Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Mary Magdalene

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Prior to this, I had not read any of the books in the Idiot's Guide series, my closest estimation of what to expect being my experience with the computer oriented Dummies books. While I think that those books work as great introductions to material, they never seem to go beyond 'Hello World' enough to satisfy my needs.

This book appears to go well beyond 'Hello World', and if one's expectations are limited to just the Biblical Mary Magdalene or to the matter of the Da Vinci Code, one will either be pleasantly surprised or possibly overwhelmed. With 2000 years of Mary Magdalene material to draw from, alot is covered here.

Many views of the subject are presented, from the Biblical and 'Gnostic', to the more recent work of author Margaret Starbird, which The Da Vinci Code is partly based upon, and the 'feminist' Apostle of the Apostles view. There is also an entire chapter devoted to lesser known modern ideas surrounding Mary Magdalene.

There are also different parts of the book that explore Mary Magdalene as a cultural figure, such as in art, books and movies, or how she is viewed in different branches of Christianity and different parts of the world and how one might personally celebrate her Feast Day.

There is quite a bit of important supporting material, such as information used to illustrate the place of women in the 1st century, ideas that Mary Magdalene has been used to represent by early church fathers, and information about the other Biblical figures named Mary who Mary Magdalene has often been confused with. While sometimes this information doesn't always directly relate to Mary Magdalene, it does help to set up the world which she may have lived in.

The book is extremely readable except for a few difficult parts, where the matter is otherwise pretty confusing anyways, such as when dealing with all the different Mary characters in the Bible. Fortunately this is rarely the case and the book is very accessible.

The Appendices include a guide to looking up where Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the Bible and other places like Gnostic texts, which I have found very useful.

There's alot more 'bang for the buck' than I expected and I think this title works as a great introduction to the rich history surrounding Mary Magdalene. Based on this I would also venture to check out other titles in this series.

Lesa Bellevie's book surveys and critiques a broad, comprehensive, and diverse array of studies and theories about Mary Magdalene, including the recent wave of scholarly and popular books on the subject.

Bellevie utilizes well the clear format provided by the Complete Idiot's Guide series, such as multiple section headings on each page, making it easy to jump in anywhere and rapidly skim.

I'm a novice when it comes to Mary Magdalene, and I needed a place to start. This is it. A great big overview of the whole topic, and Mary Magdalene is certainly a topic. I'm using this one book to follow paths to other books of worth. Lucky me, starting here. By the way, I found it in the library at the university...now I have to buy it.

These days, with Mary Magdalene pretty much all the thing, we really do need someone to help us through the morass of information, misinformation, fact and fantasy going on in her name. Ms. (Miss?) Lesa Bellevie appears the perfect person to be that guide. I'm very happy with my copy.

Book is in better condition than I expected. I look forward to reading it.

Mary Magdalene has come a long way since the bad old days of prostitution and weeping all over Christ's feet. We won't even discuss why prostitution exists in the first place...we'll just leave men to their needs, and then allow them to debase those who give them what they need, shall we? People really are odd. But as I was saying, the Magdalene has come a long way...and now it seems she might even be the mother of the children of Jesus. Although, if Jesus is God, aren't we all his children? Never mind that. Here we are, with a Mary Magdalene who begins to be all sorts of things to all sorts of people...and it's getting so complex, not to mention messy, it seems we need a guidebook to keep track of it all. And thank goodness, here's that guidebook. Who was the Magdalene anyway? Will we ever know? Even more importantly, who is she today? It's not really so much what she was that matters, but who she's becoming. As ever, we need our myths and in these days of rejecting the Stern and Judgmental Father, we're turning to the Mother. Hot damn...we're seeking the Goddess again. In the nick of time too. And since we need guideposts to take us back to Her, this is a damned good one. A must on everyone's Magdalene shelf. My shelf now holds this book, and about ten others...all chosen with great care. One of those others is Ki Longfellow's The Secret Magdalene: A Novel which I shall keep bleating on about until it gets read by everyone looking for a Magdalene that looks like THE Magdalene.

For someone like me who was raised a Lutheran, it's pretty confusing trying to keep up with all the new scholarship and, dare I say, the new religions. The New Age is a new religion, isn't it? People are trying to understand reality in a world that the Bible never dreamed of. I think this has happened time and time again, and when any one religion becomes too strong and too restrictive as the Catholic Church did, then people start mumbling and grumbling to be set free. Our Martin certainly grumbled. And he freed us from the Pope, bless him, and gave Christians a new way and new breath. But now people chafe at what has become old and there are so many taking so many paths, a person can just get confused trying to follow any one of them. So I was delighted to find this book about Mary Magdalene, who has always intriqued me, just as I said when I reviewed the wonderful The Secret Magdalene a little while ago. In this one book I can sample all sorts of ways of looking at the Magdalene...plus enjoy the appendices. I'm buying one for my sister's wedding aniversary. These days, all she can talk about is Mary Magdalene. I'll get her this book, and The Secret Magdalene, and maybe even something by Margaret Starbird. I'm not at all convinced by Ms Starbird's theories, but I do love her devotion to Mary.

I like this book. It's helping me to find other books and other sources in my search for Mary Magdalene.

This book is full of Historical facts, however, I have some problems with it, other than it being tedious to read.

Barbara Walker's book called The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, Holy Blood and Holy Grailby Michael Baignent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln have all been trashed by the authour in Chapter 19,20 and 21 of her book. In chapter 20 the authour goes through a number of claims and judges whether they are true or false.

Claim 2- The Diaries of Mary Magdalen exist she says is false, shouldn't that have been, perhaps, not found yet, or something like that, instead of false. I sure don't know that she never wrote any, I just know they haven't found any, yet.

Claim 3 Jesus loved Mary Magdalene more than the others and kissed her often. Maybe -she says, well, what does she want, it to appear suddenly in the bible. What does she consider real proof? A stamp of approval from the Vatican? I think this is unlikely to happen.

Claim4 -Jesus left instructions with Mary Magdalene on how to build his church.

Again, she says false. Well I don't know that he didn't, but I haven't seen proof he did, either. That doesn't make it false, but unproven, in my world.

Claim5 -The Roman Catholic church killed 5 million women and children as witches. Well I have heard that one as well. She says it is a modern myth, but it could be based on the ratio of number of murdered verses the population of the time. How many people do they have to murder to make it a horrendous, apparently its Ok to put to death 40,000 to 100,000 ( a pretty large part of the population at the time) people if they disagree with you as long as your detractors don't exaggerate the figure.

Claim7- There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that she was from the tribe of Benjamin, or any other tribe for that matter. Any suggestion that she is from one tribe or another is not false but conjecture. She may have been, it hasn't been proven.

Claim8- Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a daughter named Sarah, who started the Merovingian dynasty.
Again False, there is no real evidence either way is there?

In the canonical Gospels and well as the Gnostic Texts, Mary Magdalene was the foremost among Jesus' women followers. I think this should read the Gnostic texts considered her foremost among his followers, the Women who knew the All.

As long as we turn for approval to the Vatican we will remain starved for the Feminine face of God. Females leaders were deliberately eliminated from the Bible. I think she worked too hard to fit it in to main line theology.