Historically, the Roman Catholic Church has used visual imagery as a powerful didactic tool to support and validate the patriarchal structure of the Christian faith. This study focuses on the prevalent visual portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. This visual conceptualisation is exposed as an unjust condemnation of a biblical woman whose apostolic calling is validated by the Gospel accounts. A critical examination of the Christian iconography within a representative selection of Mary Magdalene imagery further identifies a bias of condemnation towards women's sexuality. Thus, Mary Magdalene is epitomised as the archetypal immoral woman, and unfavourably contrasted to the chaste purity of the Virgin Mary. The study evaluates the ethical implications of this mis-representation, and proposes, as a corrective to the imbalance, the creative actualisation of positive woman-affirming imagery. · An extended chronological index of Mary Magdalene imagery is appended to the study as Appendix A / M.Th. (Theological Ethics)

This creative project is composed of a series of ten lessons that should be suitable for use in English-Bible classes and/or seminary classes for non-native speakers of English. The main emphasis is on learning English for communication, but the lessons are also structured to utilize learning English as a tool to stimulate spiritual growth. The material is sequenced according to grammatical structures and Biblical chronology. The major grammatical patterns include present tense, continuous present tense, imperative, past tense, future tense, present perfect tense, continuous present perfect, past perfect, and continuous past perfect tense verb forms. The Biblical material has been selected to give a chronological view of the Old Testament period and to trace the plan of salvation from Adam and Eve's fateful choice in the Garden of Eden through the Old Testament.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Church has used visual imagery as a powerful didactic tool to support and validate the patriarchal structure of the Christian faith. This study focuses on the prevalent visual portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. This visual conceptualisation is exposed as an unjust condemnation of a biblical woman whose apostolic calling is validated by the Gospel accounts. A critical examination of the Christian iconography within a representative selection of Mary Magdalene imagery further identifies a bias of condemnation towards women's sexuality. Thus, Mary Magdalene is epitomised as the archetypal immoral woman, and unfavourably contrasted to the chaste purity of the Virgin Mary. The study evaluates the ethical implications of this mis-representation, and proposes, as a corrective to the imbalance, the creative actualisation of positive woman-affirming imagery. · An extended chronological index of Mary Magdalene imagery is appended to the study as Appendix A / M.Th. (Theological Ethics)