The Fourth Gospel says very clearly that the woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany was Mary, the sister of Lazarus. Mary Magdalen's name is not mentioned in connection with the anointing scene, but it is she who accompanies Jesus to Calvary in the Gospels, standing near the cross; and it is she who goes at dawn on Easter morning to finish the anointing for burial that she began several days before. Why was Mary of Bethany called "the Magdalen"? Why was she forced to flee Jerusalem? And what became of the sacred bloodline she carried with her?
I have come to suspect that Jesus had a secret dynastic marriage with Mary of Bethany and that she was a daughter of the tribe of Benjamin, whose ancestral heritage was the land surrounding the Holy City of David, the city Jerusalem. A dynastic marriage between Jesus and a royal daughter of the Benjamites would have been perceived as a source of healing to the people of Israel during their time of misery as an occupied nation.
Israel's first anointed King Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin, and his daughter Michol was the wife of King David. Throughout the history of the tribes of Israel, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were the closest and most loyal of allies. Their destinies were intertwined. A dynastic marriage between a Benjamite heiress to the lands surrounding the Holy City and the messianic Son of David would have appealed to the fundamentalist Zealot faction of the Jewish nation. It would have been seen as a sign of hope and blessing during Israel's darkest hour.
[Click here to read full article]
0 comments:
Post a Comment