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• Offers a balanced, easy-to-follow look at a very controversial subject
  
• Includes scriptural references throughout and a quick look-up appendix to track mentions of Mary Magdalene, as well as resources and a chronology
  

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  Customer Reviews
  

  Average Customer Rating:

  
  

  Helpful, informed, fair overview	Customer Rating:
  I like this book. It's helping me to find other books and other sources in my search for Mary Magdalene.

  
  

  Idiot's Guide to Mary Magdalene

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  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.

  
  

  Now here's an interesting book

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  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.

  
  

  A very nice use of The Complete Idiot's series...	Customer Rating:
  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.

  
  

  Broadly informed, accessibly presented	Customer Rating:
  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.