By the twelfth century, a legend about Mary Magdalene developed that compensated for the severe restriction in the practice of anointing. Unhampered by conventional morality in her sinfulness, the legendary Mary now acted in a way no decent woman during the Middle Ages could have gotten away with:
Rising, she reverently approached the couch on which the Saviour was resting and stood confidently behind the Messiah, from whose paths she lamented having wandered. With the tears of her eyes, Orthodox Ambivalence and the Gnostic Quest with which she had once looked after worldly loves, she washed his feet; with her hair, which before enhanced the beauty of her face, she dried them; with her mouth, which she had abused in pride and lasciviousness, she kissed them; and with the perfumes she had bought she anointed them, as once (it grieved her to remember) she had anointed her own flesh to make it more seductive.
This rich scene, inspired by the first story of anointing in Luke (7:36-50), is here made into an account of Mary Magdalene’s anointing of Jesus, an event that climaxed in her “fire of great love”—when she broke her alabaster jar to apply its oil to him at the end of his life, she proved her “intimacy with the Son of God.” This is what made her “the special friend of the Son of God and his first servant,” as well as “the apostle to the apostles.” Their physical intimacy only highlights the contrast with Mary’s verbal silence. The Catholic Magdalene has nothing to say, her significance mimed in legend and artistic representation. In order to hear her speak, we must turn to other sources.
Alongside the sources of Catholic Christianity, which silenced Mary and her successors but permitted deaconesses to anoint, Gnostic sources moved in a different direction. Gnostics added a volatile attitude toward sexuality to the ambivalence of early Christians toward women. Some Gnostic communities were celibate and thus had no children of their own. They believed the body’s pleasures mired people in a fallen world. Others Gnostics were programmatic libertines, flouting convention in order to transcend this delusional world through orgiastic rites. For many Gnostics of both kinds, Mary Magdalene stood at the apex of those who glimpsed the spiritual reality beyond human flesh: After all, she had seen the risen Jesus. The Gnostics’ ambivalence toward women and sexuality is refleeted in their depictions of Mary; even when she is praised, there is criticism, as well. She is authoritative, wise, knowledgeable, and powerful, and, at the same time, submissive, weak, hysterical, and—as The Gospel According to Thomas will show us in the next chapter—even physically deficient. Gnostic sources provide fascinating insights into how views of Mary shaped attitudes toward leadership of women in religious communities, feminine identity in the godhead, and the nature of revelation. But, as in the case of Catholic Christianity, context proves crucial to appreciating what Gnosticism has to tell us.
Chapter Twelve
THE BREAKOUT
Between the late first century and the end of the fourth century of the Common Era, a powerful religious impulse rippled through the Roman Empire. Gnosticism quested for a single integrating insight into the divine world amid the conflicting religious traditions of the ancient world. Gnostics wanted direct contact with the divine apart from parochial requirements, peculiar customs, and ethnic preferences. Traditional religions talked about transcendence, but they restricted the delivery of their truths to their different constituencies, which were limited and often mutually exclusive, defined by race, history, family, or status. Gnosticism claimed to smash through those barriers, making it the most potent cultural force in this period of the Roman Empire and the most successful effort at the intellectual reform of religion there has ever been. Mary Magdalene became one of Gnosticism’s most potent symbols.
Many people in the ancient world—some of them educated, all of them intellectually curious—felt bewildered by the welter of religions around them, each often in open conflict with the others. If you moved from one city to another, the civic god changed; new rites and obligations were required. Civic offerings—a requirement of citizenship, if you were lucky and rich enough to be a citizen—were costly.
Judaism rose above a great deal of religious static, offering faith in a single God, who did not change identities, personalities, or names from place to place. Monotheism seemed more consistent with rational philosophy than the soap opera—like cast of thousands that inhabited Mount Olympus and other venues in classical mythology. The attraction of Gentiles to the teaching of Moses and the Prophets proves its appeal within the philosophical and religious syncretism of this period. Non-Jews called “God-fearers” devoted themselves to the God of Israel, worshiping in synagogues and keeping some basic requirements of Judaism, enjoying its intellectual and ethical benefits while avoiding its most painful requirements.
But from the perspective of the Hellenistic world, the religion of Israel came from a single people, even if its god claimed to be universal, and coming to Judaism as a proselyte did not make a person into an Israelite. A male who converted, even if he accepted circumcision, could not reverse the course of time and thereby arrange to be circumcised on the eighth day of his life, as the Torah demanded (Genesis 17:10-14). Judaism was demanding if you took it seriously: The Torah limited what you could eat and prevented you from worshiping idols—even the image of the Roman emperor, who by law was owed allegiance as Divi filius, “God’s Son.” The Torah mandated when you could have sexual intercourse as well as with whom, and even the amount of skin you could keep on your penis. To Greco-Roman sensibilities, these practices were not only onerous but also grotesque. Judaism attracted more women than men, but “God-fearers” outnumbered converts in the Hellenistic world.
Mystery religions were demanding in different ways. They offered intimacy with a god or goddess (perhaps Dionysos or Isis) and personal initiation into the divine power of the deity. These initiation rites were expensive and flamboyant. The god Mithra became popular among Roman soldiers who could afford him. In Mithra’s cult, the initiate maintained a regime of fasting for weeks and repeatedly immersed himself. At the end of this period of purification, the Mithraic warrior joined in a performance that reenacted on the earth what had happened in the divine realm, when the god Mithra triumphed over and slaughtered the cosmic bull.
This lavish ceremony—with its decorative costumes, dance, carousing, and feasting—took place at night. At its climax, the initiate descended into a pit with an iron grate overhead. A bull was conducted onto the grate and then a priest slit its throat, drenching the initiate with the blood and excrement of the bull’s thundering death. When the initiate emerged from the pit, his fellow worshipers cried out that he was renatus in aeternum (“reborn into eternity”). All well and good if you could afford the bull (the Mercedes-Benz of sacrificial offerings), the time involved, the feasting, and the equipment— all luxuries few people could pay for or commandeer as a marauding soldier might.
The modern West didn’t invent religious diversity; religious pluralism was far greater in the Roman Empire than it is today. Think of Los Angeles or New York, multiply the number of religions, magnify the tensions among them, and add into that mix the pretension of the Roman emperor that he had a divine warrant as God’s Son for his authority; then you will have a sense of the profound spiritual rifts that Gnosticism confronted.
Each movement and cult, often named after foreigners like the Egyptian Isis and the Israelite Jesus, proclaimed unique access to the truth and rejected the claims of other religions. Christians even refused to worship the emperor in their zeal for their crucified Savior, and the spectacle of their being torn apart by animals, burned on pyres, and flayed by professional torturers made them seem as obdurate as it made the Romans look vicious.
The power of Gnosticism transformed the face of Greco-Roman religion: Virtually every religious movement was influenced by it. Gnostic questers pioneered a philosophical approach to religious truth that was based on knowledge rather than faith, practice, or formal organization. The Christian church, the Jewish synagogue, the guild of adepts in the Mysteries
find no real counterpart among the Gnostics. They pursued knowledge {gnosis in Greek) so intently that they came to be called gnostikoi. If the word knowledgist existed in English, that would be a good translation, because Gnostics claimed to be “in the know” about the most fundamental reality and to be in contact with the divine. Gnosticism thrived among people educated enough to enjoy philosophical speculation, experimental enough to seek religious experience, and wealthy enough to support experts to teach the ways of knowledge.
Mary Magdalene became emblematic of that transforming guest. Her gnosis wasn’t just a collection of data or reasoned argument; rather, the knowledge she conveyed involved direct insight into the celestial realm, and brought about an inner transformation in the Gnostic seeker who followed her lead. Gnosticism as a whole was a movement for a self-appointed elite, which strove to transcend the material universe and its corruption. The true Gnostic transcended the shackles of the fallen, physical world and became inured to suffering and pleasure in his or her total dedication to the spiritual world. Each person who found gnosis lived thereafter in the assurance of divine favor, saved from the predations of the flesh, incarnated within the realm of Spirit. Entering that realm required guidance, and Mary Magdalene became one of Gnosticism’s most articulate guides.
In order for Mary Magdalene to convey her vision of Jesus risen from the dead, her silence had to be broken. Many Gnostics removed the gag that the Gospels imposed, and they taught that she was free of the mold of female subservience to men. In 1896, a manuscript was discovered in Egypt. Entitled The Gospel According to Mary, that document has forever changed our understanding of Mary.
The Gospel According to Mary, dating from early-third-century Egypt, was used by the prosperous landowners who sustained Gnosticism throughout the ancient period. The Mary in the title refers to the Magdalene, and the Coptic text reflects the Gnostic Christianity that thrived in Egypt eighteen hundred years ago.
The Coptic language itself was part of the key to Gnosticism’s success in Egypt. The hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt were difficult to write and read, but Coptic put the same language into the phonetic system of the Greek alphabet (with four extra characters). That innovation enabled people with leisure in rural Egypt to read and have read to them recitations of the world’s wisdom in their own tongue. They became avid for philosophy, religion, and esoteric knowledge, and Gnosticism packaged them all in a way that ensured its advance on Egyptian soil. Mary’s centrality for these seekers has attracted considerable attention from theologians and textual scholars alike.
Following a Gnostic trope, The Gospel According to Mary depicts Jesus appearing to his disciples after his death for an extensive period of time. His risen persona doesn’t provide reassurance, as he usually does in Gnostic literature. Instead, Jesus’ appearance produces anguish. The disciples don’t despair because they are bereft. They have the opposite problem. Jesus is all too present, and—as in life—all too demanding. He insists that his followers act in ways that seem unnatural and perilous to them, commanding them to take his message to the Gentiles. He does the same thing in the Gospel According to Matthew and the book of Acts, but in The Gospel According to Mary, the disciples respond more fearfully than they do in the New Testament. Jesus’ disciples know that it was the Romans who killed him and they realize all too clearly that if they obey him, they court a similar fate. “If they did not spare him,” they moan, “how will they spare us?” (The Gospel According to Mary 9.10). By the time this Gospel was written, its audience knew that the move to proselytize non-Israelites, although crucial to the emergence of Christianity, had also proved to be a deadly gambit for many of Jesus’ closest followers.
Peter is a key figure in The Gospel According to Mary, as he is in the book of Acts; in both cases, contact with non-Jews is Peter’s central concern. But the Gnostic text—for historical reasons or theological reasons, or some blend of the two—presents a view of how the message of Jesus reached non-Israelites that contradicts the book of Acts, making Mary, rather than Peter, the pivotal disciple who prompted that religious revolution. The Gospel According to Mary goes its own way in portraying Peter as more bewildered by Christ’s command to approach people outside Israel than he is in Acts 10:9-29. He needs to ask for Mary’s advice, because he cannot understand why Jesus would tell him to court mortal danger. Mary does understand, so Peter turns to a woman’s authority, despite his male antipathy toward doing so.
While Peter and his colleagues grieve at the prospect of the suffering that awaits them at Gentile hands, Mary intervenes, “greeting them all” and cajoling them to rely on God, who “has prepared us and made us into men” (The Gospel According to Mary 9.19-20). The Magdalene emerges as an androgynous hero who strengthens the males in the apostolic company by means of the manhood—the visionary commitment to remain loyal to Jesus despite the risk of martyrdom—that she herself has received from Jesus. To be a “man” in this Gospel is to live in the realm of Spirit, despite the threat of danger in the world of flesh.
Mary kisses her colleagues, “greeting them all.” In Coptic, as in Greek, the verb aspazomai implies a mouth-to-mouth embrace of fellowship. This gesture of trust among men and women signaled familial intimacy throughout the Mediterranean world. Men kissed men, women kissed women, women kissed men, and vice versa. The “holy kiss” became a key Christian ritual, featuring centrally in both Catholic and Gnostic sources.
But the fact that the verb aspazomai is used here should not be misconstrued: It does not make Mary an especially sexual figure. Sadly, some modern translators have Mary “kissing” her colleagues, while elsewhere her male counterparts are portrayed as “greeting” each other, although exactly the same term is used. Loose, opportunistic translations of this kind perpetuate the Magdalene’s caricature as modern Christianity’s favorite vixen.
In The Gospel According to Mary, Peter is at a loss without Mary’s guidance and the strengthening of her special manhood. He and the apostles have given her a hearing because she is among the select company who experienced the resurrected Jesus. Her kiss is the seal that she belongs in this company, not an invitation to sex. When she speaks of her own revelation, her discourse forms the core of The Gospel According to Mary and its content authorizes the apostolic commission to Gentiles in Jesus’ name. Mary Magdalene rather than Peter brings about Christianity’s emergence in the Hellenistic world.
She speaks very briefly in the text as it stands, because several pages containing her discourse have been physically removed. Yet even in its truncated form, her address offers the clearest evidence we have of how ancient Christianity and Gnosticism conceived of visionary experience. Her words vibrate with a simple grandeur and elegance (The Gospel According to Mary 10.6-20):
I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him, Lord I saw you today in a vision. He answered and said to me, You are privileged, because you did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind is, there is the treasure. I said to him, Lord now does he who sees the vision see it through the soul or through the spirit? The Savior answered and said, He sees neither through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind which is between the two—that is what sees the vision and is—
Then the document breaks off for several pages. That excision, apparently inflicted on the text in antiquity, forms yet another scar over the memory of Mary. Yet The Gospel According to Mary clearly understands that, in portraying the Resurrection in trenchantly visionary terms (as the perception of the “mind,” not of physical eyes or ears or hands), Mary directly contradicted a growing fashion in ancient Christianity that conceived of Jesus as resuscitated from the grave in the flesh.
Whatever Mary goes on to say in the missing part of the document, Peter and Andrew together rebuke Mary after her speech. Their anger—summed up in a rhetorical question—stems both from what she says and from what their paternalism considers her inferior gender (The Gospel According to Mary 17.9-19.1): “Has he revealed these things to a woman and not to us?” M
ary’s articulate insight and her gender upset Peter and his cohort. A woman had experienced a visionary breakthrough that permitted her to see Jesus’ desire to reach out to Gentiles before Peter himself did, the same woman whose vision first signaled that Jesus had been raised from the dead. This claim in The Gospel According to Mary is quite convincing.
This Gospel reflects not only Mary’s theory of vision as she had articulated it from the first century but also the controversies of later periods, using the characters of Peter and Andrew to portray the reaction against Mary within the Catholic Church during the second and third centuries of the Common Era. As theologians became increasingly materialistic in their conception of how Jesus rose from the dead and how all believers were to be resurrected, Mary’s vision fell into disfavor.
The Gospel According to Mary stood by Mary Magdalene’s vision. Here, seeing Jesus is unashamedly a perception of the “mind” (nous in both Greek and Coptic). Paul, who shared Mary’s view of the Resurrection, also articulated a theology of “mind” that agrees with this (1 Corinthians 14:19). “Mind,” for Paul as well as for The Gospel According to Mary, was the instrument of lucid vision.
Mind, the term used in both Paul and The Gospel According to Mary, is the Hellenistic equivalent of “heart” (livva) in Aramaic. To appreciate the place of “heart” in the Aramaic language that shaped Mary’s experience, we have to imagine thoughts, in addition to feelings and affections, flowing from our bodies, because the livva was the locus of insight as well as of emotions and sensations. When Jesus promised that the pure in heart would see God (Matthew 5:8), that was a pledge of bodily transformation, not just insight.
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