As told in the Gospel of John:
She was with him to the end and beyond. As Jesus hangs in agony on the cross, his life ebbing, Mary Magdalene is there, beside his mother, Mary watching. The Passion has been tumultuous and frightening, and crucifixion is slow, but still she stays. Finally the hour comes. “It is finished.” Jesus says, and bows his head. His body is bound in linen, carried to a garden, buried in a tomb.
Before dawn on the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene rises to anoint Christ’s body and makes her way to the grave. It is empty. The Lord is gone; She is confused, and terrified. She races back to tell the others, returning with them so that they can see for themselves. The other disciples come and go again, unsured of what to think.
Mary Magdalene stood silently with tears in the Gardens, confused over the disappearance of Jesus’ body.
Then comes a voice and question. “Woman, why are you weeping?” She hear from behind her. “Whom do you seek?” She turns and thinking she sees the gardener, answers, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid, and I will take him away.” Then in a recognizable voice, Jesus says, “Mary,” Crying, “Rabboni,” She leaps up in joy to embrace her teacher.
“Do not touch me,” Jesus says, distancing himself from her, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Her words to disciples are simple and few, yet they transformed the world: “I have seen the Lord.”
***
With this begins the history of Christianity and ends the New Testament history of Mary Magdalene. Peter and Paul form the new church, Stephen dies a martyr’s death, John the Divine envisions the End Times. But Mary Magdalene, a critical figure in his earthly circle is neither seen nor heard from again.
Throughout the old texts, women in the bible are often named in relation to the men around them. Mary, however was named for her hometown Magdala. This seems to imply that Mary Magdalene was something very unusual for her time: single and independent. The Gospel of Mary, part of the ‘Gnostic Gospel’ describes depicts Mary as a leader of Jesus’ followers in the days after his resurrection.
So, does this mean that Dan Brown was right and the Church has hid the fact that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus? Not quite.
Throughout history, the story of Jesus and Mary has been the stuff of literature and legend, politics and theology, controversy and conflict. Mary had always been an inconvenient woman. Although the Gospel can’t avoid her- mentioning her 13 times in the New Testament- they offer few details of her life.
In 591, Pope Gregory the Great, in need of a model of penance, claimed that Mary had worked as a prostitute: “She had coveted with earthly eyes, but now through penitence these are consumed with tears...she turned the mass of her crimes to virtues.”
This was later, overturned by the Pope in 1969.
The “Da Vinci Code” especially misses the point about Mary when it makes its case that she was the bride of Christ. Dan Brown used as evidence a gap-filled passage from the Gospel of Philip, that reads: “And the companion of the [gap] Mary Magdalene. [gap] her more than [gap] the disciples [gap] kiss her [gap] on her [gap].”
Those gaps leave many questions. But even if we filled the gaps as Dan Brown did:
Jesus loved Mary more than the male apostles and kissed her on her mouth, the passage is less sensational than we might think. In Gnostic tradition, kisses on lips are not erotic but a chaste act meant to symbolize the passage of knowledge and truth. Elsewhere in the Gospel of Philip, Jesus also kisses his male disciples on the mouth. This passage is certainly significant, for it could imply that Mary had special authority in his church.
Brown’s mistake is understandable. Sex sells. Mary remains a prisoner, a mistaken creature of sex. Mary was chosen to lead the church because she was the mother of his child.
The truth of course, may be something more subversive. The intellectual and spiritual equality of the sexes. |
At 4:41 PM,
So what you're saying is....Jesus used to kiss men....on the mouth. An interesting notion that might fill purists with rage.
I have a question, how did Adam and Eve's children have children of their own?
At 12:12 AM,
Interesting theory but there are some flaws in your logic.
"In Gnostic tradition, kisses on lips are not erotic but a chaste act meant to symbolize the passage of knowledge and truth"
Jesus was not Gnostic, technically he wasn't even a Christian. For a Jew to kiss an unmarried female virgin on the lips is asking to be stoned to death .. read the scriptures.
And oh yeah, Gnosticism is generally unsupportive of sexuality. It is ok for guys to kiss each other on the lips .. not guys kissing other girls.
At 12:22 AM,
and I forgot to add , The Gospel Of Philip mentions describes Jesus kissing Mary Magdelene frequently not only once , but of course it is mentioned only vaguely .
This is the complete excerpt :
And the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene. [...] more than [...] the disciples, [...] kiss her [...] 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.
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I wonder what he meant by the parable ..
At 9:34 AM,
What I don't get is the big deal these people make about the suggestion that Jesus was married and had a kid. I mean, how does this invalidate his teachings about loving one another, being kind etc etc etc (teachings that have long since been discarded by the truly religious, who use religion to forment persecution and hatred). Should anyone even care about the issue, I mean they talk about the Bible as if its indisputable truth, which then brings me back to Adam and Eve's kids banging each other.
At 9:41 AM,
Furthermore, the concept of Jesus being the son of god is a matter of interpretation. He constantly referred to god as his father and that he was a child of god, but perhaps no more that the rest of us, for aren't we all children of god?
Even the resurrection is a bit iffy, we doubt when people we know claim to see ghost. Yet the strength of the belief that near fanatical followers of Jesus did in fact see the messiah after his death, despite the possibility the could have been hallucinating or even lying to advance their cause, is astounding.
What bothers me is that a jumble of passages from 2000 years ago can be used in our world as a weapon to discredit science, rob people of free will, destroy societies and cultures, purely on the basis of some infallible truth contained within a text that even the people who believe in can't truly agree upon.
Oh religion, such a bittersweet concoction thou art...