However, as many people know today - usually excluding Christians, who are deliberately kept in the dark by their own clergy - the New Testament books are not the only Gospels in existence. Before the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the state religion of the tottering Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, there were hundreds of diverse `Gospels', poems, songs and epistles doing the rounds. However, after Constantine's Council of Nicaea in 325 CE45 decided what books would be included in the very new New Testament, the dozens of other candidates were instantly declared anathema, together with anyone foolish enough to claim they had equal claim to be `authentic'. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386 CE) declared dogmatically:
Of the New Testament there are four Gospels only, for the rest have false titles and are harmful ... receive also the Acts of the Twelve Apostles; and in addition to these the seven Catholic Epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude; and as a seal upon them all, and the latest work of the disciples, the fourteen epistles of Paul [now acknowledged to be chronologically the first of these Christian writings]. But let all the rest be put aside in secondary rank. And whatever books are not read in the churches, do not read these even by yourself, as you have already heard me say concerning the Old Testament apocrypha 46
David Tresemer and Laura-Lea Cannon point out how the New Testament came about in their 2002 Introduction to Jean-Yves Leloup's 1997 translation of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene:
... the Council of Nicaea ... decided which texts would become the standards of the Church ... and which would be suppressed. Those not chosen as standard were attacked - sometimes violently - for many years. Indeed, the bishops at the Council of Nicaea who disagreed with Constantine's choices were exiled on the spot 47
One wonders what Cyril and his fellow Church Fathers were so afraid of. A clue may lie in the fact that although the New Testament gospels only reluctantly mention the Magdalene, her role in many of the forbidden books is so major as to be positively stellar. And we know about at least some of these other books because they were hidden from Constantine's vengeful clergy, only to resurface in much more recent times - for example, the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) (thought to have been written in the second century CE) was found in Cairo in the 1850s, while a large cache of lost gospels was found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, including The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Philip. These are routinely dismissed by most modern biblical scholars as being of dubious theological authenticity or worth, which is allegedly the reason that they are never even mentioned from pulpits or in Bible study groups. The fact is, however, that although many of the recovered gospels are fragmentary or incomprehensible, others present a coherent and consistent picture of Jesus and Mary Magdalene that is wholly unacceptable to the churches, and if a fraction of their congregations ever took these gospels seriously enough to read them carefully, grave questions would be asked about the historical authority of the Christian religion.
While the canonical books are resolutely from what might be termed `mainstream' Christianity, or Saint Paul's version, these other works are mostly Gnostic in origin and outlook. The biblical Gospels try almost too hard to sound authentic, piling on detail upon detail of Christ's travel schedule, the people he met and healed, the accusations of his critics, the chronology of his arrest, torture and death. The Gnostic gospels are usually much more concerned with the teachings and the mysteries, with a distinctly transcendent, intuitive feel to them. More significantly perhaps, the biblical texts are very masculine in tone and outlook, while the Gnostics are considerably more feminine - largely because of their reverence for their heroine, Mary Magdalene. Her role becomes clearer: indeed, even a cursory glance through the Gospels of Philip, Thomas and Mary, and the later Pistis Sophia (FaithWisdom) will present an almost explosively different picture of Jesus and his mission.
Mary comes across as feisty, intelligent, and perhaps a little too assertive and even controlling for her own good. In the Pistis Sophia - almost comically - she insists repeatedly on taking centrestage in Jesus' lengthy question-and-answer session with his disciples, asking 39 of the 42 questions. Although other women such as Salome, Martha and Mary the Mother do occasionally participate, the text is littered not only with the phrase `and Mary continues again' but also with the increasingly bitter complaints of the men, who feel humiliated and angry at her pre-eminence. One disciple in particular feels dangerously irate. Peter explodes to Jesus: `My Lord, we will not endure this woman, for she taketh the opportunity from us and hath let none of us speak, but she [my emphasis] discourseth many times.' Any mild suspicion that Peter may have actually loathed the Magdalene is substantially reinforced by another passage from the Pistis Sophia in which Mary herself says to Jesus:
My Lord, my mind is ever understanding, at every time to come forward and set forth the solution of the words which [thou] hath uttered: but I am afraid of Peter, because he threatened me and hateth our sex 48 [My emphasis.]
Peter, the bluff hot-tempered `Big Fisherman' clearly absolutely detests Mary, saying to Jesus, `Lord, let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life'49 - although Christ's own reaction, as we shall see, is perhaps at first sight not as female-friendly as it might have been. But does Peter (and perhaps the other men in the mission) hate the Magdalene simply because she is a woman? Although married,50 Peter had no compunction in abandoning his wife to follow Jesus - he may have been glad to escape an unhappy home life - although in any case misogyny was a way of life to the Jews of his time and place.
The days of wine, roses and Asherath had long gone, the shekhina were desexed and Yahweh ruled with an impressively male rod of iron. Goddesses belonged to the louche foreigners, such as - or perhaps especially - the sophisticated Egyptians, and were therefore an abomination to the Lord. (When the Greeks tried to foist the new dying-and-rising god Serapis on them, the novel religion only took hold when the people's beloved Isis was restored to power and set at his right hand, a situation that was to be echoed, albeit feebly, when the Christians made Mary their Virgin goddess.)
To the likes of Simon Peter, women should know their place: in the home behind the cooking pot or washing the men's clothes, going submissively and silently about their business with their hair modestly tied up and veiled. On the other hand, the Magdalene was known to flout Jewish Law (being harmatolos) and custom, audaciously wearing her hair unbound in public - so grievous a social and religious sin that a man could divorce his wife for doing so. (Her unbound hair, with which she dried Jesus' feet, was probably a major reason for the male disciples' distaste at the anointing.) She unhesitatingly spoke up, even in the company of the `superior' men, and was one of the women who funded Jesus' mission. Clearly rich, independent and articulate, possessed of secrets the dim Peter could only guess at, the Magdalene was riding high among the cult members. In the Pistis Sophia she even permits herself the verbal equivalent of a sly wink at Jesus as she says with something approaching mock humility: `Be not wroth with me if I question thee on all things.' Jesus says `Question what thou wilt', so, seizing on a particular point of theology, she says with an unmistakable air of condescension, as initiate to initiate: `My Lord reveal unto us ... that also my brethren may understand it [My emphasis].'S1 Peter was ill-equipped to deal with a woman who was clearly already so well-informed about Jesus' secrets and who occasionally succumbed to the temptation to rub it in. But worse, it was she who was Jesus' favourite - and absolutely not Peter himself, as indicated in the New Testament. And her role in the resurrection was something of a stumbling block for the Church, which - unbelievably - claims its authority from the `fact' that its founder, Peter, was the first person to see the risen Christ. Even a brief glance at the story in the New Testament will reveal this is arrant rubbish, although the truth would have been considerably easier to keep from the flock in the days before widespread literacy.
The Gospel of Mark states plainly: `When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene.'s' The Vatican still tries to wr
iggle out of this by explaining that Jesus had no female disciples: basically a spiritually inferior woman, Mary Magdalene didn't count. And as the argument about female bishops rolls on unedifyingly in the ranks of the Anglican Church, the old prejudices emerge with some degree of viciousness - of course women should not be bishops, or even priests, for it is a known fact that Jesus chose his disciples only from among the male population.
Yet even the male-oriented New Testament not only lists the women on the mission - always beginning with the Magdalene - but also describes them as `disciples', although unfortunately this telling term has traditionally been translated as 'disciples' of the men, but the more derogatory and inferior `followers' in a female context. In reality, it is the same word for the same role. In any case, according to Luke's Gospel, the women `were helping to support [Jesus and the men] of their own means'," or basically funding the men's mission. (The women must have been somewhat taken aback at Jesus' teaching `Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labour or spin,'S4 about not worrying about the future because God would provide. If he did, his bounty took the form of the purses of the daughters of Asherah.) The Magdalene and the other women essentially kept the men, and proved loyal to the end, while Peter got drunk, denied three times that he even knew Jesus and, like his brothers in the Gospel (apart from young John) was nowhere to be seen at the crucifixion. Surely the women had earned the right to be called disciples.
However, the Gnostic Gospels make explicit what was lurking implicitly in the New Testament about the status of the women, especially Mary Magdalene. These forbidden, anathematized books make it very clear that not only did Christ welcome women into his mission, but they were members of his inner circle of initiates rather than the slower-witted and unimaginative men, who time and time again `knew not what he meant', and even showed no sign of comprehending the significance of Christ's death. The impression is that Peter in particular had no idea what was going on: all he knew was that he loved Jesus and spent much of his time in a redhot passion of envy and anger at the - to him - incomprehensible status of the Magdalene. Of all the women, Magda-lene, the Great Lady and anointing priestess, even earned the title `Apostle of the Apostles'," which implies that Jesus acknowledged she stood head and shoulders above all other apostles.
In the Gospel of Mary, even Peter is forced to acknowledge her closeness to Jesus, saying `the Saviour loved you more than the rest of the women',56 but not before he had suggested that she had invented the story of meeting the resurrected Christ, thundering incredulously: `How is it possible that the Teacher talked in this manner with a woman about secrets of which we ourselves are ignorant? Did he really choose her, and prefer her to us?"' When Peter calls her vision a lie, naturally:
... Mary wept, and answered him: `My brother Peter, what can you be thinking? Do you believe that this is just my own imagination, that I invented this vision? Or do you believe that I would lie about our Teacher?' At this, Levi spoke up: `Peter, you have always been hot-tempered, and now we see you repudiating a woman, just as our adversaries do. Yet if the Teacher held her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Teacher knew her very well, for he loved her more than us ... Let us grow as he demanded of us, and walk forth to spread the gospel, without trying to lay down any rules and laws other than those he witnessed.'58
Unlike the canonical gospels, several of the Gnostic texts make Jesus' love for the Magdalene crystal clear. Despite the tendency of the Pistis Sophia to indulge in the usual excessively impenetrable Gnostic ramblings about complex realms of heaven and hell, the passages concerning the personal relationships among the disciples read with an unusual clarity and confidence that strongly suggests a single tradition - perhaps beginning with authentic memories of the individuals on the Jesus mission. Christ makes this unambiguous statement to the Magdalene, which must have made the irascible Peter seethe: `Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height [the highest mysteries], discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren' S9 Later in the same Gnostic text, Christ announces: `Where I shall be, there will also be my twelve ministers. But Mary Magdalene and John the Virgin, will tower over all my disciples and over all men who shall receive the mysteries ... And they will be on my right hand and on my left. And I am they, and they are I.'60
Mary and young John are Jesus' closest apostles who will sit on his right and left throughout eternity - and John the Beloved/Divine/Evangelist will have a special part to play in this investigation. But Mary is more obviously Jesus' favourite, being dubbed `The All' or `The Woman Who Knows All' by him. A clue as to the depth of their relationship is found in this explicit passage from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip:
... And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene . But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended ... They said to him, `Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Saviour answered and said to them, `Why do I not love you as I love her?'61
It has been suggested by Christian traditionalists that Jesus was merely kissing Mary in the spirit of agape, or spiritual love - indeed, the Gnostics celebrated their religion at `love-feasts', which were more or less chaste depending on the group. (Of course the Carpocratians' love-feasts were somewhat more colourful.) But if he only meant to give her an affectionate spiritual peck, why did Jesus choose to kiss her on the lips, and why would it have `offended' the others so blatantly? Actually, no one knows where Jesus kissed her because, frustratingly, the ancient gospel is missing that particular bit of papyrus. `On the mouth' is merely a scholarly speculation, but of course it is extremely interesting that even scholars thought fit to suggest the mouth and not the hand or cheek. Of course the original may have said something quite different, such as `on the Sabbath' or `on the Sea of Galilee'! Another passage from the Gospel of Philip is even more intriguing:
Three women always used to walk with the lord - Mary his mother, his sister, and the Magdalene, who is called his companion. For `Mary' is the name of his sister and his mother, and it is the name of his partner [My emphases] 61
The word for `companion' is the Aramaic koinonos, a Greek loan word meaning `partner'. Previously63 when I claimed that this means `sexual partner' there were howls of outrage from certain quarters. I remain unrepentant. I maintain that koinonos means `partner' in exactly the sense of our modem word, which depends almost entirely on context for its nearest definition. If someone is introduced as `partner' in an office setting, it will be assumed this means business associate. If at a party, `lover' is more likely to fit the bill 6' Here we have the Magdalene, who elsewhere in the Nag Hammadi texts is described as being repeatedly kissed, presumably on the mouth, by Jesus. She may have controlled the purse strings, but somehow she hardly sounds like a business partner - nor would the modem British `good mate' match the context. (In which case she would probably have been described as `disciple' or `follower'.) Koinonos, in this context, can only mean lover.
The phrase `who is called his companion' is also slightly stilted, perhaps as if some kind of euphemism, as in `who they say is his companion', and Mary is specifically called his partner.
Despite the belief fostered worldwide by Dan Brown's blockbusting thriller The Da Vinci Code that Jesus and the Magdalene were man and wife - a concept that first reached the Anglo-Saxon public in 1982 in Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln's The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - there is little to support this view, either in the Bible or, more tellingly, even in the Gnostic writings. The miracle of the turning of the water into wine at a marriage at Cana, said to be the wedding of Jesus and Mary, originally - as we have seen - came from the myths of the dyingand-rising wine god Dionysus 65 And the single most important piece of evidence for their not being married is one of glaring omission: simply, there is no mention of a `Miriam, wife of the Saviour' or `Mary, Christ's spouse' in either the New Testament or any of the known Gno
stic writings. Although there was a conspiracy to marginalize her in the Gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it seems that it did not extend to air-brushing out her marital status. Indeed, the obvious distaste the male disciples feel for her may partly arise from the fact that her relationship with Jesus was not sanctioned by Jewish Law.
In any case, Jesus' disciples were forbidden to marry - although John the Baptist's followers were not - and there are other possible considerations that would prevent Christ `making an honest woman' of her. Unacceptable and unthinkable though such considerations may be, either or both of them could already have been married, or they may have been close blood relatives - too close to make their love legal. Or one or both of them could have been dedicated to chastity, most likely as priest or priestess of a foreign cult. (Even temple `prostitutes' or servants were expected to remain unmarried and observe the sexual rites only within the temple walls.) The thirteenth-century citizens of Beziers in the south of France - all 20,000 of them - willingly died martyrs' deaths rather than recant a belief that Mary was Jesus' 'concubine', which they probably gleaned from Gnostic gospels that were circulating in the area at that time, but which have since been lost 66
The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code Page 10
