The Quest for Mary Magdalene

by Michael Haag

  Josephus, who was governor of Galilee a generation after the death of Jesus, knew the country well. ‘The whole area is excellent for crops and cattle and rich in forests of all kinds, so that by its adaptability it invites even those least inclined to work on the land. Consequently every inch has been cultivated by the inhabitants and not a corner goes to waste. It is thickly studded with towns, and thanks to the natural abundance the innumerable villages are so densely populated that the smallest has more than 15,000 inhabitants’. Josephus was right about the abundance of Galilee but he grossly exaggerated its population; village sizes were far smaller, in the hundreds not the thousands.

  Josephus also reported that the waters of the lake supported a thriving fishing industry, including a fleet of 230 fishing boats. Four of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen and shared in the prosperity of Galilee, a prosperity underlined by the archaeological evidence of comfortable and substantial houses at Capernaum, the base of Jesus’ ministry and home to Peter.

  Galilee lay on a main trading route between Egypt and Syria; roads ran everywhere; it enjoyed commercial links with the Decapolis, the coast of Palestine and Syria, with Asia Minor and Cyprus. The Greeks, Hasmoneans, Romans and Herodians all built cities here – the Hasmoneans developed the place now called Migdal or Magdala on the western shore of the lake, making it the most important port on the Sea of Galilee, and Herod Antipas founded Tiberias just to the south and made it his capital. The population of Galilee, which numbered about two hundred thousand in the first century AD, was quite mixed and included Greeks, Canaanites, Egyptians and Nabataeans, though the majority were Jews. For all these reasons Galilee was a more outward-looking place than Jerusalem.

  Much of the ministry of Jesus occurred on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He gave the Sermon on the Mount just to the north of Capernaum; and he performed miracles at the lake, walking on its waters, calming the storm, filling his disciples’ boats with a great catch of fish, and feeding the five thousand.

  Marriage and Miracle at Cana in Galilee

  Jesus performed his first miracle at Cana in Galilee. This is the marriage feast to which Jesus and his mother and the disciples are invited, but the wine runs out and after being nagged by his mother Jesus turns the water into wine. The event is described in John 2:1-5.

  And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

  Jesus then had the servants fill six jars with water; when it was tasted by the chief steward or governor of the feast, who knew nothing of what Jesus had done, the steward complemented the bridegroom saying, ‘Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now’ (John 2:10).

  The Wedding at Cana, Jesus turning water into wine. German, early 18th century. But whose wedding was it?

  Wedding at Cana, Jesus turning water into wine. Wikimedia Commons.

  The symbolism lies in Jesus transforming the water used in the old Jewish rituals of purification into the wine of a new faith. But the scene is strange, as though it recalls a once significant event, now forgotten or edited out. After all, as Jesus says, it is no concern of his to make good a shortage in the wine; he and his mother and the disciples are only guests. Or are they?

  Mary addresses Jesus in a tone of expectation and she tells the servants to follow whatever orders he gives them. This is the behaviour not of guests but of people who are hosting a wedding feast. Some Bible commentators have suggested that the wedding might have been that of a close relative of Mary’s, but beyond that they will not venture; they name no names.

  But according to the late fourth-century historian and theologian St Jerome, who spent the last decades of his life in Bethlehem – or at least according to Domenico Cavalca, a fourteenth-century Franciscan who wrote a Life of Mary Magdalene and attributes his information to Jerome – the marriage was between Mary Magdalene and John the Evangelist, the author of the fourth gospel, who immediately abandoned his bride and joined Jesus in heralding the kingdom of God.

  This story has been imaginatively recreated by Marguerite Yourcenar, author of The Memoirs of Hadrian, in her collection of stories about women in love called Fires. Mary Magdalene is abandoned by John on their wedding night when he lets himself out the window to join Jesus in preaching the imminent kingdom. John’s desertion and Mary’s shame turn her into a prostitute. Later she meets and falls in love with Jesus but he is then crucified; when she goes to his tomb to anoint him she finds that he has risen: ‘For the second time in my life, I was standing in front of a deserted bed’.

  But there are clues in John’s gospel that suggest the bridegroom was Jesus himself and that we are witnessing his marriage to Mary Magdalene. The marriage at Cana happens on ‘the third day’, says the gospel of John. The phrase ‘the third day’ appears fourteen times in the gospels, thirteen of those times referring to the resurrection when Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and finds that Jesus has risen. The phrase occurs only one other time: ‘And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee’.

  The marriage of Mary Magdalene to John the Evangelist, an illustration from a manuscript of Der Saelden Hort, a late-13th-century Swiss verse romance. The poem draws on the tradition that the feast at Cana was a celebration of the marriage of John, author of the fourth gospel, and Mary Magdalene.

  Marriage of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene at Cana. Karlsruhe Badische Landesbibliothek.

  Several of Jesus’ disciples were married, including Peter (Matthew 8.14-17; Mark 1.29-31; Luke 4.38), and there is nothing in the New Testament that says Jesus was not married. In fact it would have been unusual for a man of Jesus’ age not to have been married. Jesus was no ascetic like John the Baptist or the Essenes; he was relaxed about ritual washing and diet; he caricatured himself as ‘a glutton and a drunkard’ (Matthew 11.19; Luke 7.34); he loved food and drink and good talk; he was witty and sharp; he was at ease with women; and he was self-deprecating but had an intensity and aura about him that was very attractive. Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene married that would explain the intimacy between them, her constant companionship, her appearance at the crucifixion, and above all her visit to the tomb on the third day bearing spices to anoint his naked body, a task undertaken by a wife.

  It would also help explain her name. Mary the Magdalene, the Watchtower of the Messiah, the Bride of Christ.

  The Kingdom of God

  When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been thrown into prison he began gathering disciples and he started to preach. He travelled all about Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, healing the sick and the possessed and preaching the kingdom of God. ‘And they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them’ (Matthew 4:24). Multitudes came to him from Galilee, Jerusalem, Judaea and from beyond the river Jordan and also from the Decapolis, ten cities founded by the Greeks or otherwise entirely Hellenised, including Damascus to the north, all with primarily gentile populations and large numbers of Hellenised Jews.

  But gentiles were of no concern to Jesus. His three public activities were curing the sick, delivering people from demonic possession, and preaching, and all these were directed towards his fellow Jews. Nothing Jesus said or did suggests any political view; though paying taxes to Rome was considered the ultimate betrayal by Jewish radicals, Jesus said, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’ (Mark 12:17). He occasionally healed gentiles but he declared that his message was strictly for ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matthew 15:24), and
he spoke harshly to and about gentiles, comparing them to dogs and pigs (Mark 7:27, Matthew 7:6, 15:26). Jesus explicitly directed his disciples to address only Jews and he forbade them to approach gentiles. ‘The only logical inference that can be drawn from these premises is that Jesus was conerned only with Jews, because in his view citizenship of the Kingdom of God was reserved for them alone’, writes the leading Jesus scholar Geza Vermes in The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, adding that ‘Jesus was not exactly the gentle, sugary, meek and mild figure of pious Christian imagination’.

  Mary Magdalene with John the Baptist (not to be confused with John the Evangelist), by Angelo Puccinelli, mid-14th century. Mary Magdalene might first have been a follower of the Baptist, attracted by his message of salvation addressed to women as much as men.

  Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist by Puccinelli, 14th century. Wikimedia Commons.

  Jesus certainly did not see himself as a saviour, least of all a universal saviour. He never spoke of himself as the messiah or the Son of God; he never claimed to rule, rather he said he had come to serve. He sought the lost lamb; he cherished repentant sinners and tax collectors, one of whom was his disciple Matthew (also known as Levi), and he loved children. Jesus was clear about what he was doing; when the scribes and Pharisees demanded to know why he ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners, he said to them, ‘They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’ (Mark 2:16-17).

  This was the way of God, and to illustrate what he meant Jesus told the parable of the profligate son (Luke 15:11-32) – about the younger son who claims his inheritance from his father, goes into a far country and wastes everything in riotous living. When he has nothing and is on the point of starving he returns to his father and says, ‘I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son’. But his father, far from rebuking his younger son, has compassion and embraces him and kisses him and calls out to his servants, ‘Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry’.

  The older brother, when he hears this, is angry and says to his father, ‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither trangressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou has killed for him the fatted calf’. The father answered him, saying, ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine’. But he explained that it was right ‘that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found’.

  Jesus exorcises two men possessed by demons. Jesus drives the demons into a herd of pigs who rush into the Sea of Galilee and are drowned. French, early 17th century.

  Jesus exorcising the demoniacs. Wellcome Library, London.

  God yearns, and his yearning is not so much for the righteous as for the sinners. And that is a reminder, preached Jesus, that no matter how much a man may follow the law, it is not man but God who decides.

  Jesus rejected the charge that he was violating the Torah, that is the Jewish law. ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill’ (Matthew 5:17). But Jesus also preached that to enter the kingdom of God one had not only to fulfill the law but go beyond it. Observing rituals and a moral system was not enough; one had to submit absolutely to God, a God who could be incomprehensible in the seemingly arbitrary and indiscriminate ways he chooses to love.

  Jesus spoke of this in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44, 45, 48).

  Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. . . .

  Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

  In the original Greek the word for ‘perfect’ is teleios, which can also be translated as entire or complete. The God of Jesus’ teachings pours out his love on all. And just as God the father is entire and complete through his embrace of everyone in his love, so man should imitate God by loving absolutely.

  Jesus’ teaching appealed to the poor, the oppressed, the distressed and those on the margins; and this, combined with his powers as a healer and an exorcist, made him immensely popular among the crowds of Galilee.

  The kingdom of God is coming, said Jesus, during his Sermon on the Mount as he taught his disciples how to pray to God the father. ‘Our father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:9). In fact the kingdom of God is all about us, waiting for us to enter if we know how. ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mark 1:15).

  The Ghost of John the Baptist

  Mary Magdalene and the other women, and the twelve disciples, were taking a serious risk when they joined Jesus, for it was the arrest of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas that spurred Jesus into action. Most of John the Baptist’s ministry had taken place on the east bank of the Jordan in Herod’s territory of Parea; after John’s imprisonment Jesus began his ministry in Herod’s territory of Galilee. Herod Antipas took it as a challenge.

  Herod’s rule, as he saw it, offered a stable and peaceful and united world, sharing a common culture, a paradise on earth. And not only Greeks and Romans but many Jews had adopted Hellenistic ways.

  But Herod feared that Jesus’ kingdom would be seen by people as in conflict with his own and with the Romans’. When Herod heard about Jesus preaching throughout Galilee he said that ‘John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. . . . It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead’ (Mark 6:14,16).

  CHAPTER THREE

  On the Road with Jesus

  JESUS IS SOMETIMES DESCRIBED as a radical for his attitude towards women. He included women in his entourage. And in mixing with women during his preachings and his healings, he did not observe the taboos. He did not feel himself polluted, for example, in the story told by Matthew and Luke of the woman who had suffered twelve years from an issue of blood; she had spent all her money on doctors to no avail but now among a throng of people she reached out and touched Jesus on the hem of his garment. ‘And Jesus said, Who touched me? . . . She came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately.’ Where custom and belief would have caused other Jewish men to shrink from her and feel themselves defiled, Jesus said to her, ‘Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace’ (Luke 8:44-48).

  Women with Jesus

  Jesus had an inclusive view of the twelve disciples and the women travelling with him round Galilee. When Luke 8:1-2 writes that ‘the twelve were with him, and certain women’, the women are not set apart; men and women are all ‘with him’. Furthermore the women, like the men, are there throughout his ministry. ‘The women that followed him from Galilee’ are at the crucifixion, writes Luke 23:49; and on the third day when the women discover the empty tomb, two men in shining garments appeared among them, saying ‘He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee. Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words’ (Luke 24:6-8). Luke is being emphatic; from those early days in Galilee to the last days in Jerusalem, and for all the days in between, Jesus is accompanied by his close circle of women and by his twelve male disciples. Both the women and the men have shared in his teachings and have received his intimate revelations.

  But the rea
l radical was not Jesus. The radicals were the women. Jesus may have been unusual and inclusive in his outlook, but there was no question of having women in his movement unless – against almost all the laws and customs of Jewish society in Palestine – these women could live independently of family ties. The women in Jesus’ entourage were not performing the conventional female roles of cooking meals and washing clothes, or if they were Luke does not say so, but what he does say is that neither Jesus nor any of his followers, women or men, were engaged in economically productive work. Just as the men have given up their employment to follow Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the other women exercised their independence and used their financial means to make the mission possible.

  Yet if anything restrictions on Jewish women in Palestine were most severe at the time of Mary Magdalene, the moment when Judaism was most fiercely engaged in the struggle to preserve its identity against the influences of Hellenistic culture. While women belonging to the Hellenistic world, from Italy through Greece and to Egypt, enjoyed increasing independence and financial opportunities, Jewish women of Judaea and Galilee were subjected to ever stricter intepretations of the Torah and yet more elaborate regulations.

  ‘Thy faith hath made thee whole’, Jesus says to the woman with an issue of blood who touches the hem of his garment. The wall painting was discovered in the 3rd-century Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter in Rome.

  Woman with an issue of blood. Wikimedia Commons.