The Bible's Lost Stories

The fascination with Magdalene has a long and rich history of its own. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, a cultural historian at Georgetown University, curated an exhibit last year of Magdalene portraits at the American Bible Society in New York. "She's gone through conflations and misinterpretations and reinterpretations and retrievals," she says. "I've seen her represented in every medium of art through every Christian period--as the witness to the Resurrection, the seductive temptress, the haggard desert mother signifying penitence, the beautiful woman reborn signifying new life." But for most people, the image that sticks is the rehabilitated prostitute. Scholars blame Pope Gregory the Great for her bad rep; in A.D. 591, he gave a sermon in which he apparently combined several Biblical women into one, including Magdalene and an unnamed sinner who anoints Jesus' feet. Although the Vatican officially overruled Gregory in 1969, the image stuck until quite recently. "It became a snowball that grew and grew until her name in legend and art history evoked the whore," says Jane Schaberg, professor of religious studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and author of "The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene."

Part of the problem may stem from what scholars have called "the muddle of the Marys." There are a lot of women named Mary in the New Testament, and it's not always clear which is which.

But some scholars also think Mary Magdalene was defamed because she was a threat to male control of the church. As the "Apostle to the Apostles"--the first to encounter the risen Christ and to take the news to Peter and the other male Apostles--she was clearly more than just an ordinary follower. In several Gnostic Gospels--written by Christians whose alternative views of Jesus were eventually suppressed as heresy--Mary Magdalene rivals Peter for the leadership of the early church because of her superior understanding of Jesus' teaching. The Gospel of Philip, for example, describes her as Jesus' close companion whom he often "used to kiss." Karen King of Harvard Divinity School, author of "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala" and a leading authority on women's roles in the early church, sees her as a target of jealousy because she threatened Peter's status. By transforming her into a reformed whore, King believes, the church fathers "killed the argument for women's leadership"--and for recognizing women as fit recipients of divine revelation. King says the transformation also created a powerful symbol of the prostitute as redeemed sinner, the female version of the Prodigal Son. If Jesus could accept her, he could accept anyone.

In "The Da Vinci Code," Brown suggests that she still had one more hold on Jesus--as his wife. That theory has been circulating for centuries. Some historians think it is possible because Jewish men of that era were almost always married, but many others dismiss that reasoning. Some argue that Jesus wasn't conventional in any other sense, so why would he feel the need to be married? Others say that relegating her to the role of wife is belittling. "Let's not continue the relentless denigration of Mary Magdalene by reducing her only importance to a sexual connection with Jesus," says John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago. "She's not important because she was Mrs. Jesus. That's like saying Hillary Rodham Clinton is only important because she's married to Bill Clinton. Both women are important in their own right."

That's certainly true for the women who see in Mary Magdalene's rediscovered importance a pathway to their own new roles in the church. Mary Magdalene's story gave Maggie Albo, a 49-year-old volunteer hospice chaplain from Spokane Valley, Wash., the courage to lobby the Diocese of Spokane for space in local Catholic cemeteries to bury abandoned remains from the county medical examiner's office. "Mary has taught me to step out in faith to do the work of Jesus," she says. "I aspire to be a Mary of Magdala... a woman unafraid to speak up."

Mary Magdalene is not the only Biblical heroine to benefit from a modern makeover. A number of scholars have gone back to the original Hebrew texts for a clearer understanding of Eve, the original woman in the Bible. The popular conception of Eve is the product of centuries of myth and artistic interpretation. One widely held misconception is that the fruit Eve offered Adam in the Garden of Eden was an apple. In fact, scholars say, the Bible never states that. "Just because Milton mentions it in 'Paradise Lost' or some Renaissance painter puts it in a picture doesn't make it an apple," says Carol Meyers, professor of Biblical studies at Duke. Meyers says that not only is the apple missing from the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, but there is also no mention of the words "the temptation of Adam," "seduction," "curse of Eve," "Fall of Man," "sin" or "original sin." And yet the Creation story has traditionally been the basis for the argument that women are responsible for sin and should therefore be subservient to men. This error "has oppressed both women and men," says Phyllis Trible, professor of Biblical studies at Wake Forest University, "because the master-slave relationship isn't a relationship of freedom for either party." Trible gives a more egalitarian rendering of a passage that has long troubled many women readers. When God tells Eve "Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you," Trible sees a patriarchy turning description into prescription. In the original Hebrew, Trible insists, "it doesn't say he shall rule over you. It just says he does rule over you--a description of the way things are."