Mary Magdalene: pop culture fantasies
• Christian Pop Culture , • Superstitious Folly , • The Da Vinci Code
As a hottie in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and the subject of idle speculation in The Da Vinci Code, Jesus' favorite sex worker is having a boom time.
"She's one hot commodity right now," said Marvin Meyer, professor of religion at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. "Mary Magdalene is everywhere." ...
Lynn Picknett, a British scholar, thinks she knows why Jesus' companion "has suddenly become the flavor of the month" among scholars and lay people.
"I think people are realizing now that the Bible did not arrive by e-mail from God, and that it's very much the work of man, and man with his own agenda," said Picknett, author of Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess.