“Secrets of Mary Magdalene” (2006), edited by Dan Burstein and Arne J.De Keijzer, with an introduction by Elaine Pagels, is a collection of essays and interviews from persons concerned with the woman who fisrt saw the resurrected Christ. Apart from accounts given in the canonized gospels and the coptic gospels, numerous books and works of art have been devoted to interpretations of who this woman was.
In 591 CE Pope Gregory delivered a powerful sermon in which he proclaimed Mary of Magdala a harlot, saved from seven devils by Jesus. The idea of a repenting whore has persisted over the centuries, even depite the Vatican’s 1969 reassessment of this woman’s place in Christianity. Her saints’ day, July 22, has long been celebrated by prostitutes who consider her to be their parton saint.
Pope Gregory’s assessment of this woman, an assessment unaffected by the realization that the pope confused several Marys whom Jesus met, persists. It fits well into the male psyche that is unable to resolve the conflict between its own animus and anima. It allows males to continue seeing women in two categories only–the virgin and the whore. Mary Magdalene as earth mother, as feminine conterpart of sky father, had to be denied in order for a patriarcal dominance of religion and society to continue.
The gnostic gospels agree with John in assigning Mary of Magdala a special place in the revelatory experience of Jesus as man and son of god. In these gospels Peter gets upset because Jesus favors this woman with spiritual insights and praises her for her abilty to understand them. Paul, alligning with the Peter of the coptic gospels, claims women should not minister in the churches.
How did John do that?
If you had read anything in the OP and the Gospel of John, you could not ask such a question. In that “gospel” John depicts Mary the Magdalene as appearing at the crucifixion and as being the first to see the risen Christ. I wish you could offer more to discussions such as these.
Along with many others, not all of them very sympathetic to Jesus.
How does that assign Mary of Magdala a special place in the revelatory experience of Jesus as man and son of god?
Do set us all an example. 
I always found it interesting that Mary M. doesn’t recognize the risen Jesus. Why does he look different? Why don’t other people find that odd?
I really like the Jesus and the Mary Mags of the gnostic gospels much better than their portrayals in the evangelistic gospels. They kissed on the lips and very probably ‘knew’ each other in the biblical sense. Even better, is the long short story by D H Lawrence where Jesus goes to Egypt, meets a priestess of Isis, and has sex with her. And of course, all of these stories are absolutely true and should be taken literally. 
Because he didn’t look different. Mary did not think that Jesus could be alive. Like the other disciples, she did not believe. So when she heard a voice, she took it to be that of the gardener. But she recognised Jesus, whose appearance was as it had been previously, as did all the others; that was the very point of appearing to people after resurrection.
Actually she looked at him and didn’t recognize him. She didn’t notice the stigmata. She didn’t say, “You look exactly like someone I knew and who was recently crucified”.
John 20:13-16
Luke 24:23-26
Mark 16:12
Another form?
People don’t need to have ‘stigmata’ to be recognisable, or not. Especially in the dark, through weepy eyes.
That should be “Thou lookest like unto he that was heretofore crucified, that was known unto me.” They all spoke like unto that in the Bible, surely.
Mk 16:9-20 is not acceptable canon.
As modern Bibles say.
That was the big proof that Jesus was fulfilling divine prophecy – he came back. The other miracles may have been convincing, but his death is unique in that God sent him back [in other words, it was a sign that Jesus was more than human so to speak].
Ierrellus,
What do you make of the claims that Jesus and Mary were supposedly in love, or in a relationship? I’ve never seen any textual support for that either.
In my opinion, the whole virgin/whore dichotomy is a product of extremely dated culture. That people still subscribe to that idea is absurd. Conventional views would still hold women as subservient in many cases, but that seems just as dated and useless to me. I read somewhere that the role of women, even starting in Genesis, was gradually doctored over time. I’ve even read that the story of Adam and Eve was modified in the middle ages to implicate Eve as the indirect cause of sin for all mankind.
Maybe. How did it assign Mary of Magdala a special place in the revelatory experience of Jesus as man and son of god?
Seems as legitimate as anything in the NT.
Cowabunga dude, you look just like Jesus.
Very many educated persons have suspected otherwise before confirmation that it is not acceptable.
Then there will be acceptable quotes elsewhere.
The general impression, from what is written in the NT, is that the followers of Jesus didn’t recognize him after the resurrection.
What do you make of this?
Luke 24:28-31
Why didn’t they notice the resemblance or the stigmata until after the breaking of the bread?
And this?
John 20:19-20
They were glad only after he showed the wounds.
If they didn’t recognise him, we would not be discussing him. But Jesus showed himself to over five hundred people soon after resurrection, and for that reason there are a billion internet posts about him.
The fact is that these people mentioned in the gospels were not his followers then. Here were people disillusioned, even shocked, having loved, been fascinated by, been devoted to a person they believed to be the saviour of Israel, if not the world. They would have been too embarrassed to look others in the eye, too dispirited to consider others worth engaging directly. It is notable that they recognised Jesus for spiritual reasons, not because of physiognomy, that certain people seem to want to promote as significant. So if Jesus covered his face, it would have been in harmony with his teaching, that it was his spirit in anyone, having any sort of face, that was to be the power to change the world.
It hardly makes sense for Jesus to appear in unrecognisable forms if the purpose of his appearances was to be recognised. What is generally supposed, and what has been supposed for five centuries, is that Jesus’ followers were not expecting him to rise from the dead, and did not immediately recognise him, though they certainly did so. If people want to allege that Jesus took different forms after resurrection, they can do so, if they insist, but there is no genuine textual support for that view. Perhaps the person(s) responsible for the Marcan Appendix wanted to put about the idea that Jesus did not rise again, but a lookalike was used. If so, they did not get very far.
Perhaps there are people today who want this to be supposed, though. Perhaps they favour the use of the KJV, which has absence of note pointing out the lack of teaching authority of the Appendix among its many defects. The United Bible Societies indicate that this passage should not even be printed, though publishers ignore that.
This is the type of response I had hoped for. Luther did not believe Jesus was celibate; but then Luther wanted to marry. It has been argued that if Jesus could not have known a sexual experience, he could not have known what it is like to be human.
Some early Hebrew tales about creation claim Adam was androgenous, hence he was divided into Adam and Eve. Some current writers see this as a division of animus and anima in the human psyche, a perennial conflict. I cannot see such a conflict as real, except in minds who find some comfort in believing in polar oppositions. Whether or not this Mary was Jesus’ lover or spiritual partner is up for grabs in such outdated considerations of the human psyche.
Getting beyond the legends, myths and popular fiction about Mary, what can we think of her privilege of being at the cross when Jesus was crucified and the 11 were hiding, being at the tomb to annoint Jesus’ body, being the first to see the risen Jesus? Has orthodoxy obscured her true position as an apostle?
Stumps,
In an interview with Philip Jenkins (prof. of history and religious studies at Penn State) Jenkins states–
“In the earliest account of the resurrection, written by Paul in the 50s, Mary is not mentioned, and Peter receives the first Resurrection experience.” Unfortunately, Jenkins does not provide a reference here. If most of the NT writings can be dated between 70 and 95 C.E., has it been found that Paul’s writing precedes them? Since Jenkins is a stickler for dates, I thought you might know what preceded what. He dismisses the Gnostic Gospels from the contention that they are narrations of events some two hundered years after the events actually occured. Did Paul write something about the resurrection that is noncanonical? Or did I miss something he said in the canon?
One source in the book I’m reading and presenting here claims that the city Mary was from was renamed Magdala circa 70 C.E., which would call for a retranslation of Magdalene. One is offered in this book.
Thanks, Lady J.
Several contributers in the book I’m discussing here quote Schwitzer who noted that in the search for Jesus we are looking into a well and seeing our own reflection. The same may be true in our looking for Mary. You’d love this book, if you’ve not already read it.
Everything that Paul wrote in the canon is canonical. In 1 Cor 15:5-8 he wrote this:
‘He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.’ (NIV)
But this ‘precedence’ should not be taken at face value, because Paul’s purpose here is not to relate what the Corinthians already know, but to remind them that what they know is not just Paul going off on his own tangent, and his ‘late arrival’ as an apostle does not mean that his message is compromised. At the beginning of the letter Paul took his readers to task quite severely because they were making human leaders into faction leaders. So he was saying that the order of precedence that the Corinthians may think important (and some of them may have been in danger of rejecting Paul’s authority) is actually worth diddly squat. It’s no excuse, as I don’t doubt some are itching to say, that this order of precedence puts Mary at the top.
Note that, not only Mary is not mentioned, but no female is. The fact that Mary was first to see Jesus means only happenstance, not privilege. So capitalists who want to promote women because they are easier to control, criminals who wish to control the church by promoting women, homosexuals who want to condition young minds, can forget about this Magdalene myth.
Actually, I think when she heard his voice, that is when she realized that it was Christ. Something just spoke to her because of the relationship she’d had with him. When she saw the figure in the garden, she assumed it to be the gardner.
Anyway, don’t you think that someone rising up from the dead would necessarily look different? 
At least at first. Aside from that, if Mary had had such a strong relationship with him, and believed him to be the messiah and that he would resurrect after three days, as i would think she would have to, why wouldn’t she be expecting to see him? One might say that she was simply started by his appearance.