h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello,
excuse me, i became interested in the discussion on the Last Supper, and well, meandered about, and saw that you had written a book on the life of women in the times of Jesus. I'm very interested how you tackled that subject, but can't find the book, i tried Amazon, is that the right place? I'd be grateful if you supplied me with the necessary bibliographical details, if need be off-site under [email protected]. Thanks in advance, and i hope you forgive my pouncing on you in this sudden manner.

Ooo, I've been pounced on!

I only just saw this. Hmmm...Amazon have got it but only on the 'co.uk' site and it's so old that they take a time to order it.

You can get it from the library...worth trying! Or email the Tethered Camel site - they have some copies - [email protected]. But this bit will probably be moderated!

However, how did I approach it? Well, it was inspired by visiting Israel...I just got the story and the name in my head while I was at Qumran and the first few paragraphs just arrived at the same time.

I wanted to write the story from the point of view of not being a Christian ... showing that Jesus had knowledge of the Jewish oral tradition. I was raised as a Christian but fell out with the traditional view...and studied the Judaic oral tradition.

Deborah is Jesus's cousin, raised as his sister after her parents died...and she becomes Judas's wife. It was really odd writing it because we all know the story so well but I wanted to fill in the gaps all around it - starting with Jesus staying behind in the Temple.

It also has details of how the women lived in those days because that's another piece of the jigsaw that's missing. I even studied NT Greek to check some of the facts out and that was fascinating in itself.

Hope that helps.

Thank you! Well it would have to be Amazon, the libraries and bookshops in Germany carry few English language books. So i'm a habitual at the co.uk site, but the search didn't bring up your Deborah. From what you say i'd really like to get it, I particularly appreciate books where the authors have taken the trouble to do extensive research on the subject and gone through the available sources for me I'll try at the other site you mentioned. Thanks again, and have a good Christmas!

Hello

I was just wondering whether you came across the Fifth Gospel in your research Maggy? It was mentioned in a religious studies lesson a couple of years back and has intrigued me ever since: apparently there are copies of it floating around...

Would that be Fr Bargil Pixner's book...or the Gospel of Thomas... or 'Q'? Interpretations vary!

Gospel of Thomas methinks...it was taking out because it claimed Jesus played with squirrels when he was young or something...

Well that would be a pretty un-Messianic thing to do! we all know what kind of b******* squirrels are

Gospel of Thomas is interesting: it's just things that Jesus is reputed to have said so it's not a story really. It's a bit more open than the other gospels and there's some nice stuff in it.

I have got a copy and yes, I did read it when I was researching the book. I also read the Gospel of Mary Magdelene which is very short and has a nice bitchy bit in it about Philip

I think it was bewitching them and making them fly and things: but I may be wrong!

Where did you get your copies?

From a bookshop...just in the religious section.

Don't remember anything about flying squirrels though. I'll check it out at home and get back to you.

I'm sure I'd have remembered levitating mammals...

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html has the text of the Gospel.

Copied it into Word and did a 'search.' No squirrels

So what did Jesus have against squirrels?

I think we should be told.

Dagnabbit! My rs teacher was obviously felling s!

Have to tell you that Thomas's flying squirrels was a hot topic of conversation over Christmas. Everyone I talked to was interested. Perhaps the Gospel would have been more popular if the flying squirrels actually were in there..

That's the trouble with these ancient texts - no humour

Glad I could entertain in my absence

I am just in the proces of reading The book of Deborah, and consider it wery worthwhile, haven't seen anything like it before. The way it's done does remind me a little of Francis Hudson, he also manges to drew people into day to day stories.
I usually have difficulties with the description of the women's role in these stories, as there is often so much bias seeping in, but i can accept the way women's life is depicted in this story. What i do wonder is, could that Rosa woman really have lived in her own house by herself? I was always under the impression that wasn't possible in those times?

Thank you kindly Ma'am.

I wondered about Rosa too...but as everyone else in her family is dead and she doesn't come from Nazara I think it's okay. She is a bit of an outcast - a kind of 'village witch'. I did research it all but it's six years ago and I can't remember to be honest!

Jewish women could inherit property - unlike Greek ones though, if Rosa were younger I think her being alone would have been an issue with the villagers.

well you were very obviously aware how thin a line you were walking on the women's issue, so that's ok, what i can't stand is people who take their own bias for gospel, and i do admit i was a little afraid of that beforehand but luckily my presentiment was disappointed. I hped it would.

hoped ... and i do hope you bear with me, you see i have suffered often, before i managed to weed the wishful thinking faction from me reading...

Oh I do understand! It's horrid then you read something and take it for 'the truth' and find out that it's badly researched.

I did do my best with Deborah - and the follow-ups. I sat in libraries and in the Jewish Sternberg centre; I even went to university for a year to study NT Greek. The thing was, I was writing the book that I would most have wanted to read myself when I was younger. So it was really important to me to get it right.

I expect some of it is inaccurate - but the sources are so faint in places that I had to use common sense.

The worst example of 'being fooled' by a reputable source was when I took it for gospel what Linda Goodman had written in her book Star Signs on Christianity and reincarnation. I was married to a man who, also mistakenly, told me that the information was true - so I believed it and wrote about it. And there is no back-up for what she says...or at least none that I've found. I wish to God there was!

I think that happens once to all of us, that we get taken in by a cleverly constructed piece. Long as one notices at some stage and then isn't mulish about it ...
Once i was convinced we lived in "enlightened" times when myth's are phenomena of the past, and now i know we're just churning out myths like never before.
That is why i wouldn't get hung up on accuracy all that much, for instance i don't really care if Jesus in reality had a step sister Deborah or if she really went with him to the Essenes, as long as i can find it believable that a woman went there. So she went with a male relative (Jesus), to keep house for him, that sounds reasonable to me. She going there alone, teaching the feminine nature of God would not. Or worse, that earth mother thing *urrrh*
So it seems to me the common sense bit is the important thing, and that's the problem in so many books dealing with things the term pc might be applied to at some stage ... they write it as they think it ought to have happned, not as it could have happened ...

Oh yes, the Earth Mother thing

The Essenes and women thing is interesting. There were graves of women found at Qumran - and the Therapeutae (who appear on book 2)near Alexandria did have men and women - although segregated.

And we are still turning out myths aren't we? Star Wars for a start...