I’ve tried thus far to make it a point to avoid discussing much about my non-Mary Magdalene activities in this blog, because, well, it’s a blog about Mary Magdalene. But in light of my reduced posting frequency, I thought an explanation might be appropriate.

Actually, there are a couple of reasons for the lack of activity here. First, I’ve started a new job that doesn’t have the flexibility for posting during the day, and my evenings are usually devoted to the always-bouncing three-year-old in our house. There is always a period of adjustment when I start a new job until I find a place in my new schedule for Mary Magdalene work. I’m sure it will open up fairly soon.

Second–and this is probably the more relevant reason–I’m still suffering from a bit of Da Vinci Code burnout. It isn’t that Mary Magdalene or Biblical studies or Christian art are any less important to me than they were six months ago, it’s just that I feel like I’m hearing the same song on the radio every time I turn it on. That’s enough to tarnish even a favorite melody for a time.

In spite of my posting inactivity, I do have a couple of things that I’m working on. I’ve started collecting more personal stories about Mary Magdalene for what I hope will be a book-length project. I’ve also started gathering references and resources for a web page / essay about the recent gossip that Mary Magdalene was represented as pregnant in many famous works of art. As far as I know, this rumor started with Margaret Starbird, and it has always bothered me deeply. I think it’s a case of viewing works of art way outside of their intended context, so what I’m attempting to do is establish some context for people who might not be aware of it otherwise. My husband, Chris, has been conversing with some medieval costume historian-types to support me in this endeavor, so we have yet another list of titles to check out from the UW library. I’ve also been in touch with a few art and fashion historians myself, with mixed success.

My to-do list is growing stagnant and neglected (and you should see my email inbox!), so I’ll be trying to get down to more Mary Magdalene business soon!

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.

I’ve had difficulty keeping up with all of the Mary Magdalene appearances in the media lately since everyone seems to mention her name in association with The Da Vinci Code. Weeding through the casual references to find articles of relevance took a little while. Here, without commentary, is a list of the most on-topic news postings I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks. They are all either about Mary Magdalene directly, or germane to the topics I write about here in The Magdalene Review.

Newsweek
The Faces of Mary Magdalene
May 29, 2006 issue

Houston Chronicle
Gnostic Gospels one key to Da Vinci Code origins
May 22, 2006
By Richard Vara and Tara Dooley

Online Journal
“The Da Vinci Code,” the film, gives the ultimate question (praise Goddess!) a radical answer
May 22, 2006
By Harvey Wasserman
(Also appeared in the Columbia Free Press on May 20, 2006.)

SFGate.com
Finding My Religion: Tau Malachi
May 22, 2006
by David Ian Miller

Toronto Star
Da Vinci Code unsettles church
May 21, 2006
by Joanna Manning

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Brown drew inspiration from local author’s books for ‘Da Vinci Code’
May 18, 2006
By Cecelia Goodnow

Ottawa Citizen
Women might be key to Da Vinci film success
May 18, 2006
By Theresa Tayler, The Calgary Herald

MyrtleBeachOnline.com
‘Code’ stirs quest for knowledge
May 18, 2006
BY Tom Heinen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The New York Sun
Looking Behind the ‘Code’ (excerpt)
May 17, 2006
By Bruce Chilton

uuworld.org
The Magdalene code
May 15, 2006
By Elizabeth A. Lerner

Hartford Courant
The Curious Case Of Mary Magdalene
May 14, 2006
By Harold W. Attridge

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
‘The Code’: Mary Magdalene — Apostle to the apostles
May 14, 2006
By Ann Rodgers

Contra Costa Times
Career-path renaissance
May 14, 2006
By Randy Myers

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Author Jane Lahr
May 14, 2006
By Jane Henderson

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.

On Easter I mentioned that I was reading Bart Ehrman’s new book, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, impressed with Ehrman’s take on Mary Magdalene’s role as the founder of Christianity. I’ve finished reading the section of the book on Mary Magdalene, and was looking forward to chatting with him for a few minutes after a talk he was to give in Seattle last night. Unfortunately, he had to fly back home for an emergency and the talk is being rescheduled.

My best wishes to Dr. Ehrman and his family for a speedy recovery from whatever emergency has occured.

I’m going to wait to post a review of Ehrman’s book for now, until I can read the rest of it and hopefully ask him a few questions. Until then, I’m comfortable recommending it highly, so please don’t hesitate to pick up a copy if you have the opportunity. It’s a level treatment of Mary Magdalene in the Gospels, in the Gnostic texts, and in modern preoccupation with her marital status. Although Ehrman pokes fun at some of the marriage theories, he manages to do so good-naturedly, and inoffensively. Definitely on the more liberal side of Christianity, but that agrees with me.

Speaking of rescheduled events, Margaret Starbird’s appearance on Larry King Live has been postponed, and I’ve not yet heard of a new date. I’ll post more about it as soon as I hear anything else.

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.

I realize posting has been slow lately…trying to remedy that soon!

This is an article I came across at SouthFlorida.com:

Who was Mary?
by Denise Flaim

The article begins:

Singer-songwriter Tori Amos called her a “blueprint for women” and described her saga as “the greatest story never told.” Publishers Weekly dubbed her the “It Girl of biblical studies.” And – perhaps the ultimate sign of having arrived in these “Surreal Life” times – she has a “Complete Idiot’s Guide” devoted to her.

Heh.

The article is mostly a rehash of information that we see in other articles about Mary Magdalene, an outline of what people are saying about her today, a few quotes from Karen King, a little bit of Dan Brown-bashing for his misunderstanding of history. It’s not a bad piece though, and I like the fact that at the end, the journalist gives a brief paragraph about a few Gospel women with whom Mary Magdalene has been confused.