Reply #8: Gospel of Mary Magdalene

[bajamary]

I found Maureen Dowd's article most interesting but she failed to mention how the male Catholic church has eliminated the other Gospels of Jesus' apostles, such as Mary Magdalene who also wrote Gospels. Maureen does not deal with early history of Christianity when women were priests and they performed various clerical duties.

I know Dowd had a limited space but it's crucial to know that in the first few centuries of after Jesus died, women were equal and they wrote several Gospels, all of which were condemned, burned and destroyed. Recently, scholars have found some of these lost gospels.

Implications of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene

Karen L. King, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University Divinity School, concludes that this Gospel provides "...an intriguing glimpse into a kind of Christianity lost for almost fifteen hundred years." Professor King goes on to say that the Gospel
"...presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects his suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is—a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women's leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority."

As Professor King also observed, the tensions in second-century Christianity are reflected in "the confrontation of Mary with Peter, a scenario also found in The Gospel of Thomas, Pistis Sophia], and The Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians. Peter and Andrew represent orthodox positions which deny the validity of esoteric revelation and reject the authority of women to teach."

The text is primarily concerned with

1. mortality and the origin of mortality as a result of the demiurge
2. Jesus' ascension
3. The ascent of the soul, according to gnosticism

The larger part of these concerns is expressed as a dialogue between the disciples and Mary, who is providing the answers. Within the text, the authority of the church after the departure of Jesus has been placed in Mary, which likely indicates that the text originated within a sect which either recognized Mary as its founder or otherwise valued Mary above other apostles. This favor may have been, in part, due to her ability as a female to represent the important figure of Sophia, the female syzygy of Christ, within gnostic theology.

Additional information can be found at:

http://www.maryofmagdala.com/Karen_King/karen_king.html