Browsing by Subject "Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint"

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    Eve, the Virgin, and the Magdalene: Women and Redemption in the Early Church
    (2008) Morrow, Bethany; McGuire, Anne Marie
    In the early stages of the Christian Church there were numerous variations on the conception of sin and salvation. This thesis explores four texts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries—Irenaeus’s Refutation and Overthrow of Falsely So-Called Gnosis (or Against Heresies), Hippolytus’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, the Sethian text called the Hypostasis of the Archons, and the Valentinian text called the Gospel of Philip—in order to examine the roles of female and male figures within each text’s conception of original sin and its redemption. The issue of redemption is defined by the fact that, in the texts discussed in this thesis, human suffering and death is always traced back to two figures, male and female: in the Book of Genesis Adam and Eve both sin in the Garden of Eden, and in gnostic versions of the creation myth male and female figures within both the divine and the earthly realms are involved in the first mistake. There is significance both in the duality out of which the original mistake comes, as well as the relationship of the offenders as partners or counterparts. Is one individual more at fault than the other? And how does this affect the role of a redeeming figure? Can one savior redeem them both or could two saviors be involved in the redemption of humankind? The authors of the four texts discussed would each have different answers. The manner in which the four texts discussed here each employ gendered relationships in their conceptions of sin and redemption reveal different universalized ideologies about men and women. These ideologies are expressed through the manner of involvement of male versus female figures in the original sin, the manner of redemption by male versus female figures, and the conception of the pre-existent divine realm (gender structures above affecting gender structures below). The material for these three elements in the four texts addressed comes from existing scriptural sources such as the letters of Paul and the Gospels of John and Luke. The point of departure from scriptural adherence to the authors’ own intertextual readings is a good place to start analyzing the authors’ ideologies about gender hierarchy and often reveals varying notions about the role of women within different early Christian movements.
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    Who am I, Lord? Intertextuality and the Image of Mary in the Protoevangelium Jacobi
    (2009) Morrison, Margaret; McGuire, Anne Marie
    In chapter twelve, verse six of the Protoevangelium Jacobi (hereinafter PJames), Mary, the mother of Jesus asks the question: “Who am I, Lord, that every generation on earth will congratulate me?” Mary’s question about the nature of her own identity is closely related to the question that defines a central motivation and raison d’etre of PJames: who is Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ? In providing an answer, PJames crafts an image of Mary defined in part through a web of intertextuality with the Jewish Scriptures. “[T]heories of intertextuality,” as defined by Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg, “suggest that all texts (either consciously or subconsciously) are in dialogue with all other texts.” The web of intertextuality that connects PJames and the Jewish Scriptures produces two levels of intertextual dialogue. The primary dialogue exists between PJames and various narratives of the Jewish Scriptures, and is established through the relatively direct allusions to characters and events in the Jewish Scriptures that appear in the PJames narrative. The secondary dialogue exists between PJames and other early Christian texts and articulations of Christian thought, including the Gospel of Luke, the epistles of Paul, and the writings of early Christian theologians essentially contemporaneous with the creation of PJames. This secondary dialogue derives from the primary dialogue: the intertextual relationships between PJames and these other early Christian texts rest on the images of Mary conjured up by the dialogue between PJames and the Jewish Scriptures. The effect of the primary dialogue is to create an image of Mary as doule kuriou, God’s servant. PJames creates a biography, or perhaps hagiography, for Mary beyond the details of the canonical Gospels, and peppers this expanded biography with references to characters from the Jewish Scriptures, who appear as parallels to the characters of PJames. Following the model of intertextuality provided in the Gospel of Luke, PJames presents Mary as a new Isaac, a new Samuel, a new Eve, and a new sacred space akin to the biblical tabernacle and Holy of Holies. Through this allusion to and appropriation of the Jewish Scriptures, PJames creates a picture of Mary as a woman totally dedicated to God, her entire self an offering to and an instrument for the manifestation of the divine will. The secondary intertextual dialogue enhances this picture of Mary, building on these scriptural allusions to suggest an identity for Mary as both a precursor to Christ and a type of the ideal believer in Christ.