inconvenient woman
She was with him to the end, and beyond. As Jesus hangs in agony on the
cross, his life ebbing, Mary
Magdalene is there, beside his mother, Mary,
watching. The Passion has been tumultuous and frightening, and crucifixion is
slow, but still she stays. Finally the hour comes. "It is finished," Jesus
says,
and bows his head. His body is bound in linen, carried to a garden, buried in a
tomb.
Before dawn on the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene rises to anoint
Christ''s body and makes her way to the grave. It is empty. The Lord is gone; she
is confused, and terrified. She races back to tell the others, returning with
them so they can see for themselves. The
male disciples come and go again,
unsure what to think; Mary, paralyzed, stays in the garden, in tearsThen comes a voice, and a question. "
Woman, why are you weeping?" she hears
from behind her. "Whom do you seek?" She turns and, thinking she sees the
gardener, answers, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have
laid him, and I will take him away." Then, in a recognizable voice, Jesus says,
"Mary." Crying "Rabboni," she leaps up in joy to embrace her teacher."Do not touch me," Jesus says, distancing himself from her, "for I have not
yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am
ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Her words to
the disciples are simple and few, yet transform the world: "I have seen the
Lord."
I have seen the Lord: such is the story of the Resurrection, as told
in the
Gospel of John. With it begins the history of Christianity, and with it
ends the New Testament history of Mary Magdalene. Peter and Paul form the new
church, Stephen dies a martyr''s death, John the Divine envisions the End Times.
But Mary Magdalene--a critical figure in his earthly circle--is neither seen nor
heard from again.
Yet the Magdalene--that part of her name derives from Magdala, her
hometown--lives on in another tradition that can be found in an obscure
second-century text. Dubbed "The Gospel of Mary," it depicts Mary as a leader of
Jesus'' followers in the days after his resurrection. Written by Christians some
90 years after Jesus'' death, Mary''s is a "Gnostic gospel"; the Gnostics, a
significant force in the early years of Christianity, stressed salvation through
study and self-knowledge rather than simply through faith. The text was lost for
centuries until found in fragments by a collector in Cairo in 1896. In its
telling, Jesus rises and vanishes after instructing his disciples to "preach the
good news about the Realm." The exhortation makes them uneasy: Christ had died
preaching that gospel. What was to save them from a similar fate?Mary, however, is serene. "Do not weep and be depressed nor let your hearts
be irresolute," she tells them. "For his grace will be with you and shelter
you." Jesus, she says, has appeared to her in a vision where he gave her special
knowledge of the soul''s journey through mystical realms. She tells the men she
will help them understand the true teachings of Christ: "What is hidden from you
I shall reveal to you."
Her words seem to sting the others. Peter, "a wrathful man," takes particular
offense. "Did he really speak with a woman in private, without our knowledge?"
he asks. "Should we all turn and listen to her?" Mostly, he is jealous: "Did he
prefer her to us?"
It is a question that is shaking Christianity after two millenniums. To many
feminists and theological liberals, the Gospel of Mary suggests that the
Magdalene, the first witness to the Resurrection, was the "apostle to the
apostles," a figure with equal (or even favored) status to the men around
Jesus--a woman so threatening that the apostles suppressed her role, and those
of other women, in a bid to build a patriarchal hierarchy in the early church.
To others, shaped by orthodoxy, Mary was an important playerand
ministry of Jesus, but subordinate to the men who followed him. Now, thanks to
Dan Brown''s "The Da Vinci Code," read by some 60 million people and open in
3,735 movie theaters nationwide, Mary Magdalene has a new role: wife of Jesus
and mother of his child, whom Mary, who purportedly escaped the Holy Land,
raised after Jesus'' death. According to the "Code"--which opened to tepid
mainstream reviews but strong box office--the baby grew up to marry into a royal
line in France--and descendants of Jesus and Mary can be found in Europe to this
day. In one particularly affecting but purely fanciful scene, one character
argues that the figure at Jesus'' right hand in Leonardo''s "Last Supper" is not a
male disciple but Mary Magdalene, and that if one recasts the painting by
putting "Mary" on Jesus'' left, they complete each other, male and female, a
human whole--a married couple, joined together forever. It is cinematically
intriguing, but like virtually all of Brown''s novel and the movie, it is a
fantasy, not fact, and, not for the first time, Mary Magdalene is a vehicle of
fevered fiction.
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