The
Gospels of
Mary Magdalene is a collection of translations,
largely from the Coptic (
Egyptian) language
referring to Mary Magdalene the
woman who accompanied Jesus. Meyer includes an introduction, translated selections from the 4
canonical New Testament Gospels and non-canonical Gospels.
The New Testament Gospels tell the story of the and Mary’s witness of the crucifixion and
resurrection. The Gospel of Mary relates to Jesus’ teaching, Peter's conflicting feelings concerning Mary's
role and Mary's description of a vision she had after Jesus departed including her description of "the seven powers of wrath" which may correspond to the seven demons cast out of her by Jesus in the canonical gospels. Following, the Gospel of Thomas relates the sayings of Jesus with references to Mary. The gospel of Philip is a very Gnostic character (The world is material and evil, heaven or the other realm is good, we transcend from the world to heaven by secret knowledge known only to the select). It identifies Mary as the “disciple Jesus loved best” and that Jesus felt possessed the
wisdom to understand what he taught. The Dialogue of the Savior depicts Mary and two other
disciples discussing a Gnostic vision. In the Pistia Sophia, Mary recites for Jesus what she has learned and understood. Peter objects that Mary as a woman cannot relate such wisdom and Jesus defends her. Finally, the Manichaean psalms retell the story of Mary’s witness of the resurrection. The canonical gospels are generally held to be mid to late first century. The “Gnostic Gospels” – Thomas, Mary, Pistia Sophia, Philip and the Dialogue of the Savior- were written a few decades later though Gnosticism predated Christianity. The Gnostics, as did other believers, saw Christ as a powerful vindication of their own beliefs. Jesus started as an itinerant Galilean rabbi announcing the end of the world and the coming kingdom ‘(See Ehrman “The Historical Jesus”). Many new concepts, Christ’s messianic role, salvation, resurrection, the Holy Spirit, and complex views of the nature of God perhaps not, one suspects, from fishermen, farmers or even Pharisees but from a gifted, very unconventional disciple. Jesus is said to have cast 7 demons from Mary which suggests she was not very conventional in her thinking – possession was a euphemism for madness. However, Mary became the
source of the gospel – Christ is risen. The canonical (cf Luke 10:38) and non-canonical sources suggest that Jesus valued her devotion and wisdom. Could Mary have been an oracle or muse, a source of inspiration, perceived perhaps as divine in origin, and the source of some of the more revolutionary tenets of Christianity? The book does not consider this. Nor does it consider what happened to Mary after Christ ascended, or whether some of the importance of Mary Magdalene’s spiritual role was not later attributed to Jesus’ mother. The book concludes with an excellent essay by Esther A de Boer who, like Mary, gifts us with unexpected but welcome insight. Her discussions of Roman era gender issues,
early Christianity and Gnosticism show us the world Mary inhabited in its own terms. She shows us that while the gospels and many early
church father’s are androcentric or even misogynist, the early church - even the proto orthodox- were not universally so and even those who saw
women as lesser beings were concerned more with the message of Christ than suppressing women- the gospels contain extensive positive references to the role of women in the church- and secondly they could be surprisingly open minded about the place of women in Christianity as de Boer shows with the example of St Jerome and Melania.