My friend A.-J.Levine tells the story of when she was a grader at Duke for a professor there who had put the Markan story of the anointing of Jesus by a woman on the exam and had asked for comments about the story. This particular student however had not bothered to read the Markan story for himself, but had simply listened to the lecture by the professor, and had misheard him to say that the woman anointed Jesus with LARD, rather than pistic nard (the chanel no. 5 of its day). The student then concluded that the reason Jesus said the woman had done a good thing anointing Jesus with a pork product was because Jesus had declared all foods clean!! (See p. 102 in her new book Entering the Passion of Jesus).
You can’t make these things up!
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