The Magdalene Review

Hip, Hip, Hippolytus!

I’m excited. I’m thrilled. How thrilled am I? I am veritably bouncing with exuberance over something I just read a little while ago.

The early church father, Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome, penned a commentary on Song of Songs sometime in the 3rd century. For those of us who are unlearned in the German language, it has been very difficult to access the commentary which is available only in Greek or a German translation from the 19th century (Werke des Hippolytus, ed. Bonwetsch, 1897). Incidentally, I don’t have any information about what manuscripts of this work might be extant.

The good news is that today I learned that a doctoral student published a thesis earlier this year containing an English translation of the commentary: Hippolytus’ Commentary on the On the Song of Songs in Social and Critical Context, Yancy Smith. Smith successfully defended the dissertation, and as far as I know it is by now available on ProQuest for anyone with access.

I’ll be off to the UW library sometime in the near future to see if I can get a copy. This is great news for Mary Magdalene research since the commentary contains discussions of a “Mary Martha” figure visiting the tomb of Jesus, during which she is compared her to Eve, and may contain a reference to Magdalene as an apostle. In the 3rd century!

The feminine mistake

The cover story in the coming week’s issue of Newsweek (available online now) is devoted to Mary Magdalene:

An Inconvenient Woman
by Jonathan Darman

Taking an angle in favor of the modern feminist position on Mary Magdalene, Darman makes an effort to trace Mary Magdalene’s history in Christianity and Western culture. He begins by quoting from the resurrection narrative in John and then from the Gospel of Mary, emphasizing the importance that she had to the earliest Christians as an apostle and leader. Then comes the pivot:

Why, then, did this woman, whom the New Testament tells us was Jesus’ constant companion and whom the Gnostics claim was privileged above all others, disappear after the resurrection? If Mary were so important to Jesus, why is there no mention of her in Acts, or in the Epistles?

Focusing first on the rivalry between Peter and Mary in the Gnostic texts, Darman then makes an unusual correlation. The Jesus that Mary encountered in the garden (“unrecognizable, untouchable”) could be seen as supportive of docetic beliefs, and the risen Jesus encountered by the male apostles (“Handle me and see me…for a spirit hath not hands and flesh”) represented faith in a bodily resurrection. Going on to mention Constantine’s rise to power as the impetus that sent Gnostic monks scrambling to bury their sacred texts, we’re led to believe that the rift that occurred within Christianity over Christ’s nature was related to the conflict between orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism, at the beginning of which were Peter and Mary Magdalene. When Constantine won, therefore, Mary Magdalene lost.

Fearing that bishops enforcing the new orthodoxy would destroy the texts, monks tried to erase all evidence of the Gnostic tradition. They buried the Gospels, with their powerful portrait of Mary Magdalene, in the sand.

The early Church, of course, went on a patriarchal rampage to oppress women in general, and Darman trots out some of the usual suspects: Paul’s letter to the Ephesians on women submitting to their husbands, Tertullian’s “because of you [women] even the Son of God had to die” in his On Women’s Attire, and finally, Pope Gregory the Great’s 6th century homily. Darman lays the blame for Mary Magdalene’s bad reputation squarely at Gregory’s feet:

Gregory created the prostitute, as if from thin air.

I’ve never had any argument with the notion that the Church fathers were misogynistic; they most obviously were, as were most other men of the time. Again, my familiar refrain: Christianity didn’t invent patriarchy. There is no evidence that Mary Magdalene’s reputation was constructed wholesale in an effort to promote a male domination agenda in spite of the fact that it was advantageous to such ends. In this case, Mary Magdalene was a very convenient woman.

Karen King is quoted by Darman in the article. While Dr. King has my utmost respect, I do differ with her and her colleagues on a couple of points. First, their now-standard position on the origin of Mary Magdalene’s reputation, which I touched on above. Second, there is the issue of Mary Magdalene’s newly-appreciated role as wife and mother. For feminist scholars everywhere, this seems to be anathema. Not only because it lacks historical merit, however, but also because it is sexual.

It has taken me quite some time to want to discuss the issue of Mary Magdalene and gender politics here, simply because I do respect the scholars who have written and spoken on this subject. While I agree fully with their assertion that there is no compelling evidence that Mary Magdalene was married, to Jesus or anyone else, much less that she bore any children, I have to step back when people are criticized for holding such thoughts because they are demeaning.

“Why do we feel the need to desexualize Mary?” wonders Karen King, author of “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala.” “We’ve gotten rid of the myth of the prostitute. Now there’s this move to see her as wife and mother. Why isn’t it adequate to see her as disciple and perhaps apostle?”

Note that she doesn’t ask why people insist on holding such beliefs in spite of history, she asks why we can’t appreciate Mary Magdalene as she does, that is, desexualized. The source of female power appears to be acceptable only when it springs from the same sources as male power: authority, leadership, witness. When the source of a woman’s power is her body, it is somehow viewed as illegitimate. Mary Magdalene, in her role as apostle and leader, is acceptable to more conservative feminists because it places her on equal footing with the male disciples. Mary Magdalene, in her legendary role of wife and mother (and prostitute), is problematic because she is being remembered as a woman.

Here is a potentially shocking observation that I’ve made in the last few years: many women enjoy being women. They want to be acknowledged for their reproductive abilities as well as for their intellectual prowess. Where fifty years ago women may have rightfully asked, “do you love me only for my body?” they now may ask if they are wrong for wanting to be loved for anything but their minds. Darman says:

Indeed, for all its revolutionary claims, “The Da Vinci Code” is remarkably old-fashioned, making Mary important for her body more than her mind. In the movie, we see a stricken, shadowy Magdalene with swollen belly being spirited out of Jerusalem by a crowd of attendant men. But we never hear her voice. “The Da Vinci Code” seems to think that the secret tradition of Mary Magdalene speaks to the carnal. In reality, it tells of something far more subversive: the intellectual equality of the sexes. The current Magdalene cult still focuses on her sexuality even though no early Christian writings speak of her sexuality at all.

I wonder, has Darman actually talked to the current Magdalene cult? Or is he simply reading the media reports that obsessively question whether or not Jesus could have been married to Mary Magdalene? If he had taken the time to talk to some bona fide Mary Magdalene “cultists,” he might have heard tales about how thinking of Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ equal and complement is empowering for women who struggle with their everyday relationships with (gasp) men. In spite of Karen King’s witty observation, made more than once since 2003, that viewing Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife “makes her the poster child for heterosexual marriage,” most women in America are heterosexual, and they don’t have a solid understanding of history or feminist theory (as I am probably demonstrating here). Not only that, but they continue to struggle within unequal relationships, not only in marriage, but with fathers, brothers, bosses, priests, car mechanics, computer salesmen, and the list goes on. When Jane Doe encounters sexism, she doesn’t always know the approved feminist response. If viewing Mary Magdalene as a woman who could teach, lead, witness at the same time as being loving and nurturing, where is the harm? How is this demeaning? This is, after all, the kind of life that modern women lead.

We’re bringing home the bacon, and by the heavens, we’re still frying it up in a pan. We’re paying bills, buying houses, and wiping snotty noses. Some of us, along with our more enlightened male partners, are attempting to learn how the exchange of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics may wax and wane within a more egalitarian relationship. Some of us revel in the power that we wield in the boardroom and in the labor and delivery ward.

So yes, a female saint who is sexual is entirely necessary. The important distinction is that today, it is women who are defining Mary Magdalene’s legendary sexual identity. Men promoted a prostitute for women to look up to, and we’ve since discovered a woman red in human experience: strong, independent, intelligent, and sensual. The legendary Magdalene is everything the Virgin was and more, and regardless of the dubious relationship her legend has to history, there is a reason why mythology moves us. Perhaps feminists would be well advised to ask why women are the ones to “re-sexualize” Mary Magdalene. Sure, we could point fingers at Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh, but it was Margaret Starbird who lit the fire of Mary Magdalene as sacred feminine. It was Dan Brown’s book that brought it to such popular attention, but the ideas that are moving women were developed by a woman. (More on that another day; Starbird has been criticized for unwittingly reinforcing ancient attitudes about men and women.) Men aren’t the ones holding women’s retreats and workshops all over the country to learn about a Mary Magdalene who was as complex as they are.

As I’ve said before, there is more to this than history. And certainly, there is more to it than what is politically correct. If I hope to accomplish anything with this post, it is to point out that the complexity of Mary Magdalene’s appeal far exceeds what appears in popular news media, and that there are some potential pitfalls in the current feminist understanding of same.

MM in the news

Found at the website for The Tidings, a weekly newspaper by the Los Angeles Archdiocese:

Mary Magdalene: Setting the record straight
by Jerry Filteau

This article focuses on the effort to redeem Mary Magdalene from her reputation as a penitent sinner. Some excellent points are made in the process:

Of the repentant prostitute version of the Magdalene, she said, “What a lot of us who’ve done some work on her say is … it’s a wrong one and in the process it’s robbing us of (appreciation of) women’s leadership at a crucial moment in the early church. In other words, in a way it’s easier … to deal with her as a repentant sinner than as she emerges in the Gospels in her own right.”

The article hits on some salient points of this issue, such as Mary Magdalene’s demon possession, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, the fact that she witnesses the resurrection, etc. It’s the standard position for Christian feminists on Mary Magdalene, but worth a read. I was particularly impressed by the snappy wrap-up by Sister Elizabeth:

Summing up the real Mary Magdalene with what she called the “w’s,” Sister Elizabeth said, “Let’s get this straight: She was not Jesus’ wife … neither a wife nor a whore, but a witness.”

That’s a newsbite worth repeating.

Also in the news is an article about Margaret Starbird from the website for a local Puget Sound newspaper called The News Tribune:

Steilacoom writer backs mystery of ‘Da Vinci’
by Steve Maynard

(Steilacoom is a place name for those not from Washington State.)

Here the author of this article gives a few details from a local talk given by Margaret last week. Hinging on the references made to her books in DVC, Maynard includes a few quotes from members of her audience about the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married as well as the upcoming DVC movie.

Before listening to Starbird, Billie Blattler of Steilacoom said she couldn’t wait to see the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code” the day it opens.

But some of her friends – while Christians like her – refused her invitation to go. “They said, ‘It’s all lies,’” Blattler said. “It’s a fictional story,” she said, but “it has a lot of facts in it.”

The article goes on to say:

Boosted by Brown’s references, Starbird speaks around the country on evidence from the Bible, folklore and medieval art that she believes shows Jesus and Mary Magdalene were husband and wife. She also believes Jesus and Mary Magdalene produced a child – a daughter.

Interestingly, I just got a catalog from Margaret’s publisher the other day (Inner Traditions). Since last August, she’s sold 24,000 copies of her most recent book, Bride In Exile. Her first book, The Woman With The Alabaster Jar, one of two of her titles to be mentioned in DVC, has sold 140,000 since it came out in 1993. Previous to the publication of DVC in 2003, it had sold fewer than 50,000 copies, according to the Inner Traditions catalog. So in the last three years, her first book has almost tripled in sales compared to what it had done during the previous decade.

Margaret is the hardest working Mary Magdalene author I know. She tours the country doing speaking engagements regularly, and did so even before the publication of DVC. Even before Dan Brown’s book hit shelves, Margaret was filling workshops from coast to coast. Certainly the number of invitations has increased since 2003, but she is serious about spreading her message. And there are a great number of people listening.

This isn’t all about The Da Vinci Code. The way I see it, DVC is merely shining a great big light on something that has been happening for a number of years. This is why I think that the interest in Mary Magdalene will continue far beyond the DVC mania.

MM in the news – apostola apostolorum

This is a short but good article that I found at Cleveland.com:

Mary Magdalene in fact and fiction
by David Briggs (The Plain Dealer columnist)

The thrust of this article is that one sexual fiction about Mary Magdalene-that she was a prostitute-has been popularly replaced by a different sexual fiction; namely, that she was Jesus’ wife and the mother of his children. This isn’t the first I’ve come across this point. Voiced mostly by feminists concerned that no woman, Mary Magdalene included, should be remembered primarily for her sexuality (positive or negative), the issue is even more volitile given that both seem to be imagined reputations anyway. Why not focus on things that we’re told Mary Magdalene actually did, rather than what she may or may not have done with her female plumbing?

But to manufacture a new sexual myth around Mary Magdalene and reduce her role to supportive spouse is hardly what people celebrating strong, independent women leaders in early Christianity consider helpful.

“It ultimately undercuts women’s leadership because it focuses on the fiction of Mary of Magdala’s marital status rather than the fact of her leadership as the primary witness to Jesus’ Resurrection,” according to Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Cleveland-based FutureChurch, an independent Catholic group.

I don’t disagree. Although there is definitely some “looking the other way” going on in regards to what mythology today’s women find valuable about Mary Magdalene, I think it is extremely important to look at Mary Magdalene’s most likely historical identity. Far and away, this is the role she filled as apostle of the apostles. Within Christianity, this is definitely the most important aspect of Mary Magdalene’s story.

“Rather than speculate falsely that Mary of Magdala was married to Jesus,” Schenk said, “it would be better to imitate her generosity and courage in accompanying a condemned political prisoner through a torturous death; and her faith in proclaiming God’s resurrection.”

Not surprisingly, the only expert quoted in the article is Sister Christine Schenk, who has been working with FutureChurch for many years to get as many Mary Magdalene feast day celebrations started as possible. This organization lobbies for female ordination as well as a married priesthood, and Mary Magdalene is their “poster girl.” Although I’m supportive of the FutureChurch cause, it’s good to keep their goals in mind when considering their position on Mary Magdalene’s identity.

Nancy Grace and Mary Magdalene

There is a fair amount of controversy occuring right now about a CNN transcript of the March 29, 2006 Nancy Grace show, on which she interviewed a few people about the recent slaying of a Church of Christ minister by his wife, Mary Winkler. One of the points of the show was to argue that the Church of Christ is “cultic,” thereby providing some sort of added impulse for Mary Winkler to kill her husband. I first read about this on Jim West’s blog here and here, but Chris Heard has a very detailed post on this issue in his blog, Higgaion.

Even though I spent some time in Church of Christ congregations growing up, I’m going to refrain from entering the debate about whether or not it is, in fact, “cultic.” Instead I’d like to focus on some comments made during the show that have to do with (surprise, surpise) Mary Magdalene. This part of the conversation is between Nancy Grace and Dr. Rubel Shelley, whom they introduce as a professor of philosophy and religion at Rochester College as well as a Church of Christ minister:

GRACE: Dr. Shelly, what is the role of women in the Church of Christ?

SHELLY: Well, we believe that God created the human race male and female in his image and that Paul said there is no male or female in Christ. There are some male leadership options, in terms of elders of churches, and most preaching ministries that are reserved to males, but that`s not a cultic fact.

GRACE: Why? Why?

SHELLY: Well, that`s because of a biblical interpretation issue that Southern Baptists and many other groups share in common with Churches of Christ about male leadership in local churches. Churches of Christ are a conservative religious group.

GRACE: OK, wait, wait, wait. Dr. Shelly, no offense, by why, why only male leadership? Does anybody remember Mary Magdalene, ding ding?

SHELLY: Well, Mary Magdalene was not an apostle. All of the apostles were, in fact…

GRACE: Well, Judas was, and that certainly isn’t saying very much.

SHELLY: Well, we don’t want to quarrel with gender issues, with regard to salvation. And probably, I’m more broad-minded and a bit more liberal in terms of things that I would affirm that women have a right to do in church leadership than some of the people in our churches, but generally…

GRACE: OK. Dr. Shelly, let me move on, because I agree with you.

And there we have it, folks. Evidence that Protestants as well as Catholics exclude women from church leadership and deny Mary Magdalene’s role as an apostle. Although this has always been the case, Catholics are the ones who are usually under fire on this issue because female ordination activists are usually focused on the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant exclusion of women in positions of leadership doesn’t usually get as much air play.

I disagree with Nancy Grace’s tone toward her guest, find it profoundly rude that she interrupted him, and doubt this question has anything at all to do with whether or not Mary Winkler killed her husband. But it is, nonethless, worth pointing out from my perspective as someone who watches public attitude about Mary Magdalene.

Was Mary Magdalene an apostle?

There seems to be some question about whether or not Mary Magdalene really qualifies as an apostle of Christ. During the Middle Ages she was called apostola apostolorum, which, as far as I know, can be translated in two ways: “apostle TO the apostles,” and “apostle OF the apostles.” This might seem like a minor distinction, but to many people, the “devil is in the details,” as they say. Before we look at apostola apostolorum, though, it might be constructive to discuss what it takes to be an apostle in the first place.

An apostle (apostolos) is defined by Liddell and Scott in A Greek-English Lexicon as a messenger, ambassador or envoy. An apostle is someone who bears an important message.

In Christianity, there are, to my knowledge, two sets of criteria by which one could be considered an apostle. Because his are the earliest writings in the New Testament, the first definition comes from Paul, who says:

• An apostle must be a witness to the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1)
• An apostle must have received a commission from Christ (Romans 1:1)

The second set of criteria is much more restrictive, and is given in Acts 1:21,22:

• An apostle must have been part of Jesus’ ministry from the beginning, when he was baptized
• An apostle must have been a witness to the risen Christ during the time before his ascension
• An apostle must be a man

Mary Magdalene qualifies as an apostle by Paul’s criteria, as do other women, such as Junia (Romans 16:7). She most definitely wouldn’t qualify by the second set of criteria, but then again, neither would Paul. He wasn’t with Jesus’ ministry from the beginning, and he wasn’t a witness of the resurrection before Jesus’ ascension. So it seems to me that we have a logical quandry on our hands; I’m not a theologian, but strictly speaking, it appears that we can either include Mary Magdalene or exclude Paul.

Back to apostola apostolorum.

The title apostola apostolorum indicates that Mary Magdalene was accepted, at least by some, as an apostle. This could have enormous implications; if Mary Magdalene was called to be an apostle, wouldn’t that mean that women could be ordained as priests? Here is where the slight difference in translation starts making a difference.

When translated as “apostle OF the apostles,” Mary Magdalene is placed in a position of leadership, of some exaltation, sort of a “more equal” member of the group than the rest. If you think about this kind of phrasing in other contexts, say, “war of wars,” or “doctor of doctors,” you come away with a sense that one member of each group is distinguished in some way.

When translated as “apostle TO the apostles,” however, the scope of Mary Magdalene’s commission is vastly diminished. Her task takes on a rather “secretarial” connotation as a messenger to only one group of people, specifically, the male followers of Jesus. The men, in turn, had the responsibility of carrying Christ’s message to the rest of the world.

Two organizations cite Mary Magdalene’s apostleship in their lobby for the ordination of women: Women Priests, and FutureChurch. FutureChurch has done much in the last ten years to encourage a reawakening within Christianity to Mary Magdalene’s role as apostle, sponsoring and assisting in organizing Mary Magdalene feast day celebrations each July 22. (If you watch the religion section of your local newspaper around July 22, you’re likely to see announcements for such celebrations.)

All of this is based on Mary Magdalene’s identity as apostola apostolorum, and the belief that her role in announcing the resurrection was more than an empty gesture by Christ, that he chose her to carry the news. And really, even if she wasn’t specifically chosen, then she, by virtue of her love, was still the first person to be honored with such an important message. That has to count for something.

Recommended reading:
Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle, by Ann Graham Brock
Mary Magdalene: The Image of a Woman Through The Centuries, by Ingrid Maisch

Bruce Chilton’s Mary Magdalene: A Biography

This weekend I read Bruce Chilton’s latest book, Mary Magdalene: A Biography. Readers of the review that follows should keep in mind that it is against a galley. The endnote numbering wasn’t even incorporated into the text in the copy I have, so even though the notes weren’t meaningless after having read the text, there are still some major disconnects that will only be remedied by reading the book in its final published form. Realistically, I have so many books in my reading queue at the moment that going out and buying this book is unlikely, so I’ll go ahead after issuing that one caveat.

Speculative non-fiction books have always been difficult for me to appreciate. Works of non-fiction that ask, “What if this thing had been true?” and then proceed on a hypothetical path based on the original assumption strike me as hollow gestures toward the subject on which they focus. Rather than presenting scholarship in a straightforward manner, they instead feel novelized and sensational. There are a great number of “would have,” “may have,” and “probably did” kinds of statements in such books. Bruce Chilton’s biography of Mary Magdalene is not an exception. Mary Magdalene is a subject ripe for speculation, and there are a number of “biographies” in circulation as they have been imagined by different authors (Gordon Thomas’ The Thirteenth Apostle comes immediately to mind). Chilton’s addition to the corpus of Magdalene scholarship adds a few new ideas, but in a questionable format.

Most notably, he asserts three things about Mary Magdalene:

1. She was intimately involved in Jesus’ exorcism ministry as one who had first-hand experience with the subject.
2. She was a practitioner of healing by anointing, a magical ritual practice.
3. She was a visionary who sensed Jesus in his spiritual (non-physical) resurrected form.

Although the book is filled with troublesome statements and suppositions, there are only a few I’ll mention here. First and foremost is the fact that Chilton hypothesizes the existence of an oral source of exorcistic material used by the author of Mark to fill out his exorcism pericopae. Apparently the suggestion for such a source doesn’t originate with Chilton, but that it seems to pop into his book fully formed without much of a case being made for its existence is peculiar. His reasons for believing such a source existed are based on his reading of Markan internal evidence only, by intuiting Mary Magdalene’s signature on the exorcism accounts. (Mark is the Gospel Chilton uses to support almost all of his guesses because of its primacy; he asserts that Mark’s use of “the Magdalene source” was the most primitive, with the later Gospels gradually “suppressing” Mary Magdalene’s influence.) An appendix contains Chilton’s Magdalene source as he reconstructed it from Gospel passages.

On the subject of Mary Magdalene as an anointer, one of Chilton’s innovations I found interesting was his defense of a partial unity theory.

Mary is the indispensable character in Mark’s account of the Resurrection, the pivot of the action around whom the final events turn. She, and she alone, embodies the connection between Jesus’ interment and the angelic announcement to the same Mary Magdalene (16:6-7) that Jesus has been raised from the dead. She connects his death and Resurrection, not only by who she is but what she does: Mary Magdalene established the place of anointing as a central ritual in Christianity, recollecting Jesus’ death and pointing forward to his Resurrection.

In this way, Mark implies, rather than states, Mary’s identity as the woman with the ointment, so our inference is not a deductive certainty. An implication is just that and shouldn’t be confused with proof: It leaves traces for the audience of the Gospel to infer its meaning. But read without this inference, Mark breaks Jesus’ promise that “wherever the message is proclaimed in the whole world, what she did will also be spoken of in memory of her” (Mark 14:9). By permitting ourselves this inference, we allow the Gospel not to contradict the very saying of Jesus that it takes pain to convey.

The anointing in Mark (and Matthew) is performed by an anonymous woman. In Luke, she is an anonymous woman who was a sinner, and in John, she is named as Mary of Bethany. Chilton, via his belief that Mary Magdalene was the anointing woman in Mark, states that she was also Mary of Bethany. In Luke, however, in an apparent effort to minimize Mary Magdalene’s influence on the Christian story, the anointing scene is changed all around and a sinner woman–with whom Mary Magdalene is not to be confused–is introduced. Honestly, I’m still not sure what to think about the Lukan perspective on Mary Magdalene, being that it is the abberation among the synoptics. Chilton, however, appears to have it all figured out: the author of Luke intentionally minimized her role in order to denigrate her. In this, he joins the ranks of several other Magdalene authors.

Anointing, as a powerful ritual healing practice, was the subject of much concern for Chilton. Jesus apparently wasn’t confident of his abilities at times, but luckily for him, Mary Magdalene was nearby to teach him how to get things done. The two Markan stories of healing with spittle bring about a fascinating observation:

The Talmud of Jerusalem also speaks of anointing with spit with the intention to heal. Women were typical practitioners of this type of healing. In one case, the woman applies her unction of saliva seven times, much as Jesus had to repeat his healing to clear up the blind man’s sight (Mark 8:22-26). Matthew and Luke repressed these stories of healing with spit not only because they involved more magic than they were comfortable with but also because Jesus was following a practice of women’s household sorcery that he had learned, in all probability, from his most prominent female disciple–Mary Magdalene.

Of all the reasons to suppose that Mary Magdalene was a visionary, Chilton gives by far the oddest explanation I’ve come across. In Mark’s empty tomb narrative, he says that the women “perceived” (theoreo) that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, rather than physically saw that the stone had been moved (horao). Apparently the misplaced stone and the angelophany were sensed by the women spiritually but not witnessed materially.

..in the vision of the women, Jesus was no longer [in the tomb] at all, but in Galilee. That is where the young man directed them, and when the women turned away from the tomb, as they were told to do by the young man, they left the question fo Jesus’ physical body behind them, unanswered. It is quite possible his corpse remained where it lay.

This is a little puzzling to me in light of the fact that the next verse says that the women “entered into the sepulchre,” which would lead me to believe that they would have either seen a corpse or not. Presumably, they saw an empty tomb. They didn’t just see an angel outside of the tomb and take off running.

Mary Magdalene’s role as a visionary in the later Gnostic texts was an extension of her already-established identity as a seer according to Chilton. This brings us to the next portion of the book: Mary Magdalene in Gnosticism. I have to say that I wasn’t completely disappointed with this section. I thought his handling of the “companion” (koinonos) and “kissing on the mouth” controversies from the Gospel of Philip were well done and evenly considered. Not so with his treatment of the “becoming male” passage in the Gospel of Thomas, however. I found it terribly odd that Mary’s statement in the Gospel of Mary about how Jesus had made them “into men” was a positive indication of their spiritual maturity but the passage in Thomas about “becoming male” was a sign of sexism inherent in Gnosticism.

It’s obvious that Chilton has done his homework, citing a recent interpretation that androgeny at the time was masculine, but his treatment of the similar language in the two texts didn’t seem fully considered. Rather than really digging into a thoughtful analysis of the “making male” language, he appeared more interested in criticizing feminists and other readers who latch onto Gnosticism as a gender-inclusive answer to patriarchal Christianity. It’s tricky, I’ll admit, but scholars like Annti Marjanen, Marvin Meyer, Karen King, and Jane Schaberg have made much more headway in that area.

Overall, there were some uplifting moments of bright observation about Mary Magdalene’s role in early Christianity, which makes it at least possible that I will return to the book at a later date for a more in-depth read. Unfortunately, however, because of the speculative format and language, it’s going to get shelved with other “inspirational” volumes in my collection instead of “history.”

Elaine Pagels interview

This article was posted today on the Minnesota Women’s Press website:

There’s Something About Mary
by Elizabeth Noll

[Elaine Pagels]: The Christian movement has always been diverse. That it was diverse in the beginning is very clear. It’s still diverse. I think that what that says is that if you’re going to participate in it at all, you make choices about what you participate in. What kind of groups, what kind of understanding. You have a wide range of choices. I do make choices about those things, quite consciously, and I think that most people are aware that they’re making choices about that.

This is a pretty good article, about Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic tradition. It addresses some very basic questions about Mary Magdalene and brings up a couple of points that I’d like to call out.

From the interview:

MWP: I read somewhere that the prostitute thing started with a pope in the sixth century.

EP: Yes. The stories get conflated so that the story of the prostitute who washes Jesus’ feet with her hair is interpreted to be Mary Magdalene when of course the story doesn’t say that at all. That’s church tradition, begun in the sixth century.

MWP: And then, in the 1960s, didn’t the Vatican officially announce that she was not a prostitute?

EP: Yes, because it was recognized by people working on the text, particularly Raymond Brown, that there’s no grounds for that, historically. And some churches, like the Russian Orthodox Church, have taken her always to be a saint.

But what [this debate] shows is that these issues about women are not invented by feminists in the 20th century; they’re issues that have been engaging Christians from the very beginning of the movement.

This demonstrates one of my hot buttons. Pope Gregory the Great didn’t invent the tradition of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, he merely reinforced it. Depending on where you lived in Christendom and who taught you about the religion, you might have learned that Mary Magdalene was Mary of Bethany or the anonymous sinner woman from Luke (who was also never called a prostitute, incidentally), or any combination of the three women. I believe that Susan Haskins discusses this briefly in her book, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor.

Pope Gregory the Great was a master administrator who took the throne during a time when doctrine and dogma was in chaos. One of the things for which he is remembered is settling long-standing questions and determining official positions that the Church would take on certain issues. In one homily delivered in 591 (XXXIII, I think), he established once and for all that:

She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark.

Today, Gregory is getting credited more and more frequently as inventing the tradition, which is clearly not the case. Conflation of the women in the Gospels and confusion between the Marys was evident several centuries before Gregory.

Another thing that stands out in the section of the interview I quoted above is that Pagels comments that Orthodox Christianity has always considered Mary Magdalene a saint. What I’m sure she knows, and my guess is that she only misspoke, is that Mary Magdalene has always been a saint in the Western church as well. I think we should give Professor Pagels the benefit of the doubt here; I think she meant to say that Orthodox Christianity has always considered Mary Magdalene a distinct person separate from Mary of Bethany and Luke’s anonymous sinner.

Not a bad interview at all. I love to see Elaine Pagels in the news.