The Mysteries of Mary Magdalene
'The Da Vinci Code' Resurrects a Debate of Biblical Proportions
By Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page D01
Mary Magdalene is back.
Not that she ever really went away, but every now and then she's thrust into the spotlight, the canon's cover girl for a lively debate about women, sex, feminism and the church. Her latest starring role comes in this summer's blockbuster thriller "The Da Vinci Code," a page-turning romp through theology, art, secret societies and the Holy Grail. The novel, which has topped bestseller lists for 16 weeks with a million copies in print, poses the not-so-innocent question: What if Jesus and the Magdalene were husband and wife?
It's not a new premise, but it never fails to rile the faithful, the faithless and the devil's advocates. "The Da Vinci Code" is the latest piece in a 2,000-year-old puzzle of Magdalene.
"I think Mary Magdalene is the most fascinating figure in the New Testament outside of Jesus Himself," says Charlotte Allen, author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus." As the first person to see the risen Christ, Magdalene is central to the Resurrection story. Other than that, the Bible offers a few tantalizing clues about her, says Allen, which only makes her more intriguing.
Was Magdalene, as portrayed in centuries of art and literature, the penitent prostitute, the devoted follower, the woman with the alabaster jar?
Or, as "The Da Vinci Code" suggests, was she Jesus's wife, partner, confidante, beloved disciple, the "apostle to the apostles"? All this and more, says "Code" author Dan Brown.
"I was skeptical, but after a year and a half of research I became a believer," says Brown. "As soon as people understand that the few Gospels included in the Bible are not the only version of the Christ story, they begin to sense contradictions. Magdalene is most obvious." Her role, he says, was deliberately distorted, a smear campaign by the early church fathers -- as one of his characters declares, "the greatest cover-up in human history."
It is, at the very least, one of the great religious and historical mysteries. Merely asking the question -- wrapped in a can't-put-down murder mystery -- has made Brown a very wealthy man.
But does he believe that Jesus was actually married to Magdalene?
"I do," he says.
"When I was a child, I always thought Mary Magdalene was just great," says Allen. "For one thing, she was beautiful with her long red hair. And the fact that she had been a great sinner but Jesus loved her so. She had human failings."
Allen grew up Catholic. As a young girl, the only movie she was allowed to see during Lent was Cecil B. De Mille's 1927 silent classic "King of Kings." Actress Jacqueline Logan plays Magdalene as a courtesan draped in jewels, accompanied by leopards and male slaves. "She was fabulous," says Allen. "I just loved her."
Nothing in the Bible says she was a prostitute. Magdalene is named by Mark (15:40-41) and Matthew (27:55-56) as one of the women from Galilee. Luke (8:2) says seven devils (probably mental illness) were cast from her. The Gospels place her at the crucifixion, watching from a distance. She might have remained a minor character in the story, except that the Bible says she was the first witness to Jesus's resurrection -- therefore a critical figure in the Easter story.
In John (20:16), the weeping Magdalene mistakes Him for the gardener. "Jesus saith unto her, 'Mary.' She turned herself and saith unto Him, 'Rabboni,' which is to say, Master." But after telling the disciples what she has seen, she's never mentioned again in the Scriptures.
There are three prominent Marys in the New Testament: Mary, the mother of Jesus; Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha; and Mary of Magdala. John describes Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus's feet and wiping them with her hair. In Luke, an unnamed woman does the same thing, but this one is called a sinner. In the very next chapter, Luke tells the story of Magdalene and her demons.
Magdalene's reputation as a wanton woman was sealed by 591 when Pope Gregory announced that the Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the sinner were, in fact, the same woman. (It wasn't until 1969 that the Catholic Church restored them to three separate individuals.)
The Eastern Orthodox Christians never accepted the tainted version of Magdalene. According to one legend, she and Jesus's mother went to Ephesus to teach. Another has her in Rome appearing before Emperor Tiberius. When she tells him the story of the resurrection, he replies that a man could no more rise from the dead than an egg could turn red. Mary picks up an egg and it turns bright red. Icons often depict her holding an egg, and Orthodox Christians still color their Easter eggs red.
Western myths are even more dramatic. Magdalene's cult is based in southern France, where she supposedly fled for safety with Lazarus and his sister, Martha. Early French literature tells of her arrival on the shores of Provence. Her Feast Day, July 22, was a major celebration in France during the Middle Ages and is observed to this day.
Little was written until the Renaissance, when she became the femme fatale of Christian art and morality plays. She made a neat contrast to the Virgin Mary, repentant whore to the Madonna. She's almost always had long red hair and revealing clothing, and carried an alabaster jar of precious oils.
By the 19th century, Magdalene was a synonym for prostitution, and she became the patron saint of reformed prostitutes and sexual temptation. (The name stuck: "The Magdalene Sisters" opens next month -- a movie about the church-sponsored Magdalene laundries in Ireland where unmarried mothers and wayward girls were incarcerated by their parents.)
Magdalene keeps appearing in popular culture, generating outcries of heresy and hypocrisy. There are the sexpot Magdalenes in "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "The Last Temptation of Christ." She's a heroine for singer-songwriter Tori Amos, who believes Magdalene was as divine as the Virgin Mary. "I absolutely believe that she was the sacred bride of Christ," Amos, the daughter of a Methodist minister, told a British music magazine. ". . . If that had been passed down this would be a different planet right now because the world of women would be so different."
"The Da Vinci Code" presents an entirely different Magdalene, one that has sparked a lively debate on the Internet. More than 500 readers have weighed in on Amazon.com alone:
• "Completely turned my opinion of the Bible and the Catholic Church upside down."
• "My only complaint with the book is that it fictionalizes real people and real events and rewrites history in such a way [as] to attempt to undermine Christianity."
• "This is one of the best books (if not the best book) I've ever read. Appropriately, there are many who would remind me that it's the second best book, after the Bible. Well, THE DA VINCI CODE is, in many ways, a further exploration of the Bible."
• "I have never read such a disjointed mishmash of unresearched untruths in my entire life."
Brown's novel is the spiritual and literary heir of the 1982 book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. (Brown has even named one of his key characters "Leigh Teabing," an anagram of the authors.)
The nonfiction "Holy Blood" pulls together facts and rumors centered on a secret society called the Prieure de Sion, supposedly founded in the 12th century by the crusader Godfroi de Bouillion and boasting members through the centuries such as Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. The book focuses on a 19th-century French priest in southeastern France, Abbe Sauniere, and his claim of a link between Jesus, Magdalene and the French Merovingian dynasty of the 7th century. The story spins off to include the Knights Templar, the Holy Grail and even King Arthur.
Margaret Starbird, raised as a devout Catholic, read "Holy Blood" 18 years ago.
"I thought it was blasphemous. I was a nice Catholic girl, mother of five, teaching CCB [Catholic religious education]. I didn't need this book. It rocked my boat."
It bothered her so much she started doing research on her own. "The deeper I got into it, the more convinced I became. There is so much evidence. I wanted to feel safe in my church. I didn't want this to be true. The last thing I wanted is to be a heretic."
But Starbird ended up writing "The Woman With the Alabaster Jar," which uses ancient goddess rites and anointing ceremonies to conclude that Jesus and Magdalene were united in a sacred marriage. "I believe that they were partners at all levels," she says. "Some people look at you cross-eyed and think you've lost it, but more and more people have already heard this, and I confirmed it in some way."
Defenders of a Magdalene-Jesus union say that Jewish tradition would have accepted Jesus as a sexual being within a lawful marriage, but it was problematic when apostles tried to expand Christianity into the Greek world, where spiritual purity demanded a chaste Jesus. They say the church fathers effectively wrote Magdalene out of the official record, but her story was kept alive through myths, legends and secret signs.
Most biblical scholars, however, believe the Magdalene-Sion-Holy Grail tale ranks right up there with "The X Files" and other vast conspiracy theories.
"Jesus had a mission. I cannot believe He would take on a wife and family knowing what would happen to Him, just in human terms," says Margaret George.
George, author of "Mary, Called Magdalene," set out to write what she calls the "thinking man's Bible novel." Too many, she thought, were either pious tracts, shocking, revisionist or Monty Python-like parodies. "I was hoping for something along the lines of historical Jesus documentaries. I wanted to show the historical characters and the setting they lived in, what it was like to be a disciple -- the everyday aspects as well as the high points."
In the 2002 novel, George's Magdalene is a wife and mother from Galilee tormented by madness and desperate for relief. Jesus commands the evil spirits to leave her, and Magdalene becomes a devout follower and friend. In her novel, Magdalene falls in love with Jesus, but there is no romance, no marriage.
"Realistically, I would imagine that she was one of several spiritually advanced disciples important to Jesus," she says. "He may have confided special insights and teaching to her. He chose to reveal Himself to her alone in the garden after the resurrection. Clearly, He had some special relationship to her, and trusted her with important things. But more than that, I don't know. It's a mystery."
The Rev. Thomas Kalita, a priest at St. Peter's Parish in Olney, discounts any discussion of Jesus as a married man: "The tradition of the Catholic Church has taught that Jesus maintained His virginity throughout His life. He was neither married nor had any sexual relationships."
Many Christians prefer to stick strictly to the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and are dismissive of historical context and non-canonical texts. They say Mary Magdalene is popular today because she's what feminists would have wished the early church to be -- not what it was.
But Kalita, who holds a doctorate in biblical theology, says Magdalene clearly held a special role. "In the liturgical calendar, every saint is given a particular description. Mary Magdalene holds the unique title, 'Disciple of the Lord.' The conclusion we can draw from that is St. Mary Magdalene was a disciple par excellence and a model for all others who would follow Jesus."
A flurry of biblical studies in the last 20 years has reexamined the role of women in the first days of Christianity. An increasing number of mainstream scholars now believe that women held positions of leadership -- deacons, teachers, preachers -- and that Magdalene was one of the most important.
Some of this is based on a rereading of the Bible. Some comes from non-biblical, ancient texts. The Gospel of Mary was discovered in 1896. The Nag Hammadi texts were discovered in 1945 and date back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries; they include the Gospels of Philip and Thomas.
A passage in Philip describes Magdalene as Jesus's companion whom He kisses on the mouth. The rest of the disciples ask, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Gospel of Mary stresses Magdalene's spiritual wisdom and closeness to Jesus. At one point, Peter challenges Magdalene to share a vision from Jesus, and then rejects it. "Are we to turn around and listen to her?" he asks the other men. "Did He choose her over us?" Levi jumps in to defend Magdalene, telling Peter that he is hot-tempered and that she is worthy to teach the male disciples.
But Peter and the other church fathers won out by the 2nd century, says Karen King, a professor of ancient Christianity at Harvard Divinity School.
"What they did is divide the tradition into orthodoxy and heresy," she says. "They associated orthodoxy with Mary the mother and heresy with Mary Magdalene as an apostle. But they saved Magdalene for the church by making her a repentant prostitute. That made women non-threatening. They had to somehow undermine her as a female authority figure." The facts, say King, are on Magdalene's side: "She got a raw deal."
Modern feminists are trying to change that. "Mary Magdalene: Myth & Metaphor," by art historian Susan Haskins, claims the church misused the image of Magdalene to subordinate women. In the recently released "Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess," Lynn Picknett makes the case that Magdalene was not only a disciple but also the leader of all the Apostles and Jesus's true successor. Future Church, a Catholic Church reform organization based in Cincinnati, observes Magdalene's feast day with a call to restore the saint to her original place of honor and more women in leadership roles.
Magdalene has become "the poster girl for women's ordination," says George. "We see in the Bible what we want to see. People are searching for a scriptural authority that would support their desire for equality, which is a modern idea. They don't want to say it's a new idea, they want to say they've rediscovered an ancient idea."
George likes the idea of Magdalene as a well-known teacher in Ephesus because it gives her a role in the early church. But what if she was more? George considers the question. "If she really was the leading disciple, if Jesus really did entrust her His mission, then, in fact, Magdalene is key in understanding Jesus's attitude toward women."
Magdalene is ready for her close-up. "She's a historical figure whose time has come," says Dan Brown. "People sense that."
History, he says, is written by the "winners," those societies and belief systems that conquered and survived. Even with that bias, we still measure the accuracy of an idea by examining how well it concurs with our existing historical record. "Many historians now believe that in gauging the historical accuracy of a given concept, we should first ask ourselves a far deeper question: 'How historically accurate is history itself?' "
The short answer: not very. Most people chalk up the mystery of the Magdalene as yet another of the great unknowables. Brown isn't so sure about that.
"I'm not entirely convinced it is unknowable," he says. We're entering an age, he says, when we've started to question everything. In the past, knowledge was something that was handed down by authority figures; now we seek and discover for ourselves.
"I have no vested interest in whether people believe one history of Magdalene or another," he says. "However, I think it's wonderful that people are . . . discussing their spirituality on new levels."