Mary Magdalene, You Ignorant Slut

ONE doesn’t need to be Richard Dawkins to loathe religious feasts. Indeed, it is possible to be an indulgent agnostic, quite happy most of the time to tolerate others’ celebrations of their faiths (so long as they do not involve beheadings), and yet find the major dates of the Christian calendar infuriating in the extreme. The chaffing is not with the occasions or what they celebrate so much as the piffle served up by the ignorant and idiotic. Come every Christmas and Easter the fools emerge in droves.

At Yuletide you can bet both turkey and trifle on the proposition that someone will pen a little article, usually for the Fairfax press, insisting that Joseph and Mary were a homeless couple and, therefore, it is right and just for Caesar to render unto the indolent and indigent that which more active citizens have worked to earn. For most of the year Christanity is seen as a curse by broadsheet opinionators, but that line is abandoned without hesitation whenever Jesus can be pressed into service as a confiscatory agent of the Australian Taxation Office.

Easter brings more of the same – and much more of the same this year, with one of the more remarkable contributions coming from Leslie Cannold, who demonstrates at The Drum that, while some small doubt remains about her idiocy, there is none whatsoever in regard to her ignorance, which is absolute. The demonstration begins with her very first sentence:

Passover and Easter are upon us. While the precise timing of each festival is dictated by different calendars (Passover the lunar one and Easter by the cycle of the sun) …

No, Leslie, Easter isn’t. Just like Passover, the date is determined by the phase moon, a convention the western Church spent a good many years and millions of words thrashing out. Those with a bent for the history of religion will find that link most interesting; the less-fascinated can go here to learn in brief that Easter Sunday, and it must always be a Sunday, is the first after the full moon that follows the vernal equinox, which occurs on March 21.

What makes Cannold’s assertion so distressing is that she has just written a book rooted in her entirely unoriginal biblical scholarship, such as it is. Apparently the life of Jesus was all about his little sister’s firm abs and workout routine, her knowledge of herbs, sexual union with Judas Iscariot and advocacy of birth control. Given that Cannold, in addition to being a muddy thinker and poor writer, is also president of Reproductive Choices Australia, readers of  The Book of Rachael can give thanks that Jesus is not depicted distributing phrangers with the loaves and fishes. He is, however, having it off with Mary Magdalene, who is driven to prostitution when their affair is revealed. Pauline misogynists will be delighted that Magdalene has once again been dressed in the scarlet robe, a folk belief for which the New Testament provides not the slightest support. It is a tired old drum for an avowed feminist to be beating, but only until you recall that Cannold is also into victimhood (as befits an habitual Fairfax and Drum contributor). If there is an ounce of outrage to be squeezed from Magdalene’s debasement at the hands of the patriarchy, so be it. Cannold will install her in the biggest bed at the Daily Planet of old Jerusalem and savour every indignity she is obliged to endure.

Even for an atheist, and an ignorant one at that, the Jesus story can still come in handy.