites.[12] He was the only Jew held captive in Nineveh who did not “eat the food of the Gentiles.”[13]

Some biblical scholars have suggested that chapters thirteen and fourteen of Tobit were added much later, that they contain numerous echoes of Old Testament passages, especially Isaiah 40-55, and that they have no particular bearing on Tobit’s personal situation. A footnote in one source notes,

On the other hand, while Tobit and his family have been delivered, the other exiles have not; therefore chs 13-14 can be seen as completing the story of Israel’s

Chapter thirteen is a hymn and a call for the people of Nineveh, especially the exiled wayward Israelites, to turn away from the foreign deities and turn instead to Elohim. It is an echo of the message of Deuteronomy 29:24-26 which says,

all the nations will wonder, ‘Why has YHWH done thus to this land? What caused this great display of anger?’ They will conclude, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of YHWH, the Elohim of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. They turned and served other gods, worshipping them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them.

Tobit’s contribution to solving this puzzle clarifies the term, Sinner when it is paired with Deuteronomy and Ezekiel:

I will pour my wrath upon Sin, the stronghold of Egypt, and cut off the hordes of Thebes.

Sin was a proper noun, the name of a city in Egypt, later changed to Pelusium. The first Divine Mesopotamian King ruled from ca.2254 - 2218 BCE as the Akkadian Moon God; his daughter was the goddess, InAnna, and Nineveh was the location of one of his administrative centers. This god’s name was Sin; therefore, his family, including his daughter, would have been referred to as Sinners.^{^[15]}

In the land of my exile I acknowledge [YHWH], and show his power and majesty to a nation of Sinners: ‘Turn back [to YHWY], you Sinners, and do what is right before him; perhaps he may look with favor upon you and show you mercy.

Sin was also the god who was worshipped by the people of Nineveh and in the Wilderness of Sin, the location of Mount Sin-ai before, during, and after the time of Moses. The people Tobit addressed as Sinners were Israelites who had turned away from YHWH and worshipped the deities of their captors, the family of Sin.

The Wilderness of Sin and Mount Sin-ai were the home of the Mesopotamian deity that ruled the land long before the arrival of YHWH. The same deity was prominent in the history of Nineveh which tells the story of the first Mesopotamian king to claim divinity for himself and his family – a tradition carried forward in time to the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt and the Emperors of Rome.

Enigmatically, Luke 11:30-32 reveals that “... greater than Nineveh’s Iona is IoAnna.” The Sinner who anointed Jesus can be associated with the goddess, InAnna whose father was the god Sin, making her a Sinner. And, the Wilderness and the Mountain made famous by Moses, must have been named after this god called Sin.

Sin in ancient Egypt was also a city with an interesting history before and after its name was changed to Pelusium:

333 BCE: Sin/Pelusium welcomed Alexander the Great who placed a garrison in the city under the command of one of the “Companions of the King.”[16]

173 BCE: Antiochus Epiphanes defeated Ptolemy Philometor’s troops under the walls of Sin/Pelusium which he retained after he left the rest of Egypt.[17] By the time Syria was conquered, Sin/Pelusium had been restored to the Ptolemies.

55 BCE: Ptolemy Auletes, Cleopatra’s father, called on the Romans for assistance. Marc Antony came to the rescue but made himself “Master of the City” when he learned that Ptolemy planned to slaughter the citizens of Sin/Pelusium.[18]

30 BCE: Shortly after his victory at the Battle of Actium, Augustus appeared before Sin/Pelusium and was admitted within its walls.

The rulers and citizens of Sin/Pellusium were also Sinners, residents of Sin. So, too were their descendants.

The phrase, “Mary, known as Magdalene … and IoAnna,” may have been created to unite into one person three well-known ancient women. Two were goddesses: Io, the first goddess queen of Egypt and InAnna, the daughter of the Mesopotamian Moon-god Sin.

The third is the woman who fulfilled the prophecy at Micah 4:8, MGDL – the Watchtower – also called, Daughter Jerusalem.

The thread that led to the family of Sin may have been cut when a scribe sought a Greek word to define those who deny YHWH and worship other deities and chose hamartolos, a word derived from ha-martanó,[19] a compound of a (not) and meros:

From an obsolete but more primary form of meiromai (to get as a section or allotment); a division or share (literally or figuratively, in a wide application) - behalf, course, coast, craft, particular (+ -ly), part (+ -ly), piece, portion, respect, side, some sort(-what).[20]

Sinners were those who worshipped the god Sin and would not be allotted a share of YHWH’s rewards to His people; therefore, they were hamartolos. Perhaps the Lover of Wisdom added the last two chapters to Tobit to aid in the search for the genesis of Sinner as it applied to the anointing woman. Without Tobit to label Sin’s people and Ezekiel to identify Sin City in Egypt, this mystery might have remained unsolved.

According to Esoteric Luke, it seems that the Sons of Elohim arrived in Jerusalem with his consort, Magdalah. To satisfy the Greco-Romans and Egyptians, this god was also the son of Zeus and Apollo and She was the daughter of the Egyptian goddess, Dam Isis. She was a Sinner – descended from the family of the Moon-god, and the Ptolemies who ruled Sin’s City in Egypt.

Magdalene was indeed the anointing woman who was also called a Sinner. However, Sinner referred to a descendant of the rulers of the city named Sin, and a descendant of the moon-god Sin. Sinner did not infer a common prostitute who sold herself to mortal men. As a Vestal Virgin she mated with gods to produce Sons of Gods. But Mary Magdalene was not a common prostitute!

[1] Middle Liddell.

[2] Middle Liddell.

[3] Strong’s Online Concordance: http://biblesuite.com/greek/1096.htm.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Excerpted from the article, “Shabbat Hamalka” by Ilil Arbel, Ph.D. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/shabbat_hamalka.html)

[6] Strong’s Concordance No. 3312.

[7] Philo’s No. 6, synonyms must be carefully studied.

[8] Philo’s No. 5, different meaning from different combination of words; No. 6, study synonyms.

[9] Philo’s No. 1, doubling of a phrase.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Jewish Encyclopedia Online: www.jewishencyclopedia.com

[12] Tobit 1:5-6

[13] Tobit 1:10

[14] New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha; note 13.1-17, p. 16 AP.

[15] Encyclopedia Britinnica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/545523/Sin

[16]Arrian, Exp. Alex. iii. 1, seq.; Quintus Curtius iv. 33.

[17] Polybius, Legat. § 82; Hieronym. in Daniel. xi.

[18] Plutarch, Life of Antony. ca.3; Valerius Maximus. ix. 1

[19] Strong’s Concordance No. 263.

[20] Strong’s Concordance No. 3312.