Mary Magdalene, La Malinche, and the Ethics of Interpretation

Mary Magdalene, La Malinche, and the Ethics of Interpretation PDF Author: Jennifer Vija Pietz
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978712553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
By comparing the intersecting histories of interpretation of Mary Magdalene, a first-century disciple of Jesus, and La Malinche, a sixteenth-century Mesoamerican woman enslaved by the Spanish conquistadores, Jennifer Vija Pietz critically evaluates the use of past lives to address contemporaneous concerns. She demonstrates how the earliest sources portray each woman as an agent in the foundation of a new community: Magdalene’s proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection helped form the first Christian community, while La Malinche’s role as interpreter between Spanish and native people during the Conquest helped establish modern Mexico. Pietz then argues that over time, various interpreters turn these real women into malleable icons that they use to negotiate changing conceptions of communal identity and norms. Strikingly, popular portraits develop of both women as archetypal whores who represent transgression—portraits that some women have experienced as harmful. Although other interpreters present contrary portraits of Magdalene and La Malinche as admirable emblems of female empowerment, Pietz argues that the tendency to turn real people into icons risks producing stereotypes that can obscure past lives and negatively affect people in the present. In response, she posits strategies for developing historically plausible and ethically responsible interpretations of people of the past.

Mary Magdalene, La Malinche, and the Ethics of Interpretation

Mary Magdalene, La Malinche, and the Ethics of Interpretation PDF Author: Jennifer Vija Pietz
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978712553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Get Book Here

Book Description
By comparing the intersecting histories of interpretation of Mary Magdalene, a first-century disciple of Jesus, and La Malinche, a sixteenth-century Mesoamerican woman enslaved by the Spanish conquistadores, Jennifer Vija Pietz critically evaluates the use of past lives to address contemporaneous concerns. She demonstrates how the earliest sources portray each woman as an agent in the foundation of a new community: Magdalene’s proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection helped form the first Christian community, while La Malinche’s role as interpreter between Spanish and native people during the Conquest helped establish modern Mexico. Pietz then argues that over time, various interpreters turn these real women into malleable icons that they use to negotiate changing conceptions of communal identity and norms. Strikingly, popular portraits develop of both women as archetypal whores who represent transgression—portraits that some women have experienced as harmful. Although other interpreters present contrary portraits of Magdalene and La Malinche as admirable emblems of female empowerment, Pietz argues that the tendency to turn real people into icons risks producing stereotypes that can obscure past lives and negatively affect people in the present. In response, she posits strategies for developing historically plausible and ethically responsible interpretations of people of the past.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene PDF Author: Jean-Yves Leloup
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594776415
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Restores to the forefront of the Christian tradition the importance of the divine feminine • The first complete English-language translation of the original Coptic Gospel of Mary, with line-by-line commentary • Reveals the eminence of the divine feminine in Christian thought • Offers a new perspective on the life of one of the most controversial figures in the Western spiritual tradition Perhaps no figure in biblical scholarship has been the subject of more controversy and debate than Mary Magdalene. Also known as Miriam of Magdala, Mary Magdalene was considered by the apostle John to be the founder of Christianity because she was the first witness to the Resurrection. In most theological studies she has been depicted as a reformed prostitute, the redeemed sinner who exemplifies Christ's mercy. Today's reader can ponder her role in the gospels of Philip, Thomas, Peter, and Bartholomew--the collection of what have come to be known as the Gnostic gospels rejected by the early Christian church. Mary's own gospel is among these, but until now it has remained unknown to the public at large. Orthodox theologian Jean-Yves Leloup's translation of the Gospel of Mary from the Coptic and his thorough and profound commentary on this text are presented here for the first time in English. The gospel text and the spiritual exegesis of Leloup together reveal unique teachings that emphasize the eminence of the divine feminine and an abiding love of nature over the dualistic and ascetic interpretations of Christianity presented elsewhere. What emerges from this important source text and commentary is a renewal of the sacred feminine in the Western spiritual tradition and a new vision for Christian thought and faith throughout the world.

The Censored Pulpit

The Censored Pulpit PDF Author: Donyelle C. McCray
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978709676
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Few have consoled the church as ably as the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich. However, her prophetic gifts have received little scholarly attention. Drawing on contemporary homiletical theory and the history of Christian spirituality, Donyelle C. McCray presents Julian as a preacher, examining the apostolic dimensions of Julian’s vocation as an anchoress and highlighting the steps she took to align herself with renowned preachers like Saint Cecelia, Mary Magdalene, and the apostle Paul. Like Paul, Julian saw Jesus’ body as her primary text, placed human weakness at the center of her theology, and used her own confined body as a rhetorical tool. Yet she navigated a web of censorship that threatened to silence her. To voice her convictions, Julian developed a novel approach to authority and exploited the fluidity of the medieval English sermon genre. McCray charts this process, revealing Julian as a central personality in the history of preaching whose best contemporary parallels operate outside the pulpit in august figures like retreat leader Evelyn Underhill, gospel singer Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith, and street preacher Reverend Billy.

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene PDF Author: Sandra Cerda
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781985575264
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In a world and time where women are shamefully scorned, abused and rejected... hear the story of how one came to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the power that emanated throughout her life, as a resu

Latina/o/x Studies and Biblical Studies

Latina/o/x Studies and Biblical Studies PDF Author: Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004430075
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
In Latina/o/x Studies and Biblical Studies Jacqueline M. Hidalgo introduces Latina/o/x studies for a biblical studies audience. She examines crucial themes that bridge the two fields, themes such as identity and difference with special attention to ethnicity and race; migration with attention to homing, diaspora, transnationalism, and citizenship. She discusses the place of Latina/o/x studies in relevant Hebrew Bible and New Testament scholarship on these topics. Ultimately this essay argues that Latina/o/x studies’ epistemological commitments to complexity, relationality, particularity, and collaborative knowledge-making can help ground critical interpretive approaches in biblical studies. She also imagines a way in which biblical studies—capaciously encompassing the study of Jewish and Christian literature in the ancient world as well as Jewish and Christian biblical reception and rejection histories, and the very category of scriptures more broadly—could deepen Latina/o/x studies' own thinking about canon formation and history.

[Un]framing the "Bad Woman"

[Un]framing the Author: Alicia Gaspar de Alba
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292758502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
One of America's leading interpreters of the Chicana experience dismantles the discourses that "frame" women who rebel against patriarchal strictures as "bad women" and offers empowering models of struggle, resistance, and rebirth.

Paul's Letter to the Romans

Paul's Letter to the Romans PDF Author: Arland J. Hultgren
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802826091
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 833

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Book Description
Building on his own translation from the Greek, Hultgren walks readers through Romans verse by verse, illuminating the text with helpful comments, probing into major puzzles, and highlighting the letter's most inspiring features. He also demonstrates the forward-looking, missional character of Paul's epistle -- written, as Hultgren suggests, to introduce Roman Christians to the major themes of Paul's theology and to inspire in them both confidence in the soundness of his teaching and support for his planned missionary efforts in Spain.

After The Passion is Gone

After The Passion is Gone PDF Author: J. Shawn Landres
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759108158
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ topped box office charts and changed the American religious conversation. The controversies it raised remain unsettled. In After The Passion Is Gone: American Religious Consequences, leading scholars of religion and theology ask what Gibson's film and the resulting controversy reveal about Christians, Jews, and the possibilities of interreligious dialogue in the United States. Landres and Berenbaum's collection moves beyond questions of whether or not the film was faithful to the gospels, too violent, or antisemitic and explores why the debate focused on these issues but not others. The public discussion of The Passion shed light on a wide range of American attitudes--evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish--about media and faith, politics and history, Jesus and Judaism, fundamentalism and victimhood. After The Passion Is Gone takes a unique view of vital points in Christian-Jewish relations and contemporary American religion.

Pagan Trinity - Holy Trinity

Pagan Trinity - Holy Trinity PDF Author: Alan Dickin
Publisher: Hamilton Books
ISBN: 1461626706
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
This book offers a revolutionary new synthesis of ancient history and religion by bridging the gap between the archaeology of Mesopotamia (now the country of Iraq) and the biblical account of Genesis. Professor Alan Dickin shows how the Sumerians, the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, established the world's first organized religion, which was a direct fore-runner of the Judeo-Christian faith. He places the biblical accounts of the Creation, Fall, Flood, and Tower of Babel in their historical context in ancient Mesopotamia, and identifies the origins of the biblical Trinity in the Sumerian pantheon. Finally, he explores the manner of God's first revelations to mankind and the meaning of the lost secrets of the Garden of Eden. Over seventy line drawings of ancient artifacts, in addition to maps and historical tables, bring the civilization and religion of ancient Mesopotamia to life for a modern audience.

Twisted Roots

Twisted Roots PDF Author: Carlos Alberto Montaner
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 0875862608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
A Cuban/Spanish journalist and author examines the historical and cultural influences that shaped Latin America and suggests how they have made it into the most impoverished, unstable and backward region in the Western world.