Mary Magdalene
There have been a few books written on the biblical character, Mary Magdalene, which claim to depict
the true Mary, rather than the distorted image which the world has been shown over the past 2,000 years. This book by Lynne Picknett is more definitive and more plausible than other books exploring the same theme and poses more provocative questions for us.
The
gospels’ account of Mary is compared with other alternative accounts from the Gnostic Gospels, which were censored by the early
church; one of which is, The Gospel of St Thomas but the one that Picknett particularly concentrates on is, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. She hones in on one line referring to ‘Jesus kissing Mary Magalene on the lips.’ This has been the source of a hot debate for a long time; Picknett believes that the two were lovers or man and wife. She then takes her premise further by, attesting that the Magdalene was carrying Jesus’ child! As to the veracity of this, one will never know, but Picknett does pose other serious questions: in one of the Gospels, we are told that Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Jesus. Yet, this has been overlooked by the church, perhaps deliberately so. So Picknett asks: could it be that the Magdalene was Jesus’ favourite apostle, the first, the most important, and that she was so intimately connected with Jesus, that she was granted this privelege?
The Gnostic Gospels are examined further and the conclusions drawn are provocative and highly controversial. From these, Picknett depicts a picture of a woman far different from the conventional account: rather than a fallen woman, she was an Ethiopian Priestess who practised a sacred sex ritual and there was a place in Ethiopia called Magdala which was attacked by the British in the 1890’s; the reason for her malignment was twofold: (1) A mistranslation of the word Magdala/Magdalene from the original chronicles and (2) A deliberate twisting to demonise her, motivated by jealousy; Mary Magdalene was ‘Jesus’ first or favoured Apostle - an highly influential woman in the Palestine of the day; all of this, running contrary to a deeply misogynistic church in the early centuries.
We are told the Magdalene fled Palestine for her life after Jesus’ crucifixion, and arrived on the shores of Provence in the South of France (this is a legend/tradition which has always been held there and, in Languedoc, where there is quite a lot of evidence to corroborate this). It’s in this part, the book is most convincing and compelling, as Picknett examines the phenomena of the Black Madonna’s (minute statues of a black lady with her child, which can be found all over Europe) which are particularly prevalent in Languedoc. She believes that this is proof of some sort of cult there which has survived; that the Black Madonnas were Mary Magdalene - a black Ethiopian Priestess - and the reason for their censorship, is driven by the same motivation to twist the truth: the jealousy of a male-oriented church.
The one part of the book which is founded on rocky ground, is when she addresses the covert secret society called The Priory of Sion in Languedoc; she contends that the name Sion was chosen because the word is Welsh for John and that The Priory is obsessed with all things Celtic! It is equally if not more probable that Sion is simply another spelling of the sacred Mount Zion in Jerusalem, but this is only a moot point!
Overall, Picknett displays great passion and conviction for her subject; in places, has unearthed quite convincing and serious hypotheses; believes that the real Magdalene is waiting to be discovered by the world; the story of the Magdalene has still to be told and that we owe it to this heroic woman, who spent most of the remainder of her life, preaching in France and who bore Jesus’ child; that Mary Magdalene was a very powerful woman of her time, with a knowledge of magic and the occult, which even Jesus borrowed from! Apart from anything else, the book iss a challenging and profound read.