In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is the first to encounter the risen Christ. After the male disciples have returned to their homes, she weeps at the tomb alone, telling the two angels there, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”[1] She turns and sees Jesus, though she does not know it is he, and pleads with him: “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”[2] Mary is desperate, seeking and grieved. But Jesus reveals himself by saying her name, and she responds with joy: “Teacher!”[3] It is a sweet tale, full of grief and hidden expectation, full of the persistence of a follower of Christ who refuses to give up on his promise. It is also, however, not the story most will conjure up when thinking of Mary Magdalene.
The repentant whore, the woman with the alabaster jar, the lady of seven vices, the sinful woman – Mary has collected many names in the Christian world over the past two thousand years. But none, it turns out, is an accurate portrayal of Mary. A close analysis of the text of the New Testament, especially the Gospels, reveals no connection between Mary Magdalene, from whom seven demons were removed, and the prostitute, who anoints his feet before the crucifixion. Scholars studying ancient sources both canonical and non-orthodox agree that Mary Magdalene was actually an important, non-prostitute figure in Jesus’ ministry, most certainly in appearance at his crucifixion and, according to tradition in almost all texts that mention her, at the tomb to encounter him in his risen form after the resurrection.[4]
This paper does not seek to validate these claims about Mary’s identity, or to engage in exegesis to “prove” that Mary was not, in fact, a prostitute or any of the other things the Church has claimed she was. This paper instead seeks to study another issue, that of how Mary’s molded identity came to be. It does so by looking at the ancient texts that surrounded her and their engagement with gendered power dynamics. Mary’s role in Christ’s ministry as described in the canonical and gnostic gospels reveals a consistent, negative male response to female power and divine knowledge. Specifically, the gnostic and canonical gospels each describe scenarios in which Mary’s knowledge or spiritual experience is challenged by male power. In each instance, she is defended by Christ. This paper explores these incidents, arguing that this consistent pattern predicts without supporting the eventual medieval and modern orthodox understanding of Mary, her warped image and transformation into reformed sinner, and, more broadly, the suppression of female participation in the Church.
Let us begin with the canonical texts. Though Mary Magdalene is mentioned many times throughout the four canonical gospels, only one incidence involves a confrontation with male power. In Luke 24, after Mary and several other women find the empty tomb on the third day and encounter the angels who tell them Jesus has risen, they go to tell the disciples. But the disciples do not take the news well. Luke writes, “these words seemed to [the disciples] an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”[5] Later, when the disciples are talking with a man who they do not yet know is Jesus, they tell him, “Some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive.”[6] Jesus responds: “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”[7] He then explains to them the scriptures that predicted his death and resurrection.
Here we have the most tame version of what will soon emerge as a pattern in descriptions of Mary Magdalene’s time in Jesus’ ministry. She has had a spiritual experience, and recounts it to some of the male disciples. They respond in disbelief, thinking Mary and the other women have made up their story. Even in the other Gospel accounts, when Mary Magdalene is actually the first to even meet the resurrected Christ, there is still not a positive response from the male disciples; in fact, in all the other Gospel accounts besides Luke, there is no response at all. Jane Schaberg, author of The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, remarks that “this may be a clear indication of conflict that is all the more powerful for being indirect and subtle.”[8] It is possible that the lack of response to the women’s story in Matthew and John suggests that the men in this version did not believe them, too. Jesus, however, does respond to the disbelief, and his response is strong – he indicates that the disciples are being foolish in not believing the women in their story, and defends the truth of their account. This, too, is a part of the pattern that will continue to emerge once this paper delves into the gnostic scriptures and their portrayals of Mary Magdalene. But the disbelief of the male disciples is more important here than Jesus’ condemnation of them. The male disciples refuse to believe the story that this group of women including Mary report, not just because it isn’t plausible to them, but most likely because the reporters are women, because the idea that women would be bringing the good news of resurrection was “troublesome in a Jewish environment where only the testimony of men counted.”[9] This is an important phenomenon that is true throughout the portrayals of Mary and her disagreements with the male disciples, especially in the gnostic texts.
Before digging into these gnostic scripture, it is prudent to explore some background information. Many of the most important gnostic texts, those of the Nag Hammadi Library, were discovered in 1945 after being hidden in a cave for over a millennium and a half.[10] These texts are called “gnostic” because they belonged to groups associated with Gnosticism, which is “an umbrella term for a variety of sects and movements flourishing in the first four centuries CE that ‘offered to enlightened adherents escape from the evils of the natural world and the celestial tyrants who governed it,’”[11] according to Schaberg and E.A. Clark. These movements centered on the concept of hidden knowledge, or gnosis, and supported a dualistic concept of spirit and body and radical withdrawal from the material world.[12] The gnostic texts explored in this paper are those that represent Mary Magdalene as an important contributor to Jesus’ ministry, and that present her in conflict with male disciples: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Pistis Sophia, and the Gospel of Mary.
Circumstances in the gnostic texts in which Mary is confronted by disapproving male disciples can now be explored, beginning with the Gospel of Thomas. In Logion 114, the Gospel of Thomas reads, “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males.’”[13] This is a striking passage that contains a lot of information. First of all, Peter is attacking Mary, not only for her position as a disciple, but for her participation in “any part in salvation and the kingdom of heaven.”[14] Antti Marjanen, author of The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents, suggests that Peter could be representing a contemporary opinion about women here, either “function[ing] as a caricature of a major ecclesiastical view with its clear subordination of women,” or acting as “an archetype[…]of those early Christian ascetics[…]who view the presence of women as threatening,”[15] which she feels is more probable. Either way, Peter is certainly speaking against Mary’s inclusion in the group and her authority as a disciple. But, as in the canonical gospel, the male attack on Mary is rebuked by none other than Jesus, who presents his solution: making Mary into a male. Because there is nuance and background to Jesus’ comment that is beyond the scope of this paper, no explanation for it will be attempted. It should be noted, however, that the simple pattern has been repeated – Mary has been attacked by male disciple, and then defended by Jesus.
The next gnostic scripture to be considered is the Gospel of Philip. The Gospel 63,30-64,9 reads:
Mary Magdalene[.] [the Savior] […loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her […]. The rest of [the disciples…]. They said to him: “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Savior answered and said to them: “why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.”[16]
In this passage we again have the male disciples attacking Mary Magdalene, this time because of her “special ability to grasp spiritual realities,”[17] and because Jesus seems to prefer her to the men. Again Jesus defends Mary, his parable about the darkness and the blind man clearly “depict[ing] Mary as able to see the light, and the disciples as blind.”[18] True, the nature of the disciples’ attack is slightly different, more in the realm of jealousy, but it still remains a gendered comment, ostensibly, “why do you love her [, a woman] more than all of us [, men]?”
The third gnostic text involving Mary Magdalene being attacked by male disciples is the Pistis Sophia. In the text, Peter, who opposes Mary three times,[19] speaks up regarding Mary’s frequent speech,[20] saying: “My Lord, we are not able to suffer this woman who takes the opportunity from us, and does not allow anyone of us to speak, but she speaks many times.”[21] To this, Jesus responds by “point[ing] out that the only criterion by which one gains a right to speak is that the power of the Spirit enables her or him to understand what Jesus is talking about,”[22] according to Marjanen’s summary. Schaberg notes that Peter refers to Mary, not as sister or fellow disciple, but as “this woman,” “thus verbally push[ing] her away, creating a distinction.”[23] Peter, of course, is upset with Mary because she, as a woman, is more advanced spiritually than him and his male disciple friends.[24] This seems to take a toll on Mary, who later, in Part II Chapter 72, indicates that, though equipped to interpret, she is worried about speaking up because she is “afraid of Peter, for he threatens [her] and hates [her] race.”[25] Here, Peter has intimidated her enough that she fears speaking revelations handed down from God – this male disciple has posed a significant barrier to her understanding and relationship with the Savior. Despite Jesus’ earlier defense of her, Mary is distraught and discouraged from participating. Again, this is a reiteration of the pattern, with a male disciple attacking Mary because she is a woman.
Finally, a last gnostic text that includes male disciples attacking Mary’s authority is the Gospel of Mary itself. Because the portion of the Gospel that involves conflict between Mary and the male disciples is multifaceted and nuanced, let us consider it in its entirety. It begins after Mary has offered a revelation revealed to her by Jesus:
Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Savior: “Did he really speak with a woman without our knowledge (and) not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Then Mary wept and said to Peter: “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?” Levi answered and said to Peter: “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect humanity and acquired it for ourselves as he commanded us, and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.”[26]
There are multiple things going on in this passage. First, we have the classic, repeated pattern: Mary’s revelation, the male disciple’s retort, and the response, based on Christ, in favor of Mary. Like before, the male disciples’ issue is less with the content of Mary’s revelation and more with its context, with Peter “reject[ing] the thought that the Savior would have spoken secretly to a woman,”[27] according to Schaberg. She writes, “such secret teaching would mean that [Mary] should be listened to, that she was chosen over them, and that is unacceptable… the attack again is not person; Mary is not attacked as unworthy, unmarried, unveiled, demon-possessed, impure, or whatever – but as a woman.”[28] This is a consistent characteristic throughout these conflicts in the gnostic scriptures, that Mary is unworthy only for the reason of her gender. Karen King, author of “Notes on Canonization and Marginalization: Mary of Magdala,” agrees, noting that in the Gospel of Mary, “Peter’s position is shown up for what it is[,] an ignorant jealousy which makes it impossible for Peter to see past the distinctions of the flesh to the spiritual insight of Mary’s teachings.”[29] Essentially, Peter cannot allow himself to surmount the issue of Mary’s femaleness to focus on the substance of her revelation. Beyond even this, though, is the issue of how Mary is validated by Levi; that he does not mention Mary’s womanhood in his response is significant, indicating that, as Schaberg writes, “Mary’s leadership has been supported but at the price of her […] identity as a woman.”[30] This is similar to the incident in the Gospel of Thomas when Jesus promises to make Mary into a woman.
As a whole, the repeated pattern considered here, of attack and defense of Mary, serves to demonstrate that Mary’s role as an important, female disciple was not without issue or controversy. That these gospels consistently illustrate male disapproval but also show Jesus’ response in favor of Mary is significant, however, suggests that these accounts were hoping to produce “an ungendered space in which both women and men could exercise legitimate leadership,”[31] according to King. But we know that this ungendered space did not come to pass; the orthodox theology won the day, and when the gnostic scriptures were buried and hidden in a cave, their liberal ideas about female leadership and the importance of Mary in the ministry of Christ were on their way to a similar fate.
Mary Magdalene’s history with the orthodox church is long and troubled, and falls much in line with the Church’s history with women as a whole, the latter being, according to Lisa Boyer, “the sacrifice that got the early church to a state that the victorious called unity.”[32] Despite Mary’s early, positive status in the church as an apostle even rivaling Peter,[33] her role began to shift as the church institutionalized. As Christianity negotiated its early conflicts, including attitudes about the material world, sexuality, celibacy, and sainthood, the role of women in the church was changing.[34] In an article for the Smithsonian Magazine, James Carroll writes, “after the Gospels [were] written, but before the New Testament [was] defined as such, Jesus’ rejection of the prevailing male dominance was being eroded in the Christian community.”[35] One can imagine that conversations like those of the gnostic scriptures involving the male disciples’ challenge of Mary were occurring again between leaders of the church, but Jesus was not there to defend women’s importance. Instead, the gnostic scriptures and attitudes were tossed aside, and Mary’s image was recast. Carroll explains, “the need to disempower the figure of Mary Magdalene, so that her succeeding sisters in the church would not compete with men for power, meshed with the impulse to discredit women generally.”[36]
It was Pope Gregory I’s great homily that sealed Mary’s fate: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, who John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark,” he wrote. He went on: “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.”[37] This logical jump, this misguided exegesis, did not occur by accident. As King explains, “the serious effort necessary to contrive and sustain these strained exegetical connections certainly show that it was not a casual exercise.”[38] Instead, “what drove the anti-sexual sexualizing of Mary Magdalene was the male need to dominate women,”[39] the desire of the male power structures to oppress women into silence, submission, and repentance. They accomplished this so well, however, that “the men of the church who benefited from the recasting […] would not know that this was what had happened. Having created a myth, they would not remember that it was mythical. Their Mary Magdalene […] became the only Mary Magdalene that existed.”[40] Thus, these men, with the same attitudes as the male disciples in the gnostic and canonical scriptures, but without Jesus or any power greater than themselves to stop them, created their own reality: the reality that continues to oppress the more historically and religiously accurate identity of Mary Magdalene, and the reality that makes a reader not recognize her true story, the story presented in the beginning of this work.
This paper has demonstrated the gnostic and canonical scriptures’ pattern involving male disciples attacking Mary Magdalene’s authority as a woman, and this repetition’s prediction of the Church’s response to female participation and Mary’s identity. Having recognized this pattern, this repeated iteration of female recasting and oppression, we as scholars are offered only one good option in moving forward. That is, we must fight against this inaccurate portrayal of one of Jesus’ most important disciples, we must fervently defend her true identity, and we must remain vigilant for other cases of such misogyny and sexism in the world of scripture and religion, now and in the future.
[1] John 20:13, ESV.
[2] John 20:15.
[3] John 20:16.
[4] Karen King, “Canonization and Marginalization: Mary of Magdala,” Concilium 3, no. 29 (1998): 284.
[5] Luke 24:10-11.
[6] Luke 24:22-25.
[7] Luke 24:26.
[8] Jane Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha and the Christian Testament (New York, NY, 2004), 224.
[9] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 226.
[10] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 121.
[11] Ibid., 122.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Marvin Meyer and James Robinson, Nag Hammadi Scriptures (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2010), 153.
[14] Antti Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1996), 53.
[15] Ibid., 54.
[16] Ibid., 162-163.
[17] Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved, 165.
[18] Ibid., 161.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., 174.
[21] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 36-37.
[22] Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved, 181.
[23] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 162.
[24] Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved, 181.
[25] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 162.
[26] Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved, 114.
[27] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 176.
[28] Ibid., 176.
[29] King, “Canonization and Marginalization,” 287.
[30] Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, 177.
[31] King, “Canonization and Marginalization,” 287.
[32] Lisa Boyer, “Conspicuous in Their Absence: Women in Early Christianity,” Cross Currents 53, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 50.
[33] James Carroll, 2006. “Who was Mary Magdalene?” Smithsonian Magazine, June 2006, 1.
[34] Ibid., 1.
[35] Ibid., 8.
[36] Ibid., 7.
[37] Pope Gregory I, Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. David Hurst (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press LLC, 2009), 269.
[38] King, “Canonization and Marginalization,” 286.
[39] Carroll, “Who was Mary Magdalene?” 8.
[40] Ibid., 8.
To Marvelous Light 