… Mary Magdalene … what if?

Yesterday afternoon I went for a little walk and bumped into a young man, weekend caretaker at the church up the street. He helped me understand a bit more about hierarchy in the Catholic church but when I mentioned that I hope they may eventually have female priests, he said that just can’t really happen.  That tradition comes from Christ himself … something to do with fatherhood, he thought. Like me, he is not a New Testament scholar and our conversation ended when our paths diverted. But I’m not sure Jesus said anything like that.  Paul, in fact,  said, let there be no more Jew nor Gentile, male nor female. (Galatians 3). 

Last Sunday, we heard a sermon about ‘all the Marys’ in the Bible. There is a string of them, apparently, sprinkled throughout the New Testament. But the sermon focused, eventually, on Mary Magdalene.  When she talked about Mary Magdalene, the pastor referenced some recent research by Elizabeth Schrader, a singer songwriter from New York (I think) who is also a PhD student in New Testament Studies at Duke University. Maybe Schrader is a bit of a mystic, but at some point she was sitting in a church garden in NY, away from the urban noise, and she heard a voice that said to her, ‘follow Mary Magdalene’. She wrote a song about Mary Magdalene but then began to think, that can’t be enough. I need to learn about this Biblical character. And that’s where her studies began. 

Mid week, I sat in on a small zoom discussion about Mary the Tower, where we listened to a lecture by Dianna Butler Bass, a Christian, American historian, about Mary Magdalene. DBB spoke at length about the research of Elizabeth Schrader, which focused on John 11 and Luke 10. In Luke 10, in ‘a certain village’ Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha. It doesn’t give the name of the village. This is a well-known, often mentioned account of the more contemplative Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet and the hostess, Martha, doing all the work, and getting a little impatient with Mary, upon which, Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better way.  I’ve often wondered about that … ‘cause if no one is doing the work, who puts out the faspa for the guests? But that’s not the point of the lecture.  Butler Bass moves on to John 11. Schrader has learned Aramaic, Greek and Coptic and for her PhD she is referred to Papyrus 66, written in about 200 AD. These early writings have been digitized and so she can zoom in to enlarge what, until recently, had been only visible in the faded plain writing. 

It’s complicated interpretation, and I’m over my head on this, but it makes me curious. Schrader finds that while the English translations in John 11 refer to Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, it also says they are from Bethany. But Bethany is never mentioned in the Luke story, so why assume it was the same Mary and Martha?  Martha in Luke welcomes Jesus into HER home, which implies she had no husband, nor brother, nor was there a father. Had there been any of those male characters, Jesus would have been welcomed into HIS home.  Which means the Lazarus, Mary and Martha story in John really has no connection to the Martha and Mary story of Luke. Schrader discovers further that the possessive ‘HIS sister Martha’ in John 11 has been written over and turned into a ‘HER sister Martha’ giving the impression there was a Martha, and she was Mary’s sister. Also, apparently the Greek for Martha is similar enough to Maria, that an editor back there in 400 AD could easily change what should have been HIS sister Maria to HER sister Martha, effectively making this Mary (Maria) in John 11 and 12 disappear.  

That Mary (edited to Martha) confronts Jesus about having  arrived late and that her brother would have lived had Jesus been there earlier. Jesus then reminds her that Lazarus will rise again and Mary (remember, there is no Martha here) says she knows this, to which Jesus then adds vs 25 and 26: ‘I am the resurrection and the life … and whoever believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’, he asks her.  And here is the key verse … this Mary then says ‘I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world’.  

That confession of Christ as Messiah only happens with one other person in the New Testament and that is Peter, after which Jesus calls him Peter, the Rock (Matt 16).  So there really are two Christological confessions!?! One by Peter and the other by a woman named Mary whom an editor 1700 years ago made to disappear by turning her into a Martha.

Apparently there is also no evidence that there ever was a seaside village called Magdala, even though on Holy Land tours, many tourists get to a village where the tour guide will tell them this is the village where Mary Magdalene was from. Magdala. But if there never was such a village with such a name, then what does Magdalene mean? It’s thought that the Mary in John 11, who was edited to become Martha, was really Mary and the Magdala was likely a title ascribed to her by Jesus. It means ‘tower’.  Peter the rock and Mary the tower. 

Dianna Butler Bass, and the pastor last Sunday, and Elizabeth Schrader all ask questions in their lectures and sermons: why was Mary edited out of John 11 to make her appear as if she is simply the Martha of Luke 10?  Secondly, if she was really Mary Magdalene, Mary the tower, the first human, by the way, to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection, why would editors have gone out of their way to make her disappear, or at least, to confuse her with the Martha in Luke?  And especially, if there was so clearly a second Confession of Jesus being the Christ, the Messiah, and it was made to a woman, to Mary Magdala, why, for 2000 years, has the church assumed its leadership had to come from a male gender. How different would the world be today, if the Christian community, back almost 2000 years, had built its traditions on the leadership of Peter and also Mary? 

One person in the zoom discussion group wondered if any of this matters. Do we have to make a fuss about learning that, way back there, our scriptures were trifled with? Does it really matter that it’s entirely probable there were two Christological Confessions … one with Peter and one with Mary Magdalene? Would it have made an important difference had we built the Christian Church traditions and theologies on the understanding there was not just a male cornerstone but also a female tower to lean on?  Maybe not, but I’m guessing yes!

The queen of England was a wise, stable, mature world leader for 70 years. There aren’t many like her. A tower indeed! But somehow, the community where that kind of leadership should probably be most easily and naturally assumed, still, in many of its representations, finds it difficult to think of itself that way.