Course: Two Marys
Lecture #3: Mary Magdalen in the Gnostic Tradition
MARY MAGDALENE AND THE GNOSTICS
Most the women in the New Testament who were disciples were mainly included in the Gnostic writings from the late first century onward. These were apocryphal and all but a few vanished and have been regarded by the Orthodox (Peterine) church as heretical.
NAG HAMMADI — in Dec. 1945 some Arab farmers found a jar with several papyrus books. They finally made their way to an antiquities dealer and it was found they were Coptic/gnostic texts buried sometime around 400 CE, when the church clamped down on heretics.
Several were contemporary with the N. T. writings. Apart from revealing the varied and various beliefs which flourished at the same time as Orthodox Christianity, some of the documents are remarkable for their unique interpretations of the role of MARY MAGDALEN.
One finds many of the same N. T. Characters (Peter, Thomas, Phillip, etc.) but, in extraordinary contrast with the presentation of the community around Christ in the synoptics (and John), and in later interpretations by the "Church Fathers", these groups incorporated women--such as Salome, Martha and Mary Magdalen--and do not appear to have differentiated sexually between their roles.
In these Gnostic writings it is a woman, Mary Magdalen, who has a major role in several of these writings, and is the only female figure from the N. T. to have one of these apocryphal texts The Gospel of Mary, named for her.
GNOSTICISM -- WHAT IS IT?
Gnosticism is the collective name given toa a variety of religious teachings that flourished both in and out of the Church in the first few centuries. Gnosis refers to secret knowledge and includes many groups.
The various groups shared a deep-seated conviction that the world (matter, the flesh) was irredeemably corrupt and controlled by evil forces, only the Spirit was good.
By the beginning of the third Century, Gnostic belief and orthodox Xianity were so enmeshed that large Gnostic Christian sects flourished all over the Roman empire.
It was thru Irenaus, Bp. of Lyon that we knew anything about Gnosticism until a few texts were brought to light in the late 18th century and published in the late 19th century. The Nag Hammadi discovery vastly expanded our knowledge of these writings.
After the victory of the "Orthodox" Church in the 4th century, Gnosticism lay almost forgotten. However, elements of its dualistic ideas, especially the equation of the spirit with good and matter, or the flesh, with evil, are still present in Christian thinking today, traceable thru early orthodox monasticism.
In the late 19th century two authentic gnostic texts were published including the Gospel of Mary and Pistis Sophia, in which Mary Magdalen appears. We will deal with both of these.
MARY MAGDALEN IN THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS
Mary Magdalen, though the Greek form of her name is used in several gospels, is the most prominent of the disciples in several gnostic texts. In the Gospel of Philip, the Pistis Sophia, and the Gospel of Thomas, her prominent role as disciple, visionary, mediatrix and messenger of esoteric revelations continues and even transcends the implications inherent in Mark and John of the importance of her function in the gospels.
Even in the Gospel of Peter, the earliest account of the Passion apart from those found in the synoptic gospels, she is also described as a "disciple of the Lord."
In the gnostic writingsMary Magdalenis the subject of the most extraordinary understandings and pronouncements, all inconceivable w/in the context of mainstream Christianity.
There is never any reference to her as a sinner or a prostitute, which shows this is a later addition. She is Mariam, the "woman who knew the All" who "reveals the greatness of the revealer". (Dialogue of the Savior) She is also the chief mediator of teaching between the Savior and the other disciples of gnosis.
In the Pistis Sophia she is the "one who is the inheritor of Light" and, as revealer of the words of Pistis Sophia, becomes absorbed into, or becomes an aspect of the Sophia, or Wisdom, of God. As chief female disciple, and first witness of the "new life" she is the privileged one.
In the Gospel of Philip she is the most important of the three women "who were always with the Lord" and the one who "is called his companion". She has been called the "savior’s terrestrial companion, counterpart of the celestial Sophia."
The Gnostic writings augment hints from the N. T. and give some idea of the importance in which she, as well as some of the other women such as Martha, Salome and to a lesser extent, Jesus’ mother Mary, were held by a least some sections of the early Christian community.
THE GOSPEL OF MARY
This gospel is missing the first 6 pages, as well as 4 in the middle. It was written sometime during the second century; the risen Christ encourages the disciples to continue his work of preaching the kingdom.
The Savior said, "All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will again be resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Peter said to him, "since you have now explained all things to us, tell us this: what is the sin of the world?"
The savior said: "Sin as such does not exist, but you make sin when you do what is of the nature of fornication, which is called 'sin'. For this reason, the Good came into your midst, to the essence of each nature, to restore it to its root.
He went on to say, "For this reason you come into existence and die. Whoever knows may know a suffering, which has nothing like itself, which has arisen out of what is contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in the whole body. For this reason, I said to you, be of good courage, and if you are discouraged, still take courage over against the various forms of nature. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
When the blessed one said this, he greeted all of them, saying with words, "Lo, here or Lo, there!' for the son of man is within you. Follow him; those who seek him will find him. Go therefore and preach the Gospel of the kingdom. I have left no commandment but what I have commanded you, and I have given you no law, as the lawgiver did, lest you be bound by it."
They grieved and mourned greatly saying: "How shall we go to the gentiles and preach the gospel of the kingdom of the Son of Man? If even he was not spared, how shall we be spared?
They are afraid, but Mary takes the initiative and consoles them saying" Do not mourn or grieve or be irresolute, for his grace will be with you all and will defend you. Let us rather praise his greatness, for he prepared us and made us into men." men" (meaning spiritual, rather than matter)
From here on she appears to be in charge of the disciples her authority deriving from her closeness to Christ, a relationship which Peter acknowledges saying:
"Sister, we know that the savior loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you have in mind since you know them; and we do not, nor have we heard of them."
Mary answered and said, "what is hidden from you I will impart to you" and she began to say the following words to them.
"I", she said, "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 'Blessed are you, since you did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind is, there is you countenance'.
I said to him, "Lord, the mind which sees the vision, does it see it thru the soul or thru the spirit?"
The savior answered and said, "it sees neither thru the soul nor thru the spirit, but the mind, which is between the two, which sees the vision
Mary Magdalen's function here is to relate the visionary aspect of Gnosticism, one of the elements condemned by the "orthodox" represented by Peter. Since about 3 pages are missing from the papyrus as well as 6 from the beginning, it is hard to follow it totally.
Thus we pick up in the middle of her vision of the soul's journey thru the spheres in which sheMary Magdalenrepresents the gnostic claim of Christ's continued presence and the value of the individual visionary experience. picking up with the fourth power (the 2nd being desire, the 3rd ignorance)
After the soul had left the third power behind, it rose upward, and saw the fourth power, which had seven forms. The firs form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth the arousing of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh and the sixth is the wisdom of the folly of the flesh, the seventh is wrathful wisdom.
These are the seven participants in wrath. They ask the soul, "whence do you come, killer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?" The soul answered and said, "what seizes me is killed; what turns me about is overcome; my desire has come to an end and ignorance is dead. In a world I was saved from a world, and in a "type," from a higher 'type' and from the fetter of the impotence of knowledge, the existence of which is temporal. From this time I will reach rest in the time of the moment of the Aeon in silence.”
When Mary describes the soul's journey thru the spheres, Andrew and Peter refuse to believe her. Peter does an about face and is unable to credit the fact the Christ spoke "privately with a woman" and not openly with the "male" disciples.
Mary weeps at this and Levi, the tax collector, comes to her defense reproving the male disciples saying: "Peter, you are always irate. now I see that you are contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the savior knew her very well. For this reason he loved here more than us and we should rather be ashamed and put on the Perfect Man, to form us as he commanded us, and proclaim the gospel, w/o publishing a further commandment or a further law than the one which the savior spoke." The gospel ends with the words: "and they began to go forth to proclaim and preach."
This gospel throws light on the gnostic perception of MM. She is not only beloved of the Savior but the leader of the apostles, even though this position is not unchallenged. This is very dissimilar to the N. T. Mary Magdalen who was never accorded such a position of leadership, except as an "honorific" "apostle to the apostles."
In the Gospel of Philip the Greek word KOINONOS used to describe MM, while often rendered as "companion" is more correctly translated as "partner" or "consort", a woman with whom a man has sexual intercourse. In the Gospel the imagery of this relationship is amplified:
But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. 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 I love her?
In the Gospel of Philip, like in many mystical texts, the spiritual union between Christ and Mary Magdalene is couched in terms of human sexuality and is probably meant as a metaphor. For the reunion of Christ and the church takes place in the bridal chamber, the place of the fullness of God.
While this Gospel deals with sacramental and ethical arguments, its main theme is the idea, common to many Gnostic and later Christian writings, that mankind’s woes had been brought about by the differentiation of the sexes caused by the separation of Eve from Adam, which destroyed the primal androgynous unity found in Genesis 1:27, after which the gnostic spirit would forever yearn.
The Gospel of Philip uses the bridal chamber as a metaphor for the reunion between "Adam and Eve" in which the polarities of male and female would be abolished, and androgyny, or the spiritual state, would be affected thru the coming of Christ, the Bridegroom. The relationship between Christ and Mary Magdalen symbolizes that perfect spiritual union.
This was, of course, used by the orthodox as literal and as fuel to fire the conflict between them and the Gnostics. Thus this sequence can be seen at two levels: one symbolic of the love of Christ for the church in the person of MM, and the other as representing an historical situation in which she symbolizes the feminine element in the Church.
In both the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip this arouses jealousy. In the Pistis Sophia one of the few books found before the Nag Hammadi material, a similar argument breaks out between Peter and Mary. Jesus rebukes Peter, but Mary tells him that she fears Peter for "He hates our sex". This probably reflects the historical situation of the leaders of the orthodox community towards the participation of women in the church.
By the end of the 2nd century the church had discarded any idea of equality in favor of patriarchal rule, a la Judaism. Thus, on the level of historical interpretation, the gnostic texts may have referred to a political tension in the early Church.
It is a situation already inferred in the synoptics thru the disciple's disbelief of the women's account of the resurrection, and in Paul's omission of the women's witness of the resurrection.
These gnostic texts are far from being feminist, however. the figure of Pistis Sophia is portrayed as another Eve who separates herself from the divine spouse, transgresses God's will, and brings the creation of Matter and evil, chaos and destruction to mankind.
The Gnostics use of the terms Male and Female to describe the division between spirit and matter and their equation with good and evil, inevitably leads to the association of woman and sexuality with evil. Thus all must become "men" as Mary Magdalen says in the gospel of Mary.
At the end of the Gospel of Thomas Peter says "let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life". Jesus says, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males.” Then he adds: "For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
PISTIS SOPHIA = Faith/wisdom
The longest and most elaborate of the gnostic writings it comes from the mid 4th century but from an earlier Greek version. It tells the story in four documents, of the resurrected savior who returns to spend twelve years teaching his disciples before his final ascension.
It takes the form of a dialogue with the disciples and holy women (Salome, Martha, Mary (Jesus mom) and Mary Magdalene) Mary Magdalen appears again as the chief questioner. She is the symbol of divine wisdom in seeking and imparting knowledge about Pistis Sophia.
The Canaanite goddesses Anat and Asherah, spouses of YHWH in a golden age (in the popular mind), lived on in another guise which links them with Pistis Sophia. But prior to that association is yet another which involves Mary Magdalen.
In the O. T. story of Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, she is a prophetess who leads all the women "with timbrels and with dances in the "song of the sea" after crossing the Reed Sea. She is on an equal status with Moses and Aaron.
However, Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses for marrying an Ethiopian woman and Miriam is punished by the Lord with Leprosy (Aaron, of course, is not) (Num 12:1-15). Moses intercedes and Miriam is cured but she is demoted from being on a par with Moses.
It is Miriam who makes sure Moses, as a baby, is safely discovered in the bullrushes and becomes the mother of his "second birth." Mose's sister Miriam succeeds Isis/Asherah whose brother/husband Osiris is murdered by his brother Seth. Isis reassembles the pieces of Osiris and conceives Horus; (read Thunder, Perfect mind the "I Am sayings" of Isis):
"For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in due time and my power is from him. I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name."
- The Thunder, Perfect Mind (excerpt)
Mary Magdalene, a still later incarnation, in witnessing the resurrection of Christ also witnesses his rebirth, and in a mythic sense can be seen as his "second mother."
This parallel between Miriam and Mary Magdalen is maintained in later imagery. Miriam and Mary Magdalen appear together in a chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalen in Assisi, Italy. They are shown as examples of penitence. Both characters, prophetesses of the O.T. and the N.T. shared the same fate demotion from their original prominence to a position of repentance.
The Pistis Sophia tells of the fall, repentance and restoration of Sophia, the first feminine principle that emanates from God. It is a tale of feminine pride which wreaks havoc and leaves disaster in its wake.
She follows a light which she thinks will take her from the realm of Light to the highest place, but is punished for her presumption, is set upon by the material powers who deprive her of her own light, and she falls into the darkness, into the world of matter or Chaos and is unable to return to her place until she repents and is redeemed by the savior.
In the Pistis Sophia, Jesus has traveled thru the almost incomprehensible complex cosmos of the Valentinian system in his mission to bring enlightenment to the universe, and to banish the evil powers of fate, magic and astrology. He descends into his mother Maria but speaks of her in a dismissive way, especially when compared to the many expressions of favor for Mary Magdalen in the text. He cast the seed into Elizabeth to bring John the Baptist as the forerunner as well.
It is here that Jesus finds Pistis Sophia mourning and proceeds to save her and return her to the realm of light. Before this episode, however, Mary Magdalen begins to speak and is the one who can question and elucidate upon Jesus words as he recounts the fall and redemption of Pistis Sophia.
Because of her knowledge and intuition, she will be happier than any woman who is upon the earth. She receives gnosis from him at the same time as imparting it to the other disciples.
MM dominates the first two of the four documents of Pistis Sophia, asking 39 of the 46 questions. This upsets the male disciples and an outburst from Peter. Jesus talks to him like a petulant child and then asks him to interpret a hymn.
In the second document the rescue of Pistis Sophia is related. It is the mission of Gabriel and Michael who are sent to rescue her: They bring her out of chaos. Mary tells Jesus she understands everything he says.
Thru a series of questions and answers, the mysteries of the gnostic universe are revealed. When the millennium occurs, the 12 disciples will be placed with Jesus as joint kings reigning over those who receive the mysteries of the ineffable.
In the most exalted place will be Mary Magdalen and Johannes the virgin. For the first time since John's gospel these two are linked. According to legends in the Middle Ages, they become betrothed as preferred disciples. This dialogue continues in the 3rd and 4th documents, ranging from punishment after death to the topography of terrors to be undergone in four hells of increasing intensity.
Hells torments are the subject of the 5th document also, populated by pagan deities such as Syrian Adonis, Egyptian Typhon, Greek Persephone and Hecate.
Jesus’ celebration of Mary Magdalen as "inheritor of the Light" seems to complement his description of her as "straining towards the heavens more than 11 thy brothers". This combined with the statement that she will become the "fullness of the fullness" reinforces the link between her and the symbol of divine wisdom.
MANICHAIEN
The Pistis Sophia was not the only gnostic source to interpret Mary Magdalen in this special way. She is identified with the "Spirit of Wisdom" or Sophia in another heretical sect in a Coptic psalm from a follower of Mane (216-76). This psalm is based on the John 20 passage where Mary sees Jesus in the garden
"Mariam, Mariam, know me: do not touch me...stem the tears of thy eyes and know me that I am thy master. Only touch me not for I have not yet seen the face of my Father.
Thy God was not stolen away, according to the thoughts of thy littleness: thy God did no die, rather he mastered death.
I am not the gardener...I appeared not to thee, until I saw thy tears and thy grief for me. He instructs her how to get the disciples attention and get them to believe it is he. Magdalen the faithful is to return the straying sheep to the shepherd.
She takes on the role of "fisher of men" the prerogative of the male disciples in the N. T. The psalm also says that God in becoming man, had taken on a "slaves vesture" and had chosen among the 12 men. but Mirriam is listed as one he chose as the "spirit of wisdom".
This inclusion of the attributes of a feminine deity shows that among some Christians at least there was an awareness of the need for a feminine element in their religious beliefs. Mary Magdalen is also the faithful one, in contradistinction to the male disciples, an attribute that applies to her in all contexts, both biblical and apocryphal.
Although Peter is described as the "foundation" of God's church" Mary Magdalen in this Coptic psalm, takes on the traditional male role of "fisher of men."
CONCLUSIONS ON GNOSTIC GOSPELS
The gnostic gospels were written between the late first and fourth centuries against a background of growing institutionalization within the church. During the 2nd century, the church was becoming a 3 tiered hierarchy of male bishops, priests and deacons, claiming authority directly from the apostles.
However, even Acts and Paul's own epistles speak of women like Phoebe, Junia and Prisca to have important functions as bishops and deacons in the fledgling church. There seemed to be a state of equality that lasted only a few generations after Christ's death.
Among the Gnostics it seemed that no such hierarchy, and no such sexual discrimination, existed. All were equal, and all might function as bishop, priest or prophet. Women in the gnostic sects, according to an amazed Tertullian, to teach, "engage in discussion' exorcise, cure and baptize.
Ironically, Tertullian joined a montanist group toward the end of his life which celebrated two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla, as its founders. He thus died a heretic.
Despite the presence of strong women and the strong presence of a feminine element, the Gnostics could never be described as pro-female, as we have already mentioned. I want to quote one more passage from Dialogue of the Savior. Jesus tells his followers to pray in the place where there is no woman, and that the works of femaleness (intercourse and procreation) are to be destroyed.
Gender bias prevailed among the Gnostics in what was still a patriarchal ambience. As Peter Brown has written: Gnostic circles treasured those incidents in the Gospels that had described the close relations of Christ with the women of His circle, and most especially those with Mary Magdalen. For a second century writer, such anecdotes were an image of the sweet and irresistible absorption of the woman, the perpetual inferior other, into her guiding principle, the male.
The gospels of Mark and John describe how, after the resurrection Christ first appeared to MM. Yet within only a few generations, the orthodox church was emphasizing, following Luke's account of the resurrection, that Christ had appeared first to Simon Peter.
The pope to this day traces his succession to Peter Himself, the "first Apostle", who was the "first witness" to the resurrection. This first "sighting" of the Lord was to justify the system which evolved in the latter part of the first century, in which those who claimed to be direct successors to the first apostles also laid claim to have the unique right and sacred power to teach, rule and sanctify, apparently conferred upon them by Christ in his lifetime.
But the assertion that it was to Peter that Christ first appeared, in face of the Mary Magdalen tradition, had, it has been argued, an essentially political end: It legitimized the claims of these men to assume authority within the church, thereby subsequently excluding women from any such functions, reverting to the patriarchal system which prevailed before Christ's time, a system which has since pertained for almost two thousand years.
Mary Magdalen was accorded a far greater importance by the Gnostics and the Manichee’s than she ever was by those who were "successors of Peter". She was chosen by them to represent their doctrines, to be the mouthpiece for thinking very different from that of the "orthodox" church.
If, in fact, the gnostic accounts of Mary Magdalen reflect a surviving historical tradition from Christ's life excluded from the orthodox accounts of his ministry, then this may be seen as the result of a political decision, whose precise form may never be known, to reduce the role of women, and Mary Magdalen as their representative.
In the late 20th century, the Roman Church has been forced to acknowledge the crucial role of Christ's female followers, and particularly MM, but yet, in its steadfast adherence to male symbolism and supremacy, refuses to accept its enormous significance.
The gnostic texts, several of which had Mary Magdalen as a central figure disappeared sometime during the late fourth century. With the Edict of Milan in 312 and later in 383 when emperor Theodosius made the Christian church the ONLY legal religion in the Empire, the church, once persecuted, could now eliminate all opposition.
The church of Rome directed that only those writings which had the stamp of apostolicity, that is to say, had the authority of Peter and Paul, could form part of the scriptural canon.
According to Eusebius (c.260-340 CE) the "Father of Church History", it was the policy of the triumphant church after the pact with Constantine to destroy all the writings of the "heretics".
The Gnostics incorporated the Jewish myth of Hokhmah, (Sophia in Greek) as symbol of Divine Wisdom into their own system, in the figure of Pistis Sophia. As handmaiden and occasional alter ego to the fallen Sophia, creator of the world, Mary Magdalen clearly assumes the role of symbol of divine Wisdom, an appellation attributed to her before it was wholly absorbed into the figure of the Virgin Mary.
With the disappearance of these 'heretical' writings, MM, heroine of the Gnostics, chief disciple, 'companion of the savior', his 'spouse', 'consort' and 'partner', vanished too, to re-emerge in orthodox eyes briefly as a witness to the resurrection, and 'apostle to the apostles', but more significantly for the history of Christianity, and women, as the repentant whore.