Thirst
for
Rightness
渴望正确
Kěwàng zhèngquè
正義のための渇き
Seigi no tame no kawaki
ps42
Iure optimo sitis
My heart longs for the sensation of serenity
as a deer thirsts for flowing streams with plenty
of cool, clean water for the modus vivendi.
My soul is cast down.
I remember the celebration of the crown.
The majesty of mountain looked around
at the vibrant green lushness of trees and ground.
The raging peace of river
was fed by the clear streams from the source as giver.
The water flowed down from beneath the peak
that held up the soles of my dirty sneakered feet.
The water ran ajar with the contour of the land
as far as the eye could see. It was grand.
God was praised
by the sun's rays.
Divinity was seen
as serene
within me as the means
to see from sea to shining sea.
Worship was found outside the temple.
The reward was so ample it produced a gentle tremble.
Now the finite calls to the finite
in the climate of the light
of the infinite type
until the clouds roll into sight.
Darkness increases quickly towards that of night.
My heart starts at the rumble
of the thunder drum bum bum rumble
as the waves of wind and spirit start the splattering patter
that cleanses the soul in relation to organic and inorganic matter
when rain roars to the ground with the madness of the hatter.
The lightning flash
of love commands respect with a dash
from the crash.
The sign on the knoll was briefly illuminated
in a field outside of town. The welcome was stated.
There was no gate
inviting you to peacefully investigate.
A squad of five deer stood near
a pond in the forest looking queer.
A school of fish were edified by the nearness of the deer
to their sphere in their wet and clear frontier.
The builder of charm
felt alarm at the knight of swords card.
A hero on a horse rides forward ready to charge.
The empty mind in time
presents perception as the means to align
perspective with design for the moral climb.
The darkness of knowledge
is illumined with a question for college
revealed through prayer from the astonished.
"Will you help me?"
I say to divinity.
"You are my rock,
the strength in whom I take stock.
You are the Giver of life
in whom I take refuge from strife.
You are the Savior in whom I trust.
Why have you left me to rust?
Why must I settle for less than enough
while my work is for boon, not bust?"
It's as if my adversary was from the tomb
pouring salt on my wound
to increase the pain
in each refrain.
I am taunted. I feel tainted
by the question that was feinted,
"Where is your deliverance?
Why are you so ignorant?"
Why are you cast down, dear soul?
Why have you become so unsettled within your role?
Put your trust in the experience of deliverance.
Divine being will be praised without ambivalence
within the sanctuary of your temple with reverence.
-----------------------
42 Quemadmodum
Just
1 As the deer longs for the water-brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God;
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night,
while all day long they say to me,
"Where now is your God?"
4 I pour out my soul when I think on these things;
how I went with the multitude and led them into the
house of God,
5 With the voice of praise and thanksgiving,
among those who keep holy-day.
6 Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?
and why are you so disquieted within me?
7 Put your trust in God;
for I will yet give thanks to him,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
8 My soul is heavy within me;
therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan,
and from the peak of Mizar among the heights of Hermon.
9 One deep calls to another in the noise of your cataracts;
all your rapids and floods have gone over me.
10 The Lord grants his loving-kindness in the daytime;
in the night season his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
11 I will say to the God of my strength,
"Why have you forgotten me?
and why do I go so heavily while the enemy
oppresses me?"
12 While my bones are being broken,
my enemies mock me to my face;
13 All day long they mock me
and say to me, "Where now is your God?"
14 Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?
and why are you so disquieted within me?
15 Put your trust in God;
for I will yet give thanks to him,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
-------------------------
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the Gospels as being among the women of Galilee who followed Jesus and His disciples. She was present at His Crucifixion and Burial.
She went to the tomb on Easter Sunday to annoint His body. She was the first to see the Risen Lord. She announced His Resurrection to the apostles. She is referred to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles."
The name Magdalene is an association with Magdala. Magdala held the Migdal tower. This tower was used to dry fish.
The Mariamne tower had an association with the Hasmonean dynasty. It was named for Mariamne, the wife of Herod. Mariamne is a Hebrew form for the name Mary. The Hasmoneans were replaced by the Herodians in the Judean monarchy installed by the Romans.
Rome had helped the Hasmoneans to ascend to power, but they were interested in changing the kingdom into a republic.
Mariamne Tower
aka Mariamne Magdala
Mary Magdalene
Herod's Citadel
The Towers
King Herod built the three towers for the citadel upon a location that was already fortified. It had been a stronghold since the days of Solomon. The citadel was the highest point of the city. It was about 2500 feet above sea level. Herod added to the citadel and built the towers to protect his palace and the western side of the city. These were fantastic towers. The largest was the Phasael Tower but the most beautiful was dedicated to his wife Mariamne.
The tower was named after the beloved Hasmonean wife whom he had murdered. Josephus said "the king considering it appropriate that the tower named after a woman should surpass in decoration those called after men." It stood 74 feet high.
Titus spared Herod's fortress when he destroyed most of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Nothing remains of Herod's three towers. A Citadel named "David's Tower" stands on the spot where Phasael’s Tower had been.
Herod's Murders
Antiquities 15.7.4 222-231
The king lay down to rest about noon one day. He called for Mariamne out of the great desire he always had for her. She came in, but would not lie down with him. She expressed her contempt for him when he urged her. She bitterly reproached him for having had her grandfather and her brother killed.
He took the statement as impudence. He was on the verge of doing something rash to her. The king's sister Salome observed how greatly disturbed he was. She sent in his principal servant who had been prepared long beforehand for just such an opportunity.
Salome had instructed him to tell the king that Mariamne had tried to persuade him to assist in preparing a love potion for the king. If the king appeared to be greatly concerned and asked further about the supposed love potion, the servant was to say that Mariamne prepared the potion. He was only asked to give it to him. If the king did not appear to be much concerned he was to let the matter drop so no harm should come to the servant in either case.
Salome took this opportunity to send him in to make his speech. So he went in with assurance and urgency and said that Mariamne had given him presents to persuade him to give the king a love potion. The king felt that he had been bewitched. He put his wife on trial. Herod gathered together those most faithful to him. He brought the accusation against Mariamne concerning the love potions and drugs she had been alleged to have prepared.
He lost his temper while speaking and was in too great a passion to judge. The jury perceived this. They condemned her to death.
It occurred to him and some of those in the court that she should not be so hastily put to death after the sentence had been passed. She should be imprisoned in one of the fortresses of the kingdom instead. Salome and her party labored hard to have the woman put to death immediately. They persuaded the king by advising him of the danger of demonstrations by the populace were she allowed to live. Mariamne was led out to her execution. She was killed about 29 BCE.
Herod's palace was constructed between 37 and 4 BCE. Jesus of Nazareth was most probably tried by Pontius Pilate in the courtyard for the palace.
The Hasmoneans were the family dynasty referred to in the books of the Maccabees. Herod professed love for her, but he was Idumaean. He wasn't Judean. He was appointed king by the Romans. He married Mariamne to appease the Judeans and the Romans. He was motivated by jealousy of their popularity among the people. He had a tower built in her name, but it was only a claim to his testimony of love. This "love" was an outward sign of a condition lacking grace.
The Magdalene Mariamne was known to the writers of the gospel.
Gospel Writers
The gospels are not eyewitness accounts. They were written 35 to 65 years after Jesus’ death. It is believed that there was a common source for the sayings of Jesus.
The differences in the accounts was due to the jelling of separate oral traditions that had taken form in different Christian communities.
Jesus was crucified in about the year 30 CE. The gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke date to about 65 to 85. The common material lends credibility to the existence of a common source.
The Gospel of John was composed around 90 to 95. It is distinct. It was written last. When we read about Mary Magdalene in each of the gospels we are not getting history in a strict factual sense. Each account is the documentation of a communal memory. The memory was shaped by time, shades of emphasis and the effort to make a distinct theological point.
The synoptic texts are Mark, Matthew and Luke. They share enough common material to warrant the assumption of the same source of sayings. The dating of the written record is associated with the destruction of Jerusalem. The destruction and the affiliated persecution gave the writers a motivation to document that which they believed to be true in the context of theological history.
Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the empty tomb in which Jesus had been placed. The crucifixion of Jesus corresponds with the destruction of Jerusalem in this context. His resurrection is a testimony to the faith that a better state of affairs would be constructed.
This was taken by the popes who called for the crusades as a claim to the city of Jerusalem. It is better to understand the resurrection of Jesus as Christ as a call to redeem the law from the doctrine of destruction that was grafted into the text of the bible during the codification of the canon by the Roman occupation.
Migdal, Israel
The town is named after the old city of Migdala Nunia (Aramaic: "fish tower"). It was identified as the home town of Mary of Magdala (Luke 8:2). It is situated just west of the Kinneret on Tiberias-Rosh Pina road.
A salvage dig was conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in September 2009. It was prior to the construction of a hotel. The dig revealed an ancient synagogue believed to date back some 2000 years. It was dated from 50 BCE to 100 CE.
Archaeologists discovered an unusual stone carved with a seven-branched menorah in the middle of a 120 sq.m. main hall. It is the first of its kind to be discovered from the early Roman period. The walls are decorated with brightly colored frescoes in addition to the engraved stone.
The Magdala Stone
Altar ?
The Magdala stone is a carved stone block unearthed by archaeologists in a Galilean synagogue in Israel. It is dated to the time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70.
It is noted for detailed carving that depicts the Second Temple. The carving was made while that Temple still stood. It is assumed to have been made by an artist who had seen the Temple before it was destroyed by the Roman military.
Some archaeologists describe the carving as something that enables a new, scholarly understanding of the synagogue. The place for worship was conceptualized as sacred during the period while the Temple was still standing.
This overturns the long-held scholarly consensus that the synagogue was merely an assembly or study hall prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. The Torah and other sacred books were read aloud and studied in each synagogue building, but it was not a sacred space for worship with prayer according to this view.
The Magdala altar stone stood in the center of the Migdal Synagogue. It is tall enough to have been used as a reading desk or podium by someone in a seated position. A similar size stone was found in an ancient synagogue dating from the Byzantine period in a dig at nearby Horvat Kur. It is also carved with images of the Temple.
Rina Talgam is a professor who specializes in the art of the ancient Near East at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a leading scholar on the meaning of this stone. She understands the Magdala Stone as a depiction of the Temple and the implements used in worship. The carving includes the depiction of the Holy of Holies by an artist who had actually seen the Temple and was familiar with the most sacred of spaces.
The image on the Magdala stone was intended to lend a sacred aura to this synagogue. The image made it “like a lesser Temple” for use in Galilee. The territory was a long journey from Jerusalem under the conditions of that pedestrian era. Most people traveled by foot.
Mary Magdalene
All four gospels refer to a follower of Jesus called Mary Magdalene. It is usually assumed that this means "Mary from Magdala". There is no extra-biblical information to indicate whether this was her home or her birthplace. Most Christian scholars assume that she was from the place the Talmud calls Magdala Nunayya. This is also where Jesus landed on the occasion recorded by Matthew.
Josephus refers to a wealthy Galilean town destroyed by the Romans in the Jewish War from 66-73 CE. The town had the Greek name "Tarichææ" from its prosperous fisheries. Josephus did not give its Hebrew name.
There are authors who identify this place with Magdala Nunaiya. The "fish tower" was used to dry fish. It was also known in biblical times for flax weaving and dyeing. It was a major campaign camp for Josephus during the Jewish Wars.
Its reference in Matthew 15:39 is given as "Magadan" in some editions. It is called "Dalmanutha" in Mark 8:10. The site is known now as "el-Medjel."
The name, Mary Magdalene, represents a conjunction between the Mariamne and Magdala towers.
The resultant 'watchtower' was a testimony to the history for the time. The destruction of the city of Jerusalem was a marker that indicated that the Romans had assisted the Hasmoneans to obtain liberation from the Seleucids in order to establish a republic in place of the kingdom.
Judean law would still act as a witness to the history of law itself with respect for the development in the Middle East and Mediterranean areas. Allusions to the contributions of Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Seleucid and Roman empires were encoded with respect for the ancient law against murder recorded in the script for the code of Ur-Nammu, an ancient Sumerian expression.
Sumerian was the first language of cuneiform letters. It was a step beyond the hieroglyphs of Egypt.
The factual expression of history was something that was being derived from the progression from the symbolic fiction associated with polytheism to the realistic frame for the historical perspective as presented by the prevailing moral concern of monotheism.
7.22
Mary Magdalene
Pope Francis declared a major feast day for Mary Magdalene on June 22 in the Roman calendar. He did this in 2016. This put the woman who first proclaimed Jesus' resurrection with the liturgical celebrations of the male apostles.
Western Christianity depicted Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute for centuries. This narrative had been started in the sixth century. Pope Gregory the Great associated Magdalene with an anonymous sinful woman mentioned in the chapter before she's introduced in the Gospel of Luke.
Luke 8:2 NKJV
It came to pass that He went through every city and village preaching and bringing glad tidings of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him along with certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary called Magdalene had seven demons cast out.
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The Catholic Church rolled back the centuries of labeling her a prostitute only in 1969. It was stated that she was distinct from the sinful woman mentioned in Luke. Eastern Orthodox Christians have referred to her as an Equal to the Apostles.
Mary Magdalene was from a thriving fishing village on the Sea of Galilee named Magdala. The site has been excavated extensively by archaeologists in recent decades.
The site is home to the oldest known synagogue in the Galilee. A stone bearing the likeness of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was found. A marketplace, ritual baths and fishing harbor have also been discovered. Marcela Zapata-Meza, the lead archaeologist at the site, has called it "the Israeli Pompeii."
Claire Pfann is the academic dean at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. She said Mary Magdalene must be seen for what she was: "An independent woman who has discretionary time and wealth from the city of Magdala, not identified by a father or a husband, whose life was dramatically restored, healed, changed by her encounter with this Jewish itinerant teacher and healer, Jesus of Nazareth."
The gospels differ in the details regarding the visit to the burial site. Mark lists Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Salome (Mark 16:1). Matthew places Mary Magdalene with the other Mary at the empty tomb (Matt. 28:1).
Luke has Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the mother of James and several other women as those who told the apostles about what had been witnessed at the empty tomb. (Luke 24:10). John puts Mary Magdalene alone at the burial site. (John 20:1)
The name Mary Magdalene lends itself to association with the tower of Mariamne and the village of Migdal. This village held a tower where fish were processed. (the migdal of migdal?)
The tower of Mariamne most likely has proximity to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. The tower of Migdal was well known to fishermen as it was a factory location for their occupation.
Galilee was a country area. Agriculture was the main occupation. The Lake of Gennesaret was famous for its fishing.
Jesus is said to have found his first disciples among fishermen (Mark 1:16-29).
Galilee was surrounded by a number of Greek cities in the time of Jesus. There was also a group of ten Greek towns in the area. This was called the Decapolis. The rest of the area was Jewish.
The Galilean fishing economy has been neglected by scholars. Some of Jesus’ followers were fishers or from fishing villages (Mark 1:16-20, Luke 8:2). Jesus also spent time in Galilean seaside villages such as Capernaum (Mark 2:1) and Bethsaida (Luke 9:10).
Magdala (Matt 15:39) was a fish-processing center. Economic and social issues arising from the daily lives of fishers and their families would have been familiar. References to fish emerge in gospel sayings (Matt 17:24-27), parables (Matt 13:47-48) and narratives (Mark 6:35-44).
Fishing was a fundamental part of the embedded agrarian economy of first-century Galilee. The region was ruled by Herod Antipas. He was a client king of the Romans.
An “embedded” economy was one in which questions of production, processing, trade and their regulation were not separated from politics, religion and family or village life.
Most peasant fishing families were poor and lived at subsistence level. The royalty held the bulk of wealth and power for the kingdom. Fishing licenses were required for access to certain areas. Fishermen needed raw materials such as wood for their boats and flax for their nets.
Families had to hire day laborers occasionally for assistance with the haul (Mark 1:19-20). Fish processors and distributors were required to pay taxes for the product and tolls for its transport.
Evidence from the first and second centuries B.C.E. shows that taxes in Palestine were often paid “in kind” rather than in cash. Some professional fishermen paid 25 to 40 percent of their catch in exchange for the right to fish.
Ancient documents indicate that fishing remained a state monopoly oversee by inspectors in at least some areas under Roman administration. A sort of fishing police made sure that no one fished without authorization in Pisidia. Fishermen sold their catch only to authorized middlemen or wholesalers. Their activity was also subject to State supervision and taxation.
The gospel of Luke states that Simon Peter had partners in his fishing business. Those who came to help Peter haul in a miraculous catch were his “partners in the other boat.” (Luke 5:3-7)
Scholars explain that fishermen could form "cooperatives" in order to bid for fishing contracts or leases. This may have been the way that the sons of Zebedee, Peter, Andrew and their partners obtained authorization to carry on their fishing business.
The tower of Migdal was an important location for their trade. It is conceivable that the towers of Migdal and Mariamne were personified as a symbol of the desire to maintain the Judean monarchy as the form of government for the land.
It was known that Rome was a republic. Their empire was republican. They usually allowed the allied or conquered nation choose their form, but it was feared that they might do something different with Judea and Galilee.
The line of succession for the Romans included adoption. An emperor could adopt someone who was not in his family to serve as his successor. This was close enough in practice to be considered a royal house in fact, but the emperor as the executive official still had to work a consensus of agreement between the patricians in the senate and the plebians from whom they drew the soldiers for their army. A number of emperors were assassinated because they couldn't formulate an agreement that satisfied the hostile representatives from polarized positions.
It is not likely that Vespasian wanted to destroy Jerusalem personally. It was for the imperial story of success towards a kingdom that rebelled against Rome. Vespasian contracted Josephus, a former leader of the Jewish armed forces to write histories about the Jews to help preserve the culture.
It is not known how much that they influenced the formation of the biblical canon, but it is likely that there was a plan to change the official Roman religion from polytheism to monotheism with the help of the histories and the bible.
Jesus was associated with the house of David. His leadership was treated as royal as well as prophetic and priestly. This had parallels with the official titles of the imperial office.
Mary Magdalene represented the Hasmonian princess Mariamne because she was from a royal line that wasn't selected by the foreign power. Her role as a financial supporter of the ministry of Christ and as the first to witness the empty tomb suggested that she was an equal to the Apostles.
Christianity was to become the official religion of the Roman empire while Judaism was to represent unofficial religion. Together it was hoped that the forms could lead civilization into something less superstitious and more morally civilized in a scientific way.
This would make Vespasian alternately the greatest bain and boom for monotheism in history. If Josephus was commissioned to document a plan for transition with his history and his influence on the biblical canon, then it was hoped that the net result would be beneficial.
Modern Mary
Fishing Economy
Fishing on the Sea of Galilee
Lectionary Mary Magdalene
Roman Occupation of Israel
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