The rest of the title sentence is ... “will never be known.” Sorry. But, boy do millions of people want to know about her—and her relationship to Jesus.
The big question right now seems to be, "were they married?” I actually find that question strange and superficial. The huge success of Dan Brown’s
book, The Da Vinci Code, makes it obvious that this topic strikes a major metaphysical chord. Why is that such a big deal? Brown leads his readers to conclude that the “fact” that Jesus and Mary had been married and had at least one child has been covered up by the Catholic Church—as if that information coming to light would somehow destroy the institution. Are any of our great philosophers or spiritual leaders
diminished by having loved and married? By having children? How could this be a problem for anyone—unless he couldn’t tolerate “holy man” and “sexuality” in the same sentence?
No great change agents in history have ever operated alone, even though it may seem so, the way they generally are portrayed. A contemporary example is Martin Luther King, Jr., a name synonymous with the
civil rights movement. While a powerful leader in that movement and one who deserves much credit, what is also true is that his thinking was shaped by his parents, his teachers, and other great thinkers before him, such as Gandhi and his ideas on non-violence. There were many courageous people, including Mrs. King, speaking out against racial inequality; and prior events and changes in the culture provided the right
timing for the ideas to take root. The harbinger of Christianity was certainly Jesus of Nazareth but that movement cannot logically be any different than the civil rights movement. Who influenced Jesus? Who supported him when the going got rough?
This is the question I’d like answered as scholars and visionaries look back to the beginnings of a spiritual revolution and ask, “Who was Mary?”
My favorite antagonist in the debate over the real Mary Magdalene is Kenneth L. Woodward, a contributing editor at Newsweek. In his article, “A Quite Contrary Mary,” which appears on the web site, beliefnet.com, he wrote, “In the case of Mary Magdalene, the news is not what is being said about her, but the new context in which she is being placed--and who is doing the placing and why. In
other words, Mary Magdalene has become a project for a certain kind of ideologically committed feminist scholarship.” Hmm. The rest of the article devolved into a nasty dig at feminism.
Who are some of these ideologically committed scholars? Check out Karen L. King’s latest book,
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle. This renowned
scholar is a Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University Divinity School. In introducing her book she discusses the Gospel of Mary, written in the second century and only recently come to light and which provides “... an intriguing glimpse into a kind of Christianity lost for almost fifteen hundred years.” This glimpse is quite different from that described in the Gospels, and one which “... presents the
most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women’s leadership ...”.
The brilliant scholar and writer, Elaine Pagels (Stanford and Harvard trained and currently Professor of Religion at Princeton University), as early as 1976 was asking, “What Became of God the Mother?” A preeminent interpreter of the
so-called Gnostic Gospels, Pagels wrote of a group of texts which “... claims to have received a secret tradition from Jesus through James, and significantly, through Mary Magdalene. In her latest book, Pagels also draws from the Gnostic Gospels and features
The Secret Gospel of Thomas. In a thoughtful chapter on the nature of mysticism, or mystical experiences, Pagels turned again to the
Gospel of Mary
Magdalene in which Mary defended the visionary’s point of view. It is shortly after Jesus’ death and “... most of the disciples, apparently at a loss to find the divine within themselves, ‘were grieved, and wept greatly,’ terrified that they would be killed as Jesus was. Then Mary stood up, spoke, and ‘turned their hearts to the good’...”, as she told them what Jesus had spoken to her in visions.
In my work as a transpersonal and past-life regression therapist I have come to appreciate why visionaries such as Mary espoused Gnosis, or knowledge which comes through insight and intuition. I have had the great fortune to work with some remarkable women and men, who, while coming to know themselves at the deepest level, have also found the god and goddess within—the secret of
gnosis, as Pagels points out in The Gnostic Gospels. Many of these clients report past lives have having lived during the time of Christ, and while some consider the material which appears in their mind’s eye as a metaphor and others as actual past lives, what is very clear to me is there is something both transformative and evolutionary is going on. Not all clients agree on the details of two thousand years ago—but
how would they? My siblings and I don’t even tell the same story of our childhood growing up in Idaho. Most clients do report that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were intimate friends, and most say they were married. All agree that Mary and many other women including Myrium, or Jesus’ mother, Ruth, his sister and others, were his teachers, his confidants, his lovers and apostles and that after Jesus’ death, the teachings
became distorted, the power of the image of the crucified Christ was usurped in the name of controlling people, the movement was thrown out of balance when the men stopped listening to the women, and that the followers “weren’t good enough” to continue his work after his crucifixion. Therefore there has been internalized in all of them deep feelings of guilt, shame, anger and failure. The good news today is that the
other belief which they all have in common is that “we are back with another chance to get it right and make things even better.”
Julia Ingram, M.A. is the New York Times best selling co-author of
The Messengers, and the author of the forthcoming book,
The Lost Sisterhood: The Return of Mary Magdalene, the Mother Mary and Other Holy Women, available August 2004. For information or Julia’s seminars and workshops or to order the book go to The Books Page.
References
King, Karen L.,
Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle,
Polebridge Press, Inc., 2003.
Pagels, Elaine H.
What Became of God the Mother: Taken from Womanspirit Rising,
edited by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, Harper & Row, 1979, pp. 107-119.
