Christ heals the wound / Mary Magdalene
joke · Palestinian Christian / West Bank joke ·
retold in 6 talks
Christ's apostles send Mary Magdalene to cheer him on his last night; she strips and spreads her legs, he looks at her vagina and says 'what a terrible wound' and heals it. Used to illustrate Christ's decentered subjectivity.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“Christ looked at it and said, 'Oh what a terrible wound,' and put his hand on and closed it.”
“He said, 'What a terrible wound is there!' He put his hand in and healed it, made it whole”
“I started to dance in front of Christ... then I showed him my vagina intimate parts and then Christ looked at my vagina and said, 'Oh, what a horrible wound' and put his palm on it.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Imre Nagy2Helmut Reichelt1John Kenneth Galbraith1Karl Löwith1Decreux1Cabaret1Tiger Woods1André Gorz1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
Christ's apostles send Mary Magdalene to cheer him on his last night; she strips and spreads her legs, he looks at her vagina and says 'what a terrible wound' and heals it. Used to illustrate Christ's decentered subjectivity., illustrating decentered subject,Palestinian Christian humor,psychoanalytic notion of the subject
A Palestinian Christian tells a dirty joke where Mary Magdalene tries to seduce Jesus, but he is horrified by her 'terrible wound' (pussy) and heals it, making it whole. Žižek warns against those intent on healing the wounds of modernity, arguing the wound itself is our salvation., illustrating capitalism with the human face,Agape
The apostles ask Mary Magdalene to give Christ a last night of sex before the crucifixion; she goes in, undresses, and when she shows Christ her genitals, he says 'Oh, what a horrible wound' and places his hand on it. Žižek uses this to show that Hegelian reconciliation does NOT close the wound in this way, the wound remains., illustrating Versöhnung,Die Wunde / spirit as wound,Hegel's reconciliation
Apostles send Mary Magdalene to comfort Jesus on his last night; she undresses and approaches him, but Christ looks at her and says 'What a terrible wound I see there' and blesses it closed. Žižek calls this the true spirit of Christianity., illustrating emancipatory core of Christianity,Christian sexuality
When visiting Ramallah, Žižek found that Palestinian Christians had the best jokes mocking Christianity and Islam, to a degree that, repeated in France, might get one killed. Used to argue that even devout religious communities are not as humorless as the West imagines., illustrating irony and genuine belonging,critique of political correctness
Žižek cites Palestinian humor, specifically 'Jesus Christ jokes' and a vulgar joke about a husband and wife in Ramallah, to argue that Palestinians are civilized and not just religious fanatics., illustrating ideology,stereotype-subversion