I was happy to see the following article at Everything Alabama this morning (from The Birmingham News):

Jungian realizes pull of `Da Vinci’
by Kathy Kemp

Birmingham resident, Nancy Qualls-Corbett, is a Jungian psychologist whose perspective on ideas of masculine and feminine principles/qualities I find deeply interesting. Author of The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine, it seems to me that Qualls-Corbett has come the closest to putting her finger on why Margaret Starbird’s “sacred union” mythology has struck a nerve in our society. From the article:

She’s particularly interested in Mary Magdalene’s role in the story and the world’s increasing fascination with her. “My speculation is that people are seeing the need for balance in the world, and that would be the feminine side – of relating to each other, of appreciating the arts as well as science.”

A vast simplification, but very in line with my thinking as well.

Dr. Qualls-Corbett is giving a lecture in Birmingham on Friday; details are in the article.

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.

Today, in spite of a mean headcold, I caught a matinee showing of The Da Vinci Code. I probably would have waited to see it, but darn that Fandango.com, they just make it too easy to buy tickets in advance. I purchased them on Thursday just in case the theater was sold out, given that this is the opening weekend for the “biggest film event of the year.” I needn’t have worried; the theater was only filled to about 60% of capacity.

The most remarkable thing I can say about the movie is that it played out on the screen almost exactly like it played out in my head as I read Dan Brown’s novel. Now, this can mean a couple of things. Either Dan Brown is very good at generating in his readers the setting he has in mind, or Ron Howard was so painstakingly faithful to the book that not a prop was out of place. Perhaps both possibilities are true, but whatever the case, the end result is that I watched the movie feeling like I had already seen it. Sure, it was fun to see Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen and Jean Reno acting out the characters that had mostly remained faceless in my mind’s eye, but I was also perfectly comfortable getting up for some popcorn during the film without feeling like I would miss anything important.

Dull, plodding, boring, literalistic; these are all adjectives used by critics when referring to the movie. I had hoped that having lived my life with DVC for the last few years would have rendered the experience a bit more exciting, but what I found was that the criticisms of the movie were perfectly warranted. I was impressed by the film’s deft avoidance of the more controversial dialogue in the novel, though, and was almost interested by a few flashbacks of a pregnant Mary Magdalene with curly red hair. I’ll admit that the hair on the back of my neck stood up at least once during a couple of dramatic pans of Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus, heightened as they were by a fantastic film score. Magdalene’s alabaster jar even made more than one appearance in the movie, but tragically, it contained a single red rose. (Could there be anything more cliché than a single, long-stemmed red rose, under any circumstance? Hello, Phantom of the Opera. Why not a lily? It would have even been appropriate given the importance placed on the fleur-de-lis in the story.)

The buzz on the Mary Magdalene email lists about the movie is generally supportive. A few people have gushed about how beautiful and empowering it is to see the sacred feminine making such an appearance in popular culture, but it just didn’t have that vibe for me. It felt tired. Overwrought. Milked dry. When I left the theater with my husband, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the movie will do more to end the DVC phenomenon than to perpetuate it. It was as preachy as the book, minus the action and excitement. Although I suppose it is a cultural marker to see goddess-worship and Christianity mingled in this manner on the big screen, it didn’t feel momentous in the least. As the audience filed out after one of the most anti-climactic final scenes ever, I caught mumbles of how long and boring the experience had been.

My advice? Wait for DVC on DVD.

This is an article, for which I was interviewed, that appeared today in The Columbus Dispatch:

A ‘good tall tale’
by Dennis M . Mahoney

Mahoney obviously talked to quite a few people in putting together this article, to his credit. I think that the only person he spoke to who was favorable to the ideas presented in The Da Vinci Code, however, was Margaret Starbird. This comes as no suprise since many of the ideas in DVC were developed by her.

Some highlights…

From Bart Ehrman:

“They need to approach this movie like they approach Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you want to learn about the history of the Middle Ages, you don’t want to watch the movie to get your information,” Ehrman said.

“If you want to know about the history of early Christianity, don’t watch The Da Vinci Code. Talk to a historian.”

From Sister Christine Shenk:

Schenk said while Jesus could have been married, it wasn’t to Mary Magdalene. She added that the thought of him being married rubs against a Catholic belief that “You can’t give yourself fully over to the kingdom of God if you’re married.

“If we did have some discovery some day, which I think is unlikely, that Jesus was married, that would be sort of a hard thing for people in that kind of Catholic culture to handle.

From a Focus On The Family representative:

Alex McFarland of Focus on the Family said a positive of The Da Vinci Code is that it is getting teenagers interested in theology and church history.

McFarland, who as director of teen apologetics for the Colorado-based organization runs conferences nationwide, said there’s no reason Christians should avoid the movie.

And finally, from Margaret Starbird:

“But ultimately, it is far more dangerous to hold unexamined opinions based on errors than it is to search for truth. What good is faith if its basic tenets are not true? “

Aside from the potential danger of holding examined opinions that are based on errors, I find the second part of her statement to be the most compelling, and interestingly, the most ironic. What good IS faith if its basic tenets are not true? Starbird could just as well ask the same question about her own faith, and the faith that she is engendering in perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions via her ideas in DVC. Most critical thinkers agree that the ideas presented in DVC and in Margaret’s books are either not true (that is, they are not based on verifiable fact), or even if they were true, could never be shown to be probable. Much of her work is based on mystical exegesis.

Although I don’t find anything inherently wrong with mysticism, it cannot be mistaken for history under any circumstances. You can believe that the name “Magdalene” is inspired by a passage in Micah, but that doesn’t mean it was so. You can believe that the name “Magdalene” was spelled the way that it was spelled because of the numerical value it generates in Greek, but that really doesn’t make it so. You can believe that Mary Magdalene was the “lost bride” of Christ and the representative of the Divine Feminine in Christianity, but again I say, that doesn’t make it so. The evidence that Starbird has compiled to support these ideas was developed after the fact, and remains tenuous at best.

It’s equally true, as far as I’m concerned, that just because something is in the Gospels doesn’t necessarily make it so, but at least we have a something, in writing, much closer to the source. What we have with Starbird’s theories is a lot of “it could have been,” and, based on modern sensitiblities, “it would have made sense if.” As Bart Ehrman pointed out in his recent book, it would “make sense” if natural disasters and disease and war never occured either, but our preferred vision of the world doesn’t usually translate into reality. Wishful thinking, unfortunately, doesn’t make it so.

Lest I come off too harshly where Margaret Starbird is concerned, I should reiterate for readers that I appreciate her ideas very much as mythology, and believe that much of the response we’ve seen to DVC is indicative of the merit of such mythology. However, mythology and history are not the same kinds of pursuits. It appears to me that our obsession with revising history in order to validate our feelings about this new mythology is the result of a human impulse toward literalism. It’s unfortunate, but nothing new.

So, I return to the question: “What good is a faith if its basic tenets are not true?”

It seems to me that it all depends on your definition of “truth,” and the relationship it bears to “fact.” What rings true to one doesn’t necessarily ring true for another. Unless you have a general distrust of historical method and see a conspiracy lurking in every shadow, “fact” is something that isn’t dependent on anything “ringing” at all. It either was or wasn’t. Nothing philosophical about it. Facts can be disputed, but must be done so on credible evidence.

Are there some truths represented in DVC? Probably.

Are they based on fact? Probably not.

You can debunk “fact,” but you can’t debunk “truth.” You can only argue about “truth;” this pasttime has occupied priests, philosophers and theologians for millennia. Ironically, both Christians and DVC people feel that their faith is bolstered by the truth, as they see it, and its relationship to fact. In the case of the DVC people, critics see the “facts” that underpin their “truth” as much less probable than the “facts” that underpin the “truth” of traditional Christianity. This is probably accurate. The question I have is, if you take away the “facts,” in either case, what is left of the “truth?” Does it fall away like a house of cards? Must all of our “truths” be based on literal “fact?”

I think that there is much here worth examining.

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.

An announcement just went out to several email lists that Margaret Starbird, author of The Woman With The Alabaster Jar and several other Mary Magdalene-as-lost-bride books, will appear on Larry King Live this Friday night, May 5. Apparently Bishop Shelby Spong will be on the show with her, and they will be discussing the rise of the sacred feminine, through Mary Magdalene, with more conservative Christian guests (whose identities I do not know).

This should be an interesting show.

My weekend in New York with the scholars I mentioned in a post from last week went very well. We all (except Margaret Starbird, who was not present) contributed to a documentary film, which I will be happy to post about once some details are settled about what it will be called, etc. In the meantime, the experience has provided enough blogging material to keep me busy for months. I’d like to start by sharing a point that Elaine Pagels and I discussed briefly, but were unfortunately unable to flesh out because the moderator moved the topic to another area.

The discussion was about Kabbalah, the prevailing form of Jewish mysticism through the Middle Ages and beyond. It has origins that date back to the first century (probably not all the way back to the Patriarchs though as some would claim), but it really came into its own as a movement around the 11th century in the Jewish communities of Spain. Much could be said about Kabbalah, particularly because it has become a popular form of mysticism today, being liberally adapted by and for members of American society like every other religious system you can think of. The Kabbalistic concept in question is that of the Shekinah. I believe that what follows will show that one could spend a great deal of time exploring how the relationships between Gnosticism, Judaism, and orthodox Christianity affected the outcome of Mary Magdalene’s legends. In addition, I believe it speaks to the heart of the phenomenon we are currently observing in popular culture in which Mary Magdalene has become Jesus’ wife.

My primary source for this understanding is Gershom Scholem, who has written much on the history of Kabbalah. Of particular value is his book, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism.

In Rabbinic Judaism, the Shekinah is the “presence of God,” rather like his face, or his aspect. In the Middle Ages, however, the Shekinah was adapted by Kabbalists into a fully-fledged female hypostasis of God; she became a bride, a princess, a daughter. The traditional belief of the Shekinah was that it lived in exile with the people, that a part of God was always present with his people. When the Shekinah was personified, the part of God that lived in exile was believed to also be in exile; so we now have God’s bride, living in exile from himself, seeking reunion with him just as his people did. For as long as his people wandered, the bride wandered as well.

The next portion of this point is best said by Scholem himself. [Note: a sefirah is an individual unit in the Kabbalistic model of the Tree of Life, which represents the principles of creation. There are ten sefiroth, with the tenth sefira, Malkuth, being the lowest, and representing the physical world. This is a grossly simple explanation just to get to my main point.]

The tenth sefirah, however, no longer represents a particular part of man, but, as complement to the universally human and masculine principle, the feminine, seen at once as mother, as wife, and as daughter, though manifested in different ways in these different aspects. This discovery of a feminine element in God, which the Kabbalists tried to justify by gnostic exegesis, is of course one of the most significant steps they took. Often regarded with the utmost misgiving by strictly Rabbinical, non-Kabbalistic Jews, often distorted into inoffensiveness by embarrassed Kabbalistic apologists, this mythical conception of the feminine principle of the Shekhinah as providential guide of Creation achieved enormous popularity among the masses of the Jewish people, so showing that here the Kabbalists had uncovered one of the primordial religious impulses still latent in Judaism.

Two other symbolic representations among many are of particular importance for an understanding of the Kabbalistic Shekhinah: its identification on the one hand with the mystical Ecclesia of Israel and on the other hand with the soul (neshamah). Both these ideas make their appearance in the Bahir. In the Talmud and Midrash we find the concept of the “Community of Israel” (from which the Christian concept of the Ecclesia is derived), but only in the sense of a personification of the real, historical Israel and as such definitely differentiated from God. Since time immemorial the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs as referring tot he relationshiop between God and teh Jewish Ecclesia had enjoyed general acceptance in Judaism; but there was nothing in this interpretation to suggest the elevation of the Ecclesia to the rank of a divine potency or hypostasis. Nowhere does the Talmudic literature identify the Shekhinah with the Ecclesia. In the Kabbalah, however, it is precisely this identification that introduces the symbolism of the feminine into the sphere of the divine. Through this identification, everything that is said in the Talmudic interpretations of the Song of Songs about the Communtiy of Israel as daughter and bride was transferred to the Shekhinah.

Before going on, a word from Susan Haskins, from her book, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor:

It is perhaps no coincidence that this first pictorial representation of Mary Magdalen as one of the holy women should have as its literary counterpart the near-contemporary celebration of her as a myrrhophore by Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170-235), a bishop of Rome, heresiologist and a staunch defender of the faith for which he ultimately died. The description appeared in his commentary — the first such Christian exposition to come down to us — on the Canticle of Canticles, the ancient allegory ascribed to Solomon and his beloved, the Shulamite. To Hippolytus, the Bride, or Shulamite, as she sought the Bridegroom, was Mary Magdalen, the myrrhophore, seeking Christ in the garden to anoint him…

…Hippolytus’ association of teh Bride of the Canticles with Mary Magdalen, forged in the third century, has lasted until today: a verse from the Canticles forms part of the liturgy which commemorates the saint’s feast-day on 22 July…

…Hippolytus’ commentary established ideas about Mary Magdalen which were to become tradition. Perhaps the most important of these were to see her as the Bride of Christ and symbol of the Church, titles which became more usually associated with the Virgin Mary. The commentary’s effect has endured, however, leaving its trace in the erotic element which has always been part of the mystical relationship attributed to Christ and Mary Magdalen.

I hope I’m not the only one who is able to see the similarities here. Very early in Christian history, Mary Magdalene, like the Shekinah, was associated with the Ecclesia via the Song of Songs. This placed her in the position of “Bride of Christ,” throughout history interpreted in an allegorical way. In the later Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene came to be associated by Christian mystics with the individual in his or her search for union with God, bringing her into even closer association with the Shekinah. The parallels don’t stop there, but for now, my comparison does.

Today, the world is searching for reasons why Dan Brown’s book is such a literary phenomenon, but the popularity of the idea that Mary Magdalene is the lost bride of Jesus was gaining momentum even before DVC. In the early 1980′s, Holy Blood, Holy Grail caused quite a stir in suggesting that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and started a bloodline. Although it was exposed as bunk, the idea sank into popular culture and spawned a number of related titles, most of which focused on the importance of a royal dyanastic, and godly, bloodline.

One book was different, however. Margaret Starbird’s book, Woman With the Alabaster Jar presented a case for Mary Magdalene not only as the wife of Jesus, but as a co-founder of Christianity, the “true” message of which was the restoration of the feminine and balance between sexes. Jesus and Mary Magdalene lived a life that expressed the “divine couple” archetype on every level of existence, Starbird writes; literal, spiritual, and archetypal. When Jesus was crucified, Mary Magdalene was in great danger, so she was spirited away. She traveled to France and gave birth, and from there, the rest of the French legends are taken pretty much at face value. The crucial thing about Starbird’s vision of history isn’t that Jesus and Mary Magdalene started a bloodline, however, it is on Mary Magdalene’s role as the feminine face of God. Jesus and Mary Magdalene together made a balanced and whole unit, masculine and feminine, “imaging God as partners.” That Mary Magdalene and the “true” Christian message were suppressed by the orthodox Church was to leave a deep scar on Christianity as it survived, and it touched every part of the Christian legacy. Thus the problems that Christianity and Western civilization in general face today are somehow the result of the imbalance caused by Mary Magdalene’s loss.

The language Starbird uses to describe her vision is quite potent and emotionally compelling for many people. The crux of DVC rests on concepts forged by Starbird; that the divine feminine lived in Mary Magdalene, and that her absence is the greatest conspiracy and tragedy ever to befall mankind. These ideas, I believe, are at the heart of what makes DVC such a revelation for some people. Not only because they are wondering, “could it be true?” but also because, I believe, Margaret Starbird happens to have stumbled across “one of the primordial religious impulses still latent,” only this time, in Christianity. In 2002, I delivered a talk to a local Seattle group called “Brides in Exile: A Primordial Religious Impulse Latent in Western Civilization,” which argued this very point. Four years later, the reaction to DVC has driven home for me the reality of Starbird’s intuition, whether I agree with her history or not.

What we are seeing today with the fascination in Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ bride is much deeper than I think most people are willing to entertain. It reflects, in a major way, what occured in the Middle Ages when the Kabbalists began to imagine the Shekinah as God’s bride. It is embarassing and ridiculous to scholars and theologians, but the idea has tremendous popularity with regular people. Margaret Starbird’s mystical Christianity, poor historical scholarship aside, has touched a nerve. A failure to explore why that stimulus is so powerful would be not only spiritually negligent, but a bit like burying one’s head in the sand.

It has been said in Christianity, many times, that the emptiness we humans feel in our existence is a “God-shaped hole,” that ultimately, only God can satisfy the search for meaning. Can it not be asked if, in fact, half of that void might actually be Godess-shaped?

When I started this blog, I said that I like to plant myself firmly between the two branches of the Magdalene movement, the historians and the mystics. I tend to lean more toward the historians, but perhaps spending a weekend with six historians gave me a reason to sympathize again with the mystics. Although I can appreciate their position entirely (the mystics are making up history as they go), I think it’s important to respect the authenticity of spiritual experience as well as a methodical pursuit of history. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this as I have time to commit it to writing.

At the moment I’m reading The Women Around Jesus, by Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel (translated from German by John Bowden). It’s a 25 year old feminist look at Jesus’ female followers, and how reading the Gospels from the women’s points of view could change the thrust of their stories. In some ways it feels a little tired, probably because much of the rhetoric has been overused during the last couple of decades, but there are some refreshing ideas and new references for me to explore. I’ll post more about it, particularly the section about Mary Magdalene, when I’m finished.

Next up is “Cult Prostitution in New Testament Ephesus: A Reappraisal,” by S. M. Baugh (published in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 42/3, September 1999). In the introduction Baugh states his purpose as proving that sacred prostitution didn’t take place during the 1st century as commonly believed. He narrows down his focus to:

1. “union with a prostitute…for exchange of money or goods, which was sanctioned by the wardens of a deity whether in temple precincts or elsewhere as a sacred act of worship”

2. “acts of prostitution where the money or goods received went to a temple and to its administrators”

He’s very clear about not including cultic acts of sexuality within mystery religions or fertility cults.

Sacred prostitution is an area of inquiry that my husband, Chris, has spent much time reading on for his own reasons, but it assists me a great deal in addressing questions I regularly encounter about Mary Magdalene’s identity. Could Mary Magdalene have been considered a sacred prostitute herself, leading to her sinful reputation? Could her (presumed) role as anointer have been some sort of veiled reference to a hieros gamos (“sacred marriage”) ritual? Both of these things, and more, have been suggested of Mary Magdalene in relation to sacred prostitution, so I too find this a topic rich for exploration.

My other project-in-progress is transcribing sections of Christian symbolism and art books so I can return them to the library. In the wake of the Megiddo discovery, claims have been made online that the two fish in the mosaic represent Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the two fishes of the Age of Pisces, the Lord and Lady of Christianity. Entering debunk mode, I felt it necessary to read everything I could get my hands on about fish symbolism in early Christianity, which has been rewarding in itself. Chris dug up a dissertation called The interpretation of religious symbols in the Graeco-Roman world: A case study of Early Christian fish symbolism, by Laurence Harold Kant (Yale, 1993). I haven’t read the entire 933 pages yet, but I’m assured it’s worth the $30 we spent for the .pdf. Needless to say, I think, is that so far, not an academic word has been written about Mary Magdalene and fish symbolism.