October 10, 2001 Home Back Issues       The first Mary Deborah Rose Subscribe to our free e-newsletter! Mary Magdalene is arising out of the sands of time...                                                                             "...the stories and traditions of the Virgin Mary appear at a later date in the history of the early Church."   I had the good fortune of attending a lecture called "There is Something about Mary" during the commencement activities at Harvard Divinity School last June. Karen King and Francois Bovon were the featured speakers. Karen is a contemporary feminist scholar whose academic life has focused on female imagery in early Christian Gnosticism. Her translation and interpretation of The Gospel of Mary has positioned her as a leading authority on the historical Mary Magdalene. Karen was historical consultant and featured presenter for the A&E TV documentary "Mary Magdalene: The Hidden Apostle" that aired in June 2000. The documentary described the archeological discoveries of long buried Egyptian texts that have given us a dramatic new understanding of the role of Mary Magdalene in the early Christian movement. Karen King said that from the beginning, in the earliest literature of the emerging Christian movement, there is evidence of women's leadership, particularly that of Mary Magdalene. Equally evident is the strong opposition to women's leadership in every century since. The Gospel of Mary chronicles the rise of Mary's leadership and its immediate challenge by Peter who, as we know, became the Rock upon which the Christian Church was built. In it, the risen Savior imparts esoteric teachings to the group of disciples, commissions them to begin preaching and then departs. The disciples are greatly distressed at his departure and begin weeping. Mary alone remains calm. She is invited by Peter to share teachings she has been uniquely privileged to receive. She speaks words of strength and encouragement, and reveals "what has been hidden" based on a vision she had of the Lord. The response of the disciples is mixed. Andrew does not believe her; Peter is competitive and full of male pride ("Are we to turn around and listen to her? Did he choose her over us?"); and only Levi takes Mary's side, reprimanding Peter for his wrathfulness and reminding the group that Jesus loved Mary more than the others. The document is remarkable in many ways. Personally, I am struck with the forthrightness, the directness and ease with which Mary steps into leadership with the male disciples. This is not a timid woman. This is someone who has risen above the gender stratification of her era. Clearly she has developed great inner strength which allows her to assume power and responsibility in a time of group need. Then there is Mary's vision: she has had a direct visionary experience of the risen Christ. Mary had powers of clairvoyance. And further, Jesus trusted her with secret knowledge. In another text, Dialogue with the Savior, Mary Magdalene is given advanced teachings and is called "a woman who had understood completely." In the Pistis Sophia, Jesus names Mary Magdalene and John "the virgin" as the greatest of the disciples. (A very good and brief overview of the passages referring to Mary Magdalene in both the Canonical and Gnostic texts can be found on page 120-123 in Women in Scripture, ed. Carol Meyers, Houghton Mifflin Company, NY.) Karen King points out that Mary's "spiritual maturity" is contrasted sharply with the impulsiveness and wrathfulness of Peter. Given the direction taken by the emerging Church, it is not surprising that The Gospel of Mary and other similar texts were placed in hiding. To me, what's remarkable is that after more than 1500 years, the texts were "accidentally" discovered during this time of an expanding feminist consciousness, when so many more people, especially women, are truly able to receive and acknowledge the importance of women's leadership in the earliest stage of Christianity. If the texts were Tibetan Buddhist instead of Christian they would be called "terma," meaning mind teachings that are deliberately hidden and destined to be revealed when the cultural climate is more receptive. In The Gospel of Mary, only the name Mary was used. When Karen King was translating the text, a primary issue was identifying which Mary was speaking. How do we know this is the Magdalene? Not Mary the Mother? The twice repeated comment that this Mary is "the woman Jesus loved more than the others" strongly suggests Mary Magdalene. In other Gnostic texts, Mary Magdalene is named as his companion and the one he kissed often upon the lips. Regarding Mary the Mother, Karen said that the stories and traditions of the Virgin Mary appear at a later date in the history of the early Church. When Mary the Mother "arrives" it is to emphasize motherhood and submission. The earlier tradition of Mary Magdalene, in Karen's words, "contests gender." Explaining what she meant, Karen said that Gnostic teaching posits the irrelevance of the body. The divine is "the good" -- not matter. Instead of critiquing this dualism as inherently sexist as I have heard others do, Karen argued that the irrelevance of the body opened up the possibility of a non-gendered leadership, based not on maleness or femaleness but spiritual character and receptivity to Jesus' teaching. The French scholar Francois Bovon also presented at the Harvard Divinity School lecture. A year before, a friend who knew of my interest in Mary Magdalene sent a clipping from the Harvard Magazine describing Bovon and his work: in 1974 he and a colleague discovered a fourteenth century Greek copy of a fourth century text based on second century traditions. It is the most complete Acts of Philip yet found and among other things, describes a heretical Christian community in Asia Minor devoted to ascetic practices. Women served alongside men on all levels. Mentioned frequently in the document is Mariamne, sister to the apostle Philip. Bovon believes this person is Mary Magdalene. The Hebrew translation of Mariamne is Miriam which translates to Maria in Latin. For support of this theory, Bovon cites the third century writer Origen who uses the similar name Mariamme to refer to Mary Magdalene. As to the use of the word "sister" he says it was common for missionary partners in the early Church to be paired as "sister and brother." Given that Mariamne was Mary Magdalene, there are wonderful accounts in the Acts of Philip about her radical activities: as a preacher she went out into the streets and called out to be listened to; as a spiritual doctor she entered the city and founded spiritual clinics; as a miracle worker, her saliva was used to cure a man who had been blind for 40 years. Mariamne baptized the women while Philip baptized the men. According to this "edition" of the Acts of Philip , both Philip and Mariamne were persecuted. Only Philip became a full martyr: the death of Mariamne was announced but when persecutors tried to rip off her clothes, she transformed into a box of glass. A box of glass! Nowhere else in the surviving literature about Mary Magdalene is she described this way. Fragile and dangerous is my quick interpretation of the image. And how true. Mary Magdalene's brilliance and lack of submissiveness, her assumption of leadership based on personal and direct experience, these characteristics made her dangerous to the emerging hierarchical male-dominated Church. Because she was a woman, a single woman, her role in the early movement was fragile and quickly her true identity was completely extinguished. Until now. The emergence of documents from the Egyptian sands allows us to know Mary Magdalene, not as the maligned but beloved whore of popular history but as a woman of great courage and spiritual wisdom, an enlightened leader among men and women. At the end of the lecture several questions were posed by the audience. One in particular animated the room: what did the presenters think of the possibility that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus? Karen King stood up and said yes, many theories have come forward because of the phrase from the Gospel of Philip about Jesus kissing Mary upon the lips. From a historical point of view, from the literature so far available, we don‚t really know. In her opinion, "It would be nice either way."