The Da Vinci Fraud: Why the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction (25 page)

THE GOSPEL OF THE SAVIOR

This gospel must be reconstructed from a pile of fragments. It stands astride the divide between Gnosticism and emerging Orthodoxy (much like the Apocryphon of James) in that, while it seems to presuppose the Gnostic world picture, it places great emphasis on Jesus’s impending crucifixion. The book depends heavily on both Matthew and John, though it also seems to be in touch with continuing oral tradition. It may come from the late second, early third century.

OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRUS 840

The following fragment of a gospel had been inserted into a locket to serve as an amulet worn around the neck. It was discovered in the tombs of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in 1905. It contains the end of one episode and the entirety of another. From this we can tell this must have been a gospel very close in style and form to the New Testament gospels. Free of heavy-handed Gnostic fustian, this gospel is really a shame to have lost. Here is the primary episode:

And he took them with him into the very place of purification and strolled about the Temple court. And a chief priest named Levi, a Pharisee, joined them and said to the Savior, “Who gave you permission to march into this place of purification and to view these sacred utensils without having ritually bathed yourself, or even having your disciples so much as wash their feet? As it is, you have entered the Temple court, this place of purity, in a state of defilement, although [the rule is that] no one may enter and view the sacred utensils without first bathing and changing his clothes.”

At once, the Savior stood still with his disciples and answered: “How is it then with you? I see you, too, are present in the Temple court. Does that mean you are clean?”

He answered him, “Indeed I am, for I have bathed myself in the pool of David, having descended by one stair and ascended by the other, and I have donned white and clean clothes, and only then did I presume to come here and view these sacred utensils.”

Then the Savior said to him, “Woe to you, blind man without sight! You have bathed yourself in waste water in which dogs and pigs lie all night and day. You have scrubbed your skin raw, just as prostitutes and dancing girls perfume, bathe, chafe, and rouge theirs in order to awaken the lust of men. Within, they are full of scorpions and every variety of wickedness. On the other hand, my disciples and I, whom you charge with failing to immerse ourselves, have in fact been baptized in the living water that comes down from heaven. But woe to those. . . .”

This one would be worth about a million Pistis Sophias!

NOTES

1
Dan Brown,
The Da Vinci Code
(New York: Doubleday, 2003), p. 234.

2
By Barbara Thiering’s esoteric decoding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they do refer to a purely human Jesus, but her whole point is that this is anything but apparent on a casual surface reading, and Brown gives no hint of having anything like her approach in mind.

3
Brown,
Da Vinci Code
, p. 256.

4
Ibid.

5
Ibid., p. 231.

6
Ibid., p. 256.

7
Robert J. Miller, ed.,
The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version
(Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1992).

8
Brown,
Da Vinci Code
, p. 256.

9
Stevan L. Davies,
The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom
(New York: Seabury, 1983).

10
Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
6:12:2-6.

11
John Dominic Crossan,
The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).

12
Stephan Hermann Huller, “Against Polykarp,” unpublished MS.

13
Rod Blackhirst, “Barnabas and the Gospels: Was There an Early
Gospel of Barnabas
?”
Journal of Higher Criticism
7, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 1-22.

14
Samuel Krauss,
Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen
(Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902); Hugh J. Schonfield,
According to the Hebrews
(London: Duckworth, 1937).

Chapter 8

MARY MAGDALENE

Female Apostle?

M
ary Magdalene looms very large in
The Da Vinci Code
as in many of the seudoscholarly works Dan Brown’s novel draws upon. And one suspects this accounts for quite a bit of the popular interest in the book, since Mary has also become a symbol for Christian feminism, and the novel encourages such a stance. One of the virtues of the novel is that, despite its misinformation on several points, it has given much wider exposure than ever before to the wealth of early Christian texts in which the Magdalene plays a surprisingly prominent role. And yet the average reader of Brown and his predecessors is likely in no position to sort the factual wheat from the spurious tares in Brown’s field without some assistance.

FRAGMENTS OF THE MAGDALENE

Mary Magdalene is a tantalizingly enigmatic figure in all four canonical gospels. Mary Magdalene, we discover, was one of a number of wealthy female disciples of Jesus, who traveled with his entourage and paid for their food and accommodations (Mark 15:40-41; Luke 8:1-3). Though this kind of arrangement would be common enough in Hellenistic Mystery Religions, where the devotion of wealthy women to their gurus was notorious (see Juvenal’s
Sixth Satire
and Plutarch’s
Advice to the Bride and Groom
), the situation is really unparalleled as far as we know in Judaism. Mary Magdalene seems even to have been the leader of this group of women since she has the top spot when any of their names are listed, and hers is the only name appearing in all these lists (Mark 15:40-41, 47, 16:1; Matt. 27:55-56, 61, 28:1; Luke 8:2-3, 24:10). What does it mean that the group of women even
had
a leader? (Perhaps her later status as the leader of a Christian sect or movement has been read back into the time of Jesus.) Mary also is said to have been a recovered demoniac, healed by Jesus. There is something decidedly odd about this, too, as she is not merely said to have been demon possessed, a genuine affliction even if modern psychology has different ways of accounting for it. No, we read that
seven
demons had gone out of her, and this detail marks the whole thing as legendary. Short of
Ghostbusters
technology, how would you know how many there were? It’s not like cavities at the dentist.

And as if that rap sheet were not enough to overcome, Christian legend casts the Magdalene as a reformed prostitute as well. Despite this, Christian speculation all the way up into nineteenth-century Mormonism and
Jesus Christ Superstar
has made her Jesus’s (at least would-be) lover. (Interestingly, if Jesus had married an ex-harlot, this would make him another like Hosea—whose wife, Gomer, however, was still turning tricks for a little extra cookie-jar money—and Joshua, who rabbinic lore said married Rahab, the Belle Watlin of the Old Testament.)

In the rest of the New Testament and in orthodox Christianity of the next few centuries, Mary Magdalene has been tacitly relegated to president of Jesus’s “ladies’ auxiliary,” though some gospel accounts make her the first witness of the risen Christ. Yet all these are only intriguing scraps. One receives the impression that these details are the lingering after-echoes of some great explosion.

We gain a very different impression when we turn to Gnostic Christian documents excluded from the canon. There Mary Magdalene appears as a, or even
the
, prime revealer of the secrets of Jesus. She is his closest disciple and the greatest of the apostles! How did two such clashing portraits of this woman arise and coexist? Does either represent the historical Magdalene?

THE GNOSTIC TEXTS

First, let us review the relevant Gnostic texts and see what we can make of them. Perhaps the most famous text is the concluding saying (114) of the Gospel of Thomas (first or second century CE).
¹
“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Tell Mary to leave us, for women are not worthy of (eternal) life.’ Jesus said, ‘But I shall teach her how to become male, so that she too may become a living spirit like you fellows. In fact, every woman willing to make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

Some see in this text a terrible antiwomen slam, dealing Mary Magdalene a backhanded compliment. Be that as it may (and I will return to the point presently), it is certainly remarkable that Mary as an individual is elevated to occupy at least the same level as the male disciples. Even if the text is not much help to Christian feminism, it certainly exalts Mary Magdalene, and that is the point here.

In the Gospel of Mary (second century CE), Mary Magdalene is the chief revealer to the other disciples, relating a resurrection vision in which Jesus explained the course of the liberated spirit on its way back to God. She encourages the male disciples to take up the missionary task Jesus has assigned them: “Then Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to her brethren, ‘Do not weep and do not grieve or lose your resolve! His grace will empower you and protect you. Instead let us praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us into men’” (9:13-21).

Then she imparts her revelation. When she is done, Peter and Andrew scoff at Mary’s gibberish. Peter says:

“Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we supposed to turn about and listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Are you saying I thought this up myself in my imagination, or that I am lying about the Savior?” Levi intervened and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman as if she were one of our adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on perfect humanity.” (17:16-18:16)

(Note the parallels to the Thomas saying: Jesus has made her “worthy” and made them all “men.”)

The Dialogue of the Savior (second or third century CE) also knows Mary Magdalene as a preeminent revealer; she draws forth revelations by her astute questioning of the risen Christ. “She spoke this way because she was a woman who knew all things” (139:11-12). “Mary said, ‘Tell me, Lord, what purpose has led me this far: to benefit or to suffer loss?’ The Lord said, ‘[You are here] because you reveal the greatness of the Revealer’” (140:15-18). Similarly, the earlier of the two documents composing the Pistis Sophia (200-250 CE) depicts a kind of “press conference” with the Risen Christ among the disciples. Again, Mary is prominent. “Peter said: ‘My Lord, that’s enough questions from the women! We can’t get a word in edgewise!’ Jesus said to Mary and the women: ‘Give your male brethren a chance to ask a question’” (vi:146). The later, lengthier section, the main documentary basis for the Pistis Sophia (250-300 CE), places even greater emphasis on the primacy of Mary: She asks fully thirty-nine of the forty-six questions addressed to the living Jesus.

What happened when Mary had heard the Savior say these words [“Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear”] was that she gazed intently into the air for a whole hour. She said: “My Lord, give me the word, and I will speak freely.” And Jesus, full of compassion, answered, saying to Mary, “Mary, blessed are you, because I will fully instruct you in all the highest mysteries of heaven! Speak freely, you whose heart is raised to the Kingdom of Heaven to a greater degree than all your brothers.” (i:17)

Peter loses his temper: “And Peter interposed and said to Jesus, ‘My Lord, we will put up with no more from this woman, for she monopolizes the opportunity to speak. None of us gets the chance, because she lectures incessantly!’ (i:36) [But then:] Mary came forward and said: ‘My Lord, it is because my mind overflows with insights and always moves me to speak up and supply the solution! . . . I am afraid of Peter, because he threatened me and hates our whole sex!’” (ii:72)

The Gospel of Philip (250-300 CE?) speaks of Mary as analogous to the heavenly Wisdom, mother of the angels.

And the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples were offended] by it [and expressed disapproval]. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Savior answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, there is no difference between them. When the light comes, then he who has sight will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.” (63:34-64:9)