Did Mary Magdalene have brothers and sisters?
Surnames like “of Nazareth”, “the Baptist”, “Bar Jonah”, “Barabbas”, “of Tarsus” etc., clearly indicated origins. Mary of Bethany is obviously a completely different person to Mary Magdalene or Mary of Migdol-Tyre which is the meaning of her name. Actually, Mary Magdalene is most likely the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman who asked Jesus to cast out a devil from her daughter. It seems the New Testament writers were embarrassed that a Phoenician woman was first to witness the Resurrection. The Romans and Greeks hated the Phoenicians so much that tempers would rise just by mentioning them. Phoenicians were held responsible for starting the Trojan war and the Romans had been terrified of them during the three Punic Wars. The Tyrians or Dorians, who fled the Assyrians, swarmed over Greece in the 7th century BC along with many Jewish or Ionian refugees (emigres). So Mary the Tyrian or Phoenician was not an ideal person to be the first to eye-witness the Resurrected Christ. Yet Jesus m
