Latest / Future Christian / Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer on Rethinking Mary Magdalene (Part 1)

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Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer on Rethinking Mary Magdalene (Part 1) · Future Christian

0:04
>> Paul: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast, your
0:07
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your
0:10
church into the 21st century.
0:14
At the Future Christian podcast, we talk to
0:17
pastors, authors, and other faith leaders for helpful
0:20
advice and practical wisdom to help you and your
0:23
community of faith walk boldly into the future.
0:26
Now here's your host, Loren Richman
0:28
Juniore.
0:33
>> Loren: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. Today,
0:36
Martha Tatarnic welcomes doctor Elizabeth Schrader
0:38
Pulzer to the show. This is the first of a two
0:41
part episode, so be sure to stay tuned next week for
0:44
the second half. Elizabeth Schrader
0:47
Pulser is assistant professor of New Testament at
0:50
Villanova University. She holds a
0:53
doctorate in early Christianity from Duke
0:55
University with a focus on textual
0:58
criticism, Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel
1:01
of John. Her research has been published in
1:04
the Harvard Theological the
1:06
Journal of Biblical Literature,
1:09
TC A, UH, Journal of Biblical
1:12
Textual Criticism, the comparative
1:14
oriental manuscript Studies Bulletin, and the
1:17
Journal of Early Christian Studies. She
1:20
is regularly invited to present her peer
1:23
reviewed research at churches and conferences
1:25
internationally. One more thing. Please
1:28
take a moment to leave a review on whatever
1:31
podcast app you're listening on and share this
1:33
episode with a friend. Thanks and
1:36
enjoy the episode.
1:42
>> Martha Tatarnic: welcome to the Future Christian podcast. I
1:45
am your host for the summer season, Martha
1:48
Tatarnic. And today I am
1:50
having a conversation with somebody
1:53
whose work I have been following closely for the past couple
1:56
of years, and for a variety of reasons, would count as a
1:59
personal hero. Doctor Elizabeth
2:02
Schrader Pulitzer and we are
2:05
going to hi. We're going to be
2:08
discussing Elizabeth's groundbreaking
2:10
work in biblical scholarship, particularly in how
2:13
we see and understand Mary Magdalene and
2:16
the Gospel of John. We're going to be doing
2:19
this over the course of two separate podcasts in
2:22
order to do justice, not just to her work,
2:25
but also to its implications.
2:28
Uh, I say
2:31
with quite a bit of seriousness that Elizabeth
2:34
is kind of the Taylor Swift, um, uh,
2:36
biblical scholarship, and that
2:39
says, uh, something about both her
2:41
talent, uh, and her
2:44
reach. So welcome to the podcast.
2:47
>> Elizabeth: Thank you so much. I don't know if my reach is quite as big as Taylor Swift's, but
2:50
I like where you're going with that.
2:54
>> Martha Tatarnic: Well, uh, it helps my kids to
2:56
understand, you know, why this
2:59
interview is such a big deal.
3:03
So, um, speaking of Taylor
3:05
Swift, uh, and
3:08
music and, uh, that analogy,
3:11
let's just set this context a little bit here
3:14
for how you became one of the most talked
3:17
about biblical scholars of our day, because it's
3:20
not exactly an obvious
3:22
path. Um, but,
3:25
uh, maybe you could just begin by telling us a little
3:28
bit about what your relationship with christianity
3:31
and the church was growing up?
3:33
>> Elizabeth: Sure, yeah. I, um, mean, I grew up in the
3:35
episcopal church. Um, I
3:38
am from Oregon. Um, I had a
3:41
really strong youth group
3:44
growing up. Um, and I would
3:47
say I got really involved in the church as a teenager.
3:50
And, um, you know, we did these church
3:53
weekends called teens encounter Christ. And,
3:56
uh, all of my best friends still to this
3:58
day went to that with me. Um, so it was
4:01
very good for bonding. And,
4:04
um, then in college, I don't think I
4:07
really went to church in college. I went to school in southern
4:10
California at Pomona college. And I think I kind of, like,
4:13
dropped off from church attendance in my twenties, as probably a lot of
4:16
people do. I got really interested in
4:19
meditation in particular, actually.
4:22
And, um, I got
4:25
along the way. I was interested in finding a guru,
4:28
which maybe a lot of people do at some point in
4:31
their spiritual seeking. And,
4:34
um, I would say I
4:37
did get interested in meditation, and I would say I was kind of
4:39
seeking for a while. And then
4:42
sort of in my early thirties,
4:45
somehow it just became clear to me that my
4:48
guru, well, I knew I had an intuition that my
4:50
guru was female. And I'm like, who is it?
4:53
And, um, after a lot of seeking, I
4:56
learned that I realized it's Mother Mary.
4:59
Mother Mary is my spiritual guide. And I was
5:02
like, oh, really? Okay. And then I just started going
5:05
back to church. Really? Yeah, I started going back
5:08
to episcopal church at that point. I lived in, um, Brooklyn,
5:11
New York. And so, yeah, I started
5:14
going back to church in my thirties,
5:16
um, but it was kind of like right back where I left off.
5:19
The episcopal church is pretty consistent, um, and
5:22
has been for quite a while. And one of the nice things about growing up in the
5:25
episcopal church is I feel very aligned with their
5:28
values. And I never felt like I had to leave
5:30
or change. Um, and so, yeah, so
5:33
then I was going back to an episcopal church in
5:36
my thirties. And, um, during this whole time, I was a
5:39
music major in college and I was in a band
5:42
and we won this big contest sponsored by
5:45
Pantene. And we opened for
5:47
Jewel. And then we were invited to tour with Jewel a little bit,
5:50
which was cool. And, um, we also,
5:53
uh, toured with Poe, who maybe people remember
5:56
her song angry Johnny. That was kind of like her biggest hit.
5:59
>> Martha Tatarnic: Uh, I was really into that. Well, I still am into
6:02
that album. I still on playlists that
6:05
I have. I loved that
6:08
album.
6:09
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. And we were on tour with her for her second record, which is called
6:11
haunted, um, which is also a really good
6:14
record. And so that was fun to tour around the country with
6:17
her. Um, and then we also won a
6:20
contest where we got to open for rusted Root, which was
6:23
cool, in San Francisco. And, um, then because I had won
6:26
the Pantene contest, I got to go back to a
6:28
future iteration of that contest. And I met, like, michelle
6:31
Branch and India. Ari.
6:35
There's these pictures of me with these artists, which
6:38
is fun. And I. So, yeah, that was
6:41
all really fun. My band, though, didn't really.
6:44
They were kind of like dudes who wanted
6:47
to be in like, a guy band. And they were sort of,
6:50
like, embarrassed to have a female lead singer
6:53
because the song I won the contest about was called
6:56
Blood Red Moon, which was about a late period.
6:59
And I think they just found it kind of embarrassing. And
7:01
so the band didn't really work out
7:04
in the long run. And so, um,
7:07
they sort of started their own band, which is called the action
7:10
cats, which is like, everybody in my band except me,
7:13
which is kind of a bummer. Um, and so
7:16
that was really hard for me. But I ended up,
7:18
um, just being a female singer songwriter
7:21
after that. And I did that for quite a while. And,
7:24
um, I toured so many colleges,
7:27
including Villanova, where I'm a professor now, which is
7:30
super funny. I'm like, the last time I was here, I was playing at
7:33
the Connelly center.
7:34
>> Martha Tatarnic: Like playing and probably not necessarily dreaming
7:37
about becoming a professor.
7:39
>> Elizabeth: No, no, no. I was trying to make it in the music business.
7:41
Um, I did have some more fun things happen as
7:44
a solo artist. I got to be on an episode of the Gilmore
7:47
Girls, the 6th season finale. You can see
7:50
me as one of the troubadours.
7:53
Um, in this episode called partings, where Lorelei and Luke
7:56
have a fight. I mean, you can see me. I
7:59
was at Stars Hollow, which is actually in Burbank,
8:01
California, um, for a few days filming that
8:03
episode. Um, my songs are on like,
8:06
a lot of sort of MTV reality
8:09
shows and I still get royalties for my songs.
8:12
Being in the background of, I don't know, true
8:14
life, I self injure or like,
8:17
julianna and Bill. Like, there's all these, like,
8:19
funny shows. I mean, the music business is
8:22
hard.
8:23
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, yeah, I did it for a.
8:25
>> Elizabeth: Long time and I still, you know, it's nice to get some
8:28
royalties every once in a while still. But,
8:30
um, I think I was definitely starting to
8:33
get burned out on it because after this huge,
8:36
amazing thing of winning this contest and
8:39
touring with jewel and seeing what it's like to play for like
8:42
5000 people and touring the country and
8:45
all that, um, and uh,
8:48
making records and getting better and better at my craft. I
8:51
think I became a better and better artist as I got older,
8:53
but it's a really youth focused culture.
8:56
And like the. I felt like,
8:59
um, the entertainment business cared more about
9:02
me for being young than for being
9:04
accomplished.
9:06
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, well, and it's interesting the
9:08
piece about your male band mates going on
9:11
without you too, because, um, I
9:14
have quite a bit of background in music
9:17
as well. I studied music in university, although I was
9:20
never like a pop artist
9:23
or anything like that. I'm a french horn player.
9:25
Um, but
9:29
I, uh, think that the misogyny in the
9:32
music world sort of puts the
9:34
church to shame.
9:36
>> Elizabeth: Well, yeah. Ah, there's that too.
9:39
>> Martha Tatarnic: Ah, I also grew up in the
9:42
anglican church, and, um, so
9:45
I certainly grew up thinking that women had a place
9:48
in the church. I didn't grow up thinking that
9:51
women particularly had a place in music
9:54
or in the history of music. And,
9:56
um, yeah, the music industry
9:59
can be quite famously, uh,
10:02
misogynistic. Can it?
10:03
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. I mean, I think also there was a part of
10:06
me that was a little naive, that I'm like, if I'm just really good at what I do,
10:09
then, like, that's all it takes,
10:12
right? I, um, was not willing
10:15
to sleep with older industry
10:17
executives like that. Just, I was like, you know,
10:20
my music is good. Like, why would I do that? And it's
10:23
like, I mean, maybe I would have gone further
10:26
if I'd been willing to do that kind of thing, but that was not something
10:29
that I participated in. Um, you know, it was a little
10:32
depressing to see that, um, especially in entertainment,
10:35
you know what they call it, the casting couch or whatever. That
10:38
is a real. That is a real thing.
10:40
>> Martha Tatarnic: It is a real thing, yeah.
10:41
>> Elizabeth: And so I was not willing to participate in that. And so maybe
10:44
I. That's part of why I didn't get further. But, um, I
10:47
mean, I did have fun. I had fun doing it in my twenties
10:50
and early thirties. Um,
10:53
and yeah, I would say that during my early
10:55
thirties, I was trying to figure it out. I'm like, okay. So
10:58
I expected myself to be
11:01
doing better by now. Um, there were some people I
11:04
knew personally, like Sarah Bareilles, um,
11:07
Colby Calle, Katy Perry. Those are all people
11:10
that I knew personally that I, um, mean, Sarah would
11:13
say, hi. Libby, too. Me, now, she does know me.
11:16
Um, but Katy Perry and Colby Kelly, I, like, hung
11:19
out. I was in groups with at the time before
11:22
they were getting big, and so I saw that some
11:24
people made it and I'm like, I was gonna
11:27
be one of them. But of course, I mean, I talked to my friends
11:30
now who are singer songwriters, and,
11:33
um, for every one of those, there's
11:36
like 50 to 100 who are just as qualified
11:39
who didn't make it, and we're all focusing on the person who did make it. And
11:42
I'm like, come on, let's talk to each other. You know,
11:45
we don't need to focus all of our attention on what I call lottery
11:47
winners.
11:49
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, well, it really is like a
11:51
lottery. Um, and
11:54
I would have probably put the. The
11:56
ratios as a lot higher than 50 to
11:59
100 for everyone, because, you
12:02
know, most of the people I know in
12:05
music, like, it's. It's
12:08
a real grind. Like, they have to be, uh,
12:11
extremely committed to that vocation, you
12:14
know?
12:14
>> Elizabeth: Um, well, people are committed to it into their thirties
12:17
and sometimes than even their forties. And there comes a point, like, I don't. I just
12:20
want to stop saying, will you please come to my show? I want to stop
12:23
saying, can I sleep on your couch? Like, I'm. Can I borrow your
12:26
keyboard? There's enough of that. Like, that's okay for
12:29
a while, and at a certain point, you're just like, huh? Like, no
12:32
more. Yeah.
12:33
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, for sure. Was there, like, a
12:36
spiritual dimension to
12:39
songwriting, in particular, to being
12:43
a, uh, musician on that circuit, following that
12:45
calling for all those years?
12:47
>> Elizabeth: I'd say there was, yeah. I mean, certainly, um,
12:51
in my lyrics, you can hear hints of me
12:54
sort of, um, referencing scripture.
12:56
I mean, you two was always my favorite band. And the way that you two
12:59
sometimes references scripture, I kind of do similar stuff
13:02
in my lyrics. Like, I'll talk about, like, telling you
13:05
truly, that's something that I would bring up or
13:08
taking a vow of silence. These are the kinds of lyrics that show up
13:11
in my songs. But, um, also, as I
13:14
said, during this time, I was getting really into meditation,
13:16
and I would do some. I mean, there was a time,
13:20
um, I think in my late twenties, when I
13:23
was meditating for an hour every day, every morning.
13:25
Wow. Yeah, I was taking it very, very, very seriously.
13:28
Yeah. Um, I don't think it's unrelated, by the way,
13:31
to, um, some of the stuff that I found in biblical
13:34
scholarship. I mean, how many people do meditate for
13:37
an hour every day? I did that for, I don't
13:40
know, six, seven years. I
13:42
was doing that, which is quite a while. And,
13:45
um, so, uh. And it
13:48
was around that time that I was making this transition from just
13:51
meditating to be like, oh, Mother Mary is my spiritual
13:54
guide, so I'm gonna start going back to church. M
13:57
um, and, uh, yeah, no, I
13:59
would say that there was definitely a spiritual aspect. And when it came to
14:02
my music, somewhere along the way, I think it was right after I
14:05
moved to New York in 2008 because I was in LA
14:08
after I graduated, um, and with the band, we lived in
14:11
LA, but eventually I transitioned to living in New York.
14:14
And I remember when I was in New York, I
14:17
was on the subway, strangely, and I was reading a book by Bell
14:20
Hooks, who's an amazing, um, feminist
14:23
author, uh, who passed away recently. And,
14:26
um, I had this moment
14:28
where on the
14:30
subway it was like, my purpose in
14:33
life is to bring the
14:36
valuation of feminine into the
14:38
world that, like, the feminine has
14:42
value.
14:42
>> Martha Tatarnic: Wow.
14:43
>> Elizabeth: And I had this very strange experience where
14:46
I literally felt sort of, it
14:49
sounds weird, but like, uh, it felt like energy was shooting out of
14:52
my head for like an hour afterward. And it was actually freaking me out.
14:55
I was texting my best friend. I'm like, there's this weird thing happening
14:58
right now, so maybe that's a little bit
15:01
tmi. Um, but this is when I was purely a
15:04
singer songwriter, like just pure music. And
15:06
so I was like, okay, well, I gotta write songs about the feminine and
15:09
the feminine voice. And, um,
15:12
uh, yeah, I mean, I think a song of mine
15:15
called share it is kind of like
15:18
the best job that I did,
15:21
um, of actually articulating that
15:24
feminine voice. And I was able to
15:27
showcase for the president of, was
15:30
it Sony?
15:32
Which, um, I think it was, her name was
15:35
Amanda Ghost. I did a showcase with the song
15:38
share it, and then I didn't get the record deal from it. And
15:41
I'm just like, it felt really
15:44
like I was sort of hitting a dead end. I was like, right, right,
15:47
yeah. I was like, I was doing what I thought I was supposed
15:50
to do. I was so certain that this was my life path that, like,
15:53
being a singer songwriter, being a musician
15:56
was the way. And, um,
16:00
then, uh, it just wasn't working out and I was really frustrated. And I would
16:02
go, there was this catholic church actually not far from where
16:05
I was living at the time in Brooklyn, um, that was dedicated
16:08
to the Virgin Mary. Really beautiful
16:11
garden with all these statues of the Virgin
16:14
Mary. And I would go there to meditate
16:16
sometimes. And I had had this meeting with my music
16:19
lawyer and also Jewel's mother,
16:22
Jewel's mother, Lenedra Carroll,
16:25
who had been sort of helping me a little bit. Um, we all had
16:28
this sort of pow wow. And I remember that, uh,
16:31
Lanidra was like, you just need to jump off the cliff. Like,
16:34
what is it that's blocking you? You just need to jump off the cliff. And I
16:37
was meditating in this m garden
16:39
and dedicated, um, to the virgin Mary. And I
16:42
had this. I heard words, which
16:45
is really rare for me, in a prayer, um,
16:48
or a meditation. And their words were, maybe
16:51
you should talk to Mary Magdalene about that.
16:54
>> Martha Tatarnic: And that was really kind of
16:57
the clarifying
16:59
encounter that led you onto quite a different
17:02
path, right?
17:03
>> Elizabeth: Yes. Really weird. That's not
17:06
the story that you usually hear from a Bible scholar who works on
17:09
manuscripts of the New Testament.
17:11
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah.
17:11
>> Elizabeth: Uh, yeah. So I was just like. I was like.
17:14
I was talking to the Virgin Mary here and now
17:17
I feel like. Like, go talk to Mary Magdalene. I was like,
17:20
I didn't. It was very strange to me. And, um.
17:22
So as I was walking home from this experience,
17:26
this encounter in the garden, I was like, oh, I
17:29
went to the garden of the holy virgin and I asked for the
17:31
blessing of the Magdalene. I'm like, that's a cute lyric. So I
17:34
went home and I, um, worked out
17:37
this song in just, like a couple days. It came real fast,
17:40
like, just boom. Which, um, sometimes songs take
17:43
me years and years to write. And this one just came in a
17:46
couple days. And, um, I sent it to Jules
17:48
mom. I'm like, check this out. And she's like, this song is amazing.
17:51
We're sending it to Michael, my lawyer. We're going to. We're like, oh,
17:54
this is the breakthrough we were looking for. Yeah.
17:56
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah.
17:57
>> Elizabeth: And maybe it was, but it just wasn't into the music
18:00
business.
18:00
>> Martha Tatarnic: It definitely was a breakthrough. It just
18:03
wasn't quite what you were expecting.
18:06
>> Elizabeth: And so then I walked over to the Brooklyn public
18:08
Library, which was also close to this garden, by the way. The
18:11
garden, it was at the co cathedral of St. Joseph.
18:14
And a couple years later, they unfortunately,
18:17
um, destroyed the garden to make it into a parking lot. Very
18:20
Joni Mitchell.
18:21
>> Martha Tatarnic: Very Joni Mitchell. That was immediately what came to mind.
18:24
>> Elizabeth: I know, it's so sad. Um, but I made a music video
18:27
of the Magdalene song in the garden, so you can actually see what it looked
18:30
like. So, fortunately, we did make the music video
18:33
before the garden was destroyed. But,
18:35
um, I walked over to the Brooklyn public
18:38
library and got the complete idiots guide to Mary Magdalene. And so I started
18:41
researching Mary Magdalene and it just
18:44
keeps on going. It's like the world's deepest rabbit hole. That was in
18:47
2011, I think.
18:49
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Like, you couldn't have
18:52
possibly known what you were getting into.
18:55
>> Elizabeth: No idea. And, um, then I made the record
18:58
and I decided to call it Magdalene. And then I was like, oh, I
19:01
can't, I can't make a record called bag because I put other
19:04
songs on it, including that song, share it that I mentioned and a bunch of other ones.
19:07
Also a song called Beautiful Girl that's in the same vein as what I
19:10
was talking about earlier about like, valuing the feminine.
19:13
Um, and, uh, yeah, then
19:15
I, um, wrote this, I released this
19:18
album, and I put this music video
19:21
out and I was like, okay, now what's gonna happen? And what happened was
19:24
that I just got completely obsessed with
19:27
researching the Bible and,
19:31
okay, um, and so, yeah,
19:34
maybe now you want to talk about what happened next.
19:37
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Well, let's get into the
19:40
crux of what has made you such a
19:42
groundbreaking and talked about force in
19:45
the world of biblical scholarship, because
19:48
it definitely involves that rabbit hole that
19:51
you jumped into, um, following
19:54
that spiritual encounter.
19:56
Um, a lot of your work has
19:59
centered around John Eleven, the, ah,
20:02
story of the raising of Lazarus, and
20:05
the earliest known copy that we have of the gospel
20:08
according to John, which is known as papyrus
20:10
66. Um, so can you
20:13
just set the scene for us about papyrus
20:16
66 and when, uh, it
20:19
was discovered and then what you
20:22
began to see when you came across it?
20:24
>> Elizabeth: Sure. Yeah. So, um, the papyrus
20:27
was discovered, I think they used to say
20:30
1952, but now they're saying 1956,
20:33
near Dishna, Egypt, which is not too
20:36
far away from where the Nag Hamadi codices were found.
20:39
Um, some people have theorized they came from the same place. It's hard
20:42
to, it's like a day's walk from one to the other.
20:45
Um, but they were found in different locations. It was found in a
20:48
jar with a bunch of other papyri similar to the
20:51
Nayakhamadi codices. Um, in this jar
20:54
were, um, also papyrus
20:56
75 and papyrus 45,
20:59
which are other gospel manuscripts from probably slightly
21:02
later because p 45 and p 75 are bound up with
21:05
other gospels, whereas papyrus 66
21:08
is, um, just the gospel of John, which tells
21:11
you that maybe its a little earlier because its not being bound up with other
21:14
gospels yet. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
21:16
And also some letters of like,
21:20
uh, some letters were in
21:22
there and also, um,
21:25
copies of the iliad. So it was like a jar.
21:28
Yeah, it was like a jar of somebody's library.
21:31
Um. Uh, and they found
21:34
Papyrus 66, and it was quickly identified
21:37
and published. I think it was first published in
21:40
1958. Um,
21:42
and, uh, yeah, it was just, uh, they recognized
21:45
that this was probably the world's oldest, near
21:48
complete copy of the Gospel of John. It's actually called Papyrus
21:51
Bodmer two, because it was acquired by
21:54
this, um, wealthy.
21:59
He's from Switzerland, his name is Martin Bodmer and he
22:02
has this thing, it's a library today called the Bodmer
22:05
Library. And um, there was sort of like this race
22:08
for antiquities in the 20th century. And all
22:10
these richest, uh,
22:13
magnates in Europe, including Chester
22:15
Beatty, also in Ireland, they would just
22:18
buy it basically on the black market.
22:21
Well, of course, because they have all the money and they want the
22:24
manuscripts. And in Egypt,
22:27
um, I think at this point you're not
22:30
really supposed to smuggle stuff out. Egypt is like, hey, don't
22:33
take our stuff. Um, but then if you get this
22:36
copy of the gospel of John and some guy in Switzerland is going to
22:39
pay you, who knows how much money? Like they're going to find
22:42
a way. So there was this,
22:43
um, uh, I can't remember his
22:46
name offhand, but there was an antiquities
22:49
dealer, um, who
22:51
basically got it through Cyprus and
22:54
then it made its way to bodmer and then Bodmer
22:57
hired somebody, um,
23:00
to transcribe it and just do a first edition of it.
23:03
Um, and I think his name was
23:05
Martin, Victor Martin. And then, um, it
23:08
became able to be studied. So it was just first,
23:11
ah, like in 1958, it was first
23:14
available to be studied, just the transcription of Papyrus 66. There was
23:17
a few notes on it and then people in the 1960s
23:20
started to comment on it, um, people
23:23
like Marie Emile Boimard, a french
23:26
dominican scholar, and,
23:28
um, Gordon fill, who was one of the best
23:31
known textual critics of the 20th century,
23:34
they started making sort of comments on what was
23:36
interesting about the manuscript. And what's interesting is that both of
23:39
those scholars in the 1960s said, hey, there's
23:42
this place where the name Mary's been crossed out
23:45
a couple times and like this woman's been split in two. And they're
23:48
like, that's the weirdest change in the whole manuscript.
23:51
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah.
23:53
>> Elizabeth: And they published that and nobody followed up on it.
23:56
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right. Right.
23:58
>> Elizabeth: Yeah.
23:59
>> Martha Tatarnic: Just not, yeah.
24:00
>> Elizabeth: Uh, they knew, they knew that the name Mary had been crossed out a
24:03
couple times and they had, they just said
24:05
weird. And papyrus 66 is,
24:08
um, very old, but also the
24:11
scribe is really unpredictable and the scribe makes a lot of
24:14
corrections, 450 corrections, in fact,
24:17
along the course of the text. And so it's kind of a weird,
24:20
it's a weird situation because it's the oldest copy we have
24:23
of the gospel of John, but the scribe is also really
24:26
idiosyncratic. So,
24:28
um, some people think that the scribe had access to
24:31
two copies of John, um, and
24:33
so the scribe is correcting, sorry, they're
24:36
copying from one to call it an exemplar or a
24:39
forlog. They have an exemplar that they're copying from and
24:42
then they have a second one that they're correcting the text
24:45
against because at this time there's no printing press.
24:47
So you're just trying to get.
24:49
>> Martha Tatarnic: We're a long ways away from the printing press.
24:51
>> Elizabeth: Yeah, definitely. So if you're really lucky, you
24:54
know, uh, let's say it's 200 ad. That's usually when it's
24:56
dated to like the turn of the third century. Late second, early third
24:59
century is when papyrus 66 is usually dated, which
25:02
is 100 years after the gospel was written.
25:05
So this is our earliest surviving copy, but it had been
25:07
already circulating for a century before that.
25:10
And so at this point, Christianity is just sort
25:13
of getting started. And if you're
25:16
lucky enough to have access to two copies of
25:19
the Gospel of John, I mean, they were very expensive to make
25:22
these sorts of copies, very labor intensive. This
25:25
scribe is trying to make a good copy. Um, and
25:28
so that's might be part of the reason for so many
25:31
corrections and changes is that one of the copies says
25:34
this, the other copy says that. And so the scribe is trying to sort
25:36
of reconcile which one is the right one.
25:40
Um, and so, uh, it's a really interesting manuscript
25:43
in that way, but the text is not particularly
25:46
stable. And my dissertation is actually about how at the
25:49
origins of Christianity, the text wasn't particularly
25:52
stable.
25:53
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay.
25:53
>> Elizabeth: Yeah, and so that's a. I think that's part of what's going on
25:56
there.
25:57
>> Martha Tatarnic: Um, yeah, so,
26:00
um, there are these instabilities
26:03
around the names Mary and Martha
26:07
in John eleven, um, where a number of those
26:10
corrections can visibly be seen. Right. Like if you look at
26:13
papyrus 66, you can actually see,
26:16
um, these
26:18
scratchings and changes.
26:20
>> Elizabeth: Absolutely, yeah. And so I should just give the piece of, you know, after I
26:23
went to the Brooklyn public Library and got the complete idiots guy to Mary
26:26
Magdalene, and I was like, I released a record about her.
26:28
I said, I want to look at the world's oldest copy of the Gospel of
26:31
John because, you know, the complete
26:34
idiots guy talked about how Mary was a controversial character. And I'm like, well,
26:37
let's just look at the world's oldest copy and see if anything has been
26:40
changed. And, um, it was hard for me to find,
26:43
uh, because it hasn't been translated or at the time it hadn't
26:45
been. It's all in Greek.
26:48
Um, and so I had to kind of meet with a professor at
26:51
general Theological seminary, which is the episcopal seminary in
26:53
Manhattan, um, or it was. It's kind of
26:56
been absorbed by Virginia theological Seminary now. But at the time it
26:59
was still a real seminary. And I met with Deirdre Goode,
27:02
um, who is the professor of New Testament. And she
27:05
directed me to this website that the University of Birmingham had
27:08
put together, um, called johannes.com.
27:11
i o dash h dash h dash a dash n dash s.com, comma, which you can still go
27:14
to. And they had transcribed hundreds
27:16
of copies of the gospel of John in Greek and
27:19
Latin. And so she's like, go there. And then you can look at the
27:22
transcription of papyrus 66. I said, okay.
27:25
Because I knew that. I also googled what's the
27:28
world's oldest copy of the gospel of John, and it was papyrus
27:30
66. I'm like, I want to look at that. So I went
27:33
and, um, now I had this website, johannes.com, i
27:36
could look. And, um, I
27:39
first, of course, went to John 20, the scene between Jesus and
27:42
Mary Magdalene in the garden. Nothing was weird
27:45
there that I could see John 19, and I didn't read
27:48
Greek, but I could use an interlinear study
27:50
Bible to see what each word was.
27:54
Um, and so, yeah, then I went to John 19. At the cross,
27:57
it all looks like it was supposed to look. And I said, okay.
28:00
Well, I actually said, oh, I was probably wrong. Like, who am
28:03
I? I'm just some singer songwriter.
28:05
Like, why would I,
28:08
um, be able to. I mean, these scholars, to think that they had
28:11
missed something is a silly thought. And honestly, it is a silly thought
28:14
because they spend all their time looking at this stuff. Um, and I
28:17
said, but, you know, just in case, let me look at John eleven.
28:20
Because, uh, some people
28:23
think that Mary of Bethany, Lazarus sister, is Mary Magdalene. So
28:26
I should just check. I literally almost just gave up. But I was like,
28:29
uh, let me just check. Some people think that Mary Bethany
28:32
is Mary Magdalene. And so when I went
28:35
to John eleven on Johannes.com, comma, I could see, see that there
28:38
was all this editorial activity happening for five
28:41
verses. And I could see that the name Maria
28:44
was being crossed out and being changed to Martha.
28:46
And, um, that the name Maria was totally
28:49
scratched out and changed to say, the sisters.
28:52
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay?
28:53
>> Elizabeth: And I was like, whoa. I was
28:56
like, what is this? And I
28:58
knew enough from going to church that there was another story of Mary and
29:01
Martha in. By the way, I'm so intimidated talking to
29:04
someone named Martha about this.
29:07
I'm sorry for all the consequences for someone named Martha.
29:10
>> Martha Tatarnic: Oh, I'm totally fine with it.
29:13
>> Elizabeth: I mean, I am saying that Martha existed, but I am saying,
29:17
I'm thinking just as somebody who had no
29:19
training, it looked like the character
29:22
Martha was being added, was being added into the
29:25
story. Yeah, yeah. That's just, uh, and the thought never would have
29:28
occurred to me because, you know, Mary and Martha, they go together,
29:30
as, you know, in both Luke and John. You know, Mary and
29:33
Martha, the two sisters. And I, it never would
29:36
have occurred to me except that I saw the scribe doing it.
29:39
I'm like, is the scribe adding Martha to the story? I'm like,
29:42
wait, Luke has a Martha? Luke ten
29:45
has a story of Mary and Martha. By the way, they don't have a brother in
29:48
that story.
29:48
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, there's no mention of a Lazarus.
29:51
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. And so I'm like, did this scribe take
29:54
Martha and stick her into
29:56
John? Like, somebody who read Luke, did they stick her into
29:59
John's gospel? Um, I
30:02
mean, that never would have occurred to me if I hadn't seen it. So
30:05
I copied the greek text and I sent it to
30:08
Deidre. Um, and
30:11
the email subject line just had, like, twelve exclamation
30:14
points. And I was like, look. Look at
30:17
this. It looks like they're adding Martha. Look at this.
30:20
And she said, oh, very interesting.
30:23
I was like, come on,
30:26
that's cool, right? Or that's weird. Or that's
30:29
disturbing. It's something, you
30:31
know, she probably figured that the work had already been
30:34
done because, as I mentioned, it was the 1960s
30:37
when people were commenting on it. Uh,
30:39
surely at some point, this is in
30:41
2012. Surely sometime between the
30:44
1960s and 2012, somebody would have
30:47
done it, Alex, 50 years.
30:50
But the answer was no. Nobody had really done
30:53
anything. And m so I
30:56
was frustrated. And so I just kind of kept on researching,
30:59
and I I think I sent it to Karen
31:02
King. I sent it to Elaine pagels. They're like the Harvard and Princeton
31:05
ladies who are really big and Mary Magdalene stuff. And
31:08
I was like, hey, look at this. Papyrus 66, it's
31:11
been changed. And they were
31:13
like, um, cool. They
31:16
were too busy. They had other projects going on. And
31:19
I was getting really frustrated and kept
31:22
emailing Deidre. And, um, my best friend
31:24
Kelly, um, had said to me, hey,
31:28
you can't keep bothering, uh,
31:31
these scholars. You have to go learn Greek. You got
31:34
to do this work yourself. And I was like,
31:37
no, I'm a musician.
31:40
I'm a singer songwriter. I know who I am.
31:42
I've been doing this for, like, twelve years. This is
31:45
about my music career and whatever.
31:48
And, um, after maybe a year at
31:51
the end of, I guess, in 2013.
31:54
I was like, okay, fine, I'll get this master's degree. I'll learn
31:57
Greek. But just because nobody's doing anything about this, I want
32:00
to show everybody that papyrus 66 is messed up.
32:03
I'm going to do a study. So I entered this
32:06
master's program at General Theological seminary. Deidre was my
32:09
thesis supervisor. And when I was there,
32:11
some of the professors were like, oh, have you looked at,
32:14
um, Nandra Irving, uh, at the time, he's another
32:17
great professor. He was like, have you looked at the Vitas
32:20
Latina? What are the Vitas
32:22
Latina? Um, the old latin
32:25
manuscripts before St. Jerome translated the
32:28
Vulgate. Um, they're older copies, uh, like
32:31
the first translations into Latin of the gospel of John. He's like,
32:34
look at those. And it turns out that
32:36
all over the place in the textual transmission of John, not
32:39
just in papyrus 66, I looked at, I don't
32:42
know, maybe 150 copies for my master's
32:45
thesis on this johannes.com website. I could look, I could just
32:48
click right through every single copy. Go to John eleven.
32:52
One in five greek copies had something weird happening around
32:55
Martha. Like, sometimes the name Mary would be changed to
32:57
Martha, or sometimes Mary would be doing something that you expect
33:00
Martha to do, like, Mary's serving the supper in John twelve. That's not
33:03
what you would expect. Um, and in
33:06
the old latin copies, it's even worse. You sometimes just see
33:09
Martha's name really getting awkwardly added in the margin.
33:12
Really one in three of the old latin copies, you see
33:15
something weird happening around Martha. So I was like,
33:18
this is surprising. This is a lot.
33:21
And also church fathers, I found out that,
33:24
um, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom
33:27
Tertullian, they were all saying that Mary did things that
33:30
your bible would say that Martha does. And I was like, right,
33:33
this is weird. I was like, I
33:35
think, is there a corruption in the gospel of John?
33:38
Is that what this is? So I, um,
33:41
I wrote my master's thesis. It was called, was Martha of
33:44
Bethany added to the fourth gospel in the second
33:47
century? And I knew
33:50
if I really had found something that big, it
33:53
needed to go to a big journal. And again, as
33:56
a master's student, it was maybe a little presumptuous. And
33:59
Deirdre said. I was like, how about the Harvard theological Review? That
34:02
sounds fancy. And Deirdre was like,
34:05
okay, but you got to write to them and say, I'm just a
34:07
master's student, and ask if it's okay to submit.
34:10
And I wrote to them, and they wrote back and they said, as long as it's under the word
34:13
limit, yes, you may submit. So I did.
34:17
And miraculously, it made it through the
34:20
most rigorous peer review process. Um,
34:23
I found out later that my peer reviewer was Eldon Epp, who was
34:26
another one of the 20th century's most esteemed textual
34:28
critics. Uh, and it got
34:31
published in the Harvard Theological Review. And I was like,
34:34
okay. And people are like, so where are you going to do your
34:36
PhD? I was like, I'm
34:39
a musician. I just.
34:41
>> Martha Tatarnic: So you're still, like. You're still feeling like you're a
34:44
musician at this point?
34:45
>> Elizabeth: I released a record in 2017, I released another
34:48
record called Red Thread. Um, yeah. I
34:51
was like, this is.
34:51
>> Martha Tatarnic: But you've also learned Greek, and.
34:56
>> Elizabeth: I mean, academia didn't sound. I mean, I actually.
34:59
I actually was enjoying it. I guess I was. I was doing well, right?
35:02
I got my master's thesis published in this top tier journal, but
35:05
I certainly wasn't planning on doing a PhD.
35:08
But, um, people were asking me, what are you going
35:11
to do? Where are you going to do your PhD? And also
35:14
it was, um, I actually deferred
35:17
my PhD a year, partly because general seminary is a nice place
35:20
to live in Manhattan if anybody's ever been there. It's really
35:23
beautiful. Um, and also because
35:26
I wasn't sure, I was like, I don't know if I want to
35:28
do this. Um, I'm a
35:31
musician. And I think what it was is
35:34
that, um, I
35:36
realized if I don't do this, nobody else is going
35:39
to.
35:40
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, because you tried. You tried to get
35:43
other people to take it up.
35:45
>> Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah. And I even got it published. And
35:48
then, like, so many publications, it could have just
35:51
been published and then lost, right?
35:54
>> Martha Tatarnic: Mhm.
35:54
>> Elizabeth: I said, I have to kind of steward this. If I
35:57
don't do it, nobody else is going to.
35:59
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, uh,
36:02
a piece of the calling, isn't it?
36:05
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. So, yeah, I would say
36:08
letting that singer songwriter thing go,
36:11
and honestly, I don't miss it at all at this point.
36:14
>> Martha Tatarnic: Is that right?
36:15
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. I mean, I'm really proud of the songs that I wrote. Um, some
36:18
of the ones I've mentioned here, there's, like, war on science, beautiful
36:21
girl. Share it. Wish you were the woman. These are.
36:24
I think they're top notch songs. Go look them up. You can
36:27
find them on, like, apple music or whatever.
36:30
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Uh, they're available everywhere.
36:32
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. And, um. But,
36:35
you know, I guess it's really
36:37
frustrating to do really excellent work and
36:40
for it not to receive the,
36:44
um, attention and
36:46
um, reception that you want for it.
36:49
And I got just tired of that. And,
36:52
um, especially when I turn around and I
36:55
suddenly, instead of writing songs, I'm writing academic
36:57
articles and it's going great.
37:01
Like, okay, now I'm getting published in top tier journals, I'm getting
37:03
invited to conferences. Instead of
37:06
me begging people to come to my show, people are now
37:09
like flying me places
37:12
and there's an audience that's waiting for me
37:15
to give my talks. Wow. Like, this is kind of,
37:18
it's similar to being a singer
37:20
songwriter, except like, actually, uh,
37:24
a lot of the skills that I developed as a singer songwriter I
37:26
now use. Like, I know how to be on stage,
37:29
I know how to entertain.
37:32
>> Martha Tatarnic: M mhm.
37:33
>> Elizabeth: Um, I know how to sort of tell a joke or
37:36
craft a story. And, um, actually crafting an
37:38
article and an argument is not unlike crafting a song.
37:41
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,
37:44
that self, ah, promotion that you
37:47
have to do in the arts
37:50
so much of the time can really feel like pushing a boulder
37:53
up the hill. Right?
37:54
>> Elizabeth: Yeah.
37:55
>> Martha Tatarnic: Like, to have other people just be so
37:58
excited about what you're putting into the world that
38:01
they want to push the boulder up the hill.
38:03
>> Elizabeth: Like, it was such a relief I wasn't
38:06
to do that anymore. Um, and so,
38:09
yeah, I have to say I don't really miss the music business,
38:11
though. Um, I'm happy for the people who were
38:15
able to push through and to succeed at
38:17
it. Um, and it's just like, okay, well, this was
38:20
actually, even though I was so sure that the music business was the right
38:23
path for me, it's like, well, maybe it was the right path at that
38:26
time for me to get good at certain things.
38:29
>> Martha Tatarnic: Um, well, it clearly needed to be part of the path
38:32
to lead you to the path you're on now.
38:35
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. And, um, now it's like, okay, I'm
38:38
definitely on the right path now. And it's
38:40
nice. Um, you know, I finished my PhD at
38:43
Duke last year, and, um, now.
38:46
Thank you. And I'm now a tenure track assistant
38:49
professor of New Testament at Villanova University, which is a great
38:52
place to be. Um, and
38:55
it's, yeah, it's like the path is very clear.
38:57
>> Martha Tatarnic: It's good. So let's talk
39:00
about, um, the
39:02
Martha piece in John eleven, because,
39:06
um, in the
39:09
bibles that we all have, um,
39:12
Martha has a pretty big role
39:14
in John eleven, but it
39:17
does get sort of
39:20
overlooked because Martha is
39:23
a minor character in the Bible and so it
39:25
doesn't, I don't know, raise
39:29
major alarm bells. Um, can you
39:32
just talk about that
39:35
Martha figure has been passed along
39:37
to us and why that might
39:40
be significant in,
39:43
um, all of this
39:45
editing that you can see going on in the
39:48
gospel of John.
39:49
>> Elizabeth: So are you asking what Martha's
39:52
function is? The gospel? Yeah. Yeah.
39:55
Well, right now it seems that her main function is to utter
39:58
the thesis statement of the gospel of John.
40:00
Um, you know, Jesus comes into
40:03
Bethany and,
40:05
um, it says that he loves the Bethany
40:08
siblings and Martha runs out to meet
40:11
him, whereas Mary stays at home.
40:13
And, um, Martha says, lord, if you've been here,
40:16
my brother would not have died. And then
40:19
Jesus says to her,
40:21
um, I am the resurrection and the life.
40:24
Those who believe in me, even though they die,
40:27
will live. Um, do you believe this? And
40:30
she says, yes, Lord, I believe that you are
40:33
the Christ, the son of God, the one who is coming into the
40:36
world. And, um, that
40:39
is generally, that's considered to be the christological confession in
40:41
John's gospel, which has an equivalent in the other
40:44
synoptic gospels to Peter's confession, I
40:47
believe that you are the messiah, the son of God. And in
40:50
Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, you are Peter. And
40:53
on this rock I will build my church in response to Simon
40:56
Peter giving this christological confession at Caesarea Philippi
40:59
in Matthew 16. So,
41:02
um, John seems to be sort of providing an equivalent
41:05
confession, but now it's a woman that's saying, not Peter.
41:08
Okay, so that seems sort of radical. Um, and
41:11
it's not just that it's the equivalent of Peter's
41:14
confession. Like, I identify you, you are the Christ.
41:17
But it's also that what most scholars think was
41:20
the original ending to the gospel of John, John
41:22
2031, says, these things are
41:24
written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of
41:27
God, and then by believing, you may have life in his
41:30
name, which sounds very much like what Martha
41:33
says.
41:33
>> Martha Tatarnic: Mhm.
41:34
>> Elizabeth: In John eleven. So this sort of
41:37
parallel, uh, has caused people to say, okay, martha's
41:39
the one who utters the central thesis statement of the gospel of
41:42
John. And, um, after she utters
41:45
it, she runs and gets Mary.
41:49
And then Mary can come on the scene. And then Mary says the
41:51
exact same thing that Martha says.
41:54
Um, lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died.
41:57
And before I had done my work, uh, in the
42:00
seventies and eighties, it was very hip to do redaction
42:03
criticism, which is where scholars look
42:06
at a biblical text and they see, uh,
42:08
seems in the way that the text has been
42:11
written. Um, places that seem awkward
42:14
and they think this is maybe where the evangelist edited
42:17
their source.
42:19
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
42:20
>> Elizabeth: And, um, maybe there was a testimony of
42:23
the beloved disciple, and then the evangelist was
42:26
tweaking it in certain ways. And what's really funny is that
42:29
several scholars had said, martha's
42:32
presentation is weird. And they're not
42:35
talking about the manuscripts, they're talking about the received
42:37
text. And they're assuming that the
42:40
evangelist had access to some source that
42:43
was then turned into what is our gospel narrative
42:45
now. And several people had said in
42:48
the evangelist source, there was only
42:51
one sister.
42:53
>> Martha Tatarnic: Hm.
42:53
>> Elizabeth: People had said this. I think Robert Fortna said
42:56
that Gerard, um,
42:59
Rocher said that,
43:01
um. And,
43:03
uh, probably Marie Emile
43:05
Boimard and, um,
43:08
Brendan Boyle, I think. Uh, and actually even John P.
43:11
Meyer, who is a really big catholic theologian, he wrote
43:14
in this historical Jesus thing, a marginal jew.
43:17
He said the early version.
43:20
He said the lucan story of Martha and Mary has
43:23
no Lazarus. And apparently the
43:26
early johannine version of the
43:29
Lazarus story had no Martha.
43:31
>> Martha Tatarnic: Had no Martha.
43:32
>> Elizabeth: But they're not talking about the textual
43:34
transmission. They're talking about the evangelist
43:37
writing at the very beginning. Like the evangelist
43:40
has heard some sort of story that is now being crafted
43:43
into our gospel. And they think that the
43:45
evangelist added the sister. Um,
43:48
and the difference between the two is that the evangelist is
43:51
writing what you would call the autograph copy,
43:54
the first copy
43:57
from which all other copies would be copied. And they're
44:00
saying that in that autograph,
44:03
um, the evangelist has crafted a narrative with
44:06
two sisters, but that the
44:08
evangelist knew a story with only
44:11
one sister.
44:13
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
44:13
>> Elizabeth: That's what the theory was. That's what the redaction critics had
44:16
argued. And what's really funny is it's like, wait a
44:19
second. That's the difference between redaction criticism and
44:22
textual criticism. Textual criticism is a comparison of
44:24
the manuscripts.
44:26
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay?
44:27
>> Elizabeth: So an evangelist can take, oh, I heard this story and I
44:30
heard that story, and I put it all together and I made this beautiful narrative that
44:33
we now call the Gospel of John. That's different
44:35
than this gospel of John that begins circulating and
44:38
copyists tweak the story.
44:41
That's different because the evangelists,
44:43
you assume, if you believe that there was a dohenine
44:46
community, the evangelist is
44:49
aligned with whoever.
44:51
If you believe that there was an eyewitness, the beloved disciple, they
44:54
come from that same community. They can directly trace their
44:57
lineage to Jesus. And they're like, this is the gospel that we've decided
45:00
to put forward from our perspective. That is different
45:03
than some rando, like 100
45:06
years later or 50 years later, saying, I don't like this part
45:09
of the story. And changing it in the course of
45:12
copying it. Textual criticism.
45:15
And so what my study was showing is that, yeah, maybe
45:18
Martha was added, but not by the evangelist.
45:20
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
45:21
>> Elizabeth: Maybe Martha was added by a very, very
45:23
early editor. It would have to be second century,
45:26
because, um, papyrus 66, if
45:29
it's dated to 200 AD or around that time,
45:32
it means that this is around the time that Martha is getting
45:35
added in, around the turn of the third century. Also,
45:38
origen of Alexandria writes about Mary
45:41
and Martha in the mid third century, and he knows
45:44
that Martha is there in the story of John. So it would have had to
45:47
be second century that this change was made,
45:50
perhaps right around the time that Luke started to get
45:53
read alongside John. And
45:55
that's when somebody has read Luke and they are
45:58
importing Martha into John's story.
46:01
That's when it would have to be, of course, completely theoretical,
46:04
because Martha is in every copy that we have, including
46:07
papyrus 66.
46:08
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, yeah. And I
46:11
mean, all of this is kind of, ah,
46:14
a working theory that we
46:17
certainly don't have the evidence
46:19
to back up conclusively at this
46:22
time. But,
46:25
um, the theory that I've certainly
46:28
heard you and others discuss is
46:30
that Martha might have been
46:33
imported in order to distract from
46:36
just how central a character Mary Magdalene
46:39
was.
46:40
>> Elizabeth: Right.
46:40
>> Martha Tatarnic: And so she is a witness to the
46:43
resurrection, the first witness to the resurrection. If
46:46
she's the one who was at the crucifixion, if she's
46:49
the one who anointed Jesus at
46:51
Bethany and gave the
46:53
christological.
46:55
>> Elizabeth: That's right.
46:56
>> Martha Tatarnic: Suddenly she's a main character.
46:59
>> Elizabeth: Yes, she's a very central character in John's gospel
47:02
in that case. And so I should emphasize that,
47:05
first of all, we also do have, I have not
47:08
yet found a manuscript where Mary is uttering the confession
47:11
in John eleven. So I should make that very clear. But we
47:13
do have a church father Tertullian, who wrote
47:16
around the same time as papyrus 66, was copied, like
47:19
210 AD. And he says, um,
47:22
in his treatise against Praxias that Mary
47:25
confessed Jesus as the Christ. Every single
47:28
copy of that treatise by Tertullian says that
47:31
Maryland gives the christological confession in John.
47:34
So, um, it seems that maybe
47:37
Tertullian's copy didn't have Martha in
47:40
it, and he's writing at the turn of the third
47:43
century. So he's probably got a second century copy of John
47:46
where Martha's not in it. Um,
47:49
but again, that's a church father writing about John.
47:52
And, um, so it just says
47:55
Mary. It never explicitly says the word
47:58
Magdalene in any copy of John. Eleven.
48:01
And that's actually something that some people have said. Oh, well, Mary of
48:03
Bethany is not the same person as Mary Magdalene. Mary's
48:06
from Magdala. First of all.
48:09
Um, and if it is Mary Magdalene,
48:12
why didn't the evangelist just say so, like, why not
48:15
just say Lazarus and his sister Mary
48:18
Magdalene? Um, and, uh,
48:21
I've got good answers for both of those.
48:24
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay, so tell us.
48:25
>> Elizabeth: Yeah, so first of all, the word magdalene,
48:29
um, is based on the aramaic
48:32
word magdala, which means tower.
48:36
And the ane ending is just like a
48:38
greek, uh, feminine ending. So
48:41
I, um, was just looking at a syriac manuscript this
48:44
morning, um, that says
48:46
magdaletha when it's referencing Mary Magdalene. And
48:49
eth, syriac is the same language as
48:51
Aramaic. It's just like a later stage of Aramaic.
48:54
So, um, when it says
48:56
magdalitha, it's the same thing
48:59
as Magdalene. It just means tower, eh?
49:02
That's all it means. Tower s. Tower s.
49:05
And, um, there were some
49:07
towns, uh, in the first
49:10
century, actually, a lot of them called
49:13
Magdal this or Magdala that. Uh, in
49:16
Hebrew it's Migdol. So there's like a place called,
49:21
which is like tower of the fishes and there's Migdol
49:23
el and Migdal gad. There's all these different
49:26
migdols and it just means tower of this,
49:28
tower that, tower of this, tower of that. And,
49:31
um, so to say
49:34
Magdalene or
49:36
Magdaletha is clearly referencing one
49:39
particular one of these
49:41
magdalas or amygdals is really vague.
49:44
First of all, I mean, there's so many
49:47
at this time. And some people said, oh, no, no, no.
49:50
Everybody knew that Migdal
49:51
Nuneathehe one by the sea of Galilee, that was
49:54
the one that everybody knew. That's the one. If you go
49:57
to the holy land today, they're like, magdala. This is where
50:00
Mary Magdalene came from. There's a synagogue,
50:03
um, in fact,
50:05
uh, that's not what the most popular Magdala
50:08
was. Um, and this is. So I wrote an article with Joan Taylor
50:11
in 2021 where we totally blew that out of the water
50:14
because we cited Eusebius,
50:17
who lived in the holy land. And he's writing in the fourth century.
50:20
He does know a place called, um, Magdala. He had
50:23
this book called the Animistikon where he just literally goes
50:25
through every single place that's mentioned in the Bible and he tells you what
50:28
it is. And he does know a place called
50:31
Magdala. He does not associate Mary Magdalene
50:34
with it. And he thinks it's Magdal gad. Which is
50:37
in the south. It's in Judea. So, yeah,
50:40
everybody did know Amygdala, but
50:43
it's not the one that people think it is today. And he didn't think
50:46
it had anything to do with Mary Magdalene. It just means
50:49
tower. Okay?
50:51
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
50:51
>> Elizabeth: And so there's all these towns called Tower in the first
50:54
century. And so the question becomes, is it really
50:57
about the place she came from?
51:00
Or does it mean, is it that Mary came from a town called
51:03
tower? Which, by the way, is super vague because there's so many of
51:06
them. Does she come from a town called tower, or is
51:09
Mary herself the tower?
51:11
>> Martha Tatarnic: Well, yeah, because we have Simon
51:13
Peter, Simon
51:16
the rock and Mary Tower.
51:19
>> Elizabeth: And there's James and John Boanerges, sons of thunder.
51:22
There's Thomas the twin. There's all these,
51:24
um, different names that Jesus
51:27
gives, supposedly to his closest disciples.
51:29
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, like titles.
51:31
>> Elizabeth: Right. And so the question is, did Mary get one of
51:34
those titles? And, um, so Jo Taylor and I looked at the
51:36
interpretation history of the name Magdalene, and it
51:39
turns out that there has always been a division of
51:42
interpretation. Some people did think it was a town that she came
51:44
from. Um, but some people thought that it was a
51:47
title. And St. Jerome, for
51:50
example, thinks that Mary was given the name tower,
51:53
s for her ardent faith. And St. Jerome also
51:56
lived in the Holy Land, and he also knew
51:58
Eusebius, Unamasticon. So, um,
52:02
definitely really far back. Some people
52:04
thought it was a place she came from, and some people thought it was a title.
52:07
Um, but what we pointed out was that St. Luke seems to think it's a
52:10
title because he says Marie he
52:13
Calumene Magdalene, Mary, the one called
52:16
Magdalene. And whenever he uses this word called
52:19
throughout Luke or acts, it's
52:22
always like Simon called Peter, or
52:25
Elizabeth called Barren, or Martha had
52:28
a sister called Maryland. So this
52:30
word, um, this kaleo participle that
52:33
Luke uses is for nicknames. And so in the
52:36
first century, it seemed to have been thought of as a
52:39
nickname, not a place that Mary came from. And that place,
52:41
Migdol Nunaya, besides that, it was called Tarakay. In
52:44
the first century, it was a very burgeoning big city known
52:47
to a lot of people. But it was not called magdala in the first
52:50
century. It was called Tarakay. And,
52:53
um, it's a big city,
52:56
um, that would have had plenty of synagogues. So, yeah, they're
52:58
great synagogues that you can excavate at this awesome
53:01
ancient city called Tarakay. But it wasn't called Magdalen
53:04
in the first century.
53:06
>> Martha Tatarnic: So how does that connect to
53:09
this idea that Mary
53:12
of Bethany might, um,
53:15
have been Mary Magdalene, even though it doesn't
53:18
explicitly say that in.
53:20
>> Elizabeth: Yeah, it doesn't use the word Magdalene in
53:22
John, uh, not until John
53:25
1925. At the cross.
53:28
Um, what
53:31
is clear that a lot of important scholars have
53:33
noticed is that there's some really obvious parallels between the
53:36
Lazarus story and the story
53:39
of Mary Magdalene and Jesus in the garden. Obviously, both
53:42
of them have a tomb and a stone,
53:45
and somebody rises from the dead and there's a woman named Maryland,
53:48
and she's crying. And, um,
53:50
there's even more subtle things, like there's
53:53
a handkerchief. Um, they take the handkerchief, the
53:56
sudarion, which is sort of a rare word, they take the
53:59
sudarion off of Lazarus in John
54:01
eleven. And then you look in the tomb and there's the
54:04
sudarion that's rolled up in John 20.
54:07
In, um, John eleven, Jesus says, where have you laid him?
54:10
And then in John chapter 20, Mary Magdalene says, I do not know where
54:13
you have laid him. And it's the exact same sort of greek
54:16
words. Um, and, uh, so
54:18
there's all these sort of hints that there is a really
54:21
clear parallel between the Lazarus story
54:24
and John 20, the encounter between Jesus and Mary
54:27
Magdalene in the garden. So
54:29
all biblical scholars would agree that there are deliberate
54:32
craftings of a parallel between the Lazarus story and John
54:35
20. The question is, why? Also in John
54:38
twelve, um, Judas complains about
54:41
Mary anointing Jesus at Bethany, and Jesus says,
54:44
leave her alone. Um, uh,
54:46
she will keep it for the day of my burial.
54:50
Right, right. And so if he's talking about a woman
54:52
named Mary at his burial,
54:56
in John's gospel, there's only one woman named
54:58
Mary at Jesus Field, it's Mary Madison.
55:01
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
55:02
>> Elizabeth: So you can see why people would have thought,
55:05
um. And actually, as far back as interpretation, history can be
55:08
traced. People did think that Mary of Bethany was Mary
55:11
Magdalene. People blamed Pope Gregory for this. But that's not
55:14
true. Pope Gregory identified Mary Magdalene with
55:17
Luke's sinful anointer in Luke, chapter
55:19
seven. That was his innovation.
55:22
But centuries before that, people thought that Mary of
55:25
Bethany was the same woman as Mary Magdalene.
55:28
>> Martha Tatarnic: So there's a lot of extra biblical.
55:31
>> Elizabeth: Um, support for church fathers.
55:33
Yes. Hippolytus, um of Rome,
55:36
Ambrose of Milan, Severus of Antioch,
55:38
also, um, the Manicheans thought so. They
55:41
were kind of heretical. But they seem to think Mary of Bethany was Mary
55:44
Magdalene. And if you read the Gospel of Mary, which is a second century
55:47
text, this character Mary has aspects of both Mary of
55:50
Bethany and Mary Magdalene. Jesus loves her.
55:53
She's crying and she sees the Lord in a vision.
55:55
So it seems as far back as we can trace
55:58
the interpretation history. Some people thought that
56:01
Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene. Not everybody, but
56:04
some people thought so. And so,
56:06
um, so you can see
56:09
why if somebody's reading John and they see
56:12
these parallels. I'm not saying that it was never
56:15
explicitly said, but I think that the evangelist has crafted
56:18
the narrative in such a way so
56:21
that not the first time you read the Gospel of John, but maybe the
56:24
second or the third time, especially when you notice,
56:27
oh wait, there's a woman named Mary crying at a tomb. Oh, Jesus is, where have
56:30
you laid him? And Mary says, where have you laid him? Like,
56:34
is Lazarus his sister Mary,
56:37
Mary Magdalene? It's a question that the evangelist has put
56:40
into the reader's mind. And maybe the reason why
56:42
the evangelist didn't explicitly say
56:45
that this is Mary Magdalene is because in these
56:48
Bethany stories the evangelist
56:51
is giving very controversial content
56:55
to Lazarus. Sister, first of all,
56:58
that christological confession, isn't that supposed to be
57:00
Peter's? Right.
57:02
So, um, John, almost everybody would
57:05
agree, has had some access to Mark's gospel. John
57:08
has at least heard Mark's gospel. That's a near consensus
57:11
in biblical scholarship these days. And some think that John
57:14
has access to all the synoptics. I personally think
57:17
maybe Matthew, um, but definitely
57:20
Mark. So in Mark's gospel, Peter
57:22
confesses Jesus as the Christ. But
57:25
also I'm sure you know what happens in the
57:28
anointing. In Mark's gospel.
57:31
There's Elizabeth Schuster Fiorenza wrote a whole book about
57:33
it. What she has done at the Bethany
57:36
anointing, um, wherever the gospel
57:39
is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of
57:42
her.
57:43
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
57:43
>> Elizabeth: But her name is not given.
57:47
Right. So. And Matthew basically
57:49
does the same thing. So
57:52
if John is trying to say, trying to give
57:55
a counterpoint to Mark's
57:58
presentation, John
58:00
knows that it will be controversial
58:03
to give a woman, perhaps Mary, this
58:05
christological confession. And John
58:08
knows that it will be controversial to
58:11
identify who the anointer was because Mark
58:13
withheld that name.
58:15
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right, right.
58:17
>> Elizabeth: Yeah. So I'm saying that John is trying to be
58:19
strategic. John is trying to say, okay, I
58:22
want to identify who
58:25
the christological confessor is and the anointer
58:28
as Mary Magdalene. That's what John's view is. But
58:31
I can't say it explicitly. I gotta do it under
58:34
the radar. So what John does is John just calls her
58:37
Mary, makes her super similar
58:40
to Mary Magdalene. And John, tway, like, super obvious
58:43
parallels, but doesn't say so explicitly
58:46
and doesn't actually name her as Mary Magdalene until Mark
58:49
does, which is at the cross.
58:51
>> Martha Tatarnic: Right.
58:52
>> Elizabeth: Because that's where it's actually safe to do. So that's where
58:55
it's safe to say that it's Mary Magdalene. Because
58:58
obviously, Mark has withheld that information,
59:00
or in the anointing, has withheld the identification
59:03
and gave the christological confession to someone else. So I'm saying
59:06
that John is anticipating that this is going to be
59:09
controversial.
59:10
>> Martha Tatarnic: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
59:12
>> Elizabeth: And in fact, I think it really was
59:14
controversial. So much so that the text, people
59:17
knew that some folks thought that Mary
59:19
Magdalene was doing these things, and so the
59:22
text had to be edited.
59:25
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. So with that bombshell,
59:28
um, because, uh, definitely
59:30
we can see, um, how John and then
59:34
others understood this as the bombshell that
59:37
it. That it potentially was.
59:39
Um, we're going to
59:42
end today's podcast, uh,
59:45
there, leaving hanging, because
59:47
there's a lot of implications to
59:50
this research. Um, and
59:53
this research has sparked a lot of excitement
59:56
across the church and across
59:59
church leadership. Um, so
1:00:01
we're going to come back next week,
1:00:05
uh, and we'll delve into some
1:00:08
of the implications and some of
1:00:11
the nerves that are being touched in,
1:00:14
um, this work that Elizabeth is
1:00:16
unfolding. Thank you so much
1:00:19
for part one of, uh, my pleasure,
1:00:22
this podcast today, and,
1:00:24
uh, we'll look forward to coming back to this
1:00:27
for part two.
1:00:30
>> Paul: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
1:00:33
To learn more about Loren or the podcast,
1:00:35
visit future dash christian.com.
1:00:39
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