Matthew, Mark, Luke …and Mary?

The woman who sits quietly writing already has known the greatest love, and because of that love has also endured the greatest loss. She writes from the depths, both of her love and of her wisdom, which is the wisdom of the inner ways taught to her as the one worthy to receive such precious knowledge. And she also writes from her own first-hand experience as a witness to the events which she relates, and from the wellsprings of insight which are uniquely hers. The woman does not know, nor can she know, the cruel twists of the invented history about her that is to come. And perhaps that is as well, for were she to know these things, even her great spirit might falter.

A yawning gulf stretches between the Mary Magdalene who shows us a wisdom and nobility of spirit as revealed in the original texts about – and possibly actually by – her, and the redeemed woman of former ill repute perpetuated by the Church. My imagined portrait of Mary features a fragment of the surviving Gospel of Mary in the background: a text which presents us with a radically different version from the Mary of the Church.

Mary, the Magdalene, writes in ink on papyrus the [1]Gnostic declaration: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. This text written in her own [2]hand has no title. It is simply a manuscript. But its spiritual clarity and emotional intensity, and the immediacy of the events which it describes will ensure that it remains one which is read, copied and circulated.

This original text will be lost to history, but some fifty years later other hands less tolerant, and perhaps more jealous, of a mere woman’s authorship of such wisdom will radically amend her text, altering it to seem as if a man had written her words – a simple matter for a copyist to alter ‘she’ to ‘he’, apparently to make it acceptable to the new orthodoxy. The text itself clearly tells us that it was written by the [3]‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, the orthodox assumption being that this is John. And there are indeed two points in the narrative where both Mary Magdalene and this unnamed ‘beloved disciple’ appear in the same scene: at the foot of the cross, and at the tomb following the Resurrection. Yet it is precisely at these points in the story that the narrative appears to stumble, [4]contradicting itself as to exactly who was where, and when. It is as if an unknown hand is shuffling the deck in the middle of the deal, attempting to shoehorn events to fit the changed context.

The weeping Magdalene outside the tomb, as portrayed in the 19th-century by Antonio Ciseri. In the fourth Gospel Mary is described as simultaneously running away from the tomb and remaining behind at the tomb alone: an impossibility of circumstance which only can be reconciled if the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ and John are not the same person. Mary’s luxuriant loose tresses were the traditional artistic means of signalling her status as a former prostitute.

And the Magdalene herself? Already ciphered away as the true author of the text, this most wise of the original disciples now becomes demoted and reinvented by the triumphant forces of orthodoxy to be portrayed, not as one of Jesus’ inner circle, but as a mere follower and a former whore. The fact that scripture never actually describes her in such terms seems of little consequence. Such tactics are not unknown to the Church, which already has reinvented such apparently pro-Gnostic writers as [5]Anthony, Clement of Alexandria and [6]Paul to become paragons of orthodox doctrine.

Not for nothing did Clement ironically caution that ‘not all true things are the truth.’ For almost two thousand years the image of Mary Magdalene as a [7]redeemed whore will persist. Artists down the centuries become willing and unwitting co-conspirators, seeing their chance to depict the Magdalene in her penitent scarlet woman guise as a pious pretext to reveal some vulnerable female flesh. But as it always does eventually, the tide of opinion and scriptural scholarship turns.

A staged photograph from the 1920’s portraying the penitent Magdalene. Even up to the previous century we see the loose hair and the element of suggestive nudity being used to denote Mary’s presumed repentance of her former profession: a lifestyle for which there is no evidence whatever anywhere in scripture. The unknown photographer nevertheless engages our sympathy with a dramatic simplicity of composition and by keeping the face of the model hidden from our view.

So what is the basis for our calling this particular book 'The Gospel According to St. John'? In the 2nd-century [8]Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, was considering what he should call the untitled manuscript. He seemed to recall that his mentor, Bishop Polycarp, had once mentioned to him that the manuscript was written by John the apostle. And so under the editorial hand of the bishop, the text became accepted into scripture with its new title. Incredibly, this tenuous boyhood memory of a single individual is the only basis we have for calling John the author. For impartial contemporary scholarship the text is anonymous.

This sympathetic 19th-century portrayal of the Magdalene by Mateo Cerezo, while still endowing her with a prostitute’s loose tresses, nevertheless creates around her an atmosphere of devotion and study. The skull was used as a memento mori – a reminder of human mortality – which the artist counterpoints with Mary’s tender gaze towards the promised immortality offered by the crucifix.

When the only reason we have for attributing the authorship of the fourth Gospel to the apostle John is based upon a hearsay boyhood memory, then tradition rests upon foundations of sand. But if John did not write it, then who did? The ‘beloved disciple’ remains unnamed, and yet entrenched tradition insists that it is John. But other [9]texts tell us specifically that the ‘beloved disciple’, the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, is Mary Magdalene. Remembering that the fourth Gospel originally was a [10]text belonging to these other writings, by restoring the inconsistencies and changes of gender we can read this fourth Gospel very much as it could be read in what perhaps was its original form, before the alterations were made which allowed the text to become an acceptable part of the orthodox canon.

If for you this all seems a little far-fetched, how differently would you feel about things if new evidence would come to light that the text was written by (for example) the disciple Bartholomew? Is it after all mere chauvinist bias which makes the idea of a female authorship implausible? And if you still resist the idea, then consider this: it is a cold fact that we have more circumstantial evidence for considering that Mary was the text’s author than ever existed for assigning the authorship to John.
Hawkwood 

Today, 22nd July, is traditionally the day of Mary Magdalene: a good day for redressing the outdated misconceptions which orthodox opinion has been only too prepared to allow to accrue around her name.
       

Notes:

[1] The term Logos (right) is essentially Gnostic, and this is the word used in the Gospel’s original Greek. The concept of the Logos actually has its origins in the pre-Christian Greek mystery schools (as does the concept of the Trinity). The author David Fideler describes the Logos as “the pre-Christian idea of ..the pattern of Harmony which was seen as underlying the order of the universe.” In subsequent translations of the fourth Gospel, the term ‘Logos’ has been exchanged for the more simplistic term ‘Word’, but ‘Logos’ and ‘Word’ are not interchangeable concepts.

[2] Such texts also could have been dictated to a scribe.

[3] John 21:20 and 21:24.
    
[4] During John 20:1-11, Mary’s location pops in and out of being both already at the entrance to the tomb and simultaneously running away from it. An assumption that it is she who is the ‘beloved disciple’ and not the separate figure of John makes this discrepancy disappear.
   
[5] Please see my post Anthony of the Desert: Life as Fiction.

[6] Just as the orthodox bishop Athanasius presented the life of Anthony as a fictionalized biography after his death to make it appear as if Anthony was a paragon of orthodoxy, the letters of Paul were altered and supplemented for the same reason. The letters appearing in Paul’s name in the New Testament as 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus are forgeries. 1 Timothy 2:9-15 notoriously emphasises the subservient role of women, but these are all chauvinist dictums put into the mouth of Paul by a later unknown hand. Please see my post "Behold This Woman" (left) for more about this subject. These writings attributed to Paul, but not by him, are the very letters which turned up (perhaps a little too coincidentally?) at the time that Irenaeus was writing his massive multi-volume work Against Heresies, attacking all that he judged to be non-orthodox. The rigorous anti-female stance of this forged letter has served the Church well ever since. So does the fact that we now know these letters to be forgeries mean that they will at last be dropped from the canon? Of course not. We have made scripture immutable. That is its weakness. 


[7] Please see my post The Gospel of Mary.

[8] Irenaeus himself tells us this in his writings. Please see my post The Gospel According to Somebody.

[9] This notably occurs in the Gospels of Philip and Mary. Stylistically, the Gospel of Mary is particularly comparable to the fourth Gospel. That the fourth Gospel is fundamentally different from the other three is signalled by the collective term Synoptic (meaning: ‘viewed together’) Gospels used for Matthew, Mark and Luke. The fourth Gospel has a specific spiritual and emotional intensity and didactic style which is mirrored in The Gospel of Mary, pointing to the possibility that these two texts, and perhaps also the Gospel of Philip, came from the same community, of which Mary could have been the spiritual leader, or at least in which she played an influential role. 

[10] In my post Vesica Piscis: The Tale of a Fish, I cite the author Margaret Starbird’s conclusion that the number 153, the number of fish in the disciples’ net in John 21:10-11, is actually the gematria equivalent of the name η Μαγδαληνή – The Magdalene – which opens the possibility that if Mary is indeed the author of the fourth Gospel, then the inclusion of this specific number can be viewed as her authorial signature – and one which was not recognised by orthodox powers for its true significance, hence its being included in scripture. And if this specific number is mere whimsy, why include it?

WTF?? This note has been added 23 July 2015, after reading a post on another blog which also chose Mary Magdalene as its theme for yesterday. The post which can be read here, written by Erik Richtsteig, a Catholic priest based in Ogden, Utah, provided me with one of those jaw-dropping moments of incredulity which I'm seriously considering for my 'WTF Moment of the Month' award. Here's why: Father Reichsteig acknowledges (as I do) that there is no evidence whatever in scripture for the baseless tradition by the Church that Mary Magdalene was a whore. He then immediately follows this with the assertion that he nevertheless "will go with tradition every time over the fads of academe." Put plainly: this particular priest prizes baseless Church tradition above actual scripture, above the Bible itself.


Sources:
Much of the basis for this post comes from the paper Mary Magdalene: Author of the Fourth Gospel?, by Ramon K. Jusino, 1998. The complete text may be read here. The proposition that Mary was the author of the fourth Gospel remains a hypothesis, although a credible and well-reasoned one. What is not in doubt is the vast and unfounded discrepancy between her depiction in these early contemporary and near-contemporary texts and her portrayal by the Church.

Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. Trinity Press International, 1975.
Hans-Josef Klauck: Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis. Baylor University Press, 2006.
David Fideler: Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism. Quest Books, 1993.
Margaret Starbird: Magdalene’s Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity. Inner Traditions, Bear and Company, 2003.

Statue of the weeping Magdalene (above) by Antonio Canova. Imagined portrait of Mary Magdalene (top image) created for this post by Hawkwood for the © David Bergen Studio, All Rights Reserved.

It's Real! It's Fake!

It's real! It's fake! No, it's... etc. The heated academic discussion grinds on about whether the papyrus fragment which makes mention of Jesus' wife is a forgery or not. The fragment (below) has Jesus referring to his wife who also is his disciple, mentioning a ‘Mary’ who presumably is Mary Magdalene, and is written in [1]Coptic on Papyrus which has been dated to the 7th-8th-centuries.

Validation of the source of the fragment, and the dating of the text itself, has been contentious since the fragment surfaced two years ago, and the debate about its authenticity rumbles on. I think I’ll let it. For me, the issue is not so much whether or not this particular fragment is authentic, but about what actually constitutes 'real' or 'fake' in the first place.

Paul as portrayed by Rembrandt. But which 'Paul' is the real one? Seven of the thirteen letters which carry his name in scripture are now known to be later forgeries.

Is a text 'real' because it is canonical, because it contains orthodox-approved ideas? Hardly. The seven 'pastoral' letters of Paul which appear in his name in the New Testament are now known to have been written decades later by an unknown hand with the intent to put an anti-Gnostic, pro-orthodox spin on a man who, as we now know, actually held Gnostic views, and might well have been Gnostic himself. In its rise to power, the orthodox Church sought to re-create Paul in its own [2]image, as a model of all the religious values which the historical Paul in his life abjured. And so, several decades after his death, these seven letters, which contain anti-female, anti-Gnostic statements, were written and signed in his name. These letters are as fake as the papyrus fragment might yet turn out to be - but I don't see anyone rushing to drop them from the canon.

A fragment from the Gospel of Judas. Considered heretical by the orthodox Church, it was excluded from the canon. From an orthodox point of view it turns the story of Jesus' betrayal on its head, making it clear that Jesus considered Judas to be the most selfless and courageous of his disciples for ensuring that his destiny would be fulfilled, knowing that this act would damn Judas' reputation forever. 

Are the Gospels of Thomas, or Judas, or Mary 'fake' because they appear nowhere in scripture? Of course they are not. The actual texts have been authenticated, as have many such ex-scriptural texts. Whether a text makes it into scripture or not has not depended upon whether it is ‘real' or ‘fake’, but often-enough upon the capricious personal opinion of a single individual. I can only conclude that those who consider scriptural texts to be the revealed word of God simply have not investigated the history of how those texts ended up between the covers of the Bible, and just how alarmingly arbitrary such keep-it-in, leave-it-out choices have at times been. But even all these fake-or-real criteria fade into moderate insignificance beside one sobering fact.

A section of the Dead Sea scroll which describes the building of the temple in Jerusalem. These ancient texts, whether they are canonical or whether they are excluded from scripture, come to us as fragments rescued from obscurity. It is only after-the-fact decisions which have determined that one text should be approved for inclusion in scripture and another rejected. But all such texts were once considered as sacred by one belief or another. 

Not a single scriptural text is known to be original. Instead what we have either are copies of copies, or translations from one language into another, with all the built-in hazards which such translating involves - as anyone who has [3]tried their hand at this will know. But even this is not just what is at issue. In almost all cases, we simply do not know who wrote these texts. A name is tagged onto a text, or a compilation of texts, at times long after the text was written, and we become familiar with such a text as [4]'The Gospel According to St. Mark', or 'The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah’.

But the reality on the ground is that we simply do not know, and have no way of conclusively confirming, who actually wrote these and other texts, or even the circumstances under which they were written. The term used for such texts is [5]pseudepigrapha – the assigning of authorship to a text when the true author is unknown or cannot be confirmed. In this sense, the whole of scripture (with the exception of the six authenticated letters of Paul) consists solely of pseudepigraphic writings.

The above text describes the building of the Jerusalem temple, and here Rembrandt depicts the prophet Jeremiah lamenting its later destruction. 

This is not to say that ascribing such authorship would necessarily have been a deliberate subterfuge. It is more that the mindset of those distant times, and the literary forms which that mindset produced, would not have thought it untoward to attach the name of some big-gun prophet or apostle to a text which one might have written oneself, perhaps with the intention of granting such a text an aura of authority or even of authenticity. Copyright laws, plagiarism and spurious authorship claims were still notions of the distant future, and the line between what we might consider to be real or fake had yet to be drawn.

Hawkwood

Notes:

[1] The Coptic text is itself probably a translation from Greek, which carries the implication (which holds true for many texts) that even if this particular fragment is a falsification in the sense that its dating does not conform to the historical context, it might well be a copy of an earlier authentic original. So proving this fragment to be falsified would not in itself prove that the text which it carries, and what that text says, is also false. That the text of the fragment could have been copied and translated from a now-lost Greek original is therefore entirely plausible.

[2] The same process of posthumously turning someone who held Gnostic values into a champion of orthodoxy was also exercised by Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. This time it was Anthony whose life and values became rewritten in a fictitious biography penned by Athanasius that for centuries was regarded as fact. Please see my post Anthony of the Desert: Life as Fiction for more about this curious episode.  

[3] Please see my post A Simple Misunderstanding for some of the results of these hazards of translation and mistranslation in scripture.

[4] Please see my post The Gospel According to Somebody for a further investigation of Gospel authorship.

[5] For more about such pseudepigraphic writings - and a questionable contemporary Christian view of Gnosticism - please see my post Leaving the Cult.

Sources:

Hans-Josef Klauck: Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis. Baylor University Press, 2006. This study contains a complete chapter on all the letters attributed to Paul, also mentioning those not included in the New Testament. It places the letters in the historical and social context in which they were written, and examines both their writing style and their possible authorship in a rigorous depth of detail which my post here only outlines. The author points out that even in the letters which we reasonably can attribute to Paul himself, various additions and amendments to his text by later unknown others have been made which change the original context. The 'pastoral' letters appearing in the New Testament as 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus not only are conclusively not by Paul, they apparently are not to Timothy or Titus either, making them what Dr. Klauck describes as 'doubly pseudonomous'. Message, apparently, is a more important criterion than authenticity for a text's inclusion in scripture.



Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. Trinity Press International.

An academic review of the fragment can be read at: The Gospel of Jesus's Wife

Updated conclusions can be read at: The Gospel of Jesus's Wife: Introduction 

Further Q&A detailed discussion regarding current results of and conclusions about the fragment can be read via the task bar menu of this website (Harvard Divinity School). The conclusions at the time of the writing of this post are that the fragment is authentic to its time, and its text reflects genuine issues of doctrine being discussed at that time. These issues were concerned with whether or not wives could also become disciples, which Jesus appears to confirm.