In the last session, we noted how Jesus took up Joseph’s mantle and began its restoration. Eventually, it was ready to pass on to one of His disciples so the unfinished tasks that were still part of Joseph’s legacy could be completed.
That handover occurs just after the resurrection. One of His disciples stood in for Joseph as well as for others in the faithline of inheritance descending from him—Deborah, Jezebel and perhaps Jeroboam’s wife, Ano. Notice that they are all women. And remember that, in the ultimate sense, this is a war against the goddess, Anat of Zaphon, so it should not be in any way surprising that Joseph’s mantle was passed to Mary Magdalene.
She was sitting, as Matthew 27:61 attests, opposite the tomb while Jesus was buried, near to the Cross. Like Deborah before her, she was stationed at the ‘tree of weeping’. Her insistent query on the day of resurrection was: ‘Where is the Lord?’ This question was integral to Canaanite religious ritual which, in the garden at the resurrection, Jesus completely despoiled. The question became a name, ‘Jezebel’, and it was the legendary cry of Anat who, after burying Baal, then went searching for his body—an odd undertaking paralleled by Mary Magdalene’s quest to discover who’d taken Jesus away.
Both Magdalene and Zaphon, the placename in Anat’s title, have a common meaning, watchtower.
Further, Jesus once again addresses a female as ‘Woman,’ and that as we’ve noted in the last session is ‘anath’ in Aramaic. To cap off the allusions to Anat, Jesus firmly places Mary in a Joseph role when she mistakes Him for a stranger, a gardener, and He says to her, ‘Who are you looking for?’
This question is a chiastic parallel for the words of Jesus’ mother to the servants at Cana: ‘Do whatever He tells you.’ As we saw last session, this is a quote from the story of Joseph. It’s the words of Pharaoh to the Egyptians. This question of Jesus is another quote from Joseph’s saga. A stranger finds him wandering around Shechem and asks him this very question. Joseph answers that he’s looking for his brothers.
And this is just what Jesus tells Mary Magdalene to do: go look for His brothers and tell them He’s alive. He’s handing her Joseph’s mantle and entrusting her with the task of restoring their inheritance, of overturning the dispossession, of guarding the memory of Jubilee so that what has been stolen can be returned to the rightful heirs at the appointed time.
That’s the calling of anyone today who has Joseph’s mantle. And since Joseph’s mantle is also shared by Sheerah and Joshua, along with Deborah and Barak, if you have any of those mantles, this also applies: restoring inheritance, overturning dispossession, guarding memory, facilitating the return of what been stolen, summoning the appointed time.
Always remembering to be watchful, lest the mantle become like Jezebel’s once more.
This is Grace Drops; I’m Anne Hamilton. May Jesus of Nazareth overturn all dispossession in your life.
Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.
Joseph’s mantle is featured The Summoning of Time: John 2 and 20: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #2.
For more on Anat, see Dealing with Lilith: Spirit of Dispossession.
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