Mary Magdalene — companion of Jesus, goddess, whore and icon — is
surely one of the most fascinating figures to have ever lived. In
scholarly writings, paintings, prose, theatre and film she continues to
exert a hold over the imagination.
Michael Haag’s lively book
asks questions that continue to excite our curiosity. Who was the
historical Mary Magdalene? What do we really know about her and why has
she had such an influence in high and popular culture for thousands of
years — from Leonardo’s painting of a sexy bare-breasted femme fatale
draped in a lurid red robe to Dan Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code, where Mary and Jesus are married with children?
Haag
addresses the many myths surrounding her, starting from the most potent
of all, the beautiful whore reformed by her love for Jesus. We can’t
resist a penitent prostitute, and nor could the great Renaissance
artists who saw in Mary Magdalene an opportunity to paint a female nude
who combined earthy sensuality with divine grace. As Haag says:
“Paintings of undressed Mary Magdalenes proved popular in the 16th
century as they allowed artists and their secular patrons to combine
eroticism and religion without exposing themselves to threat or
scandal.”
There is, however, no biblical evidence to suggest that
Mary Magdalene was ever a prostitute. It was only after the teaching of
Pope Gregory in 591 and in the writings of theologians during the
Middle Ages that she was perceived as a sinner.
Pope Gregory’s
key move was to conflate the Mary Magdalene who, according to all four
canonical gospels, was present at the crucifixion with the sinning woman
who anointed the feet of Jesus. This has led to a blurring of biblical
sources and later interpretation. Confusingly, the “composite Mary
Magdalene” has also been aligned with Mary of Bethany, the sister of
Martha and Lazarus.
Extricating the fact from the myth is a
delicate process. Not the least of the problems is that so many of the
women in Jesus’s life were called Mary. But Haag achieves an admirable
clarity of thought and cohesion in his account. He reminds us that in
the canonical gospels Mary is presented as an independent woman of
means, supporting Jesus throughout his three years of ministry. Haag’s
Jesus is quite a dude; a man who hung out with the sick and sinners, who
liked children and “loved food and drink and good talk; he was witty
and sharp; he was at ease with women; and he was self-deprecating but
had an intensity and aura about him that was very attractive”.
Jesus
included women in his entourage, something that would have been
perceived as extremely radical. Yet, for Haag, the true radicals were
these extraordinary women who followed him throughout his ministry. We
learn of the other women in his circle, Joanna and Susanna, and the
possible wives and children of the disciples. Haag reminds us (rather
too often) that Mary Magdalene is mentioned more times in the gospels
than any of the disciples, she travels with Jesus, witnesses the
crucifixion, anoints his dead body and is the first person he appears to
after the resurrection.
The privileges accorded to her were
commensurate with those of a very close family member, perhaps even a
wife. Haag does not shy away from the controversial issues. After all,
he argues, there is no biblical evidence that Jesus was not married.
One
of the myths Haag dispels is that Mary came from Magdala. He casts
doubt on there even being a place called Magdala, suggesting that Mary
might have been associated with “migdal”, the Hebrew word for “tower”.
Haag reminds us that Jesus liked nicknames — Peter the rock, John and
James, sons of thunder — so perhaps Mary was the watchtower, the beacon,
the lighthouse who helps Jesus with his flock. She was a tower or
fortress or “just plain magnificent”.
The only myth that he fails
to explore, or indeed to mention, happens to be one of my favourites,
that of Mary Magdalene the hairdresser, or as she’s sometimes known,
“Miriam, the plaiter of women’s hair”.
Hair comes into Mary’s
story quite a lot, probably because she is so often conflated with the
female sinner who anointed the feet of Jesus with expensive oils and
then dried them with her lustrous locks. Mary, the religious pin-up, is
usually depicted with long flowing hair, artfully concealing or not
concealing parts of her body. Jules Joseph Lefebvre has a naked ecstatic
woman writhing in her cave, with her hair spread out, fan-like.
Rossetti’s wonderful
Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee depicts
her casting her lover aside and tearing roses from her cascading mane
to throw herself at the feet of her “bridegroom” Jesus.
For all the controversy of
The Da Vinci Code, and the recent fuss around a Harvard theologian’s discovery of a fragmentary
Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,
now conclusively proved to be a forgery, Haag shows us that there is
nothing new in a reading of the relationship between Mary and Jesus as
something well beyond that of prophet and disciple. He even suggests the
possibility that the wedding at Cana, when Jesus performed his first
miracle, might have been a celebration of his own marriage to Mary
Magdalene.
One of the most engrossing chapters concerns the
gnostic gospels (early texts dating from the 2nd to the 4th century),
which placed Mary Magdalene as a central figure in early Christianity,
the “apostle of apostles” who truly understood Jesus and his message.
One of the gnostic texts is the only gospel named after a woman,
The Gospel of Mary,
in which Mary Magdalene talks of Jesus appearing to her in a vision and
speaking to her intimately about spiritual matters. However, the
gnostics were defeated and Mary’s role was relegated to that of a fallen
woman and penitent.
This book is a great read: my only caveats
are that Haag spends too much time writing about Mary the mother of
Jesus (not another Mary!) and the refashioning of her image by the
Catholic church. This belongs in a different book. He also fails to give
due credit to the many superb feminist theologians (Kate Cooper and
Susan Haskins spring to mind) who have covered much of this fascinating
territory before.
The Quest for Mary Magdalene: History & Legend
by Michael Haag, Profile, 323pp, £15.99. To buy this book for £13.99, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
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