Magdalene: Dresser of Women’s Hair, Yeshu

I have been reading a Wikipedia article about a Jewish character named Yeshu who lived around 100 BC.  He is mentioned in ancient Hebrew writings and a medieval Pope made the Jews remove all such Yeshu references from their books.  Luckily the Jews hid away uncensored copies of the Babylonian Talmud and other writings so we know about this Yeshu dude who pre-dates Christ, has a mother named Miriam, is born out of wedlock and gets executed for apostasy or magic or both.

Here is an excerpt that has Jesus’ mother Mary called “magdalene”.  Confusing, but most fascinating.

The character of Miriam the dresser of woman’s hair is of interest. (Her name is also mentioned briefly in Chagigah 4b in the Babylonian Talmud where it is used together with Miriam the teacher of children simply as an arbitrary choice of names in illustrating a point.) Some suggest that the expression “dresser of women’s hair” is a euphemism for a woman of ill repute. The original Aramiac for her name is Miriam megadela neshaya in which many see Mary Magdalene. Some have thus identified her with Mary Magdalene while others are more cautious merely suggesting dresser of women’s hair as a possible meaning of Magdalene alternate to the traditional understanding of the name as a toponymic surname. -  from the Talmud, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshu

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The above is from the Talmud and is calling Mother Mary “magdala” meaning dresser of women’s hair.  Mary is also referred to in one place in the Babylonian Talmud as “Miriam, teacher of children”.  So maybe the Miriam e mara in the supposed Jesus family tomb was a “master” teacher.  We are told “e mara” means “known as a master”.  Then there is the other Mary buried there, too, the one who is supposed to be Jesus’ mother and spells her name Maria in the Greek fashion. 

Some scholars think one of those Marys is Mary Salome, Jesus’ aunt.

Why oh why are so many of them named Mary?– we can’t sort ’em all out!    The first Miriam in recorded history, sister of Moses was a teacher of the Children of Israel, right? She even taught their messiah, Moses.  A teacher of the Messiah.  And prophetess, seeress, songstress…  I have a cool tome called The Five Books of Miriam, meaning the Torah as if SHE had written it, not her brother. Here is the first sentence: “TORAH SPEAKS: In the beginning, Shekhinah, the Holy-One-Who-Dwells-in-This-World, spins the world into being: light, water, earth, heavenly bodies, seed-bearing plants, sea creatures, birds, animals-and Adam…”

Anyway, the dresser of women’s hair title is partially explained in the Wiki excerpt above.  The word was supposedly a euphemism for whoredom.  Of course, what else could it mean!  Women in the ancient world were virgins or prostitutes, nothing in between. Yeah, right.  Dubiousness aside, the fact that hairdressers were supposedly whores is probably why a woman with the epithet Magdalene got labelled a prostitute. 

Jewish scholars who read the New Testament and encounter Mary Magdalene know that Magdalene is Greek for Magdala (Aramaic) and that it means dresser of women’s hair.  They have no problem therefore seeing why she was called a prostitute.

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All of this is from a search I was doing about the Yeshu of 100 BC: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshu#The_medieval_Toledot_Yeshu_narratives

Now don’t let the stuff on the page above about Yeshu shake your faith.  Yeshua “bore” a lot of archetypes. He embodied them just as Magdalene embodied Sophia, Isis, Inana. 
Yeshua/Jesus was Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Dionysius and the Son of God/ess.  Some
Moses-like tales were added to his life (slaughter of babies) and transfiguration on
a mountain.  These tales of Yeshu were also added to him or attributed to him.

Katia