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Mary Magdalene in spotlight now
The huge-selling novel “The Da Vinci Code” has given Mary Magdalene more fame lately than any biblical personality except Jesus. There’s even a “Complete Idiot’s Guide” [See Also] to her, and a forthcoming film version of the “Magdalene” comic books’ woman warrior.
“Da Vinci” said Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, and their offspring formed a royal French bloodline. So much for fiction; what are the facts?
French legends about her appeared eight centuries after Jesus’ time and aren’t serious history.
The Jesus-was-married theory says Jews expected men to wed. That’s generally true, but modern rediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that some Jewish holy men in ancient times remained celibate.
There’s also this issue, raised by Bruce Chilton of Bard College in “Mary Magdalene: A Biography” (Doubleday, $23.95): Judaism’s Talmud said a husband cannot move his wife from place to place. Couples usually resided with the wife’s parents. Jesus’ “constant travel, irregular birth, and unstable economic status made him nobody’s ideal husband or son-in-law,” Chilton comments.
“If Jesus were to have had a sexual partner, Mary remains the best candidate,” he thinks. But there’s no historical evidence that Jesus did.
Chilton chides feminists and New Agers who cite depictions of Mary Magdalene to claim ancient Gnosticism exalted women and is therefore preferable to orthodox Christianity.
The earliest Gnostic text, the second-century Gospel of Thomas, says women must make themselves males to enter the kingdom of heaven. That gender elitism contrasts with the basic spiritual equality in biblical Judaism and Christianity.
Chilton sees “active deception” in current propaganda that markets “a Gnosticism that never existed.”
But Chilton also criticizes the treatment of women in the New Testament and early church. He sees Matthew, Mark and Luke as “the best available sources” on Mary Magdalene because they were “nearest in time and ethos” to her, but alleges that these Gospels conceal her centrality.
There’s good reason to regard her as important. But Chilton stretches things with broad speculations to spin the Gospel passages into a 160-page biography.
To Chilton, Mary Magdalene was “the most influential woman in Rabbi Jesus’ movement.” He theorizes that she contributed exorcism stories and other materials that found their way into the Gospels, which is possible but could never be proven. He also portrays her as the exorcist-in-chief and spiritual guru for Jesus’ flock.
Mary’s only biblical appearance before Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is in Luke 8. There we learn that she was someone “from whom seven demons had gone out” and that she provided financial support for Jesus’ retinue.
The passage doesn’t indicate whether Mary’s affliction was physical, mental, moral or some combination of these, writes Canon S.S. Smalley of England’s Coventry Cathedral. Oddly, Luke doesn’t state that Jesus cast out the demons, though this is specified in the optional “long ending” of Mark’s Gospel.
Like Chilton, Pope Gregory went beyond the biblical evidence in A.D. 594, saying Mary Magdalene was the unnamed female “sinner” in the dramatic story of Luke 7:37-50. There, a penitent woman anoints Jesus’ feet and washes them with her hair and tears. Her sins aren’t specified, but many supposed she was a prostitute.
Mary Magdalene’s key biblical activity is as a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion and burial and his empty tomb on Easter morning (her male colleagues doubted that miracle at first).
Chilton disagrees with the Gospels’ account that Jesus was resurrected in a physical body, though in a glorified form different from simple resuscitation. Playing Mary off against the Gospels, Chilton thinks she felt a merely spiritual sense of Jesus’ ongoing presence.
On that, Chilton basically sides with Jewish historian Alan Segal’s “Life After Death,” against the primary Christian treatment, “The Resurrection of the Son of God,” by Chilton’s fellow Anglican N.T. Wright.
Writing about that book, Anne Rice, vampire novelist and Christian returnee, says in her new “Christ the Lord” that Wright “answers solidly the question that has haunted me all my life.”
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