Mary carried an inner knowing that didn’t come from books or hierarchy.
It came from the same place Paul tried to describe: the quiet room inside the mind where truth rises on its own.
She understood Jesus in that way.
She met him in the inner chamber, not the outer ritual.
That’s why she spoke with confidence, and why Peter reacted the way he did.
Not from malice.
From fear of what he couldn’t control.
You can feel the tension in those early texts.
Mary speaking from experience.
Peter speaking from structure.
One voice rooted in the inner world.
The other in the outer world.
When Mary says, “I am afraid of him because he hates our race,” she isn’t talking about biology.
She’s naming the fear men have of the feminine mind:
the part that receives,
the part that intuits,
the part that feels truth before it explains it.
Jesus never silenced her.
He trusted her.
He said the Spirit speaks through whoever the Spirit chooses.
He affirmed the feminine current inside human consciousness that institutions have always struggled with.
History didn’t follow that moment.
It followed Peter’s anxiety.
It followed the urge to build outer authority and call it holy.
That choice became the seed of religious misogyny.
Mary’s message is simple:
truth doesn’t rise through institutions.
It rises inside the person.
And it rises equally in women and men.
That’s why her story threatens systems.
And that’s why it still matters.