THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MARYS, PART SEVEN
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MARYS, PART SEVEN
In general, the faiths that opposed Roman Christianity, and that were described by Roman as pagan and heretical, were not hideous, savage or satanic. To the Roman Church, however, they were all of these things because they accepted the female principle along with the male. To Gnostic believers, the Holy Spirit was essentially the female element that bound the Father to the Son. But Rome decreed that the Trinity was "One God". And for this reason, although Jesus' mother Mary was afforded some concession as the Mother of God, she was not part of the divine Trinity which remained defined in wholly masculine terms.
Christianity adopted the God of Israel as a result of Jesus' mission, as did the Gnostics and the Nazarenes, whose women members acted quite freely as teachers, healers, evangelists, and priestesses. Within the Romanized Christian environment, however, all trace of female opportunity rapidly disappeared. One of the most prominent matriarchal sects of the 2nd century preached a faith inherited from Mary Magdalene, Martha and Helena-Salome. Tertullian angrily denounced the group: "These heretical women! How dare they! They are brazen enough to teach, to engage in argument, to undertake exorcisms, to effect cures, and (it may be) even to baptize!"
In sectarian Jewish communities, women had long been excluded from many aspects of everyday life -- education, public worship, and indeed any social or political activity outside the family environment. But this had not been the case for those in Hellenist communities, whose ideals were conversely inspired by cultural thought in Greece and Asia Minor, where women were involved equally with men in the veneration of Isis. In Jesus' time, women were in a particularly advanced state of emancipation in Egypt. Likewise, Roman women of the wealthy classes were equally involved in business, politics, literature, mathematics, and philosophy. It was the Roman Church that was the exception -- and it was different for one overriding reason: to curtail Jesus's dynastic royal legacy as embodied in Mary Magdalene.
Many of the learned women who led the groups that were formally described as heretical promoted a teaching based on the instruction from the ascetic Therapeutate at Qumran. Such teaching was inclined to be spiritually-based (whereas the Roman form of Christianity was very materialist), and the spiritual teaching was accordingly perceived as an enormous threat. Rome's strategy against the women teachers was straightforward: they were to be considered sinners and subordinates on the authority of St. Paul: "First Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (1 Timothy 2:13-14)
It was at this time that such women teachers were first described intentionally as harlots, with its revised connotations for "scarlet women." The Church degreed that they were all whores, and the malicious redefinitions have prevailed to this day.
By the early 2nd century AD, a process of segregation had commenced in Christian churches: the men performed the rite, the women worshipped in silence. At the end of the century even this level of involvement had gone -- women's participation in religious worship was forbidden altogether. Any female known to take part in religious practice was denounced as "whore and a sorceress."
According to the Gospel of Mary, Levi (Matthew Annas) argued with Peter over the rights of Mary Magdalene: "But if the Savior found her worthy, who are you, indeed, to reject her? The Savior surely knows her well enough -- this is why he loved her more than us." In contrast to Peter and his brother Andrew, the other disciples are said to have agreed with Levi, for they were encouraged by what Mary had said, and readily accepted her teaching. Gospels that showed Mary in such a light were, in the event, simply not selected for inclusion in the canonical New Testament. Furthermore, the four that were chosen were edited to suit Church requirement. But people were generally aware of Mary's importance even before any form of official Bible was produced. The tradition that retained the knowledge remained current in Britain and France, through the Dark Ages, to medieval times when the Magdalene was the inspirational Notre Dame of the early Crusades and the great Gothic cathedrals.
That being the case, then how did the Church manage to remove her from the forefront of its Apostolic structure?
What happened in the first instance was that the Roman Church drew specific attention to two passages in the Bible: Genesis 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 11:3. Both had been quoted in the Church's original 4th-century Apostolic Constitutions. The first described how the Lord God said to Eve of Adam, "He shall rule over thee." The second "a quotation of St. Paul's words) stated, "The head of the woman is the man."
On the basis of this purely imaginary story, the Church decreed that the first Apostles had clearly stated that women were not to be permitted to become priests because they were not serious-minded! The essence of this fabricated conversation was then adopted as formal Church doctrine, and Mary Magdalene was thereafter pronounced a disbelieving recusant.
Much earlier, in about AD 180, Bishop Clement of Alexandria, had written something that amounted to the exact opposite. A prominent Father of the Church, he declared: "Men and women share equally in perfection, and are to receive the same instruction and the same discipline. For the word "humanity" applies equally to both men and women, and for us in Christ there is neither male nor female."
In justification of his words, Clement listed a number of women who had been significant in past history, especially in terms of academic learning. His view was widely supported by contemporary educated society. Even so, the Pope later ruled that Clement had been in error: it was declared with thunderous authority that "a woman cannot be a priest because our Lord was a man!"