The Quest for Mary Magdalene

by Michael Haag

  That so many women companions of Jesus were afflicted by evil spirits suggests that they had all shared the same experience, had all sensed acutely the spiritual ills of the age. All may have undergone renewal at the hands of John the Baptist, and all may have turned to some form of healing, but at his arrest and his death they looked for a new source of cleansing and found it in Jesus. The most spiritually sensitive of these women, the most aware and open to the kingdom of God, the one who most entirely immersed herself in battling demons – so that she was possessed by seven devils – was Mary Magdalene.

  At the Court of Herod

  Mary Magdalene and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, travelled together round Galilee with Jesus and his other followers. Joanna, as we know, was part of Herod’s court at Tiberias. We can learn a lot more about Joanna and about the circumstances of Jesus’ ministry – and about Mary Magdalene too – if we take a close look at Herod’s unusual court.

  Herod’s capital was thoroughly Hellenised and mixed, and his court was mixed too. Joanna was Jewish, probably of an aristocratic landowning Galilean family, but her husband Chuza was an Arab. Chuza is a Nabatean name; Nabatea was an Arab kingdom with its capital at Petra in present-day Jordan. Herod Antipas’ first wife, Phasaelis, was also Nabatean, that is his wife before he married his brother’s wife Herodias for which he was denounced by John the Baptist. Chuza, who was likely high born, may well have come to the court at the time of Herod’s first marriage; in marrying Joanna the pressure of Jewish tradition would probably have demanded that Chuza convert to Judaism, but as far as external proof was concerned he could have passed as a Jew because as an Arab he may already have been circumcised, and it is quite possible that privately he remained a polytheistic pagan. Even if he had genuinely converted he may well have worn his Judaism lightly.

  It was suggested in an earlier chapter that it would be hard to imagine Chuza, a high ranking official at Herod’s court, allowing his wife Joanna to roam with Jesus and his followers, and that perhaps he had divorced her or was dead. But at one point Herod himself was drawn to what John the Baptist and Jesus had to say; as Mark 6:20 tells us, Herod was much taken by John the Baptist and ‘heard him gladly’, and also he was keen to hear about Jesus’ remarkable healings: ‘Herod said, “. . . who is this man about whom I hear such things?” And he kept trying to see Him’ (Luke 9:9). Initially, it seems, there was a certain tolerance and curiosity towards John the Baptist and Jesus. But that was before Herod gave way to the hatred and schemes of his new wife Herodias who demanded John the Baptist’s head on a platter, at which Jesus took himself away to a remote place.

  The closer we look at Herod’s court the more we discover its contradictions, on the one hand how Herod himself and several closest to him were attracted to the preachings of John the Baptist and Jesus about the kingdom of God, on the other the fear that the kingdom of God would undermine the kingdom of Herod and could only be met in the most ruthless way. Chuza and Joanna would have experienced this volatile atmosphere at first hand, perhaps even witnessing Salome’s infamous dance – and Manaen would have too.

  No one was closer to the heart of the court than Manaen, Herod’s childhood companion, his foster-brother and his closest advisor – yet he would become one of the founders of the Christian church at Antioch in Syria, the very place where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians, and there he would mentor Paul and send him with Barnabas on his first great missionary journey. ‘Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul’ (Acts 13:1).

  Herod Antipas first ruled from Sepphoris, which he rebuilt, in the words of Josephus, as ‘the ornament of Galilee’. Jesus grew up in Nazareth only four miles to the northwest and could hardly have escaped the atmosphere of Hellenism that pervaded Galilee. Even after Antipas transferred his capital to Tiberias, Sepphoris continued to flourish as witnessed by this beautiful floor mosaic dating from the end of the second century AD. Popularly known as ‘the Mona Lisa of Galilee’ she suffers not from devils but from love, if she suffers at all. But this was the world rejected by Jesus and the reformist Jews of his time.

  Mona Lisa of Galilee. Wikimedia Commons.

  Here ‘brought up with’ is the translation of syntrophos, the original Greek word used by Luke when writing Acts. Syntrophos means ‘brought up with’, ‘reared up together’, ‘foster-brother’, ‘fed from the same breast’. In the Hellenistic kingdoms of the East syntrophos was a title designating a courtier as the intimate friend of the king. From boyhood to manhood Manaen was a trusted member of Herod Antipas’ innermost circle.

  Manean went from Herod’s inner circle to being a founding father of the Christian Church. Herod was educated at Rome and we can assume that Manaen was too; he was probably the first of Jesus’ followers to have lived in the imperial city and it may have been by his guidance that Paul directed his life towards Rome. He was a man who knew Paul; many scholars think he must also have been known by Luke, who is thought to have been from Antioch, and that this accounts for the numerous references to Herod Antipas in Luke’s gospel, far more than in any other gospel.

  Joanna is thought to have been one of Luke’s sources too, further accounting for Luke’s knowledge of Herod’s court and for the large number of references to women in his gospel. Joanna and Manaen would also have provided their own eyewitness testimony to the accounts in Mark and Matthew of the circumstances surrounding John the Baptist’s death.

  Like Manaen, Joanna had an afterlife, that is after the crucifixion of Jesus, for according to some scholars she is the Junia who appears in Paul’s epistle to the Romans 16:7 where he speaks of being in jail with fellow Christians in Rome. ‘Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.’ Hellenised Jews would have two names, one their Jewish name. To boy children their parents also gave a Greek name and to their girl children they gave a Roman name. Junia is thought to be Joanna’s Roman name. And Andronicus might possibly be Chuza; if he became a follower of Jesus and went to Rome he may well have taken this Greek name. Or Chuza might have died and Junia was remarried.

  However it was, it is striking that Paul calls Junia and Andronicus ‘apostles, who also were in Christ before me’. For Matthew, Mark and Luke an apostle is one of the twelve disciples; an apostle has to be a companion of Jesus and a witness to the resurrection. For Paul, who did not know Jesus in his lifetime, an apostle was one who was called by an appearance of the risen Jesus, which according to his epistle 1 Corinthians 15:5-9 included hundreds of people, including himself because he had seen Jesus in a vision; and Paul also counted as an apostle any man or woman who was delegated by a church, such as that at Antioch, to promote the word, which again included himself.

  One way or another Junia and Andronicus were apostles and they became so before Paul’s conversion (they ‘were in Christ before me’), which very much makes it look that Junia knew Jesus in his lifetime and therefore could well be Joanna and as if to have been a witness of everything from the time of Jesus’ baptism by John.

  Circle of Familiarity

  Many of the characters of the gospel story – Herod and Joanna and Menaen and John the Baptist and Jesus – lived within a circle of familiarity. The mood of spiritual renewal engaged them all, and their backgrounds were less dissimilar than we might first think.

  John the Baptist’s family may also have been part of the Hellenistic elite; John’s father Zechariah had been a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem, a position he owed to Herod Antipas’ father, Herod the Great, acting on behalf of the Romans who had the final word in appointing the priests.

  And if Luke 1:36 is correct in saying Jesus was the cousin of John the Baptist, that would at the very least place Jesus on the fringe of that Hellenised elite. No gospel says that Jesus is a carpenter; instead in
one gospel the question is raised whether Jesus is the son of Joseph the carpenter while in another the question is whether Jesus himself is a carpenter. The original Greek word tekton, used in the gospels, can mean builder, also a creator, or a master in some field, for example a master in medicine or in literary composition, and in turn it may have been a translation of the Aramaic naggar, which can mean scholar.

  Matthew 13:55 says only that Joseph was a carpenter, not Jesus: ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?’

  Mark 6:3 describes the same incident and in this case Jesus is claimed to be a carpenter: ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him’. But this is a question, not a statement of fact; the local people are offended that Jesus has given a lesson at the synagogue on the sabbath, meaning he has delivered the sermon; they are offended because they do not realise that he is a rabbi. But the synagogue authorities do know that Jesus is a rabbi, otherwise he would not have been allowed to give the sermon. They do not look on him as a carpenter. The people are offended, but also they are mistaken; Jesus is a rabbi.

  For that matter Joseph may not have been a carpenter either. Tekton is the word used to describe both Jesus and Joseph, and the word means master, in the way that rabbi means master. Jesus is called rabbi or rabboni nine times in the New Testament, and John 1:38 makes it clear that rabbi also means master: ‘Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou?’ Rabbi is a Hebrew and Aramaic word, so for the benefit of his Hellenised readers John is here translating the unfamiliar word into Greek as didaskale, which means teacher or master – just as tekton means master.

  Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus call himself a carpenter. Instead people approach Jesus asking him to heal the sick, cast out devils or discuss his teachings. They know he is a rabbi; he calls himself a teacher and rabbi; teaching and healing and exorcising is the sort of thing that rabbis do.

  The one scene in all the gospels that we are given of Jesus in his childhood (Luke 2:41-5) shows him not at work in a carpenter’s shop but as a twelve-year old prodigy in discussion with the elders at the Temple in Jerusalem – clearly literate and highly educated; a scholar.

  Which does not mean that Jesus could not have been a carpenter as well; he might well have combined scholarship with artisanry. Be that as it may, the indications are that Jesus and his family moved in prosperous social circles; witness the marriage at Cana where the household has servants (John 2:1-5). Jesus also had powerful and influential friends such as Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned in all four gospels (Matthew 27:57-60; Mark 15:42-46 Luke 23:50-53; John 19:38), who is a member of the Sanhedrin and a rich but secret disciple with direct access to Pontius Pilate who grants him permission to lower Jesus’ body from the cross, wrap it in fine linen and bury it in Joseph’s own newly cut tomb, all before sundown that same day. And there was also Nicodemus, a Pharisee and another member of the Sanhedrin, also one of the richest men in Jerusalem, who would come to Jesus by night to listen to his teachings (John 3:1-3).

  Early Christians saw Jesus in the simplest and most unadorned terms, as the Good Shepherd who looks after his flock, as in this 2nd-century fresco on the ceiling of the Catacombs of San Callisto in Rome. And in the lifetime of Jesus, Mary Magdalene was the Tower of the Flock. Only from the fourth century, reflecting the imperial pretensions of the Church, was Jesus depicted with long hair and a beard like a Roman emperor.

  The Good Shepherd. Wikimedia Commons.

  Nor was Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, a backwater, isolated from the Graeco-Roman world. Herod Antipas first ruled from Sepphoris, which he rebuilt, in the words of Josephus, as ‘the ornament of Galilee’; Nazareth was only four miles to the northwest. With the construction of his new city of Tiberias Herod applied a further impress of Hellenism to Galilee that had long before begun when the Hasmonean dynasty helped build the city we call Magdala up the coast. Moreover, in countless every day ways the Jews of Palestine, and not only those in the big cities, were exposed to all sorts of Graeco-Roman practices and habits; for example Jews readily adopted Greek bathing practices, and bath houses proliferated throughout Galilee, and they decorated their homes with pagan symbols; these were the cultural imports that derived from the highly developed export trade in such products as dried fish which were prized as far away as Rome and brought prosperity to the fishermen of Bethsaida and Capernaum. To a greater or lesser extent everyone was affected by Hellenism, by their contact with the wider Graeco-Roman world.

  But for some a reaction set in. If John the Baptist had any thoughts to follow in his father’s footsteps he soon set himself apart, and rededicating himself to the Torah, he took up the life of an ascetic, living in the wilderness dressed in goat’s hair and feeding himself on locusts and wild honey, and soon his cousin was baptising with him too, and teaching and healing and exorcising in expectation of the kingdom of God.

  The Struggle for Jerusalem

  Herod Antipas was popular among the Jews. In Jerusalem, according to Josephus and other Jewish writers, the people and the leading Jews would have preferred to have Herod Antipas as their king rather than be governed by Pontius Pilate on behalf of Rome. From time to time Pilate would cause offence through some inept display of Roman power as when he set up votive shields on the walls of his residence in Jerusalem bearing dedications to the divine cult of the emperor. It was a blasphemy in the eyes of the Jewish people who sent a delegation to Rome that included members of the Sanhedrin and also Herod Antipas. The votive shields were taken down.

  Unlike his father and his older brother, Herod the Great and Herod’s brief successor Archelaos, who were both involved in violent confrontations with the common people and the leading figures in Jerusalem, and also unlike Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas was seen as mild and modest in his dealings with the Jews. Only two events troubled his rule as tetrarch of Galilee and Parea; one was the foundation of Tiberias on Jewish graves and the other was the execution of the popular and righteous John the Baptist, but neither caused any violent uproar.

  The aim of Herod Antipas was to use his support in Jerusalem to persuade the Romans that he should become king of Judaea. This meant gaining the full support of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Jewish elders, which included members of two factions, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees were the old aristocracy who through long years of cooperation with the Hasmoneans and the Romans were comfortably Hellenised. The Pharisees who in many instances were as much exposed to Hellenism nevertheless promoted strict teaching of the Torah and a return to traditional Jewish values.

  Herod was a thoroughly Hellenised ruler in Galilee and Parea and if he became king of Judaea his natural party, one would think, would have been the Sadducees. But their interest was to maintain control of the Temple and its priesthood, something they already enjoyed under Roman rule. The Pharisees, on the other hand, though not at all sympathetic to Herod’s Hellenisation, were eager to further their influence in the land by reducing or eliminating the Sadducees’ control over Jewish life.

  And so in his project to become king, Herod found that he and the Pharisees, who otherwise seemed opposed to one another, had a shared interest. Both wanted power.

  Jesus understood this very well as in Mark 8:15 where he warns his disciples against the leaven, or yeast, of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod, by which he means their promise of the kingdom on earth. And again in Luke 12:1 Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy’. Both Herod and the Pharisees were set upon political power.

  Into this complex situation John the Baptist had inserted himself and now Jesus. Neither was promoting a political programme; both wanted a renewed Judaism. But Jesus was opposed to the corruption an
d faithlessness of the Temple and therefore made himself unwelcome to the Sadducees. And of the Pharisees he said that following the law was not enough; one had to go beyond the law, and that angered many Pharisees against him. Herod saw Jesus as a threat because his preachings were about a higher power, an imminent kingdom that was awakening the multitudes, which undermined his own terrestrial ambitions.

  And so the chase was on. Jesus learns of John the Baptist’s execution and withdraws into the wilderness. Nine more times Jesus withdraws, always following a threat or some hostile act by Herod. And not just Jesus but the twelve disciples and Joanna and Susannah and all the other women and Mary Magdalene.

  Herod was dangerous because of his indecisiveness, for how easily he was swayed. He had not wanted to kill John the Baptist. Or maybe he did, but he knew that the people loved John and he feared rousing them against his rule. To appease his wife Herod threw the Baptist into prison but did no more until trapped by his fateful promise to Herodias’ daughter. Herod was ‘a reed shaken with the wind’, said Jesus, the complete opposite of John the Baptist, the indomitable prophet who drew the multitudes into the wilderness to hear him speak. ‘What went ye out into the wilderness to see?’, Jesus told the multitudes. ‘A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses’ (Matthew 11:7-8) – a pointed reference to Herod’s court at Tiberias.

  Herod was unpredictable, treacherous, always dangerous, and towards Jesus he was ambivalent. Herod wanted to see him, hear him, watch him perform miracles; Herod was fascinated by Jesus, perhaps interested in what he had to say but also frightened of this apparition and his powers; Jesus seemed like John the Baptist come back to life.