{"id":2116,"date":"2006-02-10T04:36:40","date_gmt":"2006-02-10T11:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/02\/10\/magdalene-matters\/"},"modified":"2006-02-10T04:36:40","modified_gmt":"2006-02-10T11:36:40","slug":"magdalene-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2116","title":{"rendered":"Magdalene Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the New Testament, Mary Magdalene, a prosititute, cleaned Jesus&#8217; feet with her tears and then dried them with her hair. What&#8217;s always struck me about this story is that it sounds kinda gross. Who wants to have their feet dried by someone else&#8217;s hair? <em>Ewwww.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Plus, Mary would have needed <em>astounding <\/em>tear ducts to be able to effectively wash more than His Holy Toenail. The poet Richard Crashaw must have had this thought in mind when he described Magdalene&#8217;s eyes as &#8220;two faithful fountains; two walking baths; two weeping motions; \/ Portable, and compendious oceans.&#8221;\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Contrary to what I wrote in the first paragraph, the New Testament never identifies the prostitute who gave Jesus the icky tear-hair footbath by name. Mary Magdalene was identified with this woman, in Christian tradition, to give Mary some much-needed backstory, and perhaps to humble her a bit. There&#8217;s an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/fact\/content\/articles\/060213fa_fact2\">excellent Joan Acocella article in the current <em>New Yorker<\/em><\/a> which describes how Magdalene &#8211; according to some Gnostic texts the smartest and most enlightened of Jesus&#8217; followers (and perhaps even Jesus&#8217; successor) &#8211; has been reinterpreted and rebiographied over the centuries, including some discussion of recent feminist interpretations. Well worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the New Testament, Mary Magdalene, a prosititute, cleaned Jesus&#8217; feet with her tears and then dried them with her hair. What&#8217;s always struck me about this story is that it sounds kinda gross. Who wants to have their &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2116\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}