The resurrection of Mary Magdalene: legends, apocrypha, and the Christian Testament.

From the Introduction:

The volatile figure of Mary Magdalene is so far too big for Hollywood, which sees her as a mix of lust, loyalty, belief, prostitution, repentance, beauty, madness, sainthood. She is the liminal and strange woman, silent, dominated by the great image of Jesus crucified, resurrected. She symbolizes the belief that women are made only deficiently in the image of God, and are ultimately a symbol of evil and of dependent, sinful humanity. But women can be forgiven; eros can be controlled. Male fantasies about the Magdalene have fired the imagination of artists, made her an instrument of ecclesiastical propaganda, and misshaped lives. We will trace here how through the centuries she is variously ignored, labeled harlot/demoniac/patroness, replaced, appropriated and left behind, conflated, diminished, openly opposed; how she is utilized, unsilenced, rediscovered, resurrected.

An explanation about the structure of this book is necessary. The chapters proceed in a way (backward) that is unusual in my field of biblical studies, and I trespass into fields other than mine. First, a description of my companion in this project, Virginia Woolf. Second, what little exploration is possible of the site of Migdal (Magdala) in modern Israel/Palestine. Third, analysis of the component parts and mechanism of the Magdalene legends, and of their major shapes, ancient and modern. Fourth, examination of recently available gnostic/apocryphal writings in which Mary (Magdalene) appears as a central character, startlingly different from her legends, praised and opposed as the woman who knew (too) much. (1) Fifth, a survey of major historical and literary difficulties regarding the Christian Testament sources that deal with her, and of the investigations of five contemporary scholars. Sixth, efforts to deal with these difficulties by constructing a set of possibilities, within the framework of feminist t hought. Seventh, on the basis of the set of possibilities, my reading of the crucifixion/empty tomb/appearance narratives in the light of Jewish mystical tradition. I end with a reading of John 20 as incorporating a source in which Mary Magdalene was seen as prophetic successor to Jesus.

The book moves this way because I look at the texts of the canonical Gospels through the lenses of their Nachleben or afterlife as well as their prelife. I used to think of the whore legends mostly as rubble that had to be cleared. Now I see as the archaeologist does that some stuff is rubble, some precious; a sifting is necessary. Sifting in this case involves self-defining: yes a whore, a prostitute, and yes a madwoman as all of us women are or are in danger of being labeled, and yes as we are redefining and claiming our sexuality and our sanity. The harlotization of Mary Magdalene means that the Christian Testament texts that were actually about her have been and still are read differently through the lens of legend. Her witness seen as romantic, emotional, crazed; her influence regarded as inessential, insignificant, minor. Even some modern historical research seems to me tainted with the subliminal thought: O so it all depends on the word of a whore? Anything to avoid it all depending on her word, the wo rd of a looney, a whore, or, in general, on the insight of any woman. Mary Magdalene is the madwoman -- angry mad -- in Christianity's attic. She was hidden there because of an open and not fully appreciated secret, and its implications, at Christianity's core: that the male disciples fled and the women did not.

I used to think of the apocryphal texts as a branching out of the canonical tree; I see now that both canonical and apocryphal go down to the roots; that their biology is interactive, radically symbiotic. The profile of the gnostic/apocryphal Mary Magdalene seems at first to bear little relation to that of the Christian Testament character. But we are learning that the sources of conflict between different forms of early Christianity, especially those under the names of Mary Magdalene and Peter, are deeper and older than was thought. She represents women's prophetic power in the gnostic/apocryphal literature, as well as in the source I reconstruct behind John 20. Some scholars like Bovon think that the reason gnostic literature was declared heterodox, and therefore fell into disuse, may have less to do with its doctrinal content than with Mary Magdalene's priority among the disciples, especially in relation to Peter. In the Gospel of Mary she encourages and instructs the others (Peter's role in Luke 22:31-32) and he is in open conflict with her. The connections and disruptions between different understandings of body, resurrection, death, life, gender in various texts and families of texts are also receiving careful scholarly analysis. Kasemann's claim that "apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology" sounds in a new way when we understand the basileia (Kingdom) movement of Jesus and his companions as an apocalyptic/wisdom movement that was inclusive. And when apocalyptic and gnostic motifs, especially the motif of ascent, are seen in the context of Jewish mystical traditions....

Why Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)? Her name and influence appear rarely in biblical scholarship. (2) She has much to offer to Religious Studies, and I think we in Religious Studies have something to offer to Woolf Studies. "Throughout her corpus, Woolf is concerned [as we are] with what can(not) be said, what can(not) be assumed, what can(not) be questioned, and what can(not) be concluded." (3) She regarded Christianity as "the chief enemy" of intellectual freedom, (4) producing preachers and parrots and killers. She also thought that its energies had been and could be used justly. Suspicion and critique of organized religion such as she engaged in are deep and widespread today in Religious Studies, and within religious -- as well as Outsider -- organizations; they have a long, long history, on part of which Woolf herself drew. (5) The suspicion and critique grow stronger with the spread of feminist consciousness and response to patriarchal backlash.

In using Woolf to comment from time to time, I do not hold that she is saying what the texts are saying, or vice versa, nor do I intend to appropriate her for my own purposes. But there is a counterpoint here which can be helpful. Her questions about gender, about the boundaries and lack of boundaries between persons, about death and survival ("perhaps -- perhaps" (6)) can redirect our attention from the ways issues are treated traditionally. A flawed and experimental spirit, she dealt with the desire for dominance, women's "ancestral memory," (7) the outsider's split consciousness. (8) What she was after was a radical transformation of culture and society, for men as well as women, and she began an analysis of classism as well as sexism. Leonard Woolf criticized that dimension of her being I deem most valuable: "She does not really know the feeling -- which alone saves the brain & the body -- that after all nothing matters. She asks too much from the earth & from the people who crawl about it." (9) For a boo k like this one on death and resurrection, Woolf's great love -- exuberant and precise -- of the beauty of the world is centering.

She described the ludicrous patriarchal procession and patriarchy's almost demented thinking, and showed in what ways it is everywhere the same: in home, fascist state, church, university. "How difficult it is to write to you! It's all Cambridge -- that detestable place and the ap-s-les [Apostles] are so unreal, and their loves are so unreal, and yet I suppose it's all going on still -- swarming in the sun -- and perhaps not as bad as I imagine. But when I think of it, I vomit -- that's all -- a green vomit, which gets into the ink and blisters the paper." (10)

For all her anger and ridicule and hatred, she showed from time to time a kind of pity, as toward the inhabitants of the "leaning tower," whose education and upbringing trap them. "Let us imagine ... that we are actually upon a leaning tower and note our sensation." Note that the view is slanting, sidelong, feel the discomfort, the self-pity for that discomfort, the pity turning to "anger against the builder, against society, for making us uncomfortable." Note that you cannot abuse all of society while you continue to profit from it, so you have to find scapegoats. "Anger; pity; scapegoat bleating; excuse finding -- these are all very natural tendencies; if we were in their position we should tend to do the same. But we are not in their position.... We have only been climbing an imaginary tower. We can cease to imagine. We can come down. But they cannot." Even when they realize the tower was founded on injustice and tyranny, even when they violently and half-heartedly preach against injustice, even when they long to be human and whole, they are "trapped by their education, pinned down by their capital" and remain on top of their leaning tower. (11) The tower she was describing is the middle-class birth and expensive education of nineteenth-century writers and their inheritors; that tower was steady down to August 1914. Her perceptions apply also to towers more sturdy and more tilting. Some good men and women are trapped inside....

Two aspects of my perspective should be mentioned: I live in Detroit, and I am a Roman Catholic.

Reading from Detroit in this time is reading embedded in experiences of the deep and tangled structures of racism, sexism, poverty, classism, colonialism, and of the despair and courage displayed by those whom these structures have enmeshed. Despite my early efforts to get a "better" job, I am lucky to teach in a non-elite, richly diverse classroom Virginia Woolf would approve of, where some -- many -- of our students are the poor (or the nearly poor, the recently poor) (12) with whom I try to be a co-learner in the effort to demystify strategies of oppression like "whiteness," and to recognize powers of resistance. Helmut Koester rightly insists: "Interpretation of the Bible is justified only if it is a source for political and religious renewal, or it is not worth the effort.... If the Bible has anything to do with justice and freedom, biblical scholarship must be able to question those very structures of power and expose their injustice and destructive potential." (13) To do this kind of work one must try to be what Osayande Obery Hendricks calls "the guerilla exegete," not waiting for, not expecting "the hegemonic pat on the head." (14)

Standing again at Golgotha (15) in Detroit is a challenge not to turn away from suffering or from the body. It demands a resurrection faith that does not make the suffering all right, does not dull to injustice, does not desensitize compassion or fear of death; rather it leads to action in spite of. Mary Magdalene of the Christian Testament is the one who stands by the dying, wrongfully accused, executed; she fails to anoint at an empty tomb of the disappeared. Simply there, she becomes the place, the location, not just the symbol of, the God who is thought to abandon, but does not abandon. Valerie Saiving remarks on "the transformation of the quality of pain by the full presence of other human beings" in our dying. (16) Each of us wishes for one like the Magdalene to go down with us into death, to stay with us to the end.... Reconstruction of her story may help us to stay, not turn away.

I approach the topic of resurrection with trepidation and reluctance. These texts deal with a (perhaps the) foundational belief of Christianity, rooted in the belief of some first-century Jews. What is meant by such belief? And (worse question) is it true? True for me? I do not consider it more sophisticated or intelligent or courageous to dismiss these questions. It is difficult to know what to include in a biblical studies book, of one's own belief or lack of it. This is something scholars like other people rarely talk about, unless they are up-front explicitly orthodox Christians....I am interested here in trying to think about something Derrida (writing of the work of Louis Marin) describes as "outside the evangelical, doctrinal, or dogmatic space of the resurrection, before it, more originary than it...." (17) I will argue for the resurrection faith as concerned with justice for the whole person, for the body, and for the corporate Human One. Justice, and perhaps mercy. My reconstruction is simple. In ma king the claim that God raised Jesus, Mary Magdalene was speaking/thinking/creating out of her own experience in the apocalyptically oriented basileia movement, and her experience of the execution of Jesus, and out of what for lack of a better word is called insight or inspiration. Whether one accepts this claim as true or not depends on how it is understood and if it can be experienced in one's own life in any way. Luck and decision seem to be part of acceptance/nonacceptance. Do I believe in the resurrection of the dead? Yes, actually, I do. I also know that I will die. Resurrection is for me a "broken and living myth," as Neil Gillman calls it, an outrageous hope grounded in belief in the God who gives life to the dead. (18) It is grounded also in the invigorating, stubborn moments of struggling against multiple aspects of oppression and against self-righteousness. Scientific knowledge, in my opinion, makes this faith no more outrageous than it was in past ages when people were intimately acquainted with t he stink and rot of death, and with injustice. Across centuries and across a lifetime, changing attitudes toward the body, sexuality, selfhood, death, and love influence understandings of resurrection. However absurd the notion of resurrection seems, writes Caroline Walker Bynum, "it is a concept of sublime courage and optimism. It locates redemption there where ultimate horror also resides--in pain, mutilation, death, and decay." (19)

On being a Catholic: First, a disclaimer. I regard religious affiliation, like nationalism, in terms of the "unreal loyalties" Woolf discussed; and in that sense, I want none, and am an Outsider. But I also do not deny being a Catholic, or an American citizen, as long as I continue to benefit from the wealth of either institution, and as long as I responsibly, even loyally oppose their institutional injustices. Drawn to the time before the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity, to the integrity of some atheist thought, and to feminist visions, I assert my right to a religion of our own.

For the past forty years, official Catholicism has increasingly identified itself with conservative, right-wing forces, fencing off Catholic social teaching from concern with women and "women's concerns." Meeting the worldwide women's movement with misogyny and fear, the hierarchy and clerical culture of the Church has walled itself up in a tower leaning to the right. Official Roman Catholicism aligned itself at Cairo and Beijing U.N. conferences with Islamic fundamentalists to restrict access of the poor to reproductive health care and family planning, and in the U.S. aligns itself with policy priorities of the GOP and of evangelical Christians and other anti-choice groups. Wealthy conservative Catholics exercise immense influence in private and public ways. During the summer of 1998, when Southern Baptists declared women should be subservient to the "servant leadership" of their husbands, Pope John Paul II made it a part of canon law that there will be no ordination of women in the Roman Catholic church, re affirming the 1976 ban and later insisting there be no more discussion of this issue. An effort to control U.S. theologians shifted into high gear in 1992, eventuating in the present requirement for all Catholics teaching "theology" (20) in Roman Catholic colleges and universities in the U.S. to seek the "Mandatum," official authorization that their teaching conforms to the teaching of the Magisterium (21) of the Church: a loyalty oath. Despite publicity-related efforts to soft peddle the impact of this decree, in the opinion of many it would make serious theological work impossible in Catholic institutions. (22) My ink is turning green.

I do not underestimate this power to enervate, intimidate, destroy work, to harm spirits, consciences, bodies, peoples. When Woolf referred in Three Guineas to photographs of the devastation of war, she gave the reader photographs of men in uniforms of the royalty, the law courts, the academy, the military, and the church. At the beginning of the first war of the third millennium (9/11/01), her explorative answers to the question--How do we prevent war?--are still unheard.

At the same time, looking beyond ecclesiastical hierarchy, it seems to some that Christianity is in the throes of a second Reformation, more extensive, more profound than the first. Catholics in high percentages disagree with official church teachings on contraception, abortion, ordination of women, homosexuality. Hierarchical clout proves unable to silence dissenting voices. It becomes clearer than ever that the main obstacle to reform or renewal or recreation is "a problem of structure or church polity that cuts off the avenues of participation, deliberation, and decision making for all but a few men in the monarchical hierarchy. This structural system must be changed." (23) It is a question of dominant and domineering ideologies and high ideals as well. (24) The "official" Roman Catholic Church, increasingly seen as patriarchy writ large, hideously boring, pits itself against egalitarian, communal realities and needs, and against the progressive dimensions of its own history.

The collapse of the idea of a unified and universal world culture based on Euro-American values parallels the collapse of the belief in a unified and catholic religious culture and center of power. The lack of a center is felt: "Most pervasive fact of the world order today is that the plight of the most hungry and most poor is so much worse than once anyone would have imagined and that there is no world center of power willing or able to do anything about it."(25) The Bible and the histories behind it are a source of certain metanarratives that create the belief that the world and humanity could become whole, belief in a power that can repair the world. The Qur'an creates that belief as well. Can there be a center -- or centers -- of democratic power, with commitment to the full humanity of women and men, to multiple perspectives, collective conversation and debate? Can art and theologies and mysticism and action for social justice be produced which free up resources through egalitarian collaboration? Can the re be (is there) a religion of Outsiders? "perhaps--perhaps."

Magdalene Christianity offers an alternative and a challenge to Petrine Christianity, which has never been able to silence it. It might move us toward a religion of Outsiders.

Notes

(1.) See T. Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (London: Methuen, 1988).

(2.) But see E. Schussler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: the Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999)19; Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger, "Introduction" to The Personal Voice in Biblical Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1999), 4,6,8.

(3.) K. Ratcliffe, Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1996), 62.

(4.) V Woolf, Diary 1.165.

(5.) See the work of Jane Marcus, cited in chapter 1, and such articles as C. Froula, "St. Virginia's Epistle to an English Gentleman; or, Sex, Violence and the Public Sphere in Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 13 (1994): 27-56.

(6.) Clarissa in V Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (London: Hogarth Press, 1925), 153.

(7.) V. Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1938), 85.

(8.) V. Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1929), 101.

(9.) L. Woolf's 1911 description of Virginia Stephen, quoted by G. Spater and I. Parsos, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), 61.

(10.) V Woolf to L. Strachey, Letters, ed. L. Woolf and J. Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1956), 38.

(11.) V Woolf, "The Leaning Tower," A Woman's Essays: Selected Essays, vol. 1, ed. R. Bowlby (London: Penguin, 1992), 168-69, 172-73.

(12.) By "poor" I mean here those who have been denied access to economic resources necessary to sustain life in a democratic society. According to M. Orfield (Detroit Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability, report to the Archdiocese of Detroit [January 1999], 5), Detroit is 85 percent African Amernican, experienced a 93 percent increase in poverty from 1980-90, and 40 percent of its citizens live in poverty.

(13.) H. Koester, "Epilogue," The Future of Early Christianity, ed. B. A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 475.

(14.) O. O. Hendricks, "Guerilla Exegesis: 'Struggle' as a Scholarly Vocation: A Postmodern Approach to African-American Interpretation," Semeia 72 (1995): 82.

(15.) See J. Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990).

(16.) V. Saiving, "Our Bodies/Our Selves," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5 (1989): 125.

(17.) J. Derrida, "By Force of Mourning," Critical Inquiry 22 (1996): 180.

(18.) N. Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1997), 30-31.

(19.) See C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University, 1995), 343.

(20.) Including ethics, systematic theology, biblical studies, etc.

(21.) Narrowly understood to refer to Vatican officials and bishops.

(22.) See further, M. Dillon, Catholic Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999).

(23.) A Democratic Catholic Church: The Reconstruction of Roman Catholicism, ed. E. C. Bianchi and R. R. Ruether (New York: Crossroad, 1992).

(24.) See E. D. Genovese, The Southern Front (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1995), chapter 23: "we of the Left" asked to explain ourselves.

(25.) C. Lemert, Postmodernism Is Not What You Think (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 33-34.

Excerpted from The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene by Jane Schaberg. Published by Continuum International Publishing Group.

Jane Schaberg is Professor of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy. She is the author of The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Scholars Press) and The Illegitimacy of Jesus (Crossroad and Sheffield Academic Press), and of numerous articles.