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#The testament of mary book club questions series

Marcus visits Mary again to tell her that her son has been arrested and will be crucified. She later leaves in order to protect herself. Some of the revellers later claim that Jesus turned water into wine but Mary questions their sobriety and did not personally witness this account. At the wedding Mary tries to convince Jesus to return to Nazareth but he ignores her. In order to speak to Jesus, Mary travels to a nearby wedding where news that Jesus has resurrected Lazarus, a childhood friend, precedes his arrival. Marcus, a cousin of hers, later visited her to reveal that her son was being closely watched by Roman and Jewish authorities after appearing to cure a man who could no longer walk the cousin urged Mary to have Jesus return to live with her to save his life and not draw further ire. Mary reflects that, like many young men, her son left their small town for opportunities in Jerusalem.

However they are antagonistic towards Mary because they believe her son, Jesus, was a Messiah, a claim which she refuses to support. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia ( view authors).At an unspecified age, when Mary is close to death, she is regularly visited by followers of her son who wish to record her testament before she dies.

Online text of the Questions of Bartholomew.

Bartholomew asks Satan how he came to be the enemy and other questions on esoteric subjects such as the hierarchy of the angels. Jesus immediately brings them back to life and gives Bartholomew control over Satan. Next, the apostles ask for a vision of hell, and angels roll up the earth to let them, and then return the earth when they have glimpsed it.įinally, Bartholomew asks to see Satan, and so a choir of angels drags Beliar (a name for Satan) from the depths of hell in chains, the sight of which kills the apostles dead. Initially, the text describes how Jesus descended into hell in his own words, and then jumps to discussing the immaculate conception when Mary arrives amongst the apostles. However, rather than a more clinical treatment that would be expected for such a treatise, it approaches these topics in a tabloid manner, evidently seeking to be a popular work rather than one for official church teaching. The text draws heavily on Jewish mysticism (such as the Book of Enoch), seeking to provide an explanation of the more supernatural aspects of Christian thought at the time. For example, the text implies that The Fall of Man was caused by Eve having sex with Satan. The text appears to have been quite popular, judging by how well it survived, perhaps due to lavish and carnal depictions of the supernatural.

#The testament of mary book club questions series

It is framed as a dialogue from Jesus to the apostles (it varies significantly as to at which stage in time between the manuscripts), instigated by a series of extremely daring and outrageous questions and requests by Bartholomew.

John the Divine, although sensational instead of seeking to frighten. It is of similar style to the Apocalypse of St. The text survives as Greek, Latin, and Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, although each copy varies from the others considerably in the wording chosen. The Questions of Bartholomew is not to be confused with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, although either text may be the missing Gospel of Bartholomew (or neither may be), a lost work from the New Testament apocrypha.