Mary Magdalene: Jesus' Temptress?

Below is the image of the life-sized nude limewood statue of Mary Magdalene which was sculpted about 1510 by Gregor Erhart (c. 1470-1540), depicting her as a mystic ascetic clothed only by her long hair. This impressive statue can be found now at the Louvre museum in Paris, first appeared publicly on the German art market in the 19th century and was purchased by the Louvre in 1902.  

According to a legend, Mary Magdalene (wrongly labeled as a repentant prostitute by Pope Gregory the Great in 591) lived a secluded life in the cave of Sainte-Baume, clothed only by her long and luxuriant hair. Every day she was raised up in the sky by angels to hear the heavenly chorus. Her languid pose and meditative expression are meant to convey her mystic ecstasy, while her marvelous beauty and glossy golden locks are intended to evoke her holy radiance. Mystics all over the globe in the past and in the present use sensual imagery when they want to express their deepest relation with the sacred. The nudity of Mary Magdalene thus symbolizes her deepest and most intimate relation with the divine.

Mary Magdalene and Jesus: both being bare breasted.
An erotic message?

Look to the second picture painted by Peter Paul Rubens in 1618. Probably this picture depicts an event occurred shortly after Jesus’ resurrection when Mary Magdalene was approaching him and called him “Rabbouni” (in Aramaic with a sense of intimacy and casualness) and wished to hold on to him (John 20:11-18). But the evangelist John does not say that during the encounter, his male disciples were also there together with her. It is difficult to decide where we should locate this picture in Jesus’ lifetime. Despite this difficulty, any body however can grasp the erotic message of this picture. Both Mary Magdalene and Jesus are bare breasted, and she seems to surrender her body unto the strong and open hands of Jesus. Do they want to make love before long? Unquestionably it is not easy to answer. Or does this picture, by depicting the half nudity of Jesus and Mary, want to tell us about the mystical aspect of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene? 
 

In the Gospel of Philip 63-64, we find an extraordinary text which records the erotic side of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, as follows: The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. The savior loved her more than all the disciples, and he kissed her often on her mouth (Marvin Meyer, The Gospels of Mary [2004], 49). The word “mouth” is uncertain because here the text has damaged. However, we still have other ancient texts which narrate the special love of Jesus for Mary Magdalene, i.e., Gospel of Mary 10; 17-18; Pistis Sophia 17; 19. Does the word “companion” in the Gospel of Philip 63-64 mean “spouse” or “wife” or “sexual partner”? Does all this text factually reveal the sexual or carnal nature of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene? Or does all this text wish to tell the mystical aspect of the post-resurrection relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene? Whatever all this text means, it seems certain that Mary Magdalene as a woman figure was an important aspect of the most intimate life of Jesus of Nazareth so that her role in Jesus’ personal life should be seriously counted.

Gautama Buddha being tempted by Maara and his hosts

Any most important religious figure of the past is usually depicted as a figure that should undergo severe temptations and ordeals and in the long run should come out as a winner. Siddharta Gautama, for example, during his quest for enlightenment and shortly after he had gained enlightenment and become the Buddha, the Enlightened One, was to face hard temptations from the Devil known in Buddhist texts as Maara or Paapimaa (=the Tempter; the Evil One; or simply the Evil). Maara is depicted as assuming a fearsome guise with a thousand arms, and as riding the elephant called Girimekhalaa. This Evil One along with his ten squadrons or “hosts” assaulted the future Buddha. In the Renunciation or Great Departure, Siddharta was tempted by Maara who appeared in the air and talked of the imminent receipt by the future Buddha of the gem-set wheel of universal monarchy. When rejected, Maara disappeared vowing to keep an eye on him like an omnipresent shadow. 
 

Buddha Gautama being tempted sexually by a daughter of Maara

It is very interesting to note that Maara had three daughters and their names are Desire, Pleasure and Delight. After their father Maara with all his hosts had failed, these three evil ladies conspired and tried to tempt Siddharta Gautama shortly after he had gotten enlightenment. They made a joint effort to destroy the Buddha’s steadiness and readiness to spread dharma to as many people as possible, employing their charms to sexually lure the Buddha. They used dance, song, music, and sweet talk as their arsenal to generate lust in the Buddha’s mind; the Buddha however showed not the slightest interest; and they failed.

Of course we know that before Jesus appeared in public as a prophet or as a messenger of God, he had been tempted by the Devil as narrated in the synoptic gospels (Mark 1:12-13; Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). It is told that to Jesus, the Devil offered easy methods of acquiring food, God’s protection and messiahship, greatness and universal monarchy. In my imagination, to be somewhat complete, there should be another crucial temptation that Jesus had to cope with, that is, the temptation from an enchanting woman as Siddharta Gautama the Buddha, as it was told, had faced long ago. Sexual temptation is a normal life fact that could come either to a woman or to a man in the past and in the present, not a fiction invented out of hatred against women or against men.

The woman who could tempt Jesus sexually is of course Mary Magdalene, no other woman else. When faced with this sexual temptation, Jesus had to decide what he would do with this charming woman. Rather than letting himself continuously be tempted sexually by this woman, Jesus, again you can imagine, decided to marry Mary Magdalene. So Jesus could kiss Mary Magdalene on her mouth either to express the mystical side of his relationship with Mary, or, especially, to release his sexual impulse. 

Jesus Riding A Dinosaur: Possible? INSANE!!

Jesus riding a dinosaur? Is this possible, or is this impossible? According to those who hold creationism as their belief, that Jesus riding a dinosaur or Jesus hugging a babe dinosaur is factually possible, even probable.

We know that creationists maintain literally-understood Bible-based views concerning the Earth, the cosmos and all living creatures that inhabit the world. They firmly believe that the Bible is the words of God that cannot make any mistake in anything they tell us; the Bible, for them, is completely inerrant in anything it records. They maintain that the whole Bible should be understood literally, and that to understand the Bible rightly, one only needs faith in the literal sense of every word of the Bible. This literalist and anti-historicist position results in their idiosyncratic, irrational and insane views concerning the age of the Earth and the time in which dinosaurs lived on earth.

a dangerous Bible study for kids!! Save them Guy!

On the basis of their unscientific hermeneutics and literal reading of the text of Genesis 1:24-31 and the Matthean and Lukan genealogies (Matthew 1:1-16; Luke 3:23-38), they claim that Dinosaurs lived together with mankind and that Planet Earth is 6000 years old. They imagine therefore that Jesus riding a dinosaur or that Jesus embracing a young dinosaur is factually probable! Knowing about this perhaps makes your head start spinning!

Jesus the dinosaur shepherd

According to almost all of us as intelligent and sane human beings, that Jesus riding a dinosaur or Jesus cuddling a babe dinosaur is factually impossible because the era of the domination of dinosaurs over Planet Earth had long elapsed before human beings were born from nature to dominate this planet.

skeleton of a dinosaur

Following the ground-breaking study previously conducted by Walter and Luis Alvarez, a panel of 41 scientists from across the globe (Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan) on March 4, 2010, reviewed 20 years’ worth of research in this area to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction which created a “hellish environment” around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on Planet Earth. These scientists working on the study analyzed the work of paleontologists, geo- and atmospheric chemists, climate modelers, geophysicists and sedimentologists who had been collecting evidence about the KT extinction over the last 20 years.

According to the panel’s conclusion, a giant extraterrestrial asteroid whose width is 15 kilometers (= 9 miles) that smashed into the Earth at Chicxulub (now known as Mexico) is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

A giant asteroid/comet hitting the Earth 65 million years ago, sending debris into the atmosphere

This giant asteroid is thought to have hit the Earth with a force a billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. This unimaginably powerful collision triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, continental landslides which created tsunamis. The “final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs” came when blasted material flew into the atmosphere, shrouding the Planet Earth in extreme darkness, causing a global deathly winter and killing many species that could not adapt to this hellish environment. Geological records show that the event that triggered the dinosaurs’ demise rapidly destroyed marine and land ecosystems. Fossil records clearly show a mass extinction about 65.5 million years ago (a time now known as the K-Pg boundary). This hellish day for dinosaurs that signaled the end of the 160-million-year reign of the dinosaurs also turned out to be a great day for mammals. The KT extinction was a pivotal moment in Earth’s history which ultimately paved the way for humans to become the dominant species on Earth.

If we use science to understand and reconstruct the past, then we should say to creationists that the Jesus riding a dinosaur or hugging a babe dinosaur is the Jesus existing only in their heterodox and insane Christological imagination. They always claim that they are orthodox Christians, though in reality they are not.

The Prostitute Jesus

Let’s look to the picture above. A woman wearing a red dress, with the upper part of her body being left naked, is drinking, smoking, and laughing cheerfully, together with three men, all conducting a simple party in a rather small room. Unmistakably, the woman is pictured as a prostitute of a cheap sort, who is trying to seduce those three men. If we look closer to her, soon we find that on the other side of each of her two hand palms there is a mark of wound left open. Actually who is this woman who is showing her wounded right hand? Jesus? Why a woman?

We know that in chapter 7:36-38 the evangelist Luke relates a famous story about an unnamed prostitute washing Jesus feet, weeping, and then anointing them with perfume (concerning this episode of the Gospel of Luke, click here). But now, in the imagination of the Philippine painter of the painting above, Emmanuel Garibay, the Jesus of the famous Emmaus Story in the Gospel of Luke chapter 24:13-32 , who is breaking bread and then giving it to two of his disciples, is the prostitute Jesus who will give her sexy body to any gentleman who wants to enjoy it. Not only does Jesus love woman, he himself becomes a woman, still a prostitute. The son of god became a whore in order to be able to sympathize with all prostitutes in this world. Jesus loves whores of the world, perhaps because he is in some way related to a whore as his physical mother (see Gospel of Thomas 105; cf. Gospel of John 8:41).

Hopefully, this painting and its message are not viewed as repugnant by orthodox Christians who worship Jesus as God unadulterated by the world’s impurity altogether, housed in exclusive and closed church buildings.

A Prostitute Wearing Red Bikini Washing Jesus' Feet

Let’s look to the image above (click it for a bigger picture). Jesus is in a modern kitchen together with a woman and with no one else. The woman wears red bikini and red shoes, signifying that she is a whore in the modern era. She is washing the feet of Jesus and drying them with her hair. 

Behind her are a washbasin and a bottle of perfume which she will pour out to Jesus’ feet. None sees them, so they can do anything freely in the kitchen if they will. 

Perhaps this image shocks you, and you consider it scandalous because you can’t let someone picture your Jesus in such an indecent way. But wait a minute … and relax! Nothing is wrong! This image is a modern artistic expression of the narrative of Luke 7:36-38.

Read this biblical passage calmly. In response to the dinner invitation of one of the Pharisees, Jesus went into the house of the Pharisee and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner (hē hamartōlos), 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. Clearly, this woman loves Jesus very much. That is part of what Luke relates.

A traditional image narrating Luke 7:36-38

In the Jewish society of Jesus’ time which was regulated by the purity system, such an action of this unnamed woman was extremely offensive to the respected members of the society. The Pharisee views this as humiliating (verse 39). But Luke tells us that Jesus is not embarrassed by the woman’s behavior (verses 44-48).

Who is the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in this Lukan narrative? We do not know who she precisely is. 

Luke only reports that she is a sinner, meaning that she is a prostitute. 

Pope Gregory the Great was totally wrong when he judged in his speech made in 591 that the prostitute in this Lukan passage was Mary Magdalene. 

Fortunately, in 1969 after much debate the Vatican removed this prostitute label which had long been attached to Mary Magdalene, by separating Luke’s unnamed sinful woman, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene in the liturgical book of the Roman Catholic Church named Missale Romanum. 

We simply don’t know who this unnamed woman sinner actually is. She is to be remembered as part of the public activities of Jesus. Jesus loves women and they love him too. The woman Jesus loves the most is of course Mary Madgalene, his smartest disciple, the apostle of the apostles.

A Lady Jesus Hugging A Lamb?

The picture above is extraordinary. Mary is depicted as hugging the infant Jesus and a lamb together, expressing her motherly affection to both of them, to a human being and to an animal at the same time. The infant Jesus is sleeping soundly, not disturbed by the young sheep. Perhaps the painter (William Bouguereau) wishes to tell us that Mary anticipates that in the future Jesus will become the good shepherd of Israel who will sacrifice his life for his sheep. In John 10:11, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Nevertheless, in John 1:29 the Fourth Evangelist changes Jesus metaphorically from the good shepherd to “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, and realistically from the unofficial Jewish leader to the victim of the political system of his day, from the judge to the culprit.

Look: another lady, not Mary of course, embracing a lamb! Who is she? I do not know. I got this image from the Internet. If you know her, please tell me who she is. But more importantly, do you capture the deep love of this lady for the lamb in her cuddle? This lamb peacefully lets itself be embraced by the lady as if the lady was its real mother. Perhaps you wonder how a human being, a lady, can express her affection so deeply to an animal. Imagine, you, gentlemen, are hugged by this lady in the same manner; what will you feel?

I am not certain that Jesus in his life ever embraced a lamb. In metaphor, yes, Jesus is the good shepherd of his flock. But whether in reality he was a shepherd in the literal sense of the word, no one can know for certain. That Jesus was a tektōn, an artisan, a carpenter, is certain (see Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55). We can however imagine that this lady is Jesus himself because the picture of Jesus embracing a lamb is so common. But, do you think that the love of Jesus for a lamb is greater than the love of this lady for the lamb in her cuddle? As far as the picture conveys, I am of the opinion that this lady’s love for a lamb is greater than Jesus’. Perhaps, Jesus in his life never touched a lamb, let alone embraced it, because he was so busy with his kingdom movement, calling men, not sheep, to come into it. Nevertheless, in a metaphorical way, perhaps it is better to imagine the picture above as the picture of a lady Jesus hugging a lamb. A lady Jesus is more heart-touching indeed than a gentleman Jesus.

Jesus As The Incarnation of The Goddess Lakshmi

On the picture above, Jesus is depicted as being seated in a Lotus position, the Padma-asana, with more or less ten lotus flowers lying in front of him, and with his head being encircled by a divine halo and wearing a thorny crown. But what is more is that Jesus himself here, as far as I can see it, is described as the lotus flower itself, blossoming above its green leaves. Extraordinarily, this Jesus has four arms with the three of which being raised up. What does it symbolize? In my interpretation, it symbolizes not the Christian Trinity, but the Trimurti or the Great Trinity in Hinduism which consists of god Brahmā the creator, god Vishnu the maintainer or preserver, and god Śhiva the destroyer or transformer. The orange robe he wears symbolizes his status as a Hindu holy man and a holy teacher, replete with wisdom, knowledge and understanding. The gesture or formation of the index and middle fingers of his second hand does not refer to his divine-human nature in Christian understanding, but to the unity of Atman (soul) and Brahman in accordance with Hindu religious view. The index finger of his third hand points to his holy heart, a Christian symbol of divine compassion. This holy heart has twelve rays radiating from its depth, perhaps symbolizing his twelve beloved disciples who proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of god to the whole world.

Let us know about the lotus. Rooted in the mud, but blossoming above the water, completely uncontaminated by the mud, the lotus represents spiritual perfection, purity, integrity, honesty, wisdom and divinity, which rise above worldly contamination. Concerning the lotus, Bhagavad Gita 5.10 states, “One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus is untouched by water.” The Confucian scholar, Zhou Dunyi, said, “I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained.” The lotus symbolism thus points to the journey of transformation from the mud of ignorance to the blossoming and enlightenment of the mind. The lotus also symbolizes the fertile growth of organic life, as the world is continually reborn on a lotus growing out of Vishnu’s navel. On the picture, all this symbolic meaning of the lotus is connected with Jesus as the blooming divine lotus.

Do you know about the four-handed goddess in Hindu religion named Lakshmi? Physically, goddess Lakshmi is described as a fair lady, with four arms, being seated or standing upon a lotus, dressed in fine garments and precious jewels, bestowing coins of prosperity and abundance and flanked by elephants signifying her royal power. The most striking feature of the iconography of Lakshmi is her persistent association with the lotus, referring to her purity, beauty, divinity and spiritual power. Symbolically, the goddess Lakshmi represents wealth, prosperity, abundance, light, wisdom, fertility, generosity and courage, as well as luck, fortune, beauty, love, grace and charm. Because of her abundant love, Lakshmi is believed to be willing to protect her dovotees from all kinds of misery and money-related sorrows. She is worshipped by Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists and many modern pagans.

Because Lakshmi is believed to be the embodiment of love, from which devotion to god or bhakti flows, it is through her that the soul (atma) is able to reach God Vishnu. Lakshmi plays a special role as the mediator between her husband Lord Vishnu and his worldly devotees. When asking Vishnu for grace or the forgiveness of sins, Hindus often approach him through the intermediary presence of Lakshmi. Due to her motherly feeling and compassion and being the consort of the Narayan or Supreme Being, Lakshmi is believed as the Mother of the Universe (Jaganmaatha).

In conclusion, if the Prologue of the Gospel of John claims that Jesus is the incarnation of the divine cosmic Word, ho Logos, the creator of the picture above believes that Jesus is the incarnation, or the embodiment, of the goddess and Mother of the Universe Lakshmi, the goddess of love, compassion, purity, wealth, wisdom and enlightenment, whose four hands are available to help the world and liberate it from poverty, ignorance, sorrows and abhorrence.

Jesus as Buddha Meditating in A Lotus Position Under The Bodhi Tree

The creator of the image above portrays Jesus as sitting in a Lotus position, the padma-asana, meditating on the meaning of life and suffering, under the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of moral enlightenment, taking the role of Siddharta Gautama, the moral teacher and founder of Buddhism later known as Gautama Buddha, in his search of liberation from suffering, dukkha, for human race.

The Bodhi Tree, or the Tree of Enlightenment, under which Siddharta Gautama achieved moral enlightenment or Bodhi, in religious iconography is recognizable by its heart-shaped leaves. It takes 100-3,000 years for a Bodhi Tree to fully grow. According to Buddhist texts, Siddharta Gautama, after gaining enlightenment, spent a whole week in front of the tree standing with unblinking eyes, gazing at it with a feeling of gratitude and admiration.

By presenting Jesus as imitating Buddha Gautama in his search of liberation from suffering and ignorance and moral enlightenment, the creator of the image above interprets the kingdom of god in the teachings of Jesus from a Buddhist perspective. Thus, for him, the kingdom of god becomes the human search of liberation from suffering and unknowingness. His Jesus is an enlightened man, a Buddha.