The Quest for Mary Magdalene

by Michael Haag

  In none of these stories is Mary Magdalene mentioned at all and yet amid the strange and confusing events that take place at Bethany, and the things left unsaid, there is a strong sense that Mary Magdalene is there.

  The week of Jesus’ passion begins with his anointing in Bethany and ends with Mary Magdalene coming to anoint him in the tomb. Jesus himself makes the connection between the two events when he tells his disciples at Bethany that the nameless woman of Mark and Matthew or the woman whom the gospel of John names as Mary, sister of Martha, has anointed him in preparation for his death. ‘For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial’ (Matthew 26:12; Mark and John are similar).

  The Raising of Lazarus, fresco by Giotto, 1305, in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

  The Raising of Lazarus by Giotto. Photograph by Michael Haag.

  The resurrection of Jesus is the defining event of Christian belief; Jesus says the woman who anoints him at Bethany will forever be remembered, and Mary Magdalene comes to anoint him at the tomb, yet the gospels themselves cannot remember or get it straight between them who anointed Jesus.

  The Plot Against Jesus

  At Jesus’ earlier visit to Bethany – the one some months before Passover – a crowd of neighbours and onlookers had gathered round Mary’s house when he answered her plea and raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Jesus himself required no proof of God’s love; his faith in his Father was absolute. But now as he called for Lazarus to rise he lifted his eyes to God and said, ‘I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou has sent me’ (John 11:42).

  Jesus was right; many of those who witnessed the miracle now believed that God was working through him. And some went to the Temple and told the priests and the Pharisees what they had seen. ‘What do we? for this man doeth many miracles’, the priests and Pharisees said in alarm. ‘If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation’ (John 11:47-48). The Temple priests and the Pharisees saw Jesus’ ability to demonstrate his direct relationship with God as a threat to the institutionalised rituals of the Temple and the authority of the Sanhedrin on which their very existence depended and, in their view, their authority as political intermediaries between the Romans and the Jewish people. Jesus was saying that anyone who believed could have a direct relationship with God; the priests and Pharisees were saying that bypassing their authority would result in direct rule by the Romans.

  The high priest Caiaphas spoke to the assembled religious hierarchy and put it to them succinctly, ‘that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not’. The assembly agreed that Jesus should be a sacrifice, the Passover lamb, and ‘from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death’ (John 11:50, 53).

  Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey was a challenge as was his cleansing of the Temple; now the day of the Passover was approaching and he was about to enter the city again.

  Believers and Friends

  As Jesus had challenged Herod in Galilee, so now he was engaged in a dangerous contest against the high priest and the Jewish elders in Jerusalem. But Jesus had reason to believe that he could win over the support of key members of the Sanhedrin. ‘Among the chief rulers’, records John 12:42-3, ‘also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God’.

  The Pool of Siloam which was supplied from the Gihon Spring, Jerusalem’s only source of water. When Jesus sent his disciples to meet a water carrier who would lead them to the Upper Room, site of the Last Supper, they would have met with the man near here. Archaeological excavations show that at the time of Jesus this was a quarter of large and luxurious houses; most likely Nicodemus would have lived here.

  The Pool of Siloam. Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt by Wilson, Charles William, Sir; Lane-Poole, Stanley. London 1881-84.

  Yet it was precisely among the Pharisees that Jesus had significant support, and two of these are mentioned in the gospels by name, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Both men sat on the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of seventy-one members which assembled on the Temple Mount where it acted as legislature and court in controlling all aspects of Jewish religious and political life. Joseph of Arimathea was a secret follower of Jesus while Nicodemus was at least sympathetic to him; Nicodemus would come to Jesus at night and talk about spiritual rebirth.

  There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John 3:1-5)

  Born of water and of the spirit, says Jesus, meaning the water of baptism but also Jesus is making an allusion to Nicodemus himself who, if he is the same man known in the Talmud as Nicodemus Ben Gurion, was one of the three or four wealthiest men in Jerusalem and controlled the water supply for the religious ablutions of the tens of thousands of pilgrims who came to the city at festival times. The Talmud also tells us that the Gurion family estates were at Ruma in Galilee, six miles north of Nazareth.

  The Water Carrier

  In the same way that Jesus had foreknowledge about the donkey on which he would make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, so he also had foreknowledge of the arrangements for what would turn out to be the Last Supper. In Luke 22:8-12 Jesus tells his disciples Peter and John to enter the city and ‘there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in’. At the time of the feast it was expected that residents of Jerusalem would make spare rooms available to visitors to take their Passover meal and so, as Jesus has already secretly arranged, the owner of the house will lead them to ‘a large upper room furnished: there make ready’.

  The story is retold in Matthew 26:18 where Jesus tells his disciples to ‘Go into the city to such a man’, a man not identified in the gospel but clearly a man whom Jesus knows. In Mark 14:13-15 the story is repeated: And he sendeth forth two of his disciples, and saith unto them, Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him’. Once again there will be a man waiting; the disciples do not have to find the man, the man will make himself known to the disciples. And again he is a water carrier.

  The man was a water carrier, or he was disguised as one, because he likely came as a messenger from Nicodemus. The gospels do not say so, but the likelihood fits.

  The traditional site of the Last Supper is marked by the Cenacle, a large rectangular hall, its vaulted ceiling supported by columns with gothic capitals. This was built in the twelfth century as the southern gallery in the upper level of the Church of St Mary of Zion which in turn stood on earlier structures that at the time of Jesus stood within the walls at the southwest corner of Jerusalem. The tradition that this is the site of the Last Supper is very old for the spot is identified on a mid-sixth-century map and it was visited by the Bordeaux Pilgrim already in 333 and by the redoubtable Egeria from the Iberian peninsula in 384.

  This neighbourhood was close to the Pool of Siloam to which water was diverted by Hezekiah’s tunnel from the Gihon Spring, Jerusalem’s only source of water. The water carrier would have met the disciples at the pool and brought them to the Upper Room; archaeological excavations show that at the time of Jesus this was a quarter of large and luxurious houses. The scene of the Last Supper in the Upper Room may have been in or close by the
home of Nicodemus.

  The Last Supper

  According to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke the house to which the disciples were led by the mysterious man was the scene of Jesus’ last meal before his arrest and trial and his crucifixion. It occurred towards the end of the week. During the meal Jesus predicts his betrayal by one of those present and foretells that before the cock crows Peter will have denied knowing him three times. In these same synoptic gospels Jesus breaks the bread and offers the wine, gives thanks for what he is about to eat, and says this is my body and my blood – this being counted by the Church as the first Eucharist, the word deriving from the Greek for thanksgiving.

  The Communion of the Apostles, a fresco by Fra Angelico at the convent of San Marco at Florence, c.1440. The woman kneeling on the left is probably a donor to the convent not a diner at the Last Supper.

  The Communion of the Apostles by Fra Angelico. Wikimedia Commons.

  In each of the synoptic gospels Jesus shares the Last Supper with ‘the twelve’; the gospel of John mentions the disciples without giving a number. In none of the gospels is there mention of anyone else being there, but there may have been more, and there would have been servants bringing the food and wine. There is no reason why women should not have been partaking of the dinner along with other followers of Jesus; this would be entirely normal for a Passover seder at which women would be expected to play the same role as men and additionally light the candles.

  The disciples would have been reclining on couches or carpets and pillows arranged round a table as was the habit of the time. Christian art has since given us a different impression of the Last Supper with the men sitting at a table, often circular or semi-circular, but this meant that some of the disciples showed only their backs.

  During the Italian Renaissance the convention developed for the disciples to be arranged in such a way that they could be seen full face or in profile, as in the Communion of the Apostles, the fresco by Fra Angelico that he did in the convent of San Marco at Florence in about 1440. Here there are two tables set at right angles, the seated disciples looking at Jesus who stands at the centre of the room giving the Eucharist to four disciples who are kneeling before him to the right. This is the occasion in the synoptic gospels when Jesus offers bread to his disciples and says ‘Take, eat: this is my body’, and offers them wine, saying, ‘This is my blood’ (Mark 14:22-24; Matthew and Luke are similar).

  Intriguingly in the fresco a woman kneels at the left, but this is almost certainly not a suggestion by Fra Angelico that a woman was actually present at the Last Supper; as a Dominican he would have stayed strictly within the accepted interpretation of the scriptures. Fra Angelico did sometimes introduce Mary the mother of Jesus to his frescos where he places her off to one side so that she can witness the events in her son’s life. Or the woman in this fresco is a donor; she has given to San Marco and this is her acknowledgement. Fra Angelico did include Mary Magdalene in his frescos where called for by the gospels, most famously in his Noli Me Tangere, his depiction of the resurrection (see p.2), but her hair is always uncovered, at least partly, and it is always red, which is not the case here.

  Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper which he painted from 1494 to 1498 on the refectory wall of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. There has been much speculation over the identity of the young androgynous figure to the left of Jesus. Curiously all the identifications in some way relate to Mary Magdalene; the figure is variously Mary Magdalene herself, or John the Evangelist, who some say was Mary Magdalene’s groom at the marriage of Cana, or Lazarus, who may have been Mary Magdalene’s brother.

  The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci. Wikimedia Commons.

  The windows above the table give a view across the courtyard to the opposite wing of the convent, identifying the world of San Marco in Florence with the built-up landscape of urban Jerusalem as seen from the Upper Room. And at the far right of the fresco is a well. Symbolically this recalls Isaiah 12:3: ‘Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation’. But the well also literally recalls the water carrier who brought the disciples to this place somewhere in the city.

  The most famous depiction of the scene, however, is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper which he painted from 1494 to 1498 on the refectory wall of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Here all the disciples sit along one side of a long table, their faces in plain view. Like Fra Angelico, Leonardo looks to the gospel text, but his subject is not the Eucharist, rather the moment when Jesus announces that one among them will be his betrayer. All the gospels mention this, but Leonardo’s painting specifically captures the moment described at John 13:21-26 when Jesus suddenly says, ‘One of you shall betray me’. The disciples are shocked; we see them fearfully wondering who it could be, questioning one another, demanding an answer from Jesus, who tells them, ‘He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it’. And we see Jesus reaching out his hand to the bread which he will dip in the wine and give to Judas Iscariot.

  To the left of Jesus, that is sitting on his right, is a young beardless and rather androgynous figure who in recent years has become the subject of popular fascination thanks to Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code which refers to the figure’s ‘flowing red hair, delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom’, and declares that this is Mary Magdalene, her presence in the painting part of an elaborate code by Leonardo to conceal but yet transmit the truth suppressed by the Church that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and had a child.

  The putative Magdalene figure in Leonardo’s Last Supper.

  The beardless youth, however, is entirely familiar and frequently repeated in Christian art where he is recognised as John, the youngest of the disciples, who is usually identified as the one referred to in the gospel of John as the Beloved Disciple. The Church Fathers consider him the same person as John the Evangelist and John of Patmos, author of Revelation. He is conventionally depicted as dreamy, he is always placed to the immediate left or right of Jesus, and he is often leaning against him or even asleep in his lap.

  But there is another identification, as we shall later see, that the Beloved Disciple might be Lazarus and that Lazarus might be the brother of Mary Magdalene.

  Uniquely in the gospel of John, and immediately before Jesus announces that he will be betrayed, Jesus pours water into a basin and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. Peter protests; ‘Thou shall never wash my feet’, he says, but Jesus says, ‘Ye are not all clean’ – not Judas who will betray him nor even Peter who will deny him three times before the cock crows. But Jesus means more than that. ‘Know ye what I have done to you?’, Jesus asks the disciples. ‘Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am’, but as Jesus explains, he is the servant of God, as all the disciples are the servants of God; ‘The servant is not greater than his lord’ (John 13:5-16).

  By washing the feet of his disciples Jesus is demonstrating that all are the servants of God.

  After the Last Supper, as all the gospels relate, Jesus went with his disciples to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. He feared that the final confrontation with the Sanhedrin and the Temple had come and he put himself into the hands of God. ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done . . . And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground’ (Luke 22:42-44).

  Soon the Temple soldiers came with the chief priest, the captain of the Temple and several members of the Sanhedrin, and Jesus challenged them, asking why do you come with swords and staves as though you have come to take a thief? ‘When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour, and the power of darkness’ (Luke 22: 53). At this moment Jesus’ disciples ran away. And they all forsook him, and fled’. But one man remained, ‘a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body’; the militia laid hold of him, but the young man
‘left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked’ (Mark 14:50-52).

  The English poet and painter and mystic William Blake had his own ideas about who was at the Last Supper which he painted in 1799. Various disciples are on the left and right; Adam and Eve are sitting naked facing Jesus; next to them is Judas counting his money; and sitting with Jesus at the head of the table is an unidentified young woman.

  The Last Supper by William Blake. Wikimedia Commons.

  Over the Mount of Olives in Bethany they waited for Jesus to return, there in the house of Lazarus where Mary had ‘anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair’ (John 12:3). Anointing the feet or the head was symbolic of anointing the whole body. Drying Jesus’ feet with her hair is adopting the role of servant; masters dried themselves on their servant’s hair. Mary of Bethany (or whoever she and the other nameless woman at Bethany were) was prescient in anointing Jesus before his death; she had foreseen what was to come and shared with him the agony of Gethsemane.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Trial and Death of Jesus

  THE GOSPELS TELL HOW Caiaphas, the high priest, laid plans for the arrest and killing of Jesus during Passover week in Jerusalem.

  Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him. But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people. (Matthew 26:3-5)

  But now in the darkness the moment had come. Jesus was taken by night from the Garden of Gethsemane to the palace of the high priest Caiaphas ‘where the scribes and the elders were assembled’ (Matthew 26:57).