Mary Magdalene had an unfortunate name. It continues in “religious” memory to be too popular. There were so many Marys that Pope “Gregory the Great” bunched several of Christ’s female followers together and turned Mary of Magdala into a whore. (Magdala: a well-known city 120 miles north of Jerusalem on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.)
And Mary of Magdala, Christians were eventually to learn, was also known as Miriam, a modestly well-to-do woman whom Jesus cured of a series of illnesses. These were early on “assumed” (Gregory for instance) to be “seven demons.” Thus all the Marys among Christ’s group of more or less constant followers were clumsily codified by Papal order into the “true” Mary of Magdalene. Gregory also readily came up with an anonymous sinner in Luke’s gospel, and this “Mary” was falsely identified as being a “whore” who was possessed by seven “devils.”
Thus, some biblical scholars of earlier times argued that the real Mary of Magdala was condemned not only for the iniquity of lust, but also pride and covertness among other sins. This lazy process clumsily mixed 1) the identity of the unnamed sinner who anointed Jesus’ feet in Luke 7:36-50, with 2) the true Mary Magdalene, and 3) another anointing sinner cited by Luke. Not only did she get slandered, disappeared, for all these Marys were all were long regarded as a single person. A warning example of the soundness of papal character analysis and history making.
Much of the confusion, and much of the knowledge we have regarding Christianity, issues from the Church’s favorite – which would become the churches [plural) favorite – the “Canonical Gospel.” Our mixed up “knowledge” regarding Christ’s female followers, for instance, comes from the Church’s aggressive promotion of the “Canonical Gospel.” That is one of the ways the conventionally and familiarly accepted history of Christianity is almost universally known. It’s provocative twin is the less widely known “Gnostic Gospels.” These writings often seem to many Christians like recorded conversations and events that simply didn’t “get in the Bible” because of when they occurred, when they were recorded, or who took part in them.
Relatively few people seem well schooled about Gnosticism. As Catholic high school kids, my schoolmates and I brushed up against gnosticism. But generally we left Church arguments, rivalries and political differences alone, mostly ignoring them. We were Catholics and at that age, in that rural milieu, there weren’t any Churchly philosophical bumps that got our attention.
To clarify somewhat: Gnostic gospels are a collection of about 52 ancient texts based on the teachings of several spiritual leaders written from the 2nd to the 4th century AD. The sayings of the Gospel of Thomas, compiled circa 140AD, may include some traditions even older than some of the gospels of the New Testament, possibly as early as the second half of the 1st century. These gospels are not part of the standard Biblical canon of any mainstream Christian denomination, and as such are part of what is called the New Testament apocrypha. Agnostic comes from the Greek word “gnosis,” meaning “knowledge,” which is often used in Greek philosophy in a manner more consistent with the English “enlightenment.” Some scholars, such as Edward Conze and Elaine Pagels, have suggested that gnosticism blends teachings like those attributed to Jesus Christ with teachings found in Eastern traditions.
The documents which comprise the collection of gnostic gospels were not discovered at the same time, but rather as a series of discoveries. The Nag Hammadi Library, for instance, was found accidentally by two farmers in December 1945, and named for the area in Egypt where it had remained hidden for centuries. Other documents included in what are now known as the gnostic gospels were found at different times and locations, such as the “Gospel of Mary,” which was discovered in 1896 as part of the Akhmim Codex and published in 1955. Some documents were duplicated in different finds. With others, such as with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, only one copy is currently known to exist.
Although the manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi are generally dated to the fourth century, there is some debate regarding the original composition of other texts. A wide range, and the majority of scholars, date the authorship of the Gnostic gospel of Nag Hammadi to the second and third centuries. Scholars with a focus on Christianity date gospels mentioned by Irenaeus to the second century. And the gospels mentioned solely by Jerome come from the fourth century. The traditional dating of the gospels derives from such division. Other scholars with a deeper focus on pagan and Jewish literature of the period tend to set dates primarily based on the type of the work.
The “Gospel of Thomas” is held by most to be the earliest of the “gnostic” gospels. Scholars generally date the text to the early mid-second century. Thomas, it is often claimed, “has some gnostic elements but lacks the full gnostic cosmology.” However, even the description of these elements as “gnostic” is based mainly upon the presupposition that “the text as a whole is a ‘gnostic’ gospel.”
And this idea itself is based on little more than the fact that it was found along with gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi, Some scholars, including Nicholas Perrin (well-known professor of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College, Illinois, who has written extensively regarding The Gospel of Thomas, and on the “Christian origins of the Gnostic Gospels”), argue that Thomas is dependent on the “Diatessaron,” which was composed shortly after 1782 in Syria.
But what is not seriously questioned is Mary Magdalene’s presence at Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. And within the four Gospels she is mentioned 12 times. She is most prominent in the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus, at which she was present. She was also present at the events on the morning after, immediately following sabbath. According to all four canonical Gospels [Matthew 28:1–8] [Mark 16:9–10] [Luke 24:10] [John 20:18], she was either alone or was a member of a group of women who were the first to testify to the resurrection of Jesus – John 20 + Mark 16:9 – specifically name her as the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection.
Thus, religious scholars note that Mary Magdalene was there at the “beginning of the movement that was going to transform the West.” She was the “Apostle to the Apostles,” an honor that the great fourth-century orthodox intellectual, Augustine, gave her, and that others had conferred on her earlier, and of course – with great frequency – later.