Mary the Tower

Magdala in Aramaic and migdal in Hebrew mean tower. For most of your life you were told Magdalene was a hometown, the way you'd say Mary from Chicago.

Documented RecordIn 2021 Elizabeth Schrader and Joan Taylor went through the early writers in the Journal of Biblical Literature. No early author places her in the lake town, Jerome read the name as an honor, and they show it can mean the magnified one, the tower-ess.

ScriptureIn the Pistis Sophia, chapter 96, Jesus says that Mary Magdalene and John will tower over all his disciples.

Documented RecordA skull kept in the crypt at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in Provence has been honored as hers since 1279. It sits in a gilt bronze reliquary made in 1860. In 2017 Philippe Charlier and Philippe Froesch photographed it from every side and modeled the face of a woman of 45 to 50, of Mediterranean origin. It has never been carbon dated.

No Gospel calls Mary Magdalene a prostitute. Luke 8 says seven demons had gone out of her, and it names no sin.

And what are these seven demons, if not the universality of all vices?Pope Gregory I, Homily 33, Rome, about 591

Documented RecordIn his sermons Gregory made Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the unnamed sinner of Luke 7 the same person. The woman who paid for the ministry and saw the risen Christ first became the sinner at his feet.

Documented RecordIn 1969 the Roman calendar separated the three women again. On June 3, 2016, by decision of Pope Francis, her day, July 22, was raised to a feast under the title Apostle of the Apostles, a title Thomas Aquinas used in his commentary on John.

Luke 8 names Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna, says there were many others, and tells you they provided for the group out of their own resources. The women paid for the road.

After he rose from the dead, his twelve disciples and seven women continued to be his followers.The Sophia of Jesus Christ, Nag Hammadi Codex III, opening line

Documented RecordThe First Apocalypse of James asks him, who are the seven women who have been your disciples? The answer on that page is damaged. A later passage names Salome, Mariam, Martha and Arsinoe.

ScriptureNo surviving page lists all seven. These are seven women the four Gospels name around him.

ScriptureIn Romans 16:7 Paul greets Andronicus and Junia and calls them prominent among the apostles. John Chrysostom praised her as a woman worthy of the title apostle. Around 1300 Giles of Rome wrote her up as a man, and the standard Greek New Testament printed a man's name from 1927 until 1998.

The Gospel of Mary was bought in Cairo in January 1896 and stayed unpublished until 1955. Ten of its nineteen pages are gone.

Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of women.Peter to Mary, the Gospel of Mary

But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her?Levi to Peter, the Gospel of Mary

Documented RecordThe Gospel of Philip was found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. It calls Magdalene the one who was called his companion. The line about the kiss is torn, and it reads: loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her, and then there is a hole in the page. Mouth is a scholar's repair.

Documented RecordThe Pistis Sophia was sold to the British Museum in 1785 and is British Library Add MS 5114. In its first three books the disciples speak up 115 times with a question or an interpretation. Mary takes 67 of them and Peter takes 7.

Mary, you blessed one, whom I will perfect in all the mysteries of the height, speak openly, you whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all your brothers.Pistis Sophia, chapter 17, Mead translation in today's words

My Lord, we will not endure this woman, for she takes the opportunity from us and has let none of us speak, but she speaks many times.Peter, Pistis Sophia, chapter 36, Mead in today's words

I am afraid of Peter, because he threatened me and hates our sex.Mary to Jesus, Pistis Sophia, chapter 72, Mead in today's words

In the Pistis Sophia, Sophia, whose name means wisdom, chases a false light and falls into the chaos without her pair. She cries out thirteen times, and in chapter 81 Jesus brings her home.

When Eve was still with Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into being.The Gospel of Philip, Isenberg translation

Christ came to repair the separation, which was from the beginning, and again unite the two.The Gospel of Philip

When you make the two one, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, then will you enter the kingdom.The Gospel of Thomas, saying 22, shortened

Documented RecordAround the year 180 Irenaeus recorded what the Valentinian teachers called that reunion. The Savior and Sophia are the bridegroom and the bride, and the bridal chamber is the whole fullness of God.

Engineering InferenceIn your own life the bridegroom is the structure, the plan and the numbers. The bride is the knowing you can't explain. Every decision you regret was made by one of them without the other.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John name no child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and neither does any book found at Nag Hammadi. The story you know was built in layers, and every layer has a date.

For it is by a kiss that the perfect conceive and give birth. For this reason we also kiss one another. We receive conception from the grace which is in one another.The Gospel of Philip, the lines just before it names Magdalene his companion

Engineering InferenceThat is how their children are born, mouth to ear and teacher to student. Every person who received what she carried out of the garden in John 20 is her child.

In the Gospel of Mary the soul climbs past the powers, and the fourth power takes seven forms, the seven powers of wrath. The soul faces all seven, keeps climbing and says, what binds me has been slain.

Documented RecordThe Surgeon General's 2023 advisory found that about half the adults in the United States were lonely, and compared living without connection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Pew found that 63 percent of men under 30 are single, against 34 percent of women the same age. The United States marriage rate was 10.6 per 1,000 people in 1970 and 6.1 in 2023.