July 2, 2024 • 61 mins
In this episode, Martha Tatarnic welcomes Elizabeth Schrader Polczer to talk about her groundbreaking work in biblical scholarship, particularly in how we see and understand Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of John. Elizabeth discusses the textual instabilities around the names Mary and Martha in John 11, visible in Papyrus 66, revealing intriguing insights and controversial edits that challenge traditional interpretations. She shares her discovery of editorial changes that suggest Martha may have been added to the Gospel of John in the second century. This revelation has significant implications for how we understand the role of Mary Magdalene in early Christianity.
This is the first of a two-part episode, so be sure to stay tuned next week for the second half.
Elizabeth Schrader Polczer is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Villanova University. She holds a doctorate in Early Christianity from Duke University, with a focus on textual criticism, Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel of John. Her research has been published in the Harvard Theological Review, the Journal of Biblical Literature, TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, the Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin, and the Journal of Early Christian Studies. She is regularly invited to present her peer-reviewed research at churches and conferences internationally.
On Twitter/X: @libbieschrader
YouTube of Diana Butler Bass sermon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSH-nfdh_S0&t=5s
Elizabeth's Album:
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/libbie-schrader/16720802
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Future Christian Team:
Loren Richmond Jr. – Host & Executive Producer
Martha Tatarnic – Guest Host / Co-Host
Paul Romig–Leavitt – Associate Producer
Danny Burton - Producer
Dennis Sanders – Producer
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Paul (00:04):
Welcome to the Future Christian podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your
church into the 21st century.
At the Future Christian podcast, we talk to
pastors, authors, and other faith leaders for helpful
advice and practical wisdom to help you and your
community of faith walk boldly into the future.
(00:26):
Now here's your host, Loren Richman
Juniore.
>> Loren (00:33):
Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. Today,
Martha Tatarnic welcomes doctor Elizabeth Schrader
Pulzer to the show. This is the first of a two
part episode, so be sure to stay tuned next week for
the second half. Elizabeth Schrader
Pulser is assistant professor of New Testament at
Villanova University. She holds a
(00:53):
doctorate in early Christianity from Duke
University with a focus on textual
criticism, Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel
of John. Her research has been published in
the Harvard Theological the
Journal of Biblical Literature,
TC A, UH, Journal of Biblical
Textual Criticism, the comparative
(01:14):
oriental manuscript Studies Bulletin, and the
Journal of Early Christian Studies. She
is regularly invited to present her peer
reviewed research at churches and conferences
internationally. One more thing. Please
take a moment to leave a review on whatever
podcast app you're listening on and share this
episode with a friend. Thanks and
(01:36):
enjoy the episode.
>> Martha Tatarnic (01:42):
welcome to the Future Christian podcast. I
am your host for the summer season, Martha
Tatarnic. And today I am
having a conversation with somebody
whose work I have been following closely for the past couple
of years, and for a variety of reasons, would count as a
personal hero. Doctor Elizabeth
Schrader Pulitzer and we are
(02:05):
going to hi. We're going to be
discussing Elizabeth's groundbreaking
work in biblical scholarship, particularly in how
we see and understand Mary Magdalene and
the Gospel of John. We're going to be doing
this over the course of two separate podcasts in
order to do justice, not just to her work,
(02:25):
but also to its implications.
Uh, I say
with quite a bit of seriousness that Elizabeth
is kind of the Taylor Swift, um, uh,
biblical scholarship, and that
says, uh, something about both her
talent, uh, and her
reach. So welcome to the podcast.
>> Elizabeth (02:47):
Thank you so much. I don't know if my reach is quite as big as Taylor Swift's, but
I like where you're going with that.
>> Martha Tatarnic (02:54):
Well, uh, it helps my kids to
understand, you know, why this
interview is such a big deal.
So, um, speaking of Taylor
Swift, uh, and
music and, uh, that analogy,
let's just set this context a little bit here
(03:14):
for how you became one of the most talked
about biblical scholars of our day, because it's
not exactly an obvious
path. Um, but,
uh, maybe you could just begin by telling us a little
bit about what your relationship with christianity
and the church was growing up?
>> Elizabeth (03:33):
Sure, yeah. I, um, mean, I grew up in the
episcopal church. Um, I
am from Oregon. Um, I had a
really strong youth group
growing up. Um, and I would
say I got really involved in the church as a teenager.
And, um, you know, we did these church
weekends called teens encounter Christ. And,
(03:56):
uh, all of my best friends still to this
day went to that with me. Um, so it was
very good for bonding. And,
um, then in college, I don't think I
really went to church in college. I went to school in southern
California at Pomona college. And I think I kind of, like,
dropped off from church attendance in my twenties, as probably a lot of
people do. I got really interested in
(04:19):
meditation in particular, actually.
And, um, I got
along the way. I was interested in finding a guru,
which maybe a lot of people do at some point in
their spiritual seeking. And,
um, I would say I
did get interested in meditation, and I would say I was kind of
(04:39):
seeking for a while. And then
sort of in my early thirties,
somehow it just became clear to me that my
guru, well, I knew I had an intuition that my
guru was female. And I'm like, who is it?
And, um, after a lot of seeking, I
learned that I realized it's Mother Mary.
Mother Mary is my spiritual guide. And I was
(05:02):
like, oh, really? Okay. And then I just started going
back to church. Really? Yeah, I started going back
to episcopal church at that point. I lived in, um, Brooklyn,
New York. And so, yeah, I started
going back to church in my thirties,
um, but it was kind of like right back where I left off.
The episcopal church is pretty consistent, um, and
(05:22):
has been for quite a while. And one of the nice things about growing up in the
episcopal church is I feel very aligned with their
values. And I never felt like I had to leave
or change. Um, and so, yeah, so
then I was going back to an episcopal church in
my thirties. And, um, during this whole time, I was a
music major in college and I was in a band
and we won this big contest sponsored by
(05:45):
Pantene. And we opened for
Jewel. And then we were invited to tour with Jewel a little bit,
which was cool. And, um, we also,
uh, toured with Poe, who maybe people remember
her song angry Johnny. That was kind of like her biggest hit.
>> Martha Tatarnic (05:59):
Uh, I was really into that. Well, I still am into
that album. I still on playlists that
I have. I loved that
album.
>> Elizabeth (06:09):
Yeah. And we were on tour with her for her second record, which is called
haunted, um, which is also a really good
record. And so that was fun to tour around the country with
her. Um, and then we also won a
contest where we got to open for rusted Root, which was
cool, in San Francisco. And, um, then because I had won
the Pantene contest, I got to go back to a
future iteration of that contest. And I met, like, michelle
(06:31):
Branch and India. Ari.
There's these pictures of me with these artists, which
is fun. And I. So, yeah, that was
all really fun. My band, though, didn't really.
They were kind of like dudes who wanted
to be in like, a guy band. And they were sort of,
like, embarrassed to have a female lead singer
(06:53):
because the song I won the contest about was called
Blood Red Moon, which was about a late period.
And I think they just found it kind of embarrassing. And
so the band didn't really work out
in the long run. And so, um,
they sort of started their own band, which is called the action
cats, which is like, everybody in my band except me,
which is kind of a bummer. Um, and so
(07:16):
that was really hard for me. But I ended up,
um, just being a female singer songwriter
after that. And I did that for quite a while. And,
um, I toured so many colleges,
including Villanova, where I'm a professor now, which is
super funny. I'm like, the last time I was here, I was playing at
the Connelly center.
>> Martha Tatarnic (07:34):
Like playing and probably not necessarily dreaming
about becoming a professor.
>> Elizabeth (07:39):
No, no, no. I was trying to make it in the music business.
Um, I did have some more fun things happen as
a solo artist. I got to be on an episode of the Gilmore
Girls, the 6th season finale. You can see
me as one of the troubadours.
Um, in this episode called partings, where Lorelei and Luke
have a fight. I mean, you can see me. I
was at Stars Hollow, which is actually in Burbank,
(08:01):
California, um, for a few days filming that
episode. Um, my songs are on like,
a lot of sort of MTV reality
shows and I still get royalties for my songs.
Being in the background of, I don't know, true
life, I self injure or like,
julianna and Bill. Like, there's all these, like,
funny shows. I mean, the music business is
(08:22):
hard.
>> Martha Tatarnic (08:23):
Yeah, yeah, I did it for a.
>> Elizabeth (08:25):
Long time and I still, you know, it's nice to get some
royalties every once in a while still. But,
um, I think I was definitely starting to
get burned out on it because after this huge,
amazing thing of winning this contest and
touring with jewel and seeing what it's like to play for like
5000 people and touring the country and
all that, um, and uh,
(08:48):
making records and getting better and better at my craft. I
think I became a better and better artist as I got older,
but it's a really youth focused culture.
And like the. I felt like,
um, the entertainment business cared more about
me for being young than for being
accomplished.
>> Martha Tatarnic (09:06):
Yeah, well, and it's interesting the
piece about your male band mates going on
without you too, because, um, I
have quite a bit of background in music
as well. I studied music in university, although I was
never like a pop artist
or anything like that. I'm a french horn player.
Um, but
(09:29):
I, uh, think that the misogyny in the
music world sort of puts the
church to shame.
>> Elizabeth (09:36):
Well, yeah. Ah, there's that too.
>> Martha Tatarnic (09:39):
Ah, I also grew up in the
anglican church, and, um, so
I certainly grew up thinking that women had a place
in the church. I didn't grow up thinking that
women particularly had a place in music
or in the history of music. And,
um, yeah, the music industry
can be quite famously, uh,
(10:02):
misogynistic. Can it?
>> Elizabeth (10:03):
Yeah. I mean, I think also there was a part of
me that was a little naive, that I'm like, if I'm just really good at what I do,
then, like, that's all it takes,
right? I, um, was not willing
to sleep with older industry
executives like that. Just, I was like, you know,
my music is good. Like, why would I do that? And it's
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
that I participated in. Um, you know, it was a little
depressing to see that, um, especially in entertainment,
you know what they call it, the casting couch or whatever. That
is a real. That is a real thing.
>> Martha Tatarnic (10:40):
It is a real thing, yeah.
>> Elizabeth (10:41):
And so I was not willing to participate in that. And so maybe
I. That's part of why I didn't get further. But, um, I
mean, I did have fun. I had fun doing it in my twenties
and early thirties. Um,
and yeah, I would say that during my early
thirties, I was trying to figure it out. I'm like, okay. So
I expected myself to be
(11:01):
doing better by now. Um, there were some people I
knew personally, like Sarah Bareilles, um,
Colby Calle, Katy Perry. Those are all people
that I knew personally that I, um, mean, Sarah would
say, hi. Libby, too. Me, now, she does know me.
Um, but Katy Perry and Colby Kelly, I, like, hung
out. I was in groups with at the time before
(11:22):
they were getting big, and so I saw that some
people made it and I'm like, I was gonna
be one of them. But of course, I mean, I talked to my friends
now who are singer songwriters, and,
um, for every one of those, there's
like 50 to 100 who are just as qualified
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,
we don't need to focus all of our attention on what I call lottery
winners.
>> Martha Tatarnic (11:49):
Yeah, well, it really is like a
lottery. Um, and
I would have probably put the. The
ratios as a lot higher than 50 to
100 for everyone, because, you
know, most of the people I know in
music, like, it's. It's
a real grind. Like, they have to be, uh,
(12:11):
extremely committed to that vocation, you
know?
>> Elizabeth (12:14):
Um, well, people are committed to it into their thirties
and sometimes than even their forties. And there comes a point, like, I don't. I just
want to stop saying, will you please come to my show? I want to stop
saying, can I sleep on your couch? Like, I'm. Can I borrow your
keyboard? There's enough of that. Like, that's okay for
a while, and at a certain point, you're just like, huh? Like, no
more. Yeah.
>> Martha Tatarnic (12:33):
Yeah, for sure. Was there, like, a
spiritual dimension to
songwriting, in particular, to being
a, uh, musician on that circuit, following that
calling for all those years?
>> Elizabeth (12:47):
I'd say there was, yeah. I mean, certainly, um,
in my lyrics, you can hear hints of me
sort of, um, referencing scripture.
I mean, you two was always my favorite band. And the way that you two
sometimes references scripture, I kind of do similar stuff
in my lyrics. Like, I'll talk about, like, telling you
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
in my songs. But, um, also, as I
said, during this time, I was getting really into meditation,
and I would do some. I mean, there was a time,
um, I think in my late twenties, when I
was meditating for an hour every day, every morning.
Wow. Yeah, I was taking it very, very, very seriously.
(13:28):
Yeah. Um, I don't think it's unrelated, by the way,
to, um, some of the stuff that I found in biblical
scholarship. I mean, how many people do meditate for
an hour every day? I did that for, I don't
know, six, seven years. I
was doing that, which is quite a while. And,
um, so, uh. And it
was around that time that I was making this transition from just
(13:51):
meditating to be like, oh, Mother Mary is my spiritual
guide, so I'm gonna start going back to church. M
um, and, uh, yeah, no, I
would say that there was definitely a spiritual aspect. And when it came to
my music, somewhere along the way, I think it was right after I
moved to New York in 2008 because I was in LA
after I graduated, um, and with the band, we lived in
(14:11):
LA, but eventually I transitioned to living in New York.
And I remember when I was in New York, I
was on the subway, strangely, and I was reading a book by Bell
Hooks, who's an amazing, um, feminist
author, uh, who passed away recently. And,
um, I had this moment
where on the
subway it was like, my purpose in
(14:33):
life is to bring the
valuation of feminine into the
world that, like, the feminine has
value.
>> Martha Tatarnic (14:42):
Wow.
>> Elizabeth (14:43):
And I had this very strange experience where
I literally felt sort of, it
sounds weird, but like, uh, it felt like energy was shooting out of
my head for like an hour afterward. And it was actually freaking me out.
I was texting my best friend. I'm like, there's this weird thing happening
right now, so maybe that's a little bit
tmi. Um, but this is when I was purely a
(15:04):
singer songwriter, like just pure music. And
so I was like, okay, well, I gotta write songs about the feminine and
the feminine voice. And, um,
uh, yeah, I mean, I think a song of mine
called share it is kind of like
the best job that I did,
um, of actually articulating that
(15:24):
feminine voice. And I was able to
showcase for the president of, was
it Sony?
Which, um, I think it was, her name was
Amanda Ghost. I did a showcase with the song
share it, and then I didn't get the record deal from it. And
I'm just like, it felt really
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
to do. I was so certain that this was my life path that, like,
being a singer songwriter, being a musician
was the way. And, um,
then, uh, it just wasn't working out and I was really frustrated. And I would
go, there was this catholic church actually not far from where
I was living at the time in Brooklyn, um, that was dedicated
(16:08):
to the Virgin Mary. Really beautiful
garden with all these statues of the Virgin
Mary. And I would go there to meditate
sometimes. And I had had this meeting with my music
lawyer and also Jewel's mother,
Jewel's mother, Lenedra Carroll,
who had been sort of helping me a little bit. Um, we all had
this sort of pow wow. And I remember that, uh,
(16:31):
Lanidra was like, you just need to jump off the cliff. Like,
what is it that's blocking you? You just need to jump off the cliff. And I
was meditating in this m garden
and dedicated, um, to the virgin Mary. And I
had this. I heard words, which
is really rare for me, in a prayer, um,
or a meditation. And their words were, maybe
(16:51):
you should talk to Mary Magdalene about that.
>> Martha Tatarnic (16:54):
And that was really kind of
the clarifying
encounter that led you onto quite a different
path, right?
>> Elizabeth (17:03):
Yes. Really weird. That's not
the story that you usually hear from a Bible scholar who works on
manuscripts of the New Testament.
>> Martha Tatarnic (17:11):
Yeah.
>> Elizabeth (17:11):
Uh, yeah. So I was just like. I was like.
I was talking to the Virgin Mary here and now
I feel like. Like, go talk to Mary Magdalene. I was like,
I didn't. It was very strange to me. And, um.
So as I was walking home from this experience,
this encounter in the garden, I was like, oh, I
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
went home and I, um, worked out
this song in just, like a couple days. It came real fast,
like, just boom. Which, um, sometimes songs take
me years and years to write. And this one just came in a
couple days. And, um, I sent it to Jules
mom. I'm like, check this out. And she's like, this song is amazing.
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.
>> Martha Tatarnic (17:56):
Yeah.
>> Elizabeth (17:57):
And maybe it was, but it just wasn't into the music
business.
>> Martha Tatarnic (18:00):
It definitely was a breakthrough. It just
wasn't quite what you were expecting.
>> Elizabeth (18:06):
And so then I walked over to the Brooklyn public
Library, which was also close to this garden, by the way. The
garden, it was at the co cathedral of St. Joseph.
And a couple years later, they unfortunately,
um, destroyed the garden to make it into a parking lot. Very
Joni Mitchell.
>> Martha Tatarnic (18:21):
Very Joni Mitchell. That was immediately what came to mind.
>> Elizabeth (18:24):
I know, it's so sad. Um, but I made a music video
of the Magdalene song in the garden, so you can actually see what it looked
like. So, fortunately, we did make the music video
before the garden was destroyed. But,
um, I walked over to the Brooklyn public
library and got the complete idiots guide to Mary Magdalene. And so I started
researching Mary Magdalene and it just
keeps on going. It's like the world's deepest rabbit hole. That was in
(18:47):
2011, I think.
>> Martha Tatarnic (18:49):
Yeah. Like, you couldn't have
possibly known what you were getting into.
>> Elizabeth (18:55):
No idea. And, um, then I made the record
and I decided to call it Magdalene. And then I was like, oh, I
can't, I can't make a record called bag because I put other
songs on it, including that song, share it that I mentioned and a bunch of other ones.
Also a song called Beautiful Girl that's in the same vein as what I
was talking about earlier about like, valuing the feminine.
Um, and, uh, yeah, then
(19:15):
I, um, wrote this, I released this
album, and I put this music video
out and I was like, okay, now what's gonna happen? And what happened was
that I just got completely obsessed with
researching the Bible and,
okay, um, and so, yeah,
maybe now you want to talk about what happened next.
>> Martha Tatarnic (19:37):
Yeah. Well, let's get into the
crux of what has made you such a
groundbreaking and talked about force in
the world of biblical scholarship, because
it definitely involves that rabbit hole that
you jumped into, um, following
that spiritual encounter.
Um, a lot of your work has
(19:59):
centered around John Eleven, the, ah,
story of the raising of Lazarus, and
the earliest known copy that we have of the gospel
according to John, which is known as papyrus
66. Um, so can you
just set the scene for us about papyrus
66 and when, uh, it
(20:19):
was discovered and then what you
began to see when you came across it?
>> Elizabeth (20:24):
Sure. Yeah. So, um, the papyrus
was discovered, I think they used to say
1952, but now they're saying 1956,
near Dishna, Egypt, which is not too
far away from where the Nag Hamadi codices were found.
Um, some people have theorized they came from the same place. It's hard
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
jar with a bunch of other papyri similar to the
Nayakhamadi codices. Um, in this jar
were, um, also papyrus
75 and papyrus 45,
which are other gospel manuscripts from probably slightly
later because p 45 and p 75 are bound up with
(21:05):
other gospels, whereas papyrus 66
is, um, just the gospel of John, which tells
you that maybe its a little earlier because its not being bound up with other
gospels yet. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
And also some letters of like,
uh, some letters were in
there and also, um,
(21:25):
copies of the iliad. So it was like a jar.
Yeah, it was like a jar of somebody's library.
Um. Uh, and they found
Papyrus 66, and it was quickly identified
and published. I think it was first published in
1958. Um,
and, uh, yeah, it was just, uh, they recognized
that this was probably the world's oldest, near
(21:48):
complete copy of the Gospel of John. It's actually called Papyrus
Bodmer two, because it was acquired by
this, um, wealthy.
He's from Switzerland, his name is Martin Bodmer and he
has this thing, it's a library today called the Bodmer
Library. And um, there was sort of like this race
for antiquities in the 20th century. And all
(22:10):
these richest, uh,
magnates in Europe, including Chester
Beatty, also in Ireland, they would just
buy it basically on the black market.
Well, of course, because they have all the money and they want the
manuscripts. And in Egypt,
um, I think at this point you're not
really supposed to smuggle stuff out. Egypt is like, hey, don't
(22:33):
take our stuff. Um, but then if you get this
copy of the gospel of John and some guy in Switzerland is going to
pay you, who knows how much money? Like they're going to find
a way. So there was this,
um, uh, I can't remember his
name offhand, but there was an antiquities
dealer, um, who
basically got it through Cyprus and
(22:54):
then it made its way to bodmer and then Bodmer
hired somebody, um,
to transcribe it and just do a first edition of it.
Um, and I think his name was
Martin, Victor Martin. And then, um, it
became able to be studied. So it was just first,
ah, like in 1958, it was first
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
started to comment on it, um, people
like Marie Emile Boimard, a french
dominican scholar, and,
um, Gordon fill, who was one of the best
known textual critics of the 20th century,
they started making sort of comments on what was
interesting about the manuscript. And what's interesting is that both of
(23:39):
those scholars in the 1960s said, hey, there's
this place where the name Mary's been crossed out
a couple times and like this woman's been split in two. And they're
like, that's the weirdest change in the whole manuscript.
>> Martha Tatarnic (23:51):
Yeah.
>> Elizabeth (23:53):
And they published that and nobody followed up on it.
>> Martha Tatarnic (23:56):
Right. Right.
>> Elizabeth (23:58):
Yeah.
>> Martha Tatarnic (23:59):
Just not, yeah.
>> Elizabeth (24:00):
Uh, they knew, they knew that the name Mary had been crossed out a
couple times and they had, they just said
weird. And papyrus 66 is,
um, very old, but also the
scribe is really unpredictable and the scribe makes a lot of
corrections, 450 corrections, in fact,
along the course of the text. And so it's kind of a weird,
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
idiosyncratic. So,
um, some people think that the scribe had access to
two copies of John, um, and
so the scribe is correcting, sorry, they're
copying from one to call it an exemplar or a
forlog. They have an exemplar that they're copying from and
then they have a second one that they're correcting the text
(24:45):
against because at this time there's no printing press.
So you're just trying to get.
>> Martha Tatarnic (24:49):
We're a long ways away from the printing press.
>> Elizabeth (24:51):
Yeah, definitely. So if you're really lucky, you
know, uh, let's say it's 200 ad. That's usually when it's
dated to like the turn of the third century. Late second, early third
century is when papyrus 66 is usually dated, which
is 100 years after the gospel was written.
So this is our earliest surviving copy, but it had been
already circulating for a century before that.
And so at this point, Christianity is just sort
(25:13):
of getting started. And if you're
lucky enough to have access to two copies of
the Gospel of John, I mean, they were very expensive to make
these sorts of copies, very labor intensive. This
scribe is trying to make a good copy. Um, and
so that's might be part of the reason for so many
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
of reconcile which one is the right one.
Um, and so, uh, it's a really interesting manuscript
in that way, but the text is not particularly
stable. And my dissertation is actually about how at the
origins of Christianity, the text wasn't particularly
stable.
>> Martha Tatarnic (25:53):
Okay.
>> Elizabeth (25:53):
Yeah, and so that's a. I think that's part of what's going on
there.
>> Martha Tatarnic (25:57):
Um, yeah, so,
um, there are these instabilities
around the names Mary and Martha
in John eleven, um, where a number of those
corrections can visibly be seen. Right. Like if you look at
papyrus 66, you can actually see,
um, these
(26:18):
scratchings and changes.
>> Elizabeth (26:20):
Absolutely, yeah. And so I should just give the piece of, you know, after I
went to the Brooklyn public Library and got the complete idiots guy to Mary
Magdalene, and I was like, I released a record about her.
I said, I want to look at the world's oldest copy of the Gospel of
John because, you know, the complete
idiots guy talked about how Mary was a controversial character. And I'm like, well,
let's just look at the world's oldest copy and see if anything has been
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
been. It's all in Greek.
Um, and so I had to kind of meet with a professor at
general Theological seminary, which is the episcopal seminary in
Manhattan, um, or it was. It's kind of
been absorbed by Virginia theological Seminary now. But at the time it
was still a real seminary. And I met with Deirdre Goode,
um, who is the professor of New Testament. And she
(27:05):
directed me to this website that the University of Birmingham had
put together, um, called johannes.com.
i o dash h dash h dash a dash n dash s.com, comma, which you can still go
to. And they had transcribed hundreds
of copies of the gospel of John in Greek and
Latin. And so she's like, go there. And then you can look at the
transcription of papyrus 66. I said, okay.
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
66. I'm like, I want to look at that. So I went
and, um, now I had this website, johannes.com, i
could look. And, um, I
first, of course, went to John 20, the scene between Jesus and
Mary Magdalene in the garden. Nothing was weird
there that I could see John 19, and I didn't read
Greek, but I could use an interlinear study
(27:50):
Bible to see what each word was.
Um, and so, yeah, then I went to John 19. At the cross,
it all looks like it was supposed to look. And I said, okay.
Well, I actually said, oh, I was probably wrong. Like, who am
I? I'm just some singer songwriter.
Like, why would I,
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
because they spend all their time looking at this stuff. Um, and I
said, but, you know, just in case, let me look at John eleven.
Because, uh, some people
think that Mary of Bethany, Lazarus sister, is Mary Magdalene. So
I should just check. I literally almost just gave up. But I was like,
uh, let me just check. Some people think that Mary Bethany
(28:32):
is Mary Magdalene. And so when I went
to John eleven on Johannes.com, comma, I could see, see that there
was all this editorial activity happening for five
verses. And I could see that the name Maria
was being crossed out and being changed to Martha.
And, um, that the name Maria was totally
scratched out and changed to say, the sisters.
>> Martha Tatarnic (28:52):
Okay?
>> Elizabeth (28:53):
And I was like, whoa. I was
like, what is this? And I
knew enough from going to church that there was another story of Mary and
Martha in. By the way, I'm so intimidated talking to
someone named Martha about this.
I'm sorry for all the consequences for someone named Martha.
>> Martha Tatarnic (29:10):
Oh, I'm totally fine with it.
>> Elizabeth (29:13):
I mean, I am saying that Martha existed, but I am saying,
I'm thinking just as somebody who had no
training, it looked like the character
Martha was being added, was being added into the
story. Yeah, yeah. That's just, uh, and the thought never would have
occurred to me because, you know, Mary and Martha, they go together,
as, you know, in both Luke and John. You know, Mary and
Martha, the two sisters. And I, it never would
(29:36):
have occurred to me except that I saw the scribe doing it.
I'm like, is the scribe adding Martha to the story? I'm like,
wait, Luke has a Martha? Luke ten
has a story of Mary and Martha. By the way, they don't have a brother in
that story.
>> Martha Tatarnic (29:48):
Yeah, there's no mention of a Lazarus.
>> Elizabeth (29:51):
Yeah. And so I'm like, did this scribe take
Martha and stick her into
John? Like, somebody who read Luke, did they stick her into
John's gospel? Um, I
mean, that never would have occurred to me if I hadn't seen it. So
I copied the greek text and I sent it to
Deidre. Um, and
(30:11):
the email subject line just had, like, twelve exclamation
points. And I was like, look. Look at
this. It looks like they're adding Martha. Look at this.
And she said, oh, very interesting.
I was like, come on,
that's cool, right? Or that's weird. Or that's
disturbing. It's something, you
(30:31):
know, she probably figured that the work had already been
done because, as I mentioned, it was the 1960s
when people were commenting on it. Uh,
surely at some point, this is in
2012. Surely sometime between the
1960s and 2012, somebody would have
done it, Alex, 50 years.
But the answer was no. Nobody had really done
(30:53):
anything. And m so I
was frustrated. And so I just kind of kept on researching,
and I I think I sent it to Karen
King. I sent it to Elaine pagels. They're like the Harvard and Princeton
ladies who are really big and Mary Magdalene stuff. And
I was like, hey, look at this. Papyrus 66, it's
been changed. And they were
(31:13):
like, um, cool. They
were too busy. They had other projects going on. And
I was getting really frustrated and kept
emailing Deidre. And, um, my best friend
Kelly, um, had said to me, hey,
you can't keep bothering, uh,
these scholars. You have to go learn Greek. You got
(31:34):
to do this work yourself. And I was like,
no, I'm a musician.
I'm a singer songwriter. I know who I am.
I've been doing this for, like, twelve years. This is
about my music career and whatever.
And, um, after maybe a year at
the end of, I guess, in 2013.
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
to show everybody that papyrus 66 is messed up.
I'm going to do a study. So I entered this
master's program at General Theological seminary. Deidre was my
thesis supervisor. And when I was there,
some of the professors were like, oh, have you looked at,
um, Nandra Irving, uh, at the time, he's another
(32:17):
great professor. He was like, have you looked at the Vitas
Latina? What are the Vitas
Latina? Um, the old latin
manuscripts before St. Jerome translated the
Vulgate. Um, they're older copies, uh, like
the first translations into Latin of the gospel of John. He's like,
look at those. And it turns out that
all over the place in the textual transmission of John, not
(32:39):
just in papyrus 66, I looked at, I don't
know, maybe 150 copies for my master's
thesis on this johannes.com website. I could look, I could just
click right through every single copy. Go to John eleven.
One in five greek copies had something weird happening around
Martha. Like, sometimes the name Mary would be changed to
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
what you would expect. Um, and in
the old latin copies, it's even worse. You sometimes just see
Martha's name really getting awkwardly added in the margin.
Really one in three of the old latin copies, you see
something weird happening around Martha. So I was like,
this is surprising. This is a lot.
(33:21):
And also church fathers, I found out that,
um, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom
Tertullian, they were all saying that Mary did things that
your bible would say that Martha does. And I was like, right,
this is weird. I was like, I
think, is there a corruption in the gospel of John?
Is that what this is? So I, um,
(33:41):
I wrote my master's thesis. It was called, was Martha of
Bethany added to the fourth gospel in the second
century? And I knew
if I really had found something that big, it
needed to go to a big journal. And again, as
a master's student, it was maybe a little presumptuous. And
Deirdre said. I was like, how about the Harvard theological Review? That
(34:02):
sounds fancy. And Deirdre was like,
okay, but you got to write to them and say, I'm just a
master's student, and ask if it's okay to submit.
And I wrote to them, and they wrote back and they said, as long as it's under the word
limit, yes, you may submit. So I did.
And miraculously, it made it through the
most rigorous peer review process. Um,
(34:23):
I found out later that my peer reviewer was Eldon Epp, who was
another one of the 20th century's most esteemed textual
critics. Uh, and it got
published in the Harvard Theological Review. And I was like,
okay. And people are like, so where are you going to do your
PhD? I was like, I'm
a musician. I just.
>> Martha Tatarnic (34:41):
So you're still, like. You're still feeling like you're a
musician at this point?
>> Elizabeth (34:45):
I released a record in 2017, I released another
record called Red Thread. Um, yeah. I
was like, this is.
>> Martha Tatarnic (34:51):
But you've also learned Greek, and.
>> Elizabeth (34:56):
I mean, academia didn't sound. I mean, I actually.
I actually was enjoying it. I guess I was. I was doing well, right?
I got my master's thesis published in this top tier journal, but
I certainly wasn't planning on doing a PhD.
But, um, people were asking me, what are you going
to do? Where are you going to do your PhD? And also
it was, um, I actually deferred
(35:17):
my PhD a year, partly because general seminary is a nice place
to live in Manhattan if anybody's ever been there. It's really
beautiful. Um, and also because
I wasn't sure, I was like, I don't know if I want to
do this. Um, I'm a
musician. And I think what it was is
that, um, I
realized if I don't do this, nobody else is going
(35:39):
to.
>> Martha Tatarnic (35:40):
Yeah, because you tried. You tried to get
other people to take it up.
>> Elizabeth (35:45):
Yeah, yeah. And I even got it published. And
then, like, so many publications, it could have just
been published and then lost, right?
>> Martha Tatarnic (35:54):
Mhm.
>> Elizabeth (35:54):
I said, I have to kind of steward this. If I
don't do it, nobody else is going to.
>> Martha Tatarnic (35:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, uh,
a piece of the calling, isn't it?
>> Elizabeth (36:05):
Yeah. So, yeah, I would say
letting that singer songwriter thing go,
and honestly, I don't miss it at all at this point.
>> Martha Tatarnic (36:14):
Is that right?
>> Elizabeth (36:15):
Yeah. I mean, I'm really proud of the songs that I wrote. Um, some
of the ones I've mentioned here, there's, like, war on science, beautiful
girl. Share it. Wish you were the woman. These are.
I think they're top notch songs. Go look them up. You can
find them on, like, apple music or whatever.
>> Martha Tatarnic (36:30):
Yeah. Uh, they're available everywhere.
>> Elizabeth (36:32):
Yeah. And, um. But,
you know, I guess it's really
frustrating to do really excellent work and
for it not to receive the,
um, attention and
um, reception that you want for it.
And I got just tired of that. And,
(36:52):
um, especially when I turn around and I
suddenly, instead of writing songs, I'm writing academic
articles and it's going great.
Like, okay, now I'm getting published in top tier journals, I'm getting
invited to conferences. Instead of
me begging people to come to my show, people are now
like flying me places
(37:12):
and there's an audience that's waiting for me
to give my talks. Wow. Like, this is kind of,
it's similar to being a singer
songwriter, except like, actually, uh,
a lot of the skills that I developed as a singer songwriter I
now use. Like, I know how to be on stage,
I know how to entertain.
>> Martha Tatarnic (37:32):
M mhm.
>> Elizabeth (37:33):
Um, I know how to sort of tell a joke or
craft a story. And, um, actually crafting an
article and an argument is not unlike crafting a song.
>> Martha Tatarnic (37:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,
that self, ah, promotion that you
have to do in the arts
so much of the time can really feel like pushing a boulder
up the hill. Right?
>> Elizabeth (37:54):
Yeah.
>> Martha Tatarnic (37:55):
Like, to have other people just be so
excited about what you're putting into the world that
they want to push the boulder up the hill.
>> Elizabeth (38:03):
Like, it was such a relief I wasn't
to do that anymore. Um, and so,
yeah, I have to say I don't really miss the music business,
though. Um, I'm happy for the people who were
able to push through and to succeed at
it. Um, and it's just like, okay, well, this was
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
time for me to get good at certain things.
>> Martha Tatarnic (38:29):
Um, well, it clearly needed to be part of the path
to lead you to the path you're on now.
>> Elizabeth (38:35):
Yeah. And, um, now it's like, okay, I'm
definitely on the right path now. And it's
nice. Um, you know, I finished my PhD at
Duke last year, and, um, now.
Thank you. And I'm now a tenure track assistant
professor of New Testament at Villanova University, which is a great
place to be. Um, and
it's, yeah, it's like the path is very clear.
>> Martha Tatarnic (38:57):
It's good. So let's talk
about, um, the
Martha piece in John eleven, because,
um, in the
bibles that we all have, um,
Martha has a pretty big role
in John eleven, but it
(39:17):
does get sort of
overlooked because Martha is
a minor character in the Bible and so it
doesn't, I don't know, raise
major alarm bells. Um, can you
just talk about that
Martha figure has been passed along
(39:37):
to us and why that might
be significant in,
um, all of this
editing that you can see going on in the
gospel of John.
>> Elizabeth (39:49):
So are you asking what Martha's
function is? The gospel? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, right now it seems that her main function is to utter
the thesis statement of the gospel of John.
Um, you know, Jesus comes into
Bethany and,
um, it says that he loves the Bethany
siblings and Martha runs out to meet
(40:11):
him, whereas Mary stays at home.
And, um, Martha says, lord, if you've been here,
my brother would not have died. And then
Jesus says to her,
um, I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die,
will live. Um, do you believe this? And
she says, yes, Lord, I believe that you are
(40:33):
the Christ, the son of God, the one who is coming into the
world. And, um, that
is generally, that's considered to be the christological confession in
John's gospel, which has an equivalent in the other
synoptic gospels to Peter's confession, I
believe that you are the messiah, the son of God. And in
Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, you are Peter. And
on this rock I will build my church in response to Simon
(40:56):
Peter giving this christological confession at Caesarea Philippi
in Matthew 16. So,
um, John seems to be sort of providing an equivalent
confession, but now it's a woman that's saying, not Peter.
Okay, so that seems sort of radical. Um, and
it's not just that it's the equivalent of Peter's
confession. Like, I identify you, you are the Christ.
(41:17):
But it's also that what most scholars think was
the original ending to the gospel of John, John
2031, says, these things are
written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of
God, and then by believing, you may have life in his
name, which sounds very much like what Martha
says.
>> Martha Tatarnic (41:33):
Mhm.
>> Elizabeth (41:34):
In John eleven. So this sort of
parallel, uh, has caused people to say, okay, martha's
the one who utters the central thesis statement of the gospel of
John. And, um, after she utters
it, she runs and gets Mary.
And then Mary can come on the scene. And then Mary says the
exact same thing that Martha says.
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
seventies and eighties, it was very hip to do redaction
criticism, which is where scholars look
at a biblical text and they see, uh,
seems in the way that the text has been
written. Um, places that seem awkward
and they think this is maybe where the evangelist edited
(42:17):
their source.
>> Martha Tatarnic (42:19):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (42:20):
And, um, maybe there was a testimony of
the beloved disciple, and then the evangelist was
tweaking it in certain ways. And what's really funny is that
several scholars had said, martha's
presentation is weird. And they're not
talking about the manuscripts, they're talking about the received
text. And they're assuming that the
evangelist had access to some source that
(42:43):
was then turned into what is our gospel narrative
now. And several people had said in
the evangelist source, there was only
one sister.
>> Martha Tatarnic (42:53):
Hm.
>> Elizabeth (42:53):
People had said this. I think Robert Fortna said
that Gerard, um,
Rocher said that,
um. And,
uh, probably Marie Emile
Boimard and, um,
Brendan Boyle, I think. Uh, and actually even John P.
Meyer, who is a really big catholic theologian, he wrote
(43:14):
in this historical Jesus thing, a marginal jew.
He said the early version.
He said the lucan story of Martha and Mary has
no Lazarus. And apparently the
early johannine version of the
Lazarus story had no Martha.
>> Martha Tatarnic (43:31):
Had no Martha.
>> Elizabeth (43:32):
But they're not talking about the textual
transmission. They're talking about the evangelist
writing at the very beginning. Like the evangelist
has heard some sort of story that is now being crafted
into our gospel. And they think that the
evangelist added the sister. Um,
and the difference between the two is that the evangelist is
writing what you would call the autograph copy,
(43:54):
the first copy
from which all other copies would be copied. And they're
saying that in that autograph,
um, the evangelist has crafted a narrative with
two sisters, but that the
evangelist knew a story with only
one sister.
>> Martha Tatarnic (44:13):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (44:13):
That's what the theory was. That's what the redaction critics had
argued. And what's really funny is it's like, wait a
second. That's the difference between redaction criticism and
textual criticism. Textual criticism is a comparison of
the manuscripts.
>> Martha Tatarnic (44:26):
Okay?
>> Elizabeth (44:27):
So an evangelist can take, oh, I heard this story and I
heard that story, and I put it all together and I made this beautiful narrative that
we now call the Gospel of John. That's different
than this gospel of John that begins circulating and
copyists tweak the story.
That's different because the evangelists,
you assume, if you believe that there was a dohenine
community, the evangelist is
(44:49):
aligned with whoever.
If you believe that there was an eyewitness, the beloved disciple, they
come from that same community. They can directly trace their
lineage to Jesus. And they're like, this is the gospel that we've decided
to put forward from our perspective. That is different
than some rando, like 100
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
copying it. Textual criticism.
And so what my study was showing is that, yeah, maybe
Martha was added, but not by the evangelist.
>> Martha Tatarnic (45:20):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (45:21):
Maybe Martha was added by a very, very
early editor. It would have to be second century,
because, um, papyrus 66, if
it's dated to 200 AD or around that time,
it means that this is around the time that Martha is getting
added in, around the turn of the third century. Also,
origen of Alexandria writes about Mary
(45:41):
and Martha in the mid third century, and he knows
that Martha is there in the story of John. So it would have had to
be second century that this change was made,
perhaps right around the time that Luke started to get
read alongside John. And
that's when somebody has read Luke and they are
importing Martha into John's story.
(46:01):
That's when it would have to be, of course, completely theoretical,
because Martha is in every copy that we have, including
papyrus 66.
>> Martha Tatarnic (46:08):
Yeah, yeah. And I
mean, all of this is kind of, ah,
a working theory that we
certainly don't have the evidence
to back up conclusively at this
time. But,
um, the theory that I've certainly
heard you and others discuss is
(46:30):
that Martha might have been
imported in order to distract from
just how central a character Mary Magdalene
was.
>> Elizabeth (46:40):
Right.
>> Martha Tatarnic (46:40):
And so she is a witness to the
resurrection, the first witness to the resurrection. If
she's the one who was at the crucifixion, if she's
the one who anointed Jesus at
Bethany and gave the
christological.
>> Elizabeth (46:55):
That's right.
>> Martha Tatarnic (46:56):
Suddenly she's a main character.
>> Elizabeth (46:59):
Yes, she's a very central character in John's gospel
in that case. And so I should emphasize that,
first of all, we also do have, I have not
yet found a manuscript where Mary is uttering the confession
in John eleven. So I should make that very clear. But we
do have a church father Tertullian, who wrote
around the same time as papyrus 66, was copied, like
(47:19):
210 AD. And he says, um,
in his treatise against Praxias that Mary
confessed Jesus as the Christ. Every single
copy of that treatise by Tertullian says that
Maryland gives the christological confession in John.
So, um, it seems that maybe
Tertullian's copy didn't have Martha in
(47:40):
it, and he's writing at the turn of the third
century. So he's probably got a second century copy of John
where Martha's not in it. Um,
but again, that's a church father writing about John.
And, um, so it just says
Mary. It never explicitly says the word
Magdalene in any copy of John. Eleven.
(48:01):
And that's actually something that some people have said. Oh, well, Mary of
Bethany is not the same person as Mary Magdalene. Mary's
from Magdala. First of all.
Um, and if it is Mary Magdalene,
why didn't the evangelist just say so, like, why not
just say Lazarus and his sister Mary
Magdalene? Um, and, uh,
(48:21):
I've got good answers for both of those.
>> Martha Tatarnic (48:24):
Okay, so tell us.
>> Elizabeth (48:25):
Yeah, so first of all, the word magdalene,
um, is based on the aramaic
word magdala, which means tower.
And the ane ending is just like a
greek, uh, feminine ending. So
I, um, was just looking at a syriac manuscript this
morning, um, that says
(48:46):
magdaletha when it's referencing Mary Magdalene. And
eth, syriac is the same language as
Aramaic. It's just like a later stage of Aramaic.
So, um, when it says
magdalitha, it's the same thing
as Magdalene. It just means tower, eh?
That's all it means. Tower s. Tower s.
And, um, there were some
(49:07):
towns, uh, in the first
century, actually, a lot of them called
Magdal this or Magdala that. Uh, in
Hebrew it's Migdol. So there's like a place called,
which is like tower of the fishes and there's Migdol
el and Migdal gad. There's all these different
migdols and it just means tower of this,
(49:28):
tower that, tower of this, tower of that. And,
um, so to say
Magdalene or
Magdaletha is clearly referencing one
particular one of these
magdalas or amygdals is really vague.
First of all, I mean, there's so many
at this time. And some people said, oh, no, no, no.
(49:50):
Everybody knew that Migdal
Nuneathehe one by the sea of Galilee, that was
the one that everybody knew. That's the one. If you go
to the holy land today, they're like, magdala. This is where
Mary Magdalene came from. There's a synagogue,
um, in fact,
uh, that's not what the most popular Magdala
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
because we cited Eusebius,
who lived in the holy land. And he's writing in the fourth century.
He does know a place called, um, Magdala. He had
this book called the Animistikon where he just literally goes
through every single place that's mentioned in the Bible and he tells you what
it is. And he does know a place called
(50:31):
Magdala. He does not associate Mary Magdalene
with it. And he thinks it's Magdal gad. Which is
in the south. It's in Judea. So, yeah,
everybody did know Amygdala, but
it's not the one that people think it is today. And he didn't think
it had anything to do with Mary Magdalene. It just means
tower. Okay?
>> Martha Tatarnic (50:51):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (50:51):
And so there's all these towns called Tower in the first
century. And so the question becomes, is it really
about the place she came from?
Or does it mean, is it that Mary came from a town called
tower? Which, by the way, is super vague because there's so many of
them. Does she come from a town called tower, or is
Mary herself the tower?
>> Martha Tatarnic (51:11):
Well, yeah, because we have Simon
Peter, Simon
the rock and Mary Tower.
>> Elizabeth (51:19):
And there's James and John Boanerges, sons of thunder.
There's Thomas the twin. There's all these,
um, different names that Jesus
gives, supposedly to his closest disciples.
>> Martha Tatarnic (51:29):
Yeah, like titles.
>> Elizabeth (51:31):
Right. And so the question is, did Mary get one of
those titles? And, um, so Jo Taylor and I looked at the
interpretation history of the name Magdalene, and it
turns out that there has always been a division of
interpretation. Some people did think it was a town that she came
from. Um, but some people thought that it was a
title. And St. Jerome, for
example, thinks that Mary was given the name tower,
(51:53):
s for her ardent faith. And St. Jerome also
lived in the Holy Land, and he also knew
Eusebius, Unamasticon. So, um,
definitely really far back. Some people
thought it was a place she came from, and some people thought it was a title.
Um, but what we pointed out was that St. Luke seems to think it's a
title because he says Marie he
(52:13):
Calumene Magdalene, Mary, the one called
Magdalene. And whenever he uses this word called
throughout Luke or acts, it's
always like Simon called Peter, or
Elizabeth called Barren, or Martha had
a sister called Maryland. So this
word, um, this kaleo participle that
(52:33):
Luke uses is for nicknames. And so in the
first century, it seemed to have been thought of as a
nickname, not a place that Mary came from. And that place,
Migdol Nunaya, besides that, it was called Tarakay. In
the first century, it was a very burgeoning big city known
to a lot of people. But it was not called magdala in the first
century. It was called Tarakay. And,
um, it's a big city,
(52:56):
um, that would have had plenty of synagogues. So, yeah, they're
great synagogues that you can excavate at this awesome
ancient city called Tarakay. But it wasn't called Magdalen
in the first century.
>> Martha Tatarnic (53:06):
So how does that connect to
this idea that Mary
of Bethany might, um,
have been Mary Magdalene, even though it doesn't
explicitly say that in.
>> Elizabeth (53:20):
Yeah, it doesn't use the word Magdalene in
John, uh, not until John
1925. At the cross.
Um, what
is clear that a lot of important scholars have
noticed is that there's some really obvious parallels between the
Lazarus story and the story
of Mary Magdalene and Jesus in the garden. Obviously, both
(53:42):
of them have a tomb and a stone,
and somebody rises from the dead and there's a woman named Maryland,
and she's crying. And, um,
there's even more subtle things, like there's
a handkerchief. Um, they take the handkerchief, the
sudarion, which is sort of a rare word, they take the
sudarion off of Lazarus in John
eleven. And then you look in the tomb and there's the
(54:04):
sudarion that's rolled up in John 20.
In, um, John eleven, Jesus says, where have you laid him?
And then in John chapter 20, Mary Magdalene says, I do not know where
you have laid him. And it's the exact same sort of greek
words. Um, and, uh, so
there's all these sort of hints that there is a really
clear parallel between the Lazarus story
and John 20, the encounter between Jesus and Mary
(54:27):
Magdalene in the garden. So
all biblical scholars would agree that there are deliberate
craftings of a parallel between the Lazarus story and John
20. The question is, why? Also in John
twelve, um, Judas complains about
Mary anointing Jesus at Bethany, and Jesus says,
leave her alone. Um, uh,
she will keep it for the day of my burial.
(54:50):
Right, right. And so if he's talking about a woman
named Mary at his burial,
in John's gospel, there's only one woman named
Mary at Jesus Field, it's Mary Madison.
>> Martha Tatarnic (55:01):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (55:02):
So you can see why people would have thought,
um. And actually, as far back as interpretation, history can be
traced. People did think that Mary of Bethany was Mary
Magdalene. People blamed Pope Gregory for this. But that's not
true. Pope Gregory identified Mary Magdalene with
Luke's sinful anointer in Luke, chapter
seven. That was his innovation.
(55:22):
But centuries before that, people thought that Mary of
Bethany was the same woman as Mary Magdalene.
>> Martha Tatarnic (55:28):
So there's a lot of extra biblical.
>> Elizabeth (55:31):
Um, support for church fathers.
Yes. Hippolytus, um of Rome,
Ambrose of Milan, Severus of Antioch,
also, um, the Manicheans thought so. They
were kind of heretical. But they seem to think Mary of Bethany was Mary
Magdalene. And if you read the Gospel of Mary, which is a second century
text, this character Mary has aspects of both Mary of
Bethany and Mary Magdalene. Jesus loves her.
(55:53):
She's crying and she sees the Lord in a vision.
So it seems as far back as we can trace
the interpretation history. Some people thought that
Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene. Not everybody, but
some people thought so. And so,
um, so you can see
why if somebody's reading John and they see
these parallels. I'm not saying that it was never
(56:15):
explicitly said, but I think that the evangelist has crafted
the narrative in such a way so
that not the first time you read the Gospel of John, but maybe the
second or the third time, especially when you notice,
oh wait, there's a woman named Mary crying at a tomb. Oh, Jesus is, where have
you laid him? And Mary says, where have you laid him? Like,
is Lazarus his sister Mary,
(56:37):
Mary Magdalene? It's a question that the evangelist has put
into the reader's mind. And maybe the reason why
the evangelist didn't explicitly say
that this is Mary Magdalene is because in these
Bethany stories the evangelist
is giving very controversial content
to Lazarus. Sister, first of all,
(56:58):
that christological confession, isn't that supposed to be
Peter's? Right.
So, um, John, almost everybody would
agree, has had some access to Mark's gospel. John
has at least heard Mark's gospel. That's a near consensus
in biblical scholarship these days. And some think that John
has access to all the synoptics. I personally think
maybe Matthew, um, but definitely
(57:20):
Mark. So in Mark's gospel, Peter
confesses Jesus as the Christ. But
also I'm sure you know what happens in the
anointing. In Mark's gospel.
There's Elizabeth Schuster Fiorenza wrote a whole book about
it. What she has done at the Bethany
anointing, um, wherever the gospel
is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of
(57:42):
her.
>> Martha Tatarnic (57:43):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (57:43):
But her name is not given.
Right. So. And Matthew basically
does the same thing. So
if John is trying to say, trying to give
a counterpoint to Mark's
presentation, John
knows that it will be controversial
to give a woman, perhaps Mary, this
(58:05):
christological confession. And John
knows that it will be controversial to
identify who the anointer was because Mark
withheld that name.
>> Martha Tatarnic (58:15):
Right, right.
>> Elizabeth (58:17):
Yeah. So I'm saying that John is trying to be
strategic. John is trying to say, okay, I
want to identify who
the christological confessor is and the anointer
as Mary Magdalene. That's what John's view is. But
I can't say it explicitly. I gotta do it under
the radar. So what John does is John just calls her
(58:37):
Mary, makes her super similar
to Mary Magdalene. And John, tway, like, super obvious
parallels, but doesn't say so explicitly
and doesn't actually name her as Mary Magdalene until Mark
does, which is at the cross.
>> Martha Tatarnic (58:51):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (58:52):
Because that's where it's actually safe to do. So that's where
it's safe to say that it's Mary Magdalene. Because
obviously, Mark has withheld that information,
or in the anointing, has withheld the identification
and gave the christological confession to someone else. So I'm saying
that John is anticipating that this is going to be
controversial.
>> Martha Tatarnic (59:10):
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
>> Elizabeth (59:12):
And in fact, I think it really was
controversial. So much so that the text, people
knew that some folks thought that Mary
Magdalene was doing these things, and so the
text had to be edited.
>> Martha Tatarnic (59:25):
Yeah. So with that bombshell,
um, because, uh, definitely
we can see, um, how John and then
others understood this as the bombshell that
it. That it potentially was.
Um, we're going to
end today's podcast, uh,
there, leaving hanging, because
(59:47):
there's a lot of implications to
this research. Um, and
this research has sparked a lot of excitement
across the church and across
church leadership. Um, so
we're going to come back next week,
uh, and we'll delve into some
(01:00:08):
of the implications and some of
the nerves that are being touched in,
um, this work that Elizabeth is
unfolding. Thank you so much
for part one of, uh, my pleasure,
this podcast today, and,
uh, we'll look forward to coming back to this
for part two.
>> Paul (01:00:30):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
To learn more about Loren or the podcast,
visit future dash christian.com.
one more thing before you go. Do us a favor
and subscribe to the podcast. And if you're
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It really helps us get the word out to more people about the
(01:00:50):
podcast. The
Future Christian podcast is a production of torn curtain
arts and resonate media. Our episodes were
mixed by Danny Burton and the production support is
provided by Paul Romaglevitt. Thanks
and go in peace.
Welcome to the Future Christian podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your
church into the 21st century.
At the Future Christian podcast, we talk to
pastors, authors, and other faith leaders for helpful
advice and practical wisdom to help you and your
community of faith walk boldly into the future.
(00:26):
Now here's your host, Loren Richman
Juniore.
>> Loren (00:33):
Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. Today,
Martha Tatarnic welcomes doctor Elizabeth Schrader
Pulzer to the show. This is the first of a two
part episode, so be sure to stay tuned next week for
the second half. Elizabeth Schrader
Pulser is assistant professor of New Testament at
Villanova University. She holds a
(00:53):
doctorate in early Christianity from Duke
University with a focus on textual
criticism, Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel
of John. Her research has been published in
the Harvard Theological the
Journal of Biblical Literature,
TC A, UH, Journal of Biblical
Textual Criticism, the comparative
(01:14):
oriental manuscript Studies Bulletin, and the
Journal of Early Christian Studies. She
is regularly invited to present her peer
reviewed research at churches and conferences
internationally. One more thing. Please
take a moment to leave a review on whatever
podcast app you're listening on and share this
episode with a friend. Thanks and
(01:36):
enjoy the episode.
>> Martha Tatarnic (01:42):
welcome to the Future Christian podcast. I
am your host for the summer season, Martha
Tatarnic. And today I am
having a conversation with somebody
whose work I have been following closely for the past couple
of years, and for a variety of reasons, would count as a
personal hero. Doctor Elizabeth
Schrader Pulitzer and we are
(02:05):
going to hi. We're going to be
discussing Elizabeth's groundbreaking
work in biblical scholarship, particularly in how
we see and understand Mary Magdalene and
the Gospel of John. We're going to be doing
this over the course of two separate podcasts in
order to do justice, not just to her work,
(02:25):
but also to its implications.
Uh, I say
with quite a bit of seriousness that Elizabeth
is kind of the Taylor Swift, um, uh,
biblical scholarship, and that
says, uh, something about both her
talent, uh, and her
reach. So welcome to the podcast.
>> Elizabeth (02:47):
Thank you so much. I don't know if my reach is quite as big as Taylor Swift's, but
I like where you're going with that.
>> Martha Tatarnic (02:54):
Well, uh, it helps my kids to
understand, you know, why this
interview is such a big deal.
So, um, speaking of Taylor
Swift, uh, and
music and, uh, that analogy,
let's just set this context a little bit here
(03:14):
for how you became one of the most talked
about biblical scholars of our day, because it's
not exactly an obvious
path. Um, but,
uh, maybe you could just begin by telling us a little
bit about what your relationship with christianity
and the church was growing up?
>> Elizabeth (03:33):
Sure, yeah. I, um, mean, I grew up in the
episcopal church. Um, I
am from Oregon. Um, I had a
really strong youth group
growing up. Um, and I would
say I got really involved in the church as a teenager.
And, um, you know, we did these church
weekends called teens encounter Christ. And,
(03:56):
uh, all of my best friends still to this
day went to that with me. Um, so it was
very good for bonding. And,
um, then in college, I don't think I
really went to church in college. I went to school in southern
California at Pomona college. And I think I kind of, like,
dropped off from church attendance in my twenties, as probably a lot of
people do. I got really interested in
(04:19):
meditation in particular, actually.
And, um, I got
along the way. I was interested in finding a guru,
which maybe a lot of people do at some point in
their spiritual seeking. And,
um, I would say I
did get interested in meditation, and I would say I was kind of
(04:39):
seeking for a while. And then
sort of in my early thirties,
somehow it just became clear to me that my
guru, well, I knew I had an intuition that my
guru was female. And I'm like, who is it?
And, um, after a lot of seeking, I
learned that I realized it's Mother Mary.
Mother Mary is my spiritual guide. And I was
(05:02):
like, oh, really? Okay. And then I just started going
back to church. Really? Yeah, I started going back
to episcopal church at that point. I lived in, um, Brooklyn,
New York. And so, yeah, I started
going back to church in my thirties,
um, but it was kind of like right back where I left off.
The episcopal church is pretty consistent, um, and
(05:22):
has been for quite a while. And one of the nice things about growing up in the
episcopal church is I feel very aligned with their
values. And I never felt like I had to leave
or change. Um, and so, yeah, so
then I was going back to an episcopal church in
my thirties. And, um, during this whole time, I was a
music major in college and I was in a band
and we won this big contest sponsored by
(05:45):
Pantene. And we opened for
Jewel. And then we were invited to tour with Jewel a little bit,
which was cool. And, um, we also,
uh, toured with Poe, who maybe people remember
her song angry Johnny. That was kind of like her biggest hit.
>> Martha Tatarnic (05:59):
Uh, I was really into that. Well, I still am into
that album. I still on playlists that
I have. I loved that
album.
>> Elizabeth (06:09):
Yeah. And we were on tour with her for her second record, which is called
haunted, um, which is also a really good
record. And so that was fun to tour around the country with
her. Um, and then we also won a
contest where we got to open for rusted Root, which was
cool, in San Francisco. And, um, then because I had won
the Pantene contest, I got to go back to a
future iteration of that contest. And I met, like, michelle
(06:31):
Branch and India. Ari.
There's these pictures of me with these artists, which
is fun. And I. So, yeah, that was
all really fun. My band, though, didn't really.
They were kind of like dudes who wanted
to be in like, a guy band. And they were sort of,
like, embarrassed to have a female lead singer
(06:53):
because the song I won the contest about was called
Blood Red Moon, which was about a late period.
And I think they just found it kind of embarrassing. And
so the band didn't really work out
in the long run. And so, um,
they sort of started their own band, which is called the action
cats, which is like, everybody in my band except me,
which is kind of a bummer. Um, and so
(07:16):
that was really hard for me. But I ended up,
um, just being a female singer songwriter
after that. And I did that for quite a while. And,
um, I toured so many colleges,
including Villanova, where I'm a professor now, which is
super funny. I'm like, the last time I was here, I was playing at
the Connelly center.
>> Martha Tatarnic (07:34):
Like playing and probably not necessarily dreaming
about becoming a professor.
>> Elizabeth (07:39):
No, no, no. I was trying to make it in the music business.
Um, I did have some more fun things happen as
a solo artist. I got to be on an episode of the Gilmore
Girls, the 6th season finale. You can see
me as one of the troubadours.
Um, in this episode called partings, where Lorelei and Luke
have a fight. I mean, you can see me. I
was at Stars Hollow, which is actually in Burbank,
(08:01):
California, um, for a few days filming that
episode. Um, my songs are on like,
a lot of sort of MTV reality
shows and I still get royalties for my songs.
Being in the background of, I don't know, true
life, I self injure or like,
julianna and Bill. Like, there's all these, like,
funny shows. I mean, the music business is
(08:22):
hard.
>> Martha Tatarnic (08:23):
Yeah, yeah, I did it for a.
>> Elizabeth (08:25):
Long time and I still, you know, it's nice to get some
royalties every once in a while still. But,
um, I think I was definitely starting to
get burned out on it because after this huge,
amazing thing of winning this contest and
touring with jewel and seeing what it's like to play for like
5000 people and touring the country and
all that, um, and uh,
(08:48):
making records and getting better and better at my craft. I
think I became a better and better artist as I got older,
but it's a really youth focused culture.
And like the. I felt like,
um, the entertainment business cared more about
me for being young than for being
accomplished.
>> Martha Tatarnic (09:06):
Yeah, well, and it's interesting the
piece about your male band mates going on
without you too, because, um, I
have quite a bit of background in music
as well. I studied music in university, although I was
never like a pop artist
or anything like that. I'm a french horn player.
Um, but
(09:29):
I, uh, think that the misogyny in the
music world sort of puts the
church to shame.
>> Elizabeth (09:36):
Well, yeah. Ah, there's that too.
>> Martha Tatarnic (09:39):
Ah, I also grew up in the
anglican church, and, um, so
I certainly grew up thinking that women had a place
in the church. I didn't grow up thinking that
women particularly had a place in music
or in the history of music. And,
um, yeah, the music industry
can be quite famously, uh,
(10:02):
misogynistic. Can it?
>> Elizabeth (10:03):
Yeah. I mean, I think also there was a part of
me that was a little naive, that I'm like, if I'm just really good at what I do,
then, like, that's all it takes,
right? I, um, was not willing
to sleep with older industry
executives like that. Just, I was like, you know,
my music is good. Like, why would I do that? And it's
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
that I participated in. Um, you know, it was a little
depressing to see that, um, especially in entertainment,
you know what they call it, the casting couch or whatever. That
is a real. That is a real thing.
>> Martha Tatarnic (10:40):
It is a real thing, yeah.
>> Elizabeth (10:41):
And so I was not willing to participate in that. And so maybe
I. That's part of why I didn't get further. But, um, I
mean, I did have fun. I had fun doing it in my twenties
and early thirties. Um,
and yeah, I would say that during my early
thirties, I was trying to figure it out. I'm like, okay. So
I expected myself to be
(11:01):
doing better by now. Um, there were some people I
knew personally, like Sarah Bareilles, um,
Colby Calle, Katy Perry. Those are all people
that I knew personally that I, um, mean, Sarah would
say, hi. Libby, too. Me, now, she does know me.
Um, but Katy Perry and Colby Kelly, I, like, hung
out. I was in groups with at the time before
(11:22):
they were getting big, and so I saw that some
people made it and I'm like, I was gonna
be one of them. But of course, I mean, I talked to my friends
now who are singer songwriters, and,
um, for every one of those, there's
like 50 to 100 who are just as qualified
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,
we don't need to focus all of our attention on what I call lottery
winners.
>> Martha Tatarnic (11:49):
Yeah, well, it really is like a
lottery. Um, and
I would have probably put the. The
ratios as a lot higher than 50 to
100 for everyone, because, you
know, most of the people I know in
music, like, it's. It's
a real grind. Like, they have to be, uh,
(12:11):
extremely committed to that vocation, you
know?
>> Elizabeth (12:14):
Um, well, people are committed to it into their thirties
and sometimes than even their forties. And there comes a point, like, I don't. I just
want to stop saying, will you please come to my show? I want to stop
saying, can I sleep on your couch? Like, I'm. Can I borrow your
keyboard? There's enough of that. Like, that's okay for
a while, and at a certain point, you're just like, huh? Like, no
more. Yeah.
>> Martha Tatarnic (12:33):
Yeah, for sure. Was there, like, a
spiritual dimension to
songwriting, in particular, to being
a, uh, musician on that circuit, following that
calling for all those years?
>> Elizabeth (12:47):
I'd say there was, yeah. I mean, certainly, um,
in my lyrics, you can hear hints of me
sort of, um, referencing scripture.
I mean, you two was always my favorite band. And the way that you two
sometimes references scripture, I kind of do similar stuff
in my lyrics. Like, I'll talk about, like, telling you
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
in my songs. But, um, also, as I
said, during this time, I was getting really into meditation,
and I would do some. I mean, there was a time,
um, I think in my late twenties, when I
was meditating for an hour every day, every morning.
Wow. Yeah, I was taking it very, very, very seriously.
(13:28):
Yeah. Um, I don't think it's unrelated, by the way,
to, um, some of the stuff that I found in biblical
scholarship. I mean, how many people do meditate for
an hour every day? I did that for, I don't
know, six, seven years. I
was doing that, which is quite a while. And,
um, so, uh. And it
was around that time that I was making this transition from just
(13:51):
meditating to be like, oh, Mother Mary is my spiritual
guide, so I'm gonna start going back to church. M
um, and, uh, yeah, no, I
would say that there was definitely a spiritual aspect. And when it came to
my music, somewhere along the way, I think it was right after I
moved to New York in 2008 because I was in LA
after I graduated, um, and with the band, we lived in
(14:11):
LA, but eventually I transitioned to living in New York.
And I remember when I was in New York, I
was on the subway, strangely, and I was reading a book by Bell
Hooks, who's an amazing, um, feminist
author, uh, who passed away recently. And,
um, I had this moment
where on the
subway it was like, my purpose in
(14:33):
life is to bring the
valuation of feminine into the
world that, like, the feminine has
value.
>> Martha Tatarnic (14:42):
Wow.
>> Elizabeth (14:43):
And I had this very strange experience where
I literally felt sort of, it
sounds weird, but like, uh, it felt like energy was shooting out of
my head for like an hour afterward. And it was actually freaking me out.
I was texting my best friend. I'm like, there's this weird thing happening
right now, so maybe that's a little bit
tmi. Um, but this is when I was purely a
(15:04):
singer songwriter, like just pure music. And
so I was like, okay, well, I gotta write songs about the feminine and
the feminine voice. And, um,
uh, yeah, I mean, I think a song of mine
called share it is kind of like
the best job that I did,
um, of actually articulating that
(15:24):
feminine voice. And I was able to
showcase for the president of, was
it Sony?
Which, um, I think it was, her name was
Amanda Ghost. I did a showcase with the song
share it, and then I didn't get the record deal from it. And
I'm just like, it felt really
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
to do. I was so certain that this was my life path that, like,
being a singer songwriter, being a musician
was the way. And, um,
then, uh, it just wasn't working out and I was really frustrated. And I would
go, there was this catholic church actually not far from where
I was living at the time in Brooklyn, um, that was dedicated
(16:08):
to the Virgin Mary. Really beautiful
garden with all these statues of the Virgin
Mary. And I would go there to meditate
sometimes. And I had had this meeting with my music
lawyer and also Jewel's mother,
Jewel's mother, Lenedra Carroll,
who had been sort of helping me a little bit. Um, we all had
this sort of pow wow. And I remember that, uh,
(16:31):
Lanidra was like, you just need to jump off the cliff. Like,
what is it that's blocking you? You just need to jump off the cliff. And I
was meditating in this m garden
and dedicated, um, to the virgin Mary. And I
had this. I heard words, which
is really rare for me, in a prayer, um,
or a meditation. And their words were, maybe
(16:51):
you should talk to Mary Magdalene about that.
>> Martha Tatarnic (16:54):
And that was really kind of
the clarifying
encounter that led you onto quite a different
path, right?
>> Elizabeth (17:03):
Yes. Really weird. That's not
the story that you usually hear from a Bible scholar who works on
manuscripts of the New Testament.
>> Martha Tatarnic (17:11):
Yeah.
>> Elizabeth (17:11):
Uh, yeah. So I was just like. I was like.
I was talking to the Virgin Mary here and now
I feel like. Like, go talk to Mary Magdalene. I was like,
I didn't. It was very strange to me. And, um.
So as I was walking home from this experience,
this encounter in the garden, I was like, oh, I
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
went home and I, um, worked out
this song in just, like a couple days. It came real fast,
like, just boom. Which, um, sometimes songs take
me years and years to write. And this one just came in a
couple days. And, um, I sent it to Jules
mom. I'm like, check this out. And she's like, this song is amazing.
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.
>> Martha Tatarnic (17:56):
Yeah.
>> Elizabeth (17:57):
And maybe it was, but it just wasn't into the music
business.
>> Martha Tatarnic (18:00):
It definitely was a breakthrough. It just
wasn't quite what you were expecting.
>> Elizabeth (18:06):
And so then I walked over to the Brooklyn public
Library, which was also close to this garden, by the way. The
garden, it was at the co cathedral of St. Joseph.
And a couple years later, they unfortunately,
um, destroyed the garden to make it into a parking lot. Very
Joni Mitchell.
>> Martha Tatarnic (18:21):
Very Joni Mitchell. That was immediately what came to mind.
>> Elizabeth (18:24):
I know, it's so sad. Um, but I made a music video
of the Magdalene song in the garden, so you can actually see what it looked
like. So, fortunately, we did make the music video
before the garden was destroyed. But,
um, I walked over to the Brooklyn public
library and got the complete idiots guide to Mary Magdalene. And so I started
researching Mary Magdalene and it just
keeps on going. It's like the world's deepest rabbit hole. That was in
(18:47):
2011, I think.
>> Martha Tatarnic (18:49):
Yeah. Like, you couldn't have
possibly known what you were getting into.
>> Elizabeth (18:55):
No idea. And, um, then I made the record
and I decided to call it Magdalene. And then I was like, oh, I
can't, I can't make a record called bag because I put other
songs on it, including that song, share it that I mentioned and a bunch of other ones.
Also a song called Beautiful Girl that's in the same vein as what I
was talking about earlier about like, valuing the feminine.
Um, and, uh, yeah, then
(19:15):
I, um, wrote this, I released this
album, and I put this music video
out and I was like, okay, now what's gonna happen? And what happened was
that I just got completely obsessed with
researching the Bible and,
okay, um, and so, yeah,
maybe now you want to talk about what happened next.
>> Martha Tatarnic (19:37):
Yeah. Well, let's get into the
crux of what has made you such a
groundbreaking and talked about force in
the world of biblical scholarship, because
it definitely involves that rabbit hole that
you jumped into, um, following
that spiritual encounter.
Um, a lot of your work has
(19:59):
centered around John Eleven, the, ah,
story of the raising of Lazarus, and
the earliest known copy that we have of the gospel
according to John, which is known as papyrus
66. Um, so can you
just set the scene for us about papyrus
66 and when, uh, it
(20:19):
was discovered and then what you
began to see when you came across it?
>> Elizabeth (20:24):
Sure. Yeah. So, um, the papyrus
was discovered, I think they used to say
1952, but now they're saying 1956,
near Dishna, Egypt, which is not too
far away from where the Nag Hamadi codices were found.
Um, some people have theorized they came from the same place. It's hard
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
jar with a bunch of other papyri similar to the
Nayakhamadi codices. Um, in this jar
were, um, also papyrus
75 and papyrus 45,
which are other gospel manuscripts from probably slightly
later because p 45 and p 75 are bound up with
(21:05):
other gospels, whereas papyrus 66
is, um, just the gospel of John, which tells
you that maybe its a little earlier because its not being bound up with other
gospels yet. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
And also some letters of like,
uh, some letters were in
there and also, um,
(21:25):
copies of the iliad. So it was like a jar.
Yeah, it was like a jar of somebody's library.
Um. Uh, and they found
Papyrus 66, and it was quickly identified
and published. I think it was first published in
1958. Um,
and, uh, yeah, it was just, uh, they recognized
that this was probably the world's oldest, near
(21:48):
complete copy of the Gospel of John. It's actually called Papyrus
Bodmer two, because it was acquired by
this, um, wealthy.
He's from Switzerland, his name is Martin Bodmer and he
has this thing, it's a library today called the Bodmer
Library. And um, there was sort of like this race
for antiquities in the 20th century. And all
(22:10):
these richest, uh,
magnates in Europe, including Chester
Beatty, also in Ireland, they would just
buy it basically on the black market.
Well, of course, because they have all the money and they want the
manuscripts. And in Egypt,
um, I think at this point you're not
really supposed to smuggle stuff out. Egypt is like, hey, don't
(22:33):
take our stuff. Um, but then if you get this
copy of the gospel of John and some guy in Switzerland is going to
pay you, who knows how much money? Like they're going to find
a way. So there was this,
um, uh, I can't remember his
name offhand, but there was an antiquities
dealer, um, who
basically got it through Cyprus and
(22:54):
then it made its way to bodmer and then Bodmer
hired somebody, um,
to transcribe it and just do a first edition of it.
Um, and I think his name was
Martin, Victor Martin. And then, um, it
became able to be studied. So it was just first,
ah, like in 1958, it was first
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
started to comment on it, um, people
like Marie Emile Boimard, a french
dominican scholar, and,
um, Gordon fill, who was one of the best
known textual critics of the 20th century,
they started making sort of comments on what was
interesting about the manuscript. And what's interesting is that both of
(23:39):
those scholars in the 1960s said, hey, there's
this place where the name Mary's been crossed out
a couple times and like this woman's been split in two. And they're
like, that's the weirdest change in the whole manuscript.
>> Martha Tatarnic (23:51):
Yeah.
>> Elizabeth (23:53):
And they published that and nobody followed up on it.
>> Martha Tatarnic (23:56):
Right. Right.
>> Elizabeth (23:58):
Yeah.
>> Martha Tatarnic (23:59):
Just not, yeah.
>> Elizabeth (24:00):
Uh, they knew, they knew that the name Mary had been crossed out a
couple times and they had, they just said
weird. And papyrus 66 is,
um, very old, but also the
scribe is really unpredictable and the scribe makes a lot of
corrections, 450 corrections, in fact,
along the course of the text. And so it's kind of a weird,
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
idiosyncratic. So,
um, some people think that the scribe had access to
two copies of John, um, and
so the scribe is correcting, sorry, they're
copying from one to call it an exemplar or a
forlog. They have an exemplar that they're copying from and
then they have a second one that they're correcting the text
(24:45):
against because at this time there's no printing press.
So you're just trying to get.
>> Martha Tatarnic (24:49):
We're a long ways away from the printing press.
>> Elizabeth (24:51):
Yeah, definitely. So if you're really lucky, you
know, uh, let's say it's 200 ad. That's usually when it's
dated to like the turn of the third century. Late second, early third
century is when papyrus 66 is usually dated, which
is 100 years after the gospel was written.
So this is our earliest surviving copy, but it had been
already circulating for a century before that.
And so at this point, Christianity is just sort
(25:13):
of getting started. And if you're
lucky enough to have access to two copies of
the Gospel of John, I mean, they were very expensive to make
these sorts of copies, very labor intensive. This
scribe is trying to make a good copy. Um, and
so that's might be part of the reason for so many
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
of reconcile which one is the right one.
Um, and so, uh, it's a really interesting manuscript
in that way, but the text is not particularly
stable. And my dissertation is actually about how at the
origins of Christianity, the text wasn't particularly
stable.
>> Martha Tatarnic (25:53):
Okay.
>> Elizabeth (25:53):
Yeah, and so that's a. I think that's part of what's going on
there.
>> Martha Tatarnic (25:57):
Um, yeah, so,
um, there are these instabilities
around the names Mary and Martha
in John eleven, um, where a number of those
corrections can visibly be seen. Right. Like if you look at
papyrus 66, you can actually see,
um, these
(26:18):
scratchings and changes.
>> Elizabeth (26:20):
Absolutely, yeah. And so I should just give the piece of, you know, after I
went to the Brooklyn public Library and got the complete idiots guy to Mary
Magdalene, and I was like, I released a record about her.
I said, I want to look at the world's oldest copy of the Gospel of
John because, you know, the complete
idiots guy talked about how Mary was a controversial character. And I'm like, well,
let's just look at the world's oldest copy and see if anything has been
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
been. It's all in Greek.
Um, and so I had to kind of meet with a professor at
general Theological seminary, which is the episcopal seminary in
Manhattan, um, or it was. It's kind of
been absorbed by Virginia theological Seminary now. But at the time it
was still a real seminary. And I met with Deirdre Goode,
um, who is the professor of New Testament. And she
(27:05):
directed me to this website that the University of Birmingham had
put together, um, called johannes.com.
i o dash h dash h dash a dash n dash s.com, comma, which you can still go
to. And they had transcribed hundreds
of copies of the gospel of John in Greek and
Latin. And so she's like, go there. And then you can look at the
transcription of papyrus 66. I said, okay.
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
66. I'm like, I want to look at that. So I went
and, um, now I had this website, johannes.com, i
could look. And, um, I
first, of course, went to John 20, the scene between Jesus and
Mary Magdalene in the garden. Nothing was weird
there that I could see John 19, and I didn't read
Greek, but I could use an interlinear study
(27:50):
Bible to see what each word was.
Um, and so, yeah, then I went to John 19. At the cross,
it all looks like it was supposed to look. And I said, okay.
Well, I actually said, oh, I was probably wrong. Like, who am
I? I'm just some singer songwriter.
Like, why would I,
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
because they spend all their time looking at this stuff. Um, and I
said, but, you know, just in case, let me look at John eleven.
Because, uh, some people
think that Mary of Bethany, Lazarus sister, is Mary Magdalene. So
I should just check. I literally almost just gave up. But I was like,
uh, let me just check. Some people think that Mary Bethany
(28:32):
is Mary Magdalene. And so when I went
to John eleven on Johannes.com, comma, I could see, see that there
was all this editorial activity happening for five
verses. And I could see that the name Maria
was being crossed out and being changed to Martha.
And, um, that the name Maria was totally
scratched out and changed to say, the sisters.
>> Martha Tatarnic (28:52):
Okay?
>> Elizabeth (28:53):
And I was like, whoa. I was
like, what is this? And I
knew enough from going to church that there was another story of Mary and
Martha in. By the way, I'm so intimidated talking to
someone named Martha about this.
I'm sorry for all the consequences for someone named Martha.
>> Martha Tatarnic (29:10):
Oh, I'm totally fine with it.
>> Elizabeth (29:13):
I mean, I am saying that Martha existed, but I am saying,
I'm thinking just as somebody who had no
training, it looked like the character
Martha was being added, was being added into the
story. Yeah, yeah. That's just, uh, and the thought never would have
occurred to me because, you know, Mary and Martha, they go together,
as, you know, in both Luke and John. You know, Mary and
Martha, the two sisters. And I, it never would
(29:36):
have occurred to me except that I saw the scribe doing it.
I'm like, is the scribe adding Martha to the story? I'm like,
wait, Luke has a Martha? Luke ten
has a story of Mary and Martha. By the way, they don't have a brother in
that story.
>> Martha Tatarnic (29:48):
Yeah, there's no mention of a Lazarus.
>> Elizabeth (29:51):
Yeah. And so I'm like, did this scribe take
Martha and stick her into
John? Like, somebody who read Luke, did they stick her into
John's gospel? Um, I
mean, that never would have occurred to me if I hadn't seen it. So
I copied the greek text and I sent it to
Deidre. Um, and
(30:11):
the email subject line just had, like, twelve exclamation
points. And I was like, look. Look at
this. It looks like they're adding Martha. Look at this.
And she said, oh, very interesting.
I was like, come on,
that's cool, right? Or that's weird. Or that's
disturbing. It's something, you
(30:31):
know, she probably figured that the work had already been
done because, as I mentioned, it was the 1960s
when people were commenting on it. Uh,
surely at some point, this is in
2012. Surely sometime between the
1960s and 2012, somebody would have
done it, Alex, 50 years.
But the answer was no. Nobody had really done
(30:53):
anything. And m so I
was frustrated. And so I just kind of kept on researching,
and I I think I sent it to Karen
King. I sent it to Elaine pagels. They're like the Harvard and Princeton
ladies who are really big and Mary Magdalene stuff. And
I was like, hey, look at this. Papyrus 66, it's
been changed. And they were
(31:13):
like, um, cool. They
were too busy. They had other projects going on. And
I was getting really frustrated and kept
emailing Deidre. And, um, my best friend
Kelly, um, had said to me, hey,
you can't keep bothering, uh,
these scholars. You have to go learn Greek. You got
(31:34):
to do this work yourself. And I was like,
no, I'm a musician.
I'm a singer songwriter. I know who I am.
I've been doing this for, like, twelve years. This is
about my music career and whatever.
And, um, after maybe a year at
the end of, I guess, in 2013.
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
to show everybody that papyrus 66 is messed up.
I'm going to do a study. So I entered this
master's program at General Theological seminary. Deidre was my
thesis supervisor. And when I was there,
some of the professors were like, oh, have you looked at,
um, Nandra Irving, uh, at the time, he's another
(32:17):
great professor. He was like, have you looked at the Vitas
Latina? What are the Vitas
Latina? Um, the old latin
manuscripts before St. Jerome translated the
Vulgate. Um, they're older copies, uh, like
the first translations into Latin of the gospel of John. He's like,
look at those. And it turns out that
all over the place in the textual transmission of John, not
(32:39):
just in papyrus 66, I looked at, I don't
know, maybe 150 copies for my master's
thesis on this johannes.com website. I could look, I could just
click right through every single copy. Go to John eleven.
One in five greek copies had something weird happening around
Martha. Like, sometimes the name Mary would be changed to
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
what you would expect. Um, and in
the old latin copies, it's even worse. You sometimes just see
Martha's name really getting awkwardly added in the margin.
Really one in three of the old latin copies, you see
something weird happening around Martha. So I was like,
this is surprising. This is a lot.
(33:21):
And also church fathers, I found out that,
um, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom
Tertullian, they were all saying that Mary did things that
your bible would say that Martha does. And I was like, right,
this is weird. I was like, I
think, is there a corruption in the gospel of John?
Is that what this is? So I, um,
(33:41):
I wrote my master's thesis. It was called, was Martha of
Bethany added to the fourth gospel in the second
century? And I knew
if I really had found something that big, it
needed to go to a big journal. And again, as
a master's student, it was maybe a little presumptuous. And
Deirdre said. I was like, how about the Harvard theological Review? That
(34:02):
sounds fancy. And Deirdre was like,
okay, but you got to write to them and say, I'm just a
master's student, and ask if it's okay to submit.
And I wrote to them, and they wrote back and they said, as long as it's under the word
limit, yes, you may submit. So I did.
And miraculously, it made it through the
most rigorous peer review process. Um,
(34:23):
I found out later that my peer reviewer was Eldon Epp, who was
another one of the 20th century's most esteemed textual
critics. Uh, and it got
published in the Harvard Theological Review. And I was like,
okay. And people are like, so where are you going to do your
PhD? I was like, I'm
a musician. I just.
>> Martha Tatarnic (34:41):
So you're still, like. You're still feeling like you're a
musician at this point?
>> Elizabeth (34:45):
I released a record in 2017, I released another
record called Red Thread. Um, yeah. I
was like, this is.
>> Martha Tatarnic (34:51):
But you've also learned Greek, and.
>> Elizabeth (34:56):
I mean, academia didn't sound. I mean, I actually.
I actually was enjoying it. I guess I was. I was doing well, right?
I got my master's thesis published in this top tier journal, but
I certainly wasn't planning on doing a PhD.
But, um, people were asking me, what are you going
to do? Where are you going to do your PhD? And also
it was, um, I actually deferred
(35:17):
my PhD a year, partly because general seminary is a nice place
to live in Manhattan if anybody's ever been there. It's really
beautiful. Um, and also because
I wasn't sure, I was like, I don't know if I want to
do this. Um, I'm a
musician. And I think what it was is
that, um, I
realized if I don't do this, nobody else is going
(35:39):
to.
>> Martha Tatarnic (35:40):
Yeah, because you tried. You tried to get
other people to take it up.
>> Elizabeth (35:45):
Yeah, yeah. And I even got it published. And
then, like, so many publications, it could have just
been published and then lost, right?
>> Martha Tatarnic (35:54):
Mhm.
>> Elizabeth (35:54):
I said, I have to kind of steward this. If I
don't do it, nobody else is going to.
>> Martha Tatarnic (35:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, uh,
a piece of the calling, isn't it?
>> Elizabeth (36:05):
Yeah. So, yeah, I would say
letting that singer songwriter thing go,
and honestly, I don't miss it at all at this point.
>> Martha Tatarnic (36:14):
Is that right?
>> Elizabeth (36:15):
Yeah. I mean, I'm really proud of the songs that I wrote. Um, some
of the ones I've mentioned here, there's, like, war on science, beautiful
girl. Share it. Wish you were the woman. These are.
I think they're top notch songs. Go look them up. You can
find them on, like, apple music or whatever.
>> Martha Tatarnic (36:30):
Yeah. Uh, they're available everywhere.
>> Elizabeth (36:32):
Yeah. And, um. But,
you know, I guess it's really
frustrating to do really excellent work and
for it not to receive the,
um, attention and
um, reception that you want for it.
And I got just tired of that. And,
(36:52):
um, especially when I turn around and I
suddenly, instead of writing songs, I'm writing academic
articles and it's going great.
Like, okay, now I'm getting published in top tier journals, I'm getting
invited to conferences. Instead of
me begging people to come to my show, people are now
like flying me places
(37:12):
and there's an audience that's waiting for me
to give my talks. Wow. Like, this is kind of,
it's similar to being a singer
songwriter, except like, actually, uh,
a lot of the skills that I developed as a singer songwriter I
now use. Like, I know how to be on stage,
I know how to entertain.
>> Martha Tatarnic (37:32):
M mhm.
>> Elizabeth (37:33):
Um, I know how to sort of tell a joke or
craft a story. And, um, actually crafting an
article and an argument is not unlike crafting a song.
>> Martha Tatarnic (37:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,
that self, ah, promotion that you
have to do in the arts
so much of the time can really feel like pushing a boulder
up the hill. Right?
>> Elizabeth (37:54):
Yeah.
>> Martha Tatarnic (37:55):
Like, to have other people just be so
excited about what you're putting into the world that
they want to push the boulder up the hill.
>> Elizabeth (38:03):
Like, it was such a relief I wasn't
to do that anymore. Um, and so,
yeah, I have to say I don't really miss the music business,
though. Um, I'm happy for the people who were
able to push through and to succeed at
it. Um, and it's just like, okay, well, this was
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
time for me to get good at certain things.
>> Martha Tatarnic (38:29):
Um, well, it clearly needed to be part of the path
to lead you to the path you're on now.
>> Elizabeth (38:35):
Yeah. And, um, now it's like, okay, I'm
definitely on the right path now. And it's
nice. Um, you know, I finished my PhD at
Duke last year, and, um, now.
Thank you. And I'm now a tenure track assistant
professor of New Testament at Villanova University, which is a great
place to be. Um, and
it's, yeah, it's like the path is very clear.
>> Martha Tatarnic (38:57):
It's good. So let's talk
about, um, the
Martha piece in John eleven, because,
um, in the
bibles that we all have, um,
Martha has a pretty big role
in John eleven, but it
(39:17):
does get sort of
overlooked because Martha is
a minor character in the Bible and so it
doesn't, I don't know, raise
major alarm bells. Um, can you
just talk about that
Martha figure has been passed along
(39:37):
to us and why that might
be significant in,
um, all of this
editing that you can see going on in the
gospel of John.
>> Elizabeth (39:49):
So are you asking what Martha's
function is? The gospel? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, right now it seems that her main function is to utter
the thesis statement of the gospel of John.
Um, you know, Jesus comes into
Bethany and,
um, it says that he loves the Bethany
siblings and Martha runs out to meet
(40:11):
him, whereas Mary stays at home.
And, um, Martha says, lord, if you've been here,
my brother would not have died. And then
Jesus says to her,
um, I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die,
will live. Um, do you believe this? And
she says, yes, Lord, I believe that you are
(40:33):
the Christ, the son of God, the one who is coming into the
world. And, um, that
is generally, that's considered to be the christological confession in
John's gospel, which has an equivalent in the other
synoptic gospels to Peter's confession, I
believe that you are the messiah, the son of God. And in
Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, you are Peter. And
on this rock I will build my church in response to Simon
(40:56):
Peter giving this christological confession at Caesarea Philippi
in Matthew 16. So,
um, John seems to be sort of providing an equivalent
confession, but now it's a woman that's saying, not Peter.
Okay, so that seems sort of radical. Um, and
it's not just that it's the equivalent of Peter's
confession. Like, I identify you, you are the Christ.
(41:17):
But it's also that what most scholars think was
the original ending to the gospel of John, John
2031, says, these things are
written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of
God, and then by believing, you may have life in his
name, which sounds very much like what Martha
says.
>> Martha Tatarnic (41:33):
Mhm.
>> Elizabeth (41:34):
In John eleven. So this sort of
parallel, uh, has caused people to say, okay, martha's
the one who utters the central thesis statement of the gospel of
John. And, um, after she utters
it, she runs and gets Mary.
And then Mary can come on the scene. And then Mary says the
exact same thing that Martha says.
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
seventies and eighties, it was very hip to do redaction
criticism, which is where scholars look
at a biblical text and they see, uh,
seems in the way that the text has been
written. Um, places that seem awkward
and they think this is maybe where the evangelist edited
(42:17):
their source.
>> Martha Tatarnic (42:19):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (42:20):
And, um, maybe there was a testimony of
the beloved disciple, and then the evangelist was
tweaking it in certain ways. And what's really funny is that
several scholars had said, martha's
presentation is weird. And they're not
talking about the manuscripts, they're talking about the received
text. And they're assuming that the
evangelist had access to some source that
(42:43):
was then turned into what is our gospel narrative
now. And several people had said in
the evangelist source, there was only
one sister.
>> Martha Tatarnic (42:53):
Hm.
>> Elizabeth (42:53):
People had said this. I think Robert Fortna said
that Gerard, um,
Rocher said that,
um. And,
uh, probably Marie Emile
Boimard and, um,
Brendan Boyle, I think. Uh, and actually even John P.
Meyer, who is a really big catholic theologian, he wrote
(43:14):
in this historical Jesus thing, a marginal jew.
He said the early version.
He said the lucan story of Martha and Mary has
no Lazarus. And apparently the
early johannine version of the
Lazarus story had no Martha.
>> Martha Tatarnic (43:31):
Had no Martha.
>> Elizabeth (43:32):
But they're not talking about the textual
transmission. They're talking about the evangelist
writing at the very beginning. Like the evangelist
has heard some sort of story that is now being crafted
into our gospel. And they think that the
evangelist added the sister. Um,
and the difference between the two is that the evangelist is
writing what you would call the autograph copy,
(43:54):
the first copy
from which all other copies would be copied. And they're
saying that in that autograph,
um, the evangelist has crafted a narrative with
two sisters, but that the
evangelist knew a story with only
one sister.
>> Martha Tatarnic (44:13):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (44:13):
That's what the theory was. That's what the redaction critics had
argued. And what's really funny is it's like, wait a
second. That's the difference between redaction criticism and
textual criticism. Textual criticism is a comparison of
the manuscripts.
>> Martha Tatarnic (44:26):
Okay?
>> Elizabeth (44:27):
So an evangelist can take, oh, I heard this story and I
heard that story, and I put it all together and I made this beautiful narrative that
we now call the Gospel of John. That's different
than this gospel of John that begins circulating and
copyists tweak the story.
That's different because the evangelists,
you assume, if you believe that there was a dohenine
community, the evangelist is
(44:49):
aligned with whoever.
If you believe that there was an eyewitness, the beloved disciple, they
come from that same community. They can directly trace their
lineage to Jesus. And they're like, this is the gospel that we've decided
to put forward from our perspective. That is different
than some rando, like 100
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
copying it. Textual criticism.
And so what my study was showing is that, yeah, maybe
Martha was added, but not by the evangelist.
>> Martha Tatarnic (45:20):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (45:21):
Maybe Martha was added by a very, very
early editor. It would have to be second century,
because, um, papyrus 66, if
it's dated to 200 AD or around that time,
it means that this is around the time that Martha is getting
added in, around the turn of the third century. Also,
origen of Alexandria writes about Mary
(45:41):
and Martha in the mid third century, and he knows
that Martha is there in the story of John. So it would have had to
be second century that this change was made,
perhaps right around the time that Luke started to get
read alongside John. And
that's when somebody has read Luke and they are
importing Martha into John's story.
(46:01):
That's when it would have to be, of course, completely theoretical,
because Martha is in every copy that we have, including
papyrus 66.
>> Martha Tatarnic (46:08):
Yeah, yeah. And I
mean, all of this is kind of, ah,
a working theory that we
certainly don't have the evidence
to back up conclusively at this
time. But,
um, the theory that I've certainly
heard you and others discuss is
(46:30):
that Martha might have been
imported in order to distract from
just how central a character Mary Magdalene
was.
>> Elizabeth (46:40):
Right.
>> Martha Tatarnic (46:40):
And so she is a witness to the
resurrection, the first witness to the resurrection. If
she's the one who was at the crucifixion, if she's
the one who anointed Jesus at
Bethany and gave the
christological.
>> Elizabeth (46:55):
That's right.
>> Martha Tatarnic (46:56):
Suddenly she's a main character.
>> Elizabeth (46:59):
Yes, she's a very central character in John's gospel
in that case. And so I should emphasize that,
first of all, we also do have, I have not
yet found a manuscript where Mary is uttering the confession
in John eleven. So I should make that very clear. But we
do have a church father Tertullian, who wrote
around the same time as papyrus 66, was copied, like
(47:19):
210 AD. And he says, um,
in his treatise against Praxias that Mary
confessed Jesus as the Christ. Every single
copy of that treatise by Tertullian says that
Maryland gives the christological confession in John.
So, um, it seems that maybe
Tertullian's copy didn't have Martha in
(47:40):
it, and he's writing at the turn of the third
century. So he's probably got a second century copy of John
where Martha's not in it. Um,
but again, that's a church father writing about John.
And, um, so it just says
Mary. It never explicitly says the word
Magdalene in any copy of John. Eleven.
(48:01):
And that's actually something that some people have said. Oh, well, Mary of
Bethany is not the same person as Mary Magdalene. Mary's
from Magdala. First of all.
Um, and if it is Mary Magdalene,
why didn't the evangelist just say so, like, why not
just say Lazarus and his sister Mary
Magdalene? Um, and, uh,
(48:21):
I've got good answers for both of those.
>> Martha Tatarnic (48:24):
Okay, so tell us.
>> Elizabeth (48:25):
Yeah, so first of all, the word magdalene,
um, is based on the aramaic
word magdala, which means tower.
And the ane ending is just like a
greek, uh, feminine ending. So
I, um, was just looking at a syriac manuscript this
morning, um, that says
(48:46):
magdaletha when it's referencing Mary Magdalene. And
eth, syriac is the same language as
Aramaic. It's just like a later stage of Aramaic.
So, um, when it says
magdalitha, it's the same thing
as Magdalene. It just means tower, eh?
That's all it means. Tower s. Tower s.
And, um, there were some
(49:07):
towns, uh, in the first
century, actually, a lot of them called
Magdal this or Magdala that. Uh, in
Hebrew it's Migdol. So there's like a place called,
which is like tower of the fishes and there's Migdol
el and Migdal gad. There's all these different
migdols and it just means tower of this,
(49:28):
tower that, tower of this, tower of that. And,
um, so to say
Magdalene or
Magdaletha is clearly referencing one
particular one of these
magdalas or amygdals is really vague.
First of all, I mean, there's so many
at this time. And some people said, oh, no, no, no.
(49:50):
Everybody knew that Migdal
Nuneathehe one by the sea of Galilee, that was
the one that everybody knew. That's the one. If you go
to the holy land today, they're like, magdala. This is where
Mary Magdalene came from. There's a synagogue,
um, in fact,
uh, that's not what the most popular Magdala
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
because we cited Eusebius,
who lived in the holy land. And he's writing in the fourth century.
He does know a place called, um, Magdala. He had
this book called the Animistikon where he just literally goes
through every single place that's mentioned in the Bible and he tells you what
it is. And he does know a place called
(50:31):
Magdala. He does not associate Mary Magdalene
with it. And he thinks it's Magdal gad. Which is
in the south. It's in Judea. So, yeah,
everybody did know Amygdala, but
it's not the one that people think it is today. And he didn't think
it had anything to do with Mary Magdalene. It just means
tower. Okay?
>> Martha Tatarnic (50:51):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (50:51):
And so there's all these towns called Tower in the first
century. And so the question becomes, is it really
about the place she came from?
Or does it mean, is it that Mary came from a town called
tower? Which, by the way, is super vague because there's so many of
them. Does she come from a town called tower, or is
Mary herself the tower?
>> Martha Tatarnic (51:11):
Well, yeah, because we have Simon
Peter, Simon
the rock and Mary Tower.
>> Elizabeth (51:19):
And there's James and John Boanerges, sons of thunder.
There's Thomas the twin. There's all these,
um, different names that Jesus
gives, supposedly to his closest disciples.
>> Martha Tatarnic (51:29):
Yeah, like titles.
>> Elizabeth (51:31):
Right. And so the question is, did Mary get one of
those titles? And, um, so Jo Taylor and I looked at the
interpretation history of the name Magdalene, and it
turns out that there has always been a division of
interpretation. Some people did think it was a town that she came
from. Um, but some people thought that it was a
title. And St. Jerome, for
example, thinks that Mary was given the name tower,
(51:53):
s for her ardent faith. And St. Jerome also
lived in the Holy Land, and he also knew
Eusebius, Unamasticon. So, um,
definitely really far back. Some people
thought it was a place she came from, and some people thought it was a title.
Um, but what we pointed out was that St. Luke seems to think it's a
title because he says Marie he
(52:13):
Calumene Magdalene, Mary, the one called
Magdalene. And whenever he uses this word called
throughout Luke or acts, it's
always like Simon called Peter, or
Elizabeth called Barren, or Martha had
a sister called Maryland. So this
word, um, this kaleo participle that
(52:33):
Luke uses is for nicknames. And so in the
first century, it seemed to have been thought of as a
nickname, not a place that Mary came from. And that place,
Migdol Nunaya, besides that, it was called Tarakay. In
the first century, it was a very burgeoning big city known
to a lot of people. But it was not called magdala in the first
century. It was called Tarakay. And,
um, it's a big city,
(52:56):
um, that would have had plenty of synagogues. So, yeah, they're
great synagogues that you can excavate at this awesome
ancient city called Tarakay. But it wasn't called Magdalen
in the first century.
>> Martha Tatarnic (53:06):
So how does that connect to
this idea that Mary
of Bethany might, um,
have been Mary Magdalene, even though it doesn't
explicitly say that in.
>> Elizabeth (53:20):
Yeah, it doesn't use the word Magdalene in
John, uh, not until John
1925. At the cross.
Um, what
is clear that a lot of important scholars have
noticed is that there's some really obvious parallels between the
Lazarus story and the story
of Mary Magdalene and Jesus in the garden. Obviously, both
(53:42):
of them have a tomb and a stone,
and somebody rises from the dead and there's a woman named Maryland,
and she's crying. And, um,
there's even more subtle things, like there's
a handkerchief. Um, they take the handkerchief, the
sudarion, which is sort of a rare word, they take the
sudarion off of Lazarus in John
eleven. And then you look in the tomb and there's the
(54:04):
sudarion that's rolled up in John 20.
In, um, John eleven, Jesus says, where have you laid him?
And then in John chapter 20, Mary Magdalene says, I do not know where
you have laid him. And it's the exact same sort of greek
words. Um, and, uh, so
there's all these sort of hints that there is a really
clear parallel between the Lazarus story
and John 20, the encounter between Jesus and Mary
(54:27):
Magdalene in the garden. So
all biblical scholars would agree that there are deliberate
craftings of a parallel between the Lazarus story and John
20. The question is, why? Also in John
twelve, um, Judas complains about
Mary anointing Jesus at Bethany, and Jesus says,
leave her alone. Um, uh,
she will keep it for the day of my burial.
(54:50):
Right, right. And so if he's talking about a woman
named Mary at his burial,
in John's gospel, there's only one woman named
Mary at Jesus Field, it's Mary Madison.
>> Martha Tatarnic (55:01):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (55:02):
So you can see why people would have thought,
um. And actually, as far back as interpretation, history can be
traced. People did think that Mary of Bethany was Mary
Magdalene. People blamed Pope Gregory for this. But that's not
true. Pope Gregory identified Mary Magdalene with
Luke's sinful anointer in Luke, chapter
seven. That was his innovation.
(55:22):
But centuries before that, people thought that Mary of
Bethany was the same woman as Mary Magdalene.
>> Martha Tatarnic (55:28):
So there's a lot of extra biblical.
>> Elizabeth (55:31):
Um, support for church fathers.
Yes. Hippolytus, um of Rome,
Ambrose of Milan, Severus of Antioch,
also, um, the Manicheans thought so. They
were kind of heretical. But they seem to think Mary of Bethany was Mary
Magdalene. And if you read the Gospel of Mary, which is a second century
text, this character Mary has aspects of both Mary of
Bethany and Mary Magdalene. Jesus loves her.
(55:53):
She's crying and she sees the Lord in a vision.
So it seems as far back as we can trace
the interpretation history. Some people thought that
Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene. Not everybody, but
some people thought so. And so,
um, so you can see
why if somebody's reading John and they see
these parallels. I'm not saying that it was never
(56:15):
explicitly said, but I think that the evangelist has crafted
the narrative in such a way so
that not the first time you read the Gospel of John, but maybe the
second or the third time, especially when you notice,
oh wait, there's a woman named Mary crying at a tomb. Oh, Jesus is, where have
you laid him? And Mary says, where have you laid him? Like,
is Lazarus his sister Mary,
(56:37):
Mary Magdalene? It's a question that the evangelist has put
into the reader's mind. And maybe the reason why
the evangelist didn't explicitly say
that this is Mary Magdalene is because in these
Bethany stories the evangelist
is giving very controversial content
to Lazarus. Sister, first of all,
(56:58):
that christological confession, isn't that supposed to be
Peter's? Right.
So, um, John, almost everybody would
agree, has had some access to Mark's gospel. John
has at least heard Mark's gospel. That's a near consensus
in biblical scholarship these days. And some think that John
has access to all the synoptics. I personally think
maybe Matthew, um, but definitely
(57:20):
Mark. So in Mark's gospel, Peter
confesses Jesus as the Christ. But
also I'm sure you know what happens in the
anointing. In Mark's gospel.
There's Elizabeth Schuster Fiorenza wrote a whole book about
it. What she has done at the Bethany
anointing, um, wherever the gospel
is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of
(57:42):
her.
>> Martha Tatarnic (57:43):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (57:43):
But her name is not given.
Right. So. And Matthew basically
does the same thing. So
if John is trying to say, trying to give
a counterpoint to Mark's
presentation, John
knows that it will be controversial
to give a woman, perhaps Mary, this
(58:05):
christological confession. And John
knows that it will be controversial to
identify who the anointer was because Mark
withheld that name.
>> Martha Tatarnic (58:15):
Right, right.
>> Elizabeth (58:17):
Yeah. So I'm saying that John is trying to be
strategic. John is trying to say, okay, I
want to identify who
the christological confessor is and the anointer
as Mary Magdalene. That's what John's view is. But
I can't say it explicitly. I gotta do it under
the radar. So what John does is John just calls her
(58:37):
Mary, makes her super similar
to Mary Magdalene. And John, tway, like, super obvious
parallels, but doesn't say so explicitly
and doesn't actually name her as Mary Magdalene until Mark
does, which is at the cross.
>> Martha Tatarnic (58:51):
Right.
>> Elizabeth (58:52):
Because that's where it's actually safe to do. So that's where
it's safe to say that it's Mary Magdalene. Because
obviously, Mark has withheld that information,
or in the anointing, has withheld the identification
and gave the christological confession to someone else. So I'm saying
that John is anticipating that this is going to be
controversial.
>> Martha Tatarnic (59:10):
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
>> Elizabeth (59:12):
And in fact, I think it really was
controversial. So much so that the text, people
knew that some folks thought that Mary
Magdalene was doing these things, and so the
text had to be edited.
>> Martha Tatarnic (59:25):
Yeah. So with that bombshell,
um, because, uh, definitely
we can see, um, how John and then
others understood this as the bombshell that
it. That it potentially was.
Um, we're going to
end today's podcast, uh,
there, leaving hanging, because
(59:47):
there's a lot of implications to
this research. Um, and
this research has sparked a lot of excitement
across the church and across
church leadership. Um, so
we're going to come back next week,
uh, and we'll delve into some
(01:00:08):
of the implications and some of
the nerves that are being touched in,
um, this work that Elizabeth is
unfolding. Thank you so much
for part one of, uh, my pleasure,
this podcast today, and,
uh, we'll look forward to coming back to this
for part two.
>> Paul (01:00:30):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
To learn more about Loren or the podcast,
visit future dash christian.com.
one more thing before you go. Do us a favor
and subscribe to the podcast. And if you're
feeling especially generous, leave a review.
It really helps us get the word out to more people about the
(01:00:50):
podcast. The
Future Christian podcast is a production of torn curtain
arts and resonate media. Our episodes were
mixed by Danny Burton and the production support is
provided by Paul Romaglevitt. Thanks
and go in peace.
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