IN “BC” AND BIBLICAL TIMES, PEOPLE WITH “UNCLEAN SPIRITS” AND “DEMONIC POSSESSIONS” AND “MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES”, AND SATANIC WORSHIPERS, MANY WERE BURNED AT THE STAKES, AND MANY INNOCENT HUMANS WERE ALSO MURDERED AND DESTROYED… “BRUTAL” STUFF, HAS BEEN DONE EVERY SINCE “CAIN & ABLE”….
BUT, THESE DAYS, WHEN “SPIRITUAL WICKEDLY POSSESSED” HUMANS PERVADE AND INTERMIX WITHIN OUR SOCIETIES, WE BASICALLY HAVE “HARDLY ANY DEFENSES” AGAINST THEM BEING TYRANTS AND LIARS AND DECEIVERS AND “CRAZIES AND SCHIZOPHRENICS” ; RUNNING FOR OFFICES, HOLDING OFFICES IN HIGH PLACES, ROAMING THESE STREETS, AIRWAYS, CYBER-SPACE WAYS, INFECTING PEOPLE WITH THEIR DEMONIC SPIRITUAL NASTINESS AND HATRED/DEMONS AND EVIL PERSONAS….
BEFORE CHRIST, THERE WAS NOT MUCH, KNOWN TO BE DONE, WITH “DEMONIC/SATANIC/EVIL POSSESSED HUMANS”, OTHER THAN EXILING THEM FROM THE COMMUNITIES, “BURNING THEM AT THE STAKES”, AND/OR LOCKING THEM UP INTO CAGES/DUNGEONS AND NASTY PLACES….
WHEN JESUS CHRIST CAME, WE WERE TAUGHT HOW TO DEAL WITH THESE “UNCLEAN SPIRITS” BY EXORCISMS AND USAGE OF THE POWERS OF GOD/JESUS/THE HOLY SPIRIT, TO CAST THE DEMONS OUT!!! “REMEMBER, REMEMBERRRRR, REMEMBERRR”!!!!!??????, Matthew 8:28-34,Luke 8:26-37
Jesus Sends Demons into Pigs
28 And when He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men confronted Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. 29 And they cried out, saying, “[a]What business do You have with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before [b]the time?” 30 Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding at a distance from them. 31 And the demons begged Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” 32 And He said to them, “Go!” And they came out and went into the pigs; and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and [c]drowned in the waters. 33 And the herdsmen ran away, and went to the city and reported everything, [d]including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw Him, they pleaded with Him to leave their region.Read full chapter
GO ALSO STUDY THIS: https://www.history.com/news/mary-magdalene-jesus-wife-prostitute-saint
Updated:Apr 2, 2021Original:Mar 1, 2019
How Early Church Leaders Downplayed Mary Magdalene’s Influence by Calling Her a Whore
Other early documents portray her as Jesus’s companion—and even mention kissing. What’s really known about the Bible’s most mysterious woman?Sarah Pruitt
She was Mary of Magdala, one of the earliest followers of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Bible, she traveled with him, witnessed his Crucifixion and was one of the first people to learn of his Resurrection.
Over the centuries, everyone from early church leaders and scholars to novelists and filmmakers have revised and elaborated on the story of Mary Magdalene. On one hand, they downplayed her importance by claiming she was a prostitute, a ruined woman who repented and was saved by Christ’s teachings. On the other, some early Christian texts depicted Mary Magdalene as not just a mere follower, but Jesus’s trusted companion—which some interpreted to mean his wife.
But is there any truth to either of these stories? What do we really know about the Bible’s most mysterious woman, Mary Magdalene?
WATCH: Jesus: His Life on HISTORY Vault
What the Bible Says About Mary Magdalene
All four canonical gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) noted Mary Magdalene’s presence at Jesus’s Crucifixion, but only the Gospel of Luke discussed her role in Jesus’s life and ministry, listing her among “some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” (Luke 8:1–3).
According to Luke, after Jesus cast out seven demons from her, Mary became part of a group of women who traveled with him and his 12 disciples/apostles, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.” Magdalene is not a surname, but identified the place Mary came from: Magdala, a city in Galilee, located in the northernmost region of ancient Palestine (now northern Israel).
The crucifixion of Jesus with the Virgin Mary, Saint John and Mary Magdalene.
Daniela Cammilli for Alinari/Alinari Archives, Florence-Reproduced with the permission of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Alinari via Getty Images
“Mary Magdalene is among Jesus’s early followers,” says Robert Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. “She was named in the Gospels, so she obviously was important. There were apparently hundreds, if not thousands, of followers of Jesus, but we don’t know most of their names. So the fact that she’s named is a big deal.”
After Jesus’s crucifixion—which she witnessed along with several other women from the foot of the cross—and after all his male disciples had fled, Mary Magdalene also played a key role in the story of the Resurrection. According to the gospels, she visited Jesus’s tomb on Easter Sunday, either alone (according to the Gospel of John) or with other women, and found the tomb empty.
“The women are the ones who go and tell the disciples,” Cargill points out. “They are the ones that discovered that he had risen, and that’s significant.”
In the Gospel of John, Jesus actually appears to Mary Magdalene alone after his Resurrection, and instructs her to tell his disciples of his return (John 20:1-13).
READ MORE: What Did Jesus Look Like?
Mary Magdalene as sinner
Despite—or perhaps because of—Mary Magdalene’s clear importance in the Bible, some early Western church leaders sought to downplay her influence by portraying her as a sinner, specifically a prostitute.
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“There are many scholars who argue that because Jesus empowered women to such an extent early in his ministry, it made some of the men who would lead the early church later on uncomfortable,” Cargill explains. “And so there were two responses to this. One was to turn her into a prostitute.”
To cast Mary as the original repentant whore, early church leaders conflated her with other women mentioned in the Bible, including an unnamed woman, identified in the Gospel of Luke as a sinner, who bathes Jesus’s feet with her tears, dries them and puts ointment on them (Luke 7:37-38), as well as another Mary, Mary of Bethany, who also appears in Luke. In 591 A.D., Pope Gregory the Great solidified this misunderstanding in a sermon: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark.”
“By turning [Mary Magdalene] into a prostitute, then she is not as important. It diminishes her in some way. She couldn’t have been a leader, because look at what she did for a living,” Cargill says. “Of course, the other response was actually to elevate Mary. Some argued she was actually Jesus’ wife, or companion. She had a special status.”
READ MORE: The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Other Proof Exists?
Jesus at the table in the house of the Pharisee, receiving the visit of Mary Magdalene, depicted as a prostitute bowing at Jesus’s feet.
Sergio Anelli/Electa/Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images
According to Luke, after Jesus cast out seven demons from her, Mary became part of a group of women who traveled with him and his 12 disciples/apostles, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.” Magdalene is not a surname, but identified the place Mary came from: Magdala, a city in Galilee
Mary Magdalene as Jesus’s wife???? WHATEVER…EVEN “IF” SHE WAS–SOOO WHAT??? DON’T GET LOST IN CRAP, Y’ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
While some early Christians sought to downplay Mary’s influence, others sought to accentuate it. The Gospel of Mary, a text dating from the second century A.D. that surfaced in Egypt in 1896, placed Mary Magdalene above Jesus’s male disciples in knowledge and influence. She also featured prominently in the so-called Gnostic Gospels, a group of texts believed to have been written by early Christians as far back as the second century A.D., but not discovered until 1945, near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi.
One of these texts, known as the Gospel of Philip, referred to Mary Magdalene as Jesus’s companion and claimed that Jesus loved her more than the other disciples. Most controversially, the text stated that Jesus used to kiss Mary “often on her ____.” Damage to the text left the last word unreadable, though some scholars have filled in the missing word as “mouth.”
Since 2003, tens of millions of readers have devoured Dan Brown’s massively bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code, the plot of which centered around the longstanding theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children together. This idea was also central to The Last Temptation of Christ, the 1955 novel by Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, and the later film version of that book, directed by Martin Scorsese.
Then in 2012, the Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King unveiled a previously unknown papyrus fragment she believed to be a copy of a second-century gospel, in which Jesus referred to Mary Magdalene as “my wife.” After defending the document’s authenticity against a barrage of criticism, King eventually changed her stance, concluding that the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” was probably a forgery.
Mary Magdalene as trusted disciple
For its part, the Bible gave no hint that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife. None of the four canonical gospels suggests that sort of relationship, even though they list the women who travel with Jesus and in some cases include their husbands’ names.
The version of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute held on for centuries after Pope Gregory the Great made it official in his sixth-century sermon, though neither Orthodoxy nor Protestantism adopted it when those faiths later split from the Catholic Church. Finally, in 1969, the Church admitted that the text of the Bible does not support that interpretation. Today, Mary Magdalene is considered a saint by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches, with a feast day celebrated on July 22.
“Mary appears to have been a disciple of Jesus,” Cargill concludes. “What’s important is that Jesus had both male and female disciples in his ministry, which was not necessarily common at the time.” The prostitute and the wife theories may have been around for centuries, but they are legends and traditions that grew up long after the fact, he emphasizes: “Neither of them [is] rooted in the Bible itself.”
READ MORE: The History of Christianity
By Sarah Pruitt
Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor based in seacoast New Hampshire. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017),which chronicles some of history’s most famous disappearances.
EXCERPTS”
Demon Possession and ExorcismIn the New Testament
ROBERT M. JOHNSTON
Belief in incorporeal beings who interact with human beings was al-most universal among ancient peoples, both pagan and Jewish. They were called spirits or demons. These terms were originally morally neutral but came to signify evil forces. A good survey of how the meaning of daimon
developed is provided by Everett Ferguson (2003:236–238).
Pagan and Jewish background
For Socrates daimōn meant something like a conscience. Plato
sometimes used the word as a term for divine intermediaries or demigods,
sometimes as something like the guardian angel of a person or a city. From
this developed the idea that everyone has two demons, one good and one bad. As we approach New Testament times, as seen in authors like
Xenocrates, Apuleius, and Plutarch, demons were viewed as malevolent
spirits which were everywhere and caused trouble for humans. The idea
that the demons are demigods (see Plutarch Moralia in Babbitt 1993:63, 65) prepares the way for the identification of pagan deities with demons
in 1 Cor 10:20 and other early Christian literature. A demon could take possession of a person, a condition for which the verb was daimonizomai
(literally “to be demonized”), resulting in physical or mental affliction, and pagans had sorcerers (magoi) who performed exorcisms by means of incantations and magical techniques (Ferguson 2003:236–238). “Sorcerers [would] advise those possessed by demons to recite and name over to themselves the Ephesian letters [a magic formula]” (Plutarch Moralia in
Minar, Sandbach, and Helmbold 1999:55).
Intertestamental Judaism had parallel ideas. Tobit 6:21 speaks of a person’s guardian angel. But the demons are not demigods but fallen
angels. In Jubilees10:5–9 most of the angels who sinned are imprisoned in the netherworld, but a tenth of them are allowed to remain to afflict sinful
1Johnston: Demon Possession and Exorcism In the New TestamentPublished by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 201518Journal of Adventist Mission Studies
human beings. In 1 Enoch 15:11–16:1 they are the disembodied spirits of the dead giants begotten by the angels who copulated with women; their work is to afflict and deceive humankind. An alternative opinion, found in the Qumran literature and some rabbinic literature (see Cohen 1949:260),
was that these spirits were created by the Lord during the creation week.
Demons could enter into a person (for citations and discussion see Cohen 1949:260–270), and the Jews had exorcists such as one Eleazar, reported
by Josephus, who drew out the demons through the victims’ nostrils by means of techniques and incantations supposedly passed down from
Solomon (Antiquities 8.46–49 (8.2.5), in Whiston 1987:214). The Pharisees were thought to be especially adept at exorcisms, though later Rabbis sought to explain the practice away (for citations and discussion see Urbach 1979:98–102). Jesus said to the Pharisees, “If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out?” (Matt 12:27). Acts 19:13–16 tells of seven Jewish exorcists in Ephesus who sought to employ
the name of Jesus as a magical formula, with disastrous results.
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1298&context=jams
WHEN YOU/WE STUDY AND GO TO CHURCHES (BUILDINGS)..NOT “THE CHURCH” THE PEOPLE OF “JESUS CHRIST” TRUE BELIEVERS ARE “THE CHURCH”..NOT MONEY, WEALTH, FAME, NOT POLITICIANS, PREACHERS, CELEBRITIES, ATHLETES, NOR RAPPERS, AND SINGERS, NOT TYRANTS AND BIGOTS AND HATERS, NOT BLACKS N OR WHITES, NOR YELLOWS NOR REDS NOR BROWNS…
THIS IS NOT THE 1ST TIME THAT “DEMONIC AND SATANIC AND EVIL SPIRITS PRESIDENTS AND LEADERS HAVE BEEN ELECTED, KING ED, QUEENED, CROWNED, FOLLOWED, AND PLACED INTO “HIGH PLACES” YET ARE A “EVIL/POSSESSED/DEMONIC/SATAN CONTROLLED” AS SATAN HIMSELF….
WHAT/WHY IS IT, WHEN THIS NATION/COUNTRY DECIDED TO “ELECT” A SPIRITUALLY DEMONIC Beelzebub “LEGION OF DEMONS” TO OUR PUBLIC OFFICES????…Matthew 12:22-30,Mark 3:20-27
Matthew 12:22-30
Modern English Version
Jesus and Beelzebub
22 Then one possessed with a demon was brought to Him, blind and mute, and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 23 All the people were amazed and said, “Is He not the Son of David?”
24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “This Man does not cast out demons, except by Beelzebub the ruler of the demons.”
25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. And every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. Then how will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges. 28 But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
29 “Or else how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.
30 “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. Read full chapter
PREACHERS/MINISTERS/PASTORS/BISHOPS AND “SO-CALLED SPIRITUAL LEADERS” ARE, INSTEAD OF “CASTING OUT THESE DEMONS” AND DOING “GOD’S WORKS” WOULD RATHER “BUILD EXQUISITE STRUCTURES”, HAVE MEMBERS COME TO THESE “BUILDINGS ON SUNDAYS AND CHURCH DAYS, DURING THE WEEKS” TO “GIVE MONEY” SO THESE “LEADERS” CAN BE WORSHIPED AND IDOLIZED AND COLLECT “MONEY/$$” AND BUY “JETS” AND “MASSIVE HOMES” AND “DRIVE FANCY CARS” AND HAVE MEMBERS “PRAISE THEM” AS THE “REVEREND/DOCTOR-SO-&-SO”!!!????? …
WHY HAS “NOT” 1/ONE PREACHER/MINISTER/CLERGYMAN/WOMAN EVER TRIED TO “CAST OUT THE DEMONS FROM TRUMP”??? HE IS “FULL OF THE DEVILS”!!!! AND MANY WHO WORSHIP HIM ARE TOO...
