The Gospel of Mary and Modern Myths

Two modern sources of confusion about Mary Magdalene are addressed here on historical grounds: the gnostic Gospel of Mary, a fragmentary second-century text in which a figure called Mary instructs the disciples, and the modern “wife of Jesus” myth — the claim, popularized by The Da Vinci Code and the pseudo-history behind it, that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and bore His child. The first is described accurately for what it is; the second is refuted by the silence of every first- and second-century source.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Mary is a non-canonical, fragmentary text surviving in a fifth-century Coptic manuscript (the Berlin Codex, Papyrus Berolinensis 8502) and in two small third-century Greek fragments (P. Oxyrhynchus 3525 and P. Rylands 463). Scholars date its composition to the second century (Karen King argues for the early-to-mid second century; others place it somewhat later) — that is, a century or more after the events, and well after the four canonical Gospels (King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, 2003). It is not a “lost Gospel” suppressed by the Church but one of a number of second- and third-century texts, several of them gnostic in character, that circulated outside the canon and were not received as apostolic.

About a third of the short text survives; the rest is lost in the manuscript’s missing pages. In what remains, the Savior, after the Resurrection, gives teaching to the disciples and departs; the disciples are grieved and afraid; and a woman named Mary comforts them and then relates a private revelation the Savior had given her concerning the ascent of the soul. Peter and Andrew object that the Savior would not have given secret teaching to a woman in preference to the male disciples; Levi defends Mary, saying the Savior “loved her more than us” and “knew her completely”; and the disciples go out to preach (the Gospel of Mary, Berlin Codex, as ed. and trans. King, 2003).

Two points must be made plainly. First, the text is theologically gnostic. Its teaching concerns the ascent of the soul past hostile “powers,” a release from “matter,” and a knowledge (gnosis) of the self’s true nature — themes characteristic of second-century gnosticism, not of the canonical Gospels or the apostolic faith. It does not present the Resurrection of the body, the Cross as atonement, or the God of Israel as Creator in the manner of the Church’s Gospels; its frame is the dualist cosmology the Fathers (Irenaeus, Against Heresies; Hippolytus, Refutation) identified and refuted as heresy. Second, the “Mary” of the text is not securely Mary Magdalene. The text calls her simply “Mary,” and while many scholars take her to be the Magdalene, the identification is an inference, not a statement of the text (King, 2003, discusses the ambiguity). The Gospel of Mary is therefore evidence for second-century gnostic circles and their interest in a female revealer-figure; it is not a historical witness to the first-century Mary Magdalene, and it says nothing of a marriage to Jesus.

[Disputed: the date of the *Gospel of Mary* is debated — Karen King (2003) argues for the early-to-mid second century, while some scholars place its composition later in the second century; all agree it postdates the canonical Gospels and is non-apostolic. Whether its "Mary" is Mary Magdalene, the Theotokos, or a composite literary figure is also debated, the Magdalene identification being the majority but not unanimous reading. What is not in dispute is that the text is gnostic in theology and is not a historical source for the first-century Mary Magdalene.]

The “Companion” of the Gospel of Philip

A second gnostic text, the Gospel of Philip (a third-century Valentinian compilation from Nag Hammadi), is often invoked in the modern myth. It calls Mary Magdalene the “companion” (Coptic koinōnos, a loanword from Greek) of the Savior and states, in a passage broken by a lacuna, that he used to kiss her often on the […] — the crucial word lost in a hole in the manuscript (the Gospel of Philip, NHC II.3, 63–64). The myth-makers fill the lacuna with “mouth” and read the passage as evidence of a sexual relationship. But koinōnos in such gnostic texts denotes a spiritual partner or fellow in gnosis, not necessarily a spouse; kissing in gnostic literature is a figure for the transmission of spiritual life (the “kiss” by which the perfect “conceive and give birth,” as the same text says elsewhere); and the lacuna cannot bear the weight placed on it (Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, 2004; King, 2003). A broken sentence in a third-century gnostic allegory is not evidence about the first-century historical Jesus and Mary.

The Modern “Wife of Jesus” Myth

The claim that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and bore His child, from whom a royal bloodline descended in France, entered popular culture through the 1982 pseudo-historical bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln) and was made a global phenomenon by Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, which presents this fiction as suppressed fact. The “bloodline” thesis rests on the Gospel of Philip passage above, on the Gospel of Mary, on the medieval Provençal legend’s southern-French setting (see The Provençal Legend), and on the discredited “Priory of Sion” documents — a hoax fabricated in the 1950s–60s by Pierre Plantard and exposed as such (Ehrman, 2004; Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, 2004).

The historical refutation is decisive and simple. No first- or second-century source — canonical or non-canonical, Christian, Jewish, or pagan — states or implies that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married or that she bore His child. The four Gospels, written within the first century, name Mary Magdalene repeatedly and never as a wife. The letters of Paul, the earliest Christian writings, discuss the marital status of apostles (1 Cor. 9:5) without a word of a wife of Jesus. The second-century Fathers who knew and refuted the gnostic texts (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1; Hippolytus) say nothing of a marriage. Even the gnostic texts themselves — the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip — do not assert a marriage; the myth reads it into their gaps. The silence is total, and it is the silence not of suppression but of a thing that was never claimed. As Bart Ehrman, a secular New Testament scholar with no apologetic interest, concludes, the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene “is not a matter of historical record” and the Da Vinci Code’s historical claims are, point by point, false (Ehrman, 2004).

How an Orthodox Reader Holds These

The Orthodox response is neither alarm nor evasion but plain historical clarity. The Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip are real ancient texts, valuable evidence for second- and third-century gnosticism, and the Church does not pretend they do not exist; it reads them for what they are — non-apostolic, theologically gnostic works outside the canon — and not as witnesses to the first-century Mary Magdalene (on canon and apocrypha, see Holy Scripture). The modern “wife of Jesus” myth is a work of fiction resting on a hoax, a lacuna, and a conflation, and it is answered by the historical record itself. Against all of it stands the Mary Magdalene of the Gospels and the Church: the woman delivered from seven demons, foremost of the myrrh-bearers, first witness of the Resurrection, Equal-to-the-Apostles — a figure far greater than the myth, and true.

See Also

References

  • The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Ed. and trans. Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2003. (Text, translation, dating, and the question of “Mary’s” identity.)
  • The Gospel of Philip (NHC II.3). In The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Ed. James M. Robinson. 3rd ed. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1990.
  • Ehrman, Bart D. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • Bock, Darrell L. Breaking the Da Vinci Code. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 1. Trans. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. (On second-century gnosticism.)
  • The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: 1 Corinthians 9:5.