A Woman Erased? Reclaiming the Faith of Mary Magdalene in John 11
Guest Lecturer: Libbie Schrader
When: Sun., Nov. 6 at 9:45 am
About: You’re invited to a special combined class as we welcome Duke PhD Student, Libbie Schrader. Her work on the biblical text reveals that Mary Magdalene’s role was deliberately downplayed by biblical scribes to minimize her importance. Specifically, Schrader looks at the story of the raising of Lazarus told in the Gospel of John. In today’s Bibles, Lazarus has two sisters, Mary and Martha. But poring over hundreds of hand-copied early Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Gospel, Schrader found the name Martha had been altered. The scribes scratched out one Greek letter and replaced it with another, thereby changing the original name “Mary” to read “Martha.” They then split one woman into two. Join us as Libbie shares more about her research and the implications for how we interpret these stories.