*chokes with laughter*

[tree_and_leaf]

Have been reading EP Sanders' The Historical Figure of Jesus, which isn't one of the greatest comedic works of our time, but does contain the following highly amusing comment about people's urges to bring novelistic detail to the Gospel accounts, which should be sharply distinguished from history:

Mary Magdelene has appealed enormously to people who have imagined all sorts of romantic things about her: she had been a prostitute, she was beautiful, she was in love with Jesus and fled to France carrying his child. For all we know on the basis of our sources, she was eighty-six, childless and keen to mother unkempt young men. Sanders (1993: 74).


There's a story there... *is incurably novelistic*

Comments

[nicki]

Personally I think she was an apostle. "But she was a girl" is a dumb reason for not counting her as one. *is a grumpy Catholic :P*

[tree_and_leaf]

"Apostle of the apostles" as they (= orthodox Catholics) used to say in the thirteenth century. Speaking as an intermittently grumpy Anglo-Catholic, I agree with you.

[ineptshieldmaid]

OMG.

YES.

WANT.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm inclined to think she couldn't have been quite eighty-six given the resurrection scene, but the general premise is, I think, quite awesome.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Middle-aged, perhaps? You could make a really good story about age, marriage, infidelity, a whole bunch of things... hmmm

[cesy]

I would love to read that story.

[tree_and_leaf]

It would be fun to write, but it does kind of need a plot...