The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

PREFACE: WHO IS MARY MAGDALENE?

RESEARCH FOR OUR play, My Magdalene—about a young woman who finds a challenging and strengthening relationship to Mary Magdalene through her dream life—led us to France, where the Magdalene tradition lives strongly. Halfway up the hill to the cathedral at Vezelay, a nexus of Magdalene devotion, in a little stone bookstore opening onto the steep stone street, Joseph Rowe handed us The Gospel of Mary Magdalene in its original French. Completely enchanted by it, we arranged for Mr. Rowe, a very talented translator, dramatist, and musician, to translate it into English.

It became our charge to provide the foreword for this new translation. The fruits of our research, we hoped, would place Mary in some context, thereby, perhaps, making the reading of her gospel more potent.

Accomplishing this meant that we needed to find Mary both historically and geographically. We explored references to her in the Christian Gospels and the Gnostic texts. We traveled to Israel and to the south of France to follow her historical and mythical trail. We reviewed great art of the ages to see how others perceived her. We read as many books as we could find.¹ We asked each other many questions, exploring our own perceptions. And we meditated and prayed for guidance and insight. Our search is not over. It continues to be a remarkable journey.

We consider her reemergence and a renewed awareness of her importance as an essential remembering of the Feminine. The way in which Jean-Yves Leloup honors Mary Magdalene’s presence in his commentaries on her gospel contributes greatly to the convergence of her memory with the priceless wisdom of direct knowing (the true meaning of gnosis).

The earliest materials that refer to Mary Magdalene appear from two very different sources: the canonical Gospels of the New Testament, and a group of fringe materials that have come to be known as the Gnostic gospels, which were rejected by the Roman Catholic Church.

The story of the suppression of these alternative gospels reads like an adventure novel—book burnings, secret meetings of small sects found out by the authorities, exiles, executions, and so forth.

Ironically, the greatest suppression of early Christian literature began when Constantine became emperor of Rome and declared Christianity the religion of the entire Roman Empire (leading to a process of conversion that occurred over a number of years, from his initial victory in 312 C.E. to the final defeat of his rivals in 324). In 325, Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea where it was decided which texts would become the standards of the Church—those that we now know as the canonical Gospels—and which would be suppressed. Those not chosen as standard were attacked—sometimes violently—for many years. Indeed, the bishops at the Council of Nicaea who disagreed with Constantine’s choices were exiled on the spot.²

The suppression, however, was not completely successful. Some texts survived, passed on since ancient times. Many scraps and fragments turned up in a variety of places over the years, though hardly a significant number. But in 1945 the story took a completely different turn when a stash of alternative texts was found in a large clay jar in the desert at Nag Hammadi, near Phou, Egypt. The account of how these documents traveled from the nomadic tribesmen who discovered them, through the black markets—one of the papyrus books from the jar even found its way into the possession of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung—and eventually back to Cairo makes a true adventure tale.³ The contents of this jar, along with other scraps or fragments from around the same time period, have become known as the Gnostic gospels, because of the association of many of them with the belief system of a group who called themselves Gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, meaning inner knowing, self-acquaintance, or self-knowledge. Amidst the often very strange cosmology of the Gnostic sects, there can be found what has come to be known as gnosticism, the belief that spiritual development and salvation are achieved through inner knowing. Recent writers have seized on the modern aspects of these texts, finding in them leading-edge thinking about intuition and consciousness. In reality, while the Gospel of Thomas (one of those discovered at Nag Hammadi) and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene are often considered Gnostic texts, and while they do share the same emphasis on inner knowing, they do not share the elaborate cosmology of the treatises from the Gnostic sects.⁴

The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts gave a much fuller picture of the body of materials rejected early in the history of Christianity and sparked interest in studying other incomplete texts that had been languishing in the vaults of museums. One of these texts receiving renewed interest was the Gospel of Mary, found in Egypt in 1896 and left to the care of the Berlin Museum. The rediscovery of this gospel resulted in a number of translations—the first in 1955—and this translation from the Coptic to French by Jean-Yves Leloup, a scholar who has a deep intellectual and spiritual understanding of the whole range of early scriptures, and who has commented on many of them.

Besides translating the texts found in Egypt, scholars have attempted to determine their ages. Most scholars believe that the jar discovered at Nag Hammadi was placed there around 350 C.E. and that the Coptic texts in it were translations from Greek originals. How old, then, were the original writings? Complex textual analysis can lead only to educated guesses. Some scholars believe that the text of the Sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas goes back to 50 C.E., that it predates the canonical Gospels, and that it may be contemporaneous with the Q text thought to be the common (missing) sourcebook for the canonical Gospels. Some think that other portions of the Gnostic gospels date to no earlier than the third century, while others suggest that the Gospel of Mary Magdalene may date to the early part of the second century.⁵

Ultimately, all that we know is not enough to allow us to determine the exact historical origins of the Gospel of Mary in either time or place. Once we have exhausted historical certainties, however, we can determine something of the context of this work and its author through other means.

We have four ways to explore a life story that goes as far back in time as that of Mary Magdalene. First, we can review the available references to her in the canonical Gospels and the Gnostic texts. Some of the Gnostic texts feature Magdalene prominently and convey a very different picture from the Gospels we’re familiar with, including the presentation of Magdalene as the intimate companion of Jesus, while the references presented in the canonical Gospels themselves can be examined for their deeper resonance.

Second, we can approach the story through the eyes and experiences of the great artists who have focused on scenes from the Gospel references to Mary and have interpreted them through their own intuitions (filtered, of course, through the views of their cultural context). In reviewing art from books and tramping through museums around the world, we have been fascinated by several recurring symbolic interpretations: Magdalene is often painted with red or golden hair; she is repeatedly associated with a jar used for anointing; and many times she is depicted in the presence of a skull.

A third way to approach the story of the Gospel of Mary and the significance of Mary herself is to explore both on a purely symbolic level, much as artists have done with their recurring images. Doing so enables us to pose and, perhaps answer, the questions: What does this woman represent to us today, and what is the symbolic significance of her words and actions?

Last, an approach to Mary and her existence can be a particularly spiritual exploration. What has fueled our personal research is that we perceive a profound and important spiritual truth embodied by Mary Magdalene and her unique relationship with Jesus, one that has been ignored or edited from the last two millennia.

The canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) mention Mary Magdalene by name a handful of times, though many have assigned to her the identity of other unnamed women who figure in these four texts. For instance, there has been some assumption that she and Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’s sister, are the same person. Likewise, Luke refers to a woman, a sinner—often assumed to be a prostitute—who brings unguent to anoint Jesus at the home of Simon, a Pharisee, and some have believed that Magdalene is this sinner who receives forgiveness after washing Jesus’ feet with her tears (Luke 7:36–50).

Mary’s identity as a prostitute stems from Homily 33 of Pope Gregory I, delivered in the year 591, in which he declared that she and the unnamed woman in Luke 7 are, in fact, one and the same, and that the faithful should hold Mary as the penitent whore:

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. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? . . . It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts.⁶

It is interesting to note that the Greek word interpreted as sinner in the verse of Luke to which Pope Gregory referred was harmartolos, which can be translated several ways. From a Jewish perspective, it could mean one who has transgressed Jewish law. It might also mean someone who, perhaps, did not pay his or her taxes. The word itself does not imply a streetwalker or a prostitute. The Greek word for harlot, porin, which is used elsewhere in Luke, is not the word used for the sinful woman who weeps at Jesus’ feet. In fact, there is no direct reference to her—or to Mary—as a prostitute anywhere in the Gospels.

Amidst all of the conjecture regarding the identity of Mary we find some important details that do emerge from all four Gospels: Mary Magdalene is the only woman besides Mother Mary who is mentioned by name in all four texts, and her name, in all but one instance, is the first listed when there is mention of the women present at an event. The texts also clearly indicate that Jesus heals Mary Magdalene by freeing her from seven demons (Mark 16:9, Luke 8:2), an event referred to by Pope Gregory in Homily 33. We learn, as well, that she is one of the three, along with John the Apostle and Mother Mary, who waits at the foot of the cross during Christ’s crucifixion ( John 19:25). And, most essentially, we know that Mary Magdalene is the first to see Jesus Christ resurrected from the tomb ( John 20:11–18, Mark 16:9, Matthew 28:9–10). It is because of this that she is considered the apostle of apostles, and is so called even by Saint Augustine.

Altogether, these few specifics seems so paltry, so scant! Yet they give us enough to work with, if we can understand their condensed meanings. Each of these references translates something more than its face value and provides more insight about Mary.

We hear in the Gospels about many healings—of the crowds of sick and needy gathering to receive Jesus’ touch or glance.⁷ But only in the case of Mary Magdalene are seven demons released from one person. The usual conclusion has been that this exceptional number of demons must stem directly from the depth of her sin. But there may be another interpretation, which lies in the number seven.

Since ancient times, spiritual science has understood that human beings have seven energy centers located throughout the body. These wheels of energy are called chakras in Sanskrit. The understanding of chakras can be traced from the earliest teachings in India, to the cultures of Babylon and Assyria, then to the culture of Egypt. From there, it entered the traditions of the Hebrews—there are many references to the sevenfold structure of spiritual worlds in Hebrew scripture and thought that the Hebrews themselves claimed to have received as divine revelation, but which also may have been absorbed during their captivities in Babylon and Egypt.⁸

The Hebrew menorah reflects this numerical and spiritual connection: the six candles reach up to the seventh, central light of the spirit. Today the awareness of the body’s seven energy centers is the focus of the spiritual science of many healers who work with chakras and the seven levels.⁹

Unfortunately, the fact that Mary Magdalene is freed from the possession of seven demons has resulted in greater focus on the perceived stigma of her past as interpreted in Homily 33 than on her cleansed state after this healing. Only in 1969 did the Catholic Church officially repeal Gregory’s labeling of Mary as a whore, thereby admitting their error—though the image of Mary Magdalene as the penitent whore has remained in the public teachings of all Christian denominations. Like a small erratum buried in the back pages of a newspaper, the Church’s correction goes unnoticed, while the initial and incorrect article continues to influence readers.

But it’s important to remember that Jesus Christ does relieve Mary of the seven demons—or, perhaps, those aspects that can cloud vision and energy at each of the seven chakras. Presumably, she no longer possesses the seven deadly sins—pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth. In their place exist the corresponding virtues¹⁰—the way has been cleared for the seven virgins of light.¹¹ If her purification is viewed in this way, it makes her the most thoroughly sanctified person mentioned in the New Testament. Imagine being completely cleansed of prejudice and old grudges, fogs of illusion, hereditary obstacles to health, all desires. Once healed, she can truly see the spiritual truth that works in all things. She can see the barbarity of other human beings, as well as the transcendent beauty of Jesus Christ’s teachings. In modern terms, her heart and energetic centers are open.

On the third morning after the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene feels a call to visit Jesus’ tomb. She takes with her a container of unguent, perhaps one in the series of ancient oils used to assist the dead through the underworld and into the realms of spirit. She alone meets Jesus Christ at the tomb in his resurrected body. It is easy to imagine that she receives an important teaching here, one that can be comprehended only by a person whose seven demons have been lifted.

The evangelists John, Mark, and Matthew all relate this first appearance to Mary of the risen Christ. The brief verbal exchange that then occurs between Christ and Mary as related in the Gospel of John has spurred much debate. When she understands that the man she has assumed is the gardener is actually her teacher, she speaks the intimate word rabboni, and reaches toward him. Jesus Christ responds, in the King James version ( John 20:17), Do not touch me. The Latin translation is, Noli me tangere. These words have been interpreted as confirmation that Mary Magdalene still carries some of the taint from her sins. In other words, some perceive Jesus Christ’s words as, Stay away from me, you soiled woman. Indeed, many statues with the inscription, Noli me tangere depict a transcendent Jesus Christ and a woman below him, groveling in the ultimate shame of rejection.

Were Mary Magdalene still soiled from her past, however, then we would have to conclude that Jesus Christ is not really an effective healer—that he hadn’t really done the job of cleansing her of her demons. If we look at Christ’s words in the original Greek, the meaning translates a little differently. "Me mou aptou" uses the imperative mood of the verb (h)aptein, to fasten. A better translation would then be, Don’t hold onto me or Don’t cling to me.

Now for the full line: Do not cling to me, for I am not yet ascended to the Father. The last part of the sentence takes on the greater importance—Jesus Christ refers to the nature of the resurrected body that exists between the earthly body and the ascended body, a nature which we could think of as the eidolon, that is, the pure and ideal image.¹²

When we let go of the emphasis on Mary Magdalene’s rejection that some hear in Jesus’ words outside the tomb, and see this instead as a teaching about the other worlds in which we can exist, we can then understand that these words may indicate her very special role. She is the one—perhaps, because of her purified state, the only one—who can deliver Christ’s message: Go to my brethren and tell them I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God. At this point, she becomes in the canonical Gospels the apostle of apostles, which the other gospels (from Nag Hammadi, the third-century Pistis Sophia, and so forth) expand upon.¹³ Jesus clearly asks her to represent a teaching to the others—to the men who were not to be found at the foot of the cross during the Crucifixion, the men who did not believe Jesus himself when he told