by Joey Sprague
October 28, 2012
What’s the first word that pops into your mind when you think of Mary of Magdala? If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking “prostitute.” Perhaps you’re envisioning one of those many images showing a woman prostrate before Jesus and expressing her repentance for her sinful past through washing His feet with her hair. Or maybe you are thinking of Jesus Christ Superstar, and a woman singing “I don’t know how to love him…He’s just a man, and I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways, He’s just one more.”
James Carroll, writing in the Smithsonian, says about this image of Mary of Magdala: “this woman became the embodiment of Christian devotion, which was defined as repentance.”
It’s interesting–and telling, I think–that though this image has been pervasive throughout Christian tradition, there does not seem to be any real evidence to support it. I am certainly no Biblical expert but I have been reading some and this is what they say: There is no evidence that Mary of Magdala was ever a prostitute, the reference to Jesus casting out demons from her in Luke 8:2 probably referred to His healing her of a serious illness, and the gospels do not name the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her hair.
What we really know about Mary of Magdala is quite different: She was a key disciple of Jesus and an important leader in the early Jesus movement.
We can see signs of her importance in the stories in the Gospels:
Luke 8:1-3 tells us she was one of a group of women who followed Jesus and used their resources to help support his work.
She, along with His mother and her sister (and perhaps one other woman) stayed through the crucifixion when most of the others fled.
She helped to bury Jesus and, either alone or with others, went back to the tomb to anoint his body which is when she found Him gone.
She was the person to whom the risen Jesus first appeared and, since He told her not to touch Him, was close enough to Him for that to have been a possibility.
She was also the first apostle, the one who Jesus sent to tell the others, the first preacher of the Good News.
The Biblical historians I’ve been reading argue that the way the gospels write about her underscore Mary’s importance:
Mary is one of the few women who is referred to by name in the gospels. By the time redactors translated early oral traditions into text, the names of many other women had dropped out of history but not Mary of Magdala’s—she apparently was too significant to forget.
Whenever Mary is mentioned among a list of women, her name comes first. For example, that text from Luke refers to Joanna. As the wife of one of Herod’s stewards, Joanna is in a prominent social position while Mary came from the relatively poor region of Magdala. The customs of the time would dictate mentioning Joanna first so Luke’s approach signals Mary is a person of high status.
Not only that, Mary is referred to with the distinction “of Magdala.” This is the translation of a Greek form that is used specifically to indicate a person of note. According to Mary R. Thompson, besides references to Mary of Magdala, there are exactly 9 other times where this form of reference appears in the New Testament and, of those, 6 refer to Jesus, usually Jesus of Nazareth.
Other historical evidence also supports the conclusion that Mary was an influential preacher to the new Jesus movement:
For one thing, women in that era were not as totally marginalized as we might assume. While women were far from equal, documents from the time show that there were women of wealth who provided the resources to build synagogues and other community buildings. At least some women served as deacons and in other leadership positions in their synagogues. And we know that the early Jesus movement included groups that held women as equals (c.f. Paul).
And then there’s the Gospel of Mary, written early in the second century. Like the many other gospels scholars have recovered from the early days of Christianity, it was written by a “redactor” who wrote from the oral tradition of a Christian community. The existence of this text shows that some community was heavily influenced by Mary of Magdala.
In fact, this and other texts from that era give the impression that in the years after Jesus died, Mary’s status as an “apostle” was comparable to that of Peter.
How did Mary of Magdala go from being an important disciple and leader in the early Jesus movement to being represented as a repentant former prostitute? And why is that latter image so pervasive?
There’s two ways to answer that question.
There’s the process way:
There was a great deal of diversity and debate among early Christian communities. They disagreed over such issues as the materiality of the resurrection, the relationship between spirit and body, and the role of women. The positions of many of these communities were recorded in texts.
In the fourth century those who were seeking to create some coherence in Christianity and delineate its distinctiveness chose from among all these diverse texts twenty-eight that would be canonical, forming the New Testament. The Gospel of Mary was among many that did not make the cut. [we don’t know how many—it’s been estimated that we’re missing 85% of that early literature]
Then in 600, Pope Gregory I gave a sermon in which he sutured together different pieces of the gospel to create the image of Mary as the repentant prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. The image was locked into Christian lore.
Another way to answer the “how did this happen?” question is in terms of a philosophical dispute in which history has been written by the victors.
Eileen Pagels, a foremost analyst of the texts we know of that didn’t make the cut, finds the diversity in those early Christian understandings roughly falls into two contrasting approaches.
One, which she calls the “orthodox” approach, was hierarchical—individuals could not access the Divine on their own, they needed the mediation of clergy. These tended to be the folks who thought women were particularly distant from the Divine.
The other, “gnostic,” approach not only held that we all have access to the Divine within and through us but also that we can think of the Divine in Feminine as well as Masculine terms and that women and men were equal.
The Gospel of Mary is an example of this second approach. Less than half has been recovered but listen to how Karen King, perhaps the foremost scholar on the text, describes the few pages we do have:
“This astonishingly brief narrative presents a radical interpretation of Jesus’ teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects his suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is–a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women’s leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority. All written in the name of a woman.”
So there were two contrasting models of thinking about the Divine and our relationship to the Divine. The Orthodox groups were the ones to succeed in institutionalizing their approach through moves like establishing a canon and a hierarchy but both persist in our time in contrasting metaphors for the Divine. Borrowing from communication scholar George Gerbner, I call these The Authoritarian Father and The Nurturing Parent. (These two metaphors are not limited to Christianity–we can see them operating among Jews and Muslims too.)
The Authoritarian Father is a male who controls from a distance, makes the rules, imposes them strictly, responds to deviation with punishment. It’s that old white guy with the beard we see in paintings. It is the expression of a hierarchical model of social organization that relies on drawing sharp dichotomies to justify domination—e.g. men/women, royalty/subjects, and other forms of normal/other.
The Nurturing Parent metaphor for the Divine resonates through the verses we heard from Hosea [11:3-4] earlier in the service:
I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.
I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
The Nurturing Parent metaphor is more consistent with the stories we have about the way Jesus spent his life on earth: feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, welcoming little children, standing up for the marginalized, and treating women as equals to men.
It’s part of the nature of God not to be able to capture it with a word but the Nurturing Parent metaphor comes closest to the description that comes closest: God is Love.
The Authoritarian Father approach emphasizes relations of dominance and submission and celebrates power and glory.
The Nurturant Parent looks to the Divine in each person and emphasizes peace and kindness.
The Authoritarian Father leads to valuing abstract spirituality over engagement in the material world.
The Nurturing Parent calls us to value most those efforts that serve the needs of others.
The Authoritarian Father prompts judging people based on who they love.
The Nurturing Parent calls us to ask rather how well they love.
And—most fundamentally, I think—the Authoritarian Father is based on valuing men over women, seeing women as less moral, as sources of temptation and sin. This position tells us to distrust the ability of women to discern the best way to follow Jesus or to make their own decisions about their bodies.
The Nurturing Parent… is not Gendered.
When wars are fought, medical providers murdered, people denied rights in the name of religion, it seems to me that the Authoritarian Father is in play. When Peacekeepers put their bodies between groups in conflict, when medical practitioners go to under-resourced areas to provide care, when people here give generously of their time and resources to help someone out, we are acting in the light of the Nurturing Parent.
Carroll said about Mary of Magdala: “this woman became the embodiment of Christian devotion, which was defined as repentance.”
The derogation of a woman by sexualizing her and laying her prostrate before a male in a demonstration of abject repentance is a fitting image for showing devotion to an Authoritarian Father.
But that version of Mary is not real. And, most importantly, it’s not the woman who Jesus chose.
If we look at the real Mary of Magdala, we see glimpses of a different embodiment of Christian devotion:
Someone who responded to the message of justice and love by joining the movement.
Someone who had the courage to stand with Jesus through the hardest of times, even when it was dangerous.
Someone who was committed enough to go to the tomb of a “rebel leader,” perhaps even all by herself, to provide the care that was needed.
Someone who went out into the world to help spread the word of a new way to live together.
What Mary of Magdala reminds us is that Love is a verb, an active verb. The model of Christian devotion she provides calls on us to do more than simply making sure we’re not breaking rules or even being good to the people around us. The real Mary of Magdala calls us to be what Joanna has been calling in her blog “offensive Christians,” to stand up for the marginalized, to fully embrace equality, to realize the power of the crowd that Joe described last week to speak truth to power so that we can, in Joanna’s words, “extend God’s life in the world.”
To edit just a bit the beautiful closing to the New Zealand Lord’s Prayer:
For the Divine reigns in the glory of the power that is active, engaged love, now and forever. Amen.
Wonderful. Can you suggest translation of the Gospel of Mary?
Michael, I think Joey read the version that is online at http://gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm. Thanks for reading!
Michael, I think Joey read the version that is online at http://gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm. Thanks for reading!