Charles may have been confident about finding Mary’s skeleton because he had arranged for it to be put in the ground. Just seventy-five years earlier, relics said to be Mary’s, including a skull, had been looted during the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders from the West. The word in Latin for the discovery of relics is inventio, and Charles’s whole story does feel more invented than accurate.
Charles would have done no better if he had dug in Vezelay, or in Magdala, for that matter. Mary Magdalene’s relics cannot be found underground, nor will they be disinterred by means of even a plausibly targeted excavation. Her true relics are not physical, and never have been.
Her bones are mixed in with those of thousands of other victims who were hacked to death in Magdala by the Romans in 67 C.E. Likewise, not a single historical source tells us what a biographer would want to know of her life. Even when all the sources are sifted and analyzed and put together with our knowledge of her time and society, they fall short of giving us a conventional biography.
Yet however successful the desire to mute Mary Magdalene’s genuine teaching might have been, however much fashion has dominated her presentation in century after century, unmistakable signs of her influence remain. Within the complicated legends of medieval hagiographers and the conspiracy theories of their modern revisionist counterparts, her signature sacraments of exorcism, anointing, and vision persist. Her three gifts of Spirit are the inheritance of Mary Magdalene: dissolving what is impure or evil, offering ointment for sickness and sin, and permitting her followers to perceive the spiritual truth of Resurrection.
The Magdalene inheritance is not for Christianity alone or for Judaism alone. Mary lived before those two religions had separated from each other, and her native Magdala was influenced by the exchange of products and ideas that came from India and China and Nabatea. The pantheon of divinity in the religions of the Indus, Buddhism’s meditation in the face of suffering, Arabian mercantilism of a type that Muhammad would later represent—all of these echoed in her mental world.
Mary’s sacraments were for those who used them, following the centuries-old practice of women in Galilean Judaism. They did not require hierarchy or dogma, and for that reason her sacraments have survived the imposition of silence that has been Mary’s fate in orthodox Christianity. They have made their way, whether in practice or in imagination, through the twists and turns of repression, ignorance, and self-interest in the tortured history of the West.
That is why Mary’s life is a sacramental biography. For all the details that texts of the New Testament exclude—in that exclusion opening wide the doors of legend, revision, and uncertainty—her sacraments nonetheless focus the ritual power that Mary Magdalene unleashed during Jesus’ life and at his death. In the wordless struggle of exorcism, the silence of anointing, the rapt attention of vision, Mary conveyed the truth of Spirit to those who followed her disciplines, whatever their backgrounds may have been, and she has not ceased to find disciples.
In my visits with Marguerite, I had not realized that sitting in her house, looking out into her garden, I was also visiting the temple of Mary Magdalene. Her temple is manifest wherever her sacraments are embraced. Marguerite’s quiet confidence that evil had only to be identified to be dissolved, her resort to the Spirit of God in prayer in times of illness, and finally her persistent question—“Is anyone there? Is there anyone there?”—echoed the practices that Mary Magdalene had crafted with Jesus.
A Chronology for Mary Magdalene
63 B.C.E. In the midst of an internecine strife among the Maccabees, Pompey enters Jerusalem and the Temple, claiming them for Rome.
47 B.C.E. Julius Caesar arranges for the governance of what became known as Syria Palaestina, the Philistine coast of Syria, including Israel.
4 B.C.E. The death of Herod results in the division of his kingdom: His son Archelaus takes Judah, Herod Antipas inherits Galilee and Perea, while Herod Philip rules Trachonitis.
1 B.C.E.—13 C.E. The birth of Mary in the fishing town of Magdala and her childhood there.
2-16 C.E. The birth of Jesus in Galilean Bethlehem and his childhood in Nazareth.
16-21Jesus’ apprenticeship with John the Baptist in Judea.
19Herod Antipas’s construction of Tiberias, near Magdala.
21 The death of John the Baptist and the return of Jesus to Nazareth at the age of eighteen.
24-27 Using Capernaum as a base, Jesus becomes a well-known teacher in Galilee by his twenty-fifth year. Near the beginning of this period, during the year 25, Mary Magdalene meets Jesus for the first time, seeking exorcism, and starts to craft her narratives of Jesus’ practice (Mark 1:21-28).
27-31 Herod Antipas’s threat forces Jesus to skirt and crisscross Galilean territory and to gather his followers in Syria; Mary returns to Magdala, where she crafts the story of the man with a legion of demons (Mark 5:1-17) and (after the Transfiguration in 30 C.E.) the story of the possessed boy (Mark 9:14-29).
31-32 Jesus’ last year in Jerusalem, accompanied by Mary Magdalene and other disciples as well as the Twelve.
35 The meeting of Peter and James and Paul in Jerusalem, and the availability of the earliest sources of the Gospels: Peter’s instruction for apostles such as Paul, and the mishnah of Jesus’ teaching, known to modern scholarship as “Q.” 37The removal of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas from power by the Roman legate Vitellius. 40The adaptation of Peter’s Gospel by James, the brother of Jesus, in Jerusalem. 45In Antioch, well outside of Palestine, followers of Jesus are for the first time called “Christians.” 53-57Paul writes his major letters to congregations of Christians in Galatia, Corinth, and Rome. 62The death of James by stoning in Jerusalem, at the instigation of the high priest. 64The death of Paul and Peter in Rome.
The insurrection against Rome is supported by some key authorities in the Temple, and Josephus is dispatched to Galilee, where he organizes resistance in Magdala and elsewhere.
Titus defeats the Jewish insurgents in Magdala and the makeshift Jewish fleet off shore. Thousands are slaughtered systematically, making this the likely date of Mary Magdalene’s death in her native land.
70-73 The siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Romans, and the burning of the Temple under Titus; the end of the revolt in Palestine; the composition of Mark’s Gospel in Rome.
75Josephus publishes his Jewish War.
80The composition of Matthew’s Gospel (in Damascus).
90The composition of Luke’s Gospel and Acts (in Antioch).
93Josephus publishes his Antiquities of the Jews.
100The composition of John’s Gospel (in Ephesus).
xi the “hypothesis” that Mary was the true Holy Grail: The key work in developing this approach is Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Delacorte, 1982).
xü major teachers in the New Testament: An awareness of the variegated sources in the New Testament stands behind my earlier biographies, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000) and Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2004). When I cite these works in this book, I have not included my name in the citation. In addition, Rabbi Jesus and Rabbi Paul are cited only by short title hereafter.
xüi “the apostle to the apostles”: The broadest survey available is by Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993)-
xiv what Gnostic teachers had to say about Mary: This refers especially to the accounts in the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Philip and in the Pistis Sophia. My selection is informed by analytic work, such as the anthology and commentary of Antti Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
xvi it is tempting for professionals in the study of the New Testament: Darrell L. Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code (Nashville: Nelson, 2004), and Ben Witherington, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2004), provide
good examples.
1. possessed
2 In one vivid tale: Victor Saxer dates Mary’s veneration in Ephesus from that time in a monograph that remains fundamental; see Le culte de Marie Madeleine en Occident (Paris: Clavreuil, 1959), pp. 10, 21. The Ephesians claimed to possess her skeleton, which was moved to Constantinople during the ninth century; Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993), p. 108.
2 In one recent reconstruction: Marianne Sawicki, Crossing Galilee: Architectures of Contact in the Occupied Land of Jesus (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 133-153; this is an otherwise excellent study. Richard Bauckham draws the necessary distinction between Mary and Joanna in refuting Sawicki’s conclusion; see Gospel Women: Studies of Named Women in the Gospels (London: T&T Clark, 2002), p. 194 n. 356. His criticism of Sawicki for excessive speculation strikes me as overdrawn, since he himself identifies Joanna with the “Junia” mentioned by Paul in Romans 16:7 (pp. 109-202). The only evidence for this claim is the rough similarity between the women’s names, and even then Bauckham is faced with how to explain the stark difference in the names of the husbands involved, Chuza and Andronicus. However much Sawicki and Bauckham might disagree and define themselves in terms of that disagreement, their work collectively marks an important turn in the study of women in the formation of the New Testament. I am grateful to them both, even when I disagree with them in regard to particular topics.
5 he said that he listened to his daimonion ti: A rich discussion can be found in Nicholas D. Smith and Paul Woodruff, eds., Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
5 daimonia could do harm: Carmen Bernabe Ubieta, “Mary Magdalene and the Seven Demons in Social-Scientific Perspective,” trans. Lucia F. Llorente, in Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-Viewed, ed. Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 203-223. Should we see the exorcism of Mary’s seven demons as a series of events or a single explosive rout? Luke’s spare reference doesn’t answer this question directly. The demons are simply described as having “gone out” (exeleluthei) of Mary. If a Greek speaker wanted to imply that on one spectacular occasion Jesus expelled them all, it would have been more natural just to say that he cast them out (using the verb ekballo), as happens at other points in the Gospels (see Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39; Matthew 8:28—34). The use of the verb exeleluthei and the absence of any reference to a dramatic expulsion of the demons make it seem likely that Mary’s demons balked when Jesus commanded them to depart. In a later version of Luke’s description, which was appended to the Gospel According to Mark (16:9), the wording was changed in order to describe the demons as having been “cast out” {ekbeblekei). This pastiche ending of Mark is much later than the Gospel itself. In the way of many summary references in the Gospels, it irons out the troubling feature of demonic contention with Jesus.
fragments of papyrus that record the ancient craft of exorcism: Hans Dieter Betz, The Greeks Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
vaginas made their bodies vulnerable to entry: Ruth Padel, “Women: Model for Possession by Greek Demons,” in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. Averil Cameron and Ameüe Kuhrt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), pp. 3-19, particularly pp. 11-12.
a man who stayed in his future father-in-law’s house could not complain later: As the text laconically remarks, “He who eats with his father in law in Judea without a witness can not bring a complaint for the cause of non-virginity, because he was alone with her” (Ketuvoth 1:5).
Like Jesus, Mary Magdalene might conceivably have been a mamzer. Since I identified Jesus as a mamzer in Rabbi Jesus (pp. 3—23), a considerable literature on this subject has emerged: Meir Bar Ilan, “The Attitude Toward Mamzerim in Jewish Society in Late Antiquity,” Jewish History 14, no. 2 (2000): 125-170; Shaye D. Cohen, “Some Thoughts on ‘The Attitude Toward Mamzerim in Jewish Society in Late Antiquity,” “Jewish History 14, no. 2 (2000): 171-174; Saw-icki, Crossing Galilee, pp. 171-173; Andries van Aarde, Fatherless in Galilee. Jesus as Child of God (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International 2001); Chilton, ”Jesus, le mamzer (Mt 1.18),“ New Testament Studies 46 (2001): 222-227; Scot McK-night, ”Calling Jesus Mamzer,“ Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 1, no. 1 (2003): 73-103; Charles Quarles, ”Jesus as Mamzer: A Response to Bruce Chilton’s Reconstruction of the Circumstances Surrounding Jesus’ Birth in Rabbi Jesus,“ Bulletin for Biblical Research 14, no. 2 (2004): 243-255; Chilton, ”Recovering Jesus’ Mamzerut,“ in Ancient Israel, Judaism, and Christianity in Contemporary Perspective: Essays in Memory of Karl-Johan Illman, ed. Jacob Neusner et al. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005). For an earlier approach, based upon the assumption that a mamzer is a bastard in the modern sense, see Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); John J. Rousseau and Rami Arav, Jesus and His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), pp. 223-225.
7 Modern scholarship continues to parry the medieval tradition of portraying Mary as a prostitute: The hyperbole of these legends is often painful, especially those that emerged during the twelfth century. Honorius Augusto-dunensis believed that “Mary of Magdala castle” had been wealthy but then slipped into being “a filthy and common prostitute.” As Pierre de Celle said, “Out of a prostitute, Christ made an apostle.” Both these examples are cited in Haskins, Mary Magdalen, pp.158-159, 192. In a classic study, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza explains how the confusion arose; see In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983, 1992), p. 129. Nonetheless, an attempt has been made to insist that she really is depicted as a prostitute not only by medieval piety, but also by “Luke’s own design and subsequent androcentric, misogynistic interpretation”; see Jane Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 74 n. 40.
8 She long remained the ideal icon of mortification among the lay and clerical groups: See Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 171-179. For the examples cited, I am indebted to Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Maying of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 225, 228 (see also pp. 36—46, 124-142).
Mary of Egypt is herself a classic figure of Christian folklore: For a very clear discussion of a topic that is sometimes made unnecessarily complicated, see Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo: Cisterian Publications, 1987), pp. 26-56.
The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine: This book is widely available in the following editions: Christopher Stace and Richard Hamer, Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Selections (London: Penguin, 1998), pp. 165-172; William Granger Ryan, Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 374-383. For variants of the same story, which made its way all over Europe, see Larissa Tracy, Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 68-79; Francois Halin, “Une vie grecque de sainte Marie-Madeleine BHG 1 i6ix,” Analecta Bollandiana 105 (1987): 5-23.
10the mistake of presuming that women with demons were necessarily promiscuous: Jane Schaberg argues against dominant interpretations in the West, which have “scrawled… the word WHORE” over Mary Magdalene; see The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, pp. 68, 77. Schaberg knows that one way to portray Mary as a prostitute is to ask, “What kind of demons would a woman have?” and then to reply, “Sexual, of course.” To guard against that answer, Schaberg wishes to edit Mary’s demons out of the available evidence, since the reference to them appears only in Luke (echoed in Mark 16:9, a late addition to that Gospel). In my opinion, however, texts should not be discarded because
they have been badly interpreted. Schaberg tends to overcorrect for the “vivid and bizarre postbiblical life” that I agree has been imposed on Mary Magdalene.
10 the parochial hamlet he had known from his childhood would never accept him as a rabbi: See Rabbi Jesus, pp. 98-102. On the populations of the towns associated with Jesus, see the discussion since Rabbi Jesus (especially pp. 78, 80-82, 95-97, 180) detailed in Chilton, “Review Essay: Archaeology and Rabbi Jesus,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 12, no. 2 (2002): 273-280.
12 embracing the complex, rich oral tradition: See Rabbi Jesus, pp. 3-22.
2.THEMAGDALENE
the holy relics of flesh transformed by Jesus: A detailed historical account of the veneration of Mary is given in Victor Saxer, Le culte de Marie Madeleine en Occident (Paris: Clavreuil, 1959). His maps document 33 sites between the eighth and tenth centuries, 80 during the eleventh century, 116 during the first half of the twelfth century, 125 during the second half of the twelfth century, 130 during the thirteenth century (until 1278), 196 in the late thirteenth century (after 1279) and during the fourteenth century, and 187 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The whole study is a brilliant exposition of how medieval piety combined faith, legend, economics, and political ambition.
Mary Magdalene Page 17
