Most of the priestly Sadducee elite were massacred, leaving the way clear for the Pharisee movement. Over the next two hundred years, first on the Mediterranean coast and then in Galilee, their descendants would lay the groundwork for the rabbinical Judaism we know today. In the lack of the physical temple or any chance that it would be rebuilt in the foreseeable future, the early rabbis internalized the idea of it, creating a vast philosophical structure of law and ethics in its place: the Mishna, and later, the Talmud.
The Palestinian followers of Jesus as a prophet of Jewish renewal were dispersed in the turmoil following the destruction, but Paul's organizational brilliance had by then created a rapidly growing nonJewish Jesus movement throughout the rest of the Mediterranean. Already in the ascendance, this would now predominate. The Palestinian prophet would become the Christ, a divine being in the Hellenistic image. His Jewishness would be played down, and despite the fact that Paul himself was a Pharisee—and possibly Jesus too, as some scholars maintain—the gospel writers would severely distort the role of the Pharisees to avoid blaming Rome and thus antagonizing the authorities. Instead of the Romans, the Jews were set up as opponents.
It has always been this way when one group parts ways with the larger one within which it was born. Whether early Protestants separating from Catholicism, or American settlers separating from British rule, the parent group becomes the opponent. And just as the New World defined itself against the Old World even as it grew out of it, so too, sixteen hundred years earlier, the New Testament faith began to define itself against the Old. Jews were divided from Christians, and Christianity from its Jewish roots. Separation took the place of renewal, divisiveness the place of continuity.
It would surely have broken Maryam's heart, let alone that of her son.
But the spirit of continuity did not disappear altogether. It lives on quite vividly in the traditional accounts of Maryam's death.
In the apocryphal Twentieth Discourse, for instance, Maryam calls the women of her community to her as she lies dying, apparently peacefully, and of old age. When they have all gathered, she takes the hand of the Magdalene, and tells them: "Behold your mother from this time onwards."
It is a beautiful image. In that meeting of hands, the mother hands on to the chosen daughter. The daughter figure will become the new mother, the amma, continuing the line of wise women. The mantle is passed from one generation to the next, from the Nazarene to the Magdalene, the mother to the lover, one Maryam to another.
In that same spirit of continuity, the Discourse also reunites mother and son. It tells how when Jesus sees that Maryam is dying, he descends to earth with heavenly robes for her. She dies—"her soul leaped into the bosom of her own son, and he wrapped it in a garment of light"—and Jesus orders the apostles to take her body to the Vale of Jehoshaphat, where Mary's Tomb now stands. Three days later, he ascends to heaven and takes her with him: "There came a great choir of angels and caught away the body of the Virgin, and Peter and John and we looked on until she was carried to heaven, until we lost sight of it."
And lose sight of it we all did. Not just of Maryam's body, but of the woman herself—her spirit, her mind, her presence. The Mary who would come into being would be little more than a shadow of the real woman, so insubstantial that it would not be until 1950, under Pope Pius XII, that the Vatican would belatedly catch up with tradition and proclaim her bodily assumption into heaven.
What actually happened when she died? I think we can say that as with her son's resurrection, the spirit of the story carries more truth, and certainly more power, than the legendary details. In this spirit, Maryam dies, but in her own way, is resurrected. Not by Jesus himself, nor by choirs of angels, but by the women she loves. Her mantle is handed on to the next generation, and will continue to be handed on this way over the generations.
Each time a woman gives birth, each time a woman sits between another's legs and cradles the emerging newborn's head, each time a woman sings in joy or wails in mourning, seeks out knowledge or teaches it to others, works for justice or acts for peace or risks her life for freedom, the mantle of Maryam is handed on.
In the spirit of Maryam, we are all her.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
2 a name so common: See, among others, Moltmann-Wendel, Women Around Jesus.
3 the lingua franca: C. Rabin, "Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Century," in Safrai and Stern, Jewish People in the First Century.
4 C.E. and B.C.E.: Since A.D. and B.C. are more commonly used, I have Since A.D. and B.C. are used them throughout this book.
4 anxious at the temple: Luke 2:48.
4 the wedding at Cana: John 2:3-4.
4 at the foot of the cross: John 19:25.
4 legend accrued over the centuries: Marina Warner's Alone of All Her Sex is a superb history of the development of the Marian legend.
5 readers of Woolfs journals: Let, Virginia Woolf
8 olive tree can be a thousand years old: Rosenblum, Olives.
10 both empathy and imagination: Collingwood, Idea of History.
1
15 za'atar: Still widely used throughout the Middle East. Often called hyssop or marjoram, it is in fact wild oregano mixed with sesame seeds and salt. It is sprinkled on bread before baking, used as a spice in stews and casseroles, and most commonly, mixed with spice in stews and casseroles, and most olive oil into a paste used as a dip.
16 tiny, dark rooms: The modern visitor can get a sense of such rooms at Katzrin, in the Golan Heights, where archeologists have partially reconstructed a fourth-century village.
16 during harvest times: Granqvist, Birth and Childhood Among the Arabs. Hilma Granqvist was a young Swedish anthropologist whose books, full of extraordinarily rich detail on Palestinian peasant life, were the result of three years spent in the village of Artas, just south of Bethlehem. She stayed with Louise Baldensperger, the daughter of an Alsatian missionary, who spent most of her life living in Artas and eventually coauthored From Cedar to Hyssop (Crowfoot and Baldensperger), a wonderful book on Palestinian plant lore.
17 if you know astrology: Astrology played a large role in temple practice, in Jerusalem as elsewhere. The Essene scrolls found at Qumran (The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls) contain astrological systems, zodiacal horoscopes, and even a brontologion, which interpreted the sounds of thunder (for instance, "If in Taurus it thunders, hard labor for the country and the sword . . . If in Gemini it thunders, terror and affliction will be brought by strangers"). The zodiac would later be a central decorative motif in many fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-century Palestinian synagogues.
18 glimmer ofan oil lamp: Just a flat piece of clay folded and pinched into a triangle. A wick was placed in the mouth, and olive oil poured inside. You can find baskets full of such lamps outside tourist stores throughout the Middle East, selling for a dollar orfiftycents each, depending on your bargaining power. Take them home, fill them with olive oil, insert a wick, and they work—smokily. them with olive oil, insert a wick, and they
18 Not the Judean Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, but the Galilean one: The consensus among biblical scholars and historians is that it is highly improbable that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and he was most likely born in Nazareth (see for instance Shorto, Gospel Truth). They are apparently unaware of the existence of the Galilee Bethlehem. The author of the Gospel of Matthew may also have been unaware that it existed—like modern biblical scholars, he was not Palestinian. But his loose quote in Matthew 2:6 of Micah 5:2 ("For so it has been written by the prophets: And you O Bethlehem in the land of Judah . . .") makes it clear that he specified the Judean Bethlehem only because it accorded with established prophecy. Similarly, Luke 2:4 specifies the Judean Bethlehem, "the city of David," solely in order to establish Jesus' descent from David through Joseph.
20 hard-packedfibrous pellets: Sinai Beduin still use camel dung, and it is indeed a perfect fuel for cooking. Dense and dry, it burns smoothly for a long time, and with no odor.
&nb
sp; 21 peculiar date of 4 B.C.: When the Christian calendar was initiated in the seventh century, scribes miscalculated by about four years— an understandable error since there was no universal calendar in use at the time.
21 "the invention of childhood'': Aries, Centuries of Childhood.
21 "the age of chasing stray sheep": Granqvist, Birth and Childhood Among the Arabs.
22 The numbers are chilling: Brydon and Chant, Women in the Third World.
22 eighteenth-century London: Jackson, Doctors and Diseases.
22 ancient Rome: Preston, Mortality Trends, and Jackson, Doctors and Diseases.
22 nineteenth-century Massachusetts: Preston, Mortality Trends. Mortality 23 ancient Middle East: Meyers, "Everyday Life."
23 one out of three died in childbirth: Jackson, Doctors and Diseases.
23 effective birthrate was lower: Ibid.
23 number of siblings given: Matthew 13:55-56.
25 The few villages that have been excavated: Most strikingly, Mordechai Aviam's excavations of Yodfat and Cana.
25 elaborate mosaic-floored mansions: See Netzer and Weiss, Zippori. Sepphoris is now an Israeli archeological park, with tourists drawn especially to the mosaic floors, in particular the one showing a smiling woman whom the archeologists dubbed showing a smiling woman whom "the Mona Lisa of the Galilee."
26 "the salt of the earth": Matthew 5:13.
26 a house was not stones, but people: Throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean and throughout the centuries, as in Le Roy Ladourie's account of fourteenth-century Montaillou in France.
27 novelistic "infancy gospels": The father of all the infancy gospels was the Protevangelium of James (in The Apocryphal New Testament).
27 bond between land and people: See Qleibo, Before the Mountains Disappear, Benvenisti, Sacred Landscapes; and Khalidi, All That Remains.
28 The name itself was foreign: While it's often assumed that "Palestine" refers to the land of the Philistines, this is in fact highly unlikely. The Philistines had long disappeared from the historical record, back in the seventh century B.C., and even then their land was only the narrow coastal strip from Gaza to Jaffa. Moreover, the third-century B.C. Greek translation of Hebrew holy books, known as the Septuagint, used the word Philistia for that area, not Palaestina. One alternative theory (Jacobson, "When Palestine Meant Israel") has it that the name originated as a pun, a form much admired in Athens, where wordplay was elevated to a sophisticated art. Palaestina may have worked off the Greek palaistes, meaning "wrestler," since the name Israel—yisra~el in Hebrew—means one who wrestled with God. The wrestler in question, of course, is Jacob, who fought through the night with the angel of God, and so had his name changed to Israel. Wrestling was so popular in Athens that this biblical story could well have caught the Greek imagination. It certainly appeals to any modern mind wrestling with matters of faith and doubt. And given the seemingly unending wrestling over the same land today, with the ever-growing religious fanaticism on both sides, it has a horribly literal relevance.
28 always take place in the winter months: Granqvist, Birth and Childhood. Also Norberg-Hodges on Ladakh, in Ancient Futures. Ancient 29 the Galileans rose in rebellion: 1 Kings 12.
30 And so arose Elijah: The story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17 and 18, and 2 Kings 1 and 2.
30 the honey locust tree: The account of the Baptist surviving on honey and locusts in Mark 1:6 undoubtedly comes from a mistranslation for the honey locust tree, also known as the carob. The for the honey locust tree, also known as the Baptist could indeed have survived on carob pods.
30 "And behold, the Lord passed by": 1 Kings 19:11.
31 illiterate, as was everyone she knew: For the elite monopoly on For the elite monopoly literacy, see Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects.
31 "without writing": Levi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning.
32 long narrative poems: See, for instance, Clinton Bailey's translations See, for instance, Clinton Bailey's of twentieth-century poems in Bedouin Poetry.
32 rhythms, images, indeed whole phrases: Excellent on the oral tradition are Niles, Homo Narrans on singers and poets as tradition bearers; Finnegan, Oral Poetry on memorization techniques and structure; and Whallon, Formula, Character and Context, on biblical and epic traditions.
32 Mary conceiving through the ear: A legend that began in the third century when Origen of Alexandria suggested that Mary was impregnated by the words of the angel. Within a century, the visual image of the angel talking into her ear had become the conceptual image of the angel impregnating her through the ear. For a more psychoanalytic take on the legend, see "The Madonna's Conception Through the Ear" in Jones, Psycho-Myth, Psycho-History.
32 "the word was made flesh": John 1:14.
33 "all part of the once undifferentiated collection": Whallon, Formula, Character and Context.
34 "so he left Maria Magdalena": Up to this point, Khiyr's telling of the Magdalene's story follows the eastern Orthodox tradition, in which the Magdalene only despairs and/or turns to prostitution after being jilted by the man to whom she is betrothed. Only at the end does Khiyr give the story a unique twist of his own.
35 "He who is without sin": John 8:7.
II
37 raised from age three: In The Protevangelium of James, a.k.a. The Infancy Gospel of James, in The Apocryphal New Testament.
39 the woman in the gospels: Luke 7:37-38.
39 Sacrifice is a messy business: For details of sacrifice and temple ritual in the following pages, see Klingaman, First Century, and Shmuel Safrai, "Religion in Everyday Life," in Safrai and Stern, Jewish People.
41 Prayer was not part of the ritual: "The contrast between sacrifice and prayer is the contrast between elitism and populism," says Shaye Cohen in From the Maccabees to the Mishnah.
41 "whole families searching": Molly Moore, "Muslim Feat of Sacrifice Unsettles Modern Turkey," in The Washington Post, March 6, Unsettles 2001.
41 a vast array of activity: see Horsley and Silberman, Message and the Kingdom.
43 "a monumental institution": Ibid.
44 the same slab of stone: Kanan Makiya's book The Rock brilliantly incorporates the legends and history of this slab of stone.
46 beliefs mirror those of legendary first-century Pharisee sages: For instance, one of Jesus' most famous sayings, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, for this is the law and the prophets," mirrors Hillel's "Golden Rule" when asked the meaning of the Torah: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole of the Torah. The rest is interpretation."
47 exhibit on ancient goddesses: "Local Goddesses: From Ancient Deities to Mythical Women of Today" was at the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem in spring 2001.
47 A Jew—Yehudi: "Jewish identity in antiquity was elusive and uncertain," says Shaye Cohen, who explores the issue in depth in The Beginnings of Jewishness. "Indeed," he continues, "the Greek word 'Ioudaios,' usually translated as 'Jew,' often is better translated as 'Judean.' "James Carroll (Constantine's Sword) notes the misleading assumption of a social-religious entity called "the Jews," as well as the powerful regional differences between Judeans and Galileans.
51 mystical Judaism: See Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
51 The gospel version: Mark 6:17-2 8.
III
54 Barabbas, the thief: See Smallwood, Jews Under Roman Rule.
54 "a notable prisoner": Matthew 27:16; Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19.
55 "social banditry": Discussed at length by Horsley and Hanson in Discussed at length Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs.
57 "his" people never accepted him: See Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness for an excellent discussion of the Judean/Jewishness of Herod and the Idumeans.
57 "an Arab from the southern Palestinian province of Idumea": Wilson, Jesus.
58 Mark Antony in Rome: The Mark Antony of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
58 "accidental death by drowning": There was nothing accidental
about it, of course. The event is memorably portrayed in E. P. Cavafy's poem "Aristoboulus," which ends with the boy's mother longing "to go out and shout it to the Hebrews, to tell, to tell how the murder was done" (trans. Rae Daeven).
59 Olympic Games: Herod's long list of benefactions is detailed in Herod's long list of Smallwood, Jews Under Roman Rule.
60-61 Guile was needed too: Smallwood gives an excellent account of the intricacies of Herodian politics, which could be said to have defined Byzantine three hundred years before the Byzantines came into being.
62 tax burden was crippling: See Richard Horsley's work on tax debt and its destructive effect on peasant society (The Message and the Kingdom). Le Roy Ladourie also records peasant hostility to tithes and resentment of the wealth of the church in fourteenth-century Montaillou, in southwestern France.
64 "the bond with the land": Qleibo, Before the Mountains Disappear. Before the Mountains 64 "We are having to pledge our fields": Nehemiah 5:1-5.
65 old Mosaic law: Sabbatical release from debt mandated in Deuteronomy 15:1-2.
65 The earliest version: Matthew 6:12.
65 lost partial sight of debt: Luke 11:4.
67 the still, humid days of summer: On a single hot summer's day, the Sea of Galilee loses one whole centimeter of water level through Sea of Galilee evaporation.
68 fishermen as exploited: See Horsley and Silberman, Message and the Kingdom.
69 many candidates: See Horsley and Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs.
72 "combined patriotism with moral purity": Schiff and Ya'ari, Intifada.
IV
77 a stone on thefloor: As with many such details, in Granqvist, Birth and Childhood.
78 "Come sister," she chants: Ibid.
79 "Give afflictions and enemies no power": Naveh and Shaked, Magic "Give afflictions and enemies Spells and Formulae.
79 to the earth we shall return: Patai, On Jewish Folklore.
79 dust to dust: Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20.
Mary Page 22