Searching for a Political Mary: Among the Daughters of Judean Queen Mariamne (Paperback)

Searching for a Political Mary, Among the Daughters of the Judean Queen Mariamne. is an outsider's lifelong study of women named Mary in the New Testament and comparing them to the royal Mariamne's in Flavius Josephus' histories of the Jews and Judaea. His books "Antiquities of the Jews" and "Wars of the Jews" cover the timeframe of the New Testament story. They were written about the same time as Mark was writing the first gospel (ca 90 A.D.) Josephus had royal blood and so included information from the court records of King Herod and Queen Mariamne of the House of the Hasmoneans. The theory presented here is speculation, as all theories on the history of the life of Jesus...and Mary...are, but it gives logical explanations for why just about every Jewish royal person alive at the time is included in the story of a Galilean carpenter who was crucified with the sign "King of the Jews" over his head. "The son of Mary" as Mark refers to Jesus echoes the prominent role played by Queen Mariamne and her sons in the works of Josephus whom he called the "sons of Mariamne." One granddaughter of Mariamne I was a young virgin at the time that King Herod died when the Jewish nation was looking for a return of a true king of their own royal house...even under Roman occupation. This young Princess Mariamne disappeared from the court records at the same time that Mary gave birth to her son. Looking at the New Testament story through the eyes of the Jewish royal women and the history of the House of the Hasmoneans shows women were relevant in a political way and offers answers to some of the questions left unanswered about Jesus and his mother by the four gospels.