In my previous post I was answering the following question: “where did the origin of Mary Magdalene as an escort/ sex worker come from?” I began my answer by citing a passage from my book on Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, where I explained that a number of passages in the New Testament in which women are said to appear are often said / assumed to be about Mary Magdalene, even though she is not mentioned in them. That is where I will pick up the conversation here, to show that these stories are almost certainly *not* about her; I will then show how they all got mushed together in the popular imagination, largely because of a famous sermon preached by a famous pope in the sixth century. Here is where I resume: *************************************************************************** None of these New Testament stories, however, deals with Mary Magdalene -- except in popular imagination, which has kept blissfully removed from a careful reading of the texts themselves. But the New Testament texts actually tell a different tale. Mary Magdalene [...]