Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor.

Pope Gregory the Great (died 604) identified Mary of Magdala, always cited as the leader of the women who ministered to Jesus in his lifetime, with the penitent woman who bathed the feet of Jesus (Luke 7) and Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Because of Gregory's popularity and authority there arose in the medieval period an intense devotion to Mary Magdalene focusing on her status as a repentant sinner and a contemplative. She was often depicted in art (Haskins is quite good on the development of her iconography), many churches were raised in her honor, houses for penitent women were dedicated to her as well as colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge. Even the film The Last Temptation of Christ (and, earlier, Jesus Christ Superstar) relied on the myth of Mary Magdalene as a woman converted from a life of wantonness to what the mystic Julian of Norwich called a "Lover of Jesus."

Alas, this outpouring of imaginative homage is based on a misreading of the Gospel, as Origen, writing centuries before Gregory, already understood. Accordingly, the Eastern church honors Mary of Magdalene as one of the myrrophores (ointment-bearing women) without the theme of penitent sinner. Furthermore, modern feminist scholarship has rehabilitated her claim to the title of "apostle" since she is the earliest recorded witness to the Resurrection. Even the reformed Catholic liturgical calendar has struck the notation "penitent" from her feast day. Her role in the early Jesus movement has received careful, and persuasive, attention from scholars like Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza.

This is all spelled out in ample detail in Haskins's book as she traces the somewhat convoluted story of the rise of the cult of Mary Magdalene from its gospel origins down to the present day. The book is amply illustrated and the art history sections are fascinating. Haskins makes the intelligent point that various ages have added to or reshaped the image of Mary Magdalene according to the reigning Zeitgeist. By turns, she is the converted sinner, the contemplative friend of God, or the weeper (the very word "maudlin" is a relic of that latter emphasis). In our century there has been a belletristic and dramatic interest in the putative erotic relationship between Mary and Jesus.

I must note, however, that this book is less successful when the author moves from art history to theology and church history. Marred with trivial errors of fact, a reliance on tendentious sources as well as citations almost always culled from secondary sources (and, thus, mostly unusable), the author trumpets her prejudices with wearying regularity. What we end up with is a work containing fascinating patches of intellectual history combined with an intermittent attempt to exorcise the ghosts of the author's convent school education. The end result is a very uneven and quite irritating book.

Josephus (A.D. ?37-?100), born of a priestly family in Jerusalem, was a desert dweller (with the Essenes?) for three years, and afterwards in Rome an ambassador on behalf of the Jews. After being captured by Vespasian at the siege of Jotopata in Palestine, he was spared by the emperor to serve as his interpreter. Josephus was an eyewitness (and Roman spokesman) at the horrendous siege of Jerusalem which ended in the destruction of the temple, the slaughter of its citizens, and the Roman triumph commemorated by the Arch of Titus (Vespasian's son) with its bas relief depicting Roman soldiers carrying the temple menorah in triumph.

From those eyewitness experiences Josephus wrote his Jewish Wars in Aramaic, quickly followed by a Greek translation, which is a valuable (but not always reliable) resource despite Josephus's skittishness about laying blame at the Roman doorstep. Josephus had good reason for caution since he lived in an era of psychotic emperors.