Status Updates From Mary Wept Over the Feet of ...

“The roots of our culture’s whorephobia are in the Bible. The New Testament writer Paul vigorously disapproved of prostitution, and this established whorephobia as THE Christian position on the subject. The result is that sex-for-pay between consenting adults is a criminal offense in most places on the globe… The secular reasoning has been influenced by Christianity.”

“Some Christians might not consider me to be a Christian, and maybe you’d agree with them. Whether I am one or not, I’m certainly religious. A person who has faith in secular materialism believes that consciousness developed out of matter, while those of us who are religious would say that matter developed out of consciousness.”

“On occasion, my adventures took me into what many people might call the ‘sexual underground,’ a place of… prostitution, heavy alcohol use, and other socially condemned practices. But I learned much in that world. I was given to see that what Jesus said about many prostitutes and sinners entering the kingdom of heaven before the righteous is as true today as it was when Jesus spoke.”
- Jim Marion

“The Yahwist religion was anti-woman, anti-sex, and anti-prostitution. Of course female prostitutes in Israel and Judah preferred the pro-woman, pro-sex, and pro-prostitution Goddess religion. Associating prostitution and idolatry together in the prostitution metaphor made sense because real-life prostitutes were associated with idolatry.”

“According to the book of HOSEA, the prophet Hosea married a prostitute named Gomer…

‘The men of Israel themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine-prostitutes.’ [HOSEA 4:14]

This seems to be a straightforward report of where men were finding prostitutes: at temples devoted to deities other than Yahweh… Temples devoted to deities other than Yahweh were largely funded by prostitutes.”

… I think prejudice prevented Schaberg from seeing that a woman can be both a prostitute and a source of spiritual power.

Jesus wanted the woman who anointed him to be remembered. Her name was Mary. She was a prostitution. She had some sort of spiritual authority. She was, according to Jesus, a loving person.”

“I think Schaberg was partially right: The anointer represented spiritual authority in some way… all of the gospel writers downplay the spiritual authority of the anointer. I think all four of the canonical gospel writers knew that a prostitution named Mary had the spiritual authority to anoint Jesus as a christ, and all four of them were embarrassed about this…”

“All four of the canonical gospels contain a scene in which Jesus is anointed by a woman. The words ‘messiah’ and ‘christ’ both mean ‘anointed one’, so the anointing of Jesus is important…
That’s a point worth emphasizing: a prostitution made Jesus a Christ.”

“‘The gospel [of Luke] was clearly written by a person who could think about the community around Jesus from both the male and the female point of view.’ [Cooper]

Randel Helms is convinced that Luke was a woman:

‘In Luke, women are the first to believe and preach the resurrection faith. Only Luke stresses the unique depth of female faith and understanding.’ [Helms]”

“Again, the father in the parable [of the prodigal son] represents how our assumptions affect how we experience God. The older som obeys the father (symbolically, the son follows the Torah) and thinks that it should guarantee the love of his father (and a close relationship with God) and is resentful when it doesn’t. The younger son ignores ‘the rules’ and ends up being embraced by the father.”

“God is loving, but to experience God’s love you have to be receptive to it. The clue to why the master treats the slave-who-hid-the-talent harshly is that slave’s preconception of the master: the slave believes the master is harsh, and that the master ‘reaps what he doesn’t sow’. The master symbolizes, not how God really is, but how our preconceptions shape our experience of God.”

… on to it but instead gives it away in a manner that honours the women he gives it to as workers, not as people in need of charity.”

“‘The rabbis of the Talmud distinguished three levels of charity. The highest level is to give someone work by which he can earn his living for himself. The second is to give money anonymously. The lowest level, which is approved of, but not accorded much admiration, is to give money and to let people know it.’ [Mitchell]
Although [the whoremonger] realizes that the money is really his, he doesn’t hold on…

“A significant reason why the master embraces the whoremonger in the parable [of the sower] is because he’s the one who hasn’t acted like a slave. He accepts that what God gives us is ours to do with as we will. God doesn’t expect or want obedience.”

… who could see that God wasn’t really behind the law…. I think it’s significant that the story of the Garden of Eden — a story of God punishing disobedience — is followed by the story of Cain and Abel, which is about God rewarding someone for disobeying Him when disobedience makes sense…. JOB suggests that God is not behind the law, and doesn’t care about the matters that it deals with.”

“God doesn’t see His own laws as absolute.”

Note:
“I don’t think Jesus was against the law in the Torah. I would say he saw it as spiritually irrelevant: to observe it is fine, but don’t expect doing such a bring you closer to God…
In questioning the law, Jesus was following a tradition that went back, at least to the Cain and Abel story. There were Jews prior to Jesus who were spiritually advanced and