Transcription
Mary Magdalene is one of the most controversial figures in the Bible. But who was she really? Is it true, as some claim, that she had a relationship with Jesus? Maybe even married him and bore him children? Some people even say that she was the real Messiah, a living, breathing healer and mystic, and that Jesus was simply her partner. And what happened to her? Did she die in the Holy Land, or as some suggest, did she come to France and start a ministry here?
Most Christians say that she was a prostitute who met Jesus and reformed. But there is evidence in the Gnostic Gospels that not only were they very close, but also that she had power over him in some way, that he was besotted with her. The real Mary Magdalene was much more interesting, much more involved than the biblical Mary Magdalene that we know. Mary Magdalene had special powers, mystic healing, and so she was much revered because of it. A priestess, a goddess, she was something special. The real Jesus Christ was a woman. It was Mary, who is airbrushed. Mary, who is the real spiritual leader of the first century Judea.
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It's a version of events that you won't read about in the Bible. But it's claimed by some that a deal was done with the Roman governor in Jerusalem at the time, Pontius Pilate, to secretly get the body of Jesus out of the city at the time of the crucifixion, possibly dead, possibly alive, maybe even sedated. And this explains why, it's claimed, no body was found in his tomb. But is it true? Just from reading the Bible, there's enough evidence to say that it's unlikely that Jesus died on the cross. He didn't have his legs broken. He wasn't on the cross long enough to die. It's a long, slow, painful death, crucifixion. But they took him down. Then shortly after, Jesus is walking around again. And clearly, if he is the King of the Jews, he's a major threat to Roman rule, 'cause he could spark an uprising. So he has to disappear. And then Mary leaves, supposedly the Holy Land, according to the book of the Saints, and goes to France. The question is, did she take Jesus with her, or did she take the body?
What happened when Jesus was crucified by the Romans? Mary Magdalene was there, supporting him in his final terrifying moments and mourning his death. She also discovers the empty tomb and she's a witness to the resurrection.
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In art, she's often semi-naked or an isolated hermit, repenting for her sins in the wilderness, an outcast. But we know her best as a prostitute. Powerful as this image may be for many scholars and historians, it's not the story of the real Mary Magdalene. She is mentioned in each of the four Gospels in the New Testament, but not once does it mention that she was a prostitute or a sinner. The biblical Mary Magdalene is seen as quite a passive figure, as a woman to be saved. So if you kind of think of any fairy tale, she's sort of the beautiful princess that's there to be saved, and she's a sinner, and she repents, and she kind of comes up in very seminal moments in Jesus's life. But there are some historians that believe that the real Mary Magdalene was much more involved in the way that Jesus developed his ideas, in supporting him, in fact, as perhaps being that 13th Apostle that people often speak of. She's possibly a woman that lived near the Sea of Galilee in a small fishing village. She's possibly from Ethiopia, in Magdala. There, she's possibly from Egypt. So it's very difficult to sort of pick one story and say this is our real Mary Magdalene. It appears that at some point, Mary Magdalene became confused with two other women in the Bible: Mary, the sister of Martha, and the unnamed sinner from Luke's Gospel, both of whom washed Jesus's feet with their hair. In the 6th Century, Pope Gregory the Great made this incorrect assumption official by declaring in a sermon that these three characters were actually the same person.
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Mary Magdalene. After the inception of Christianity, when Christianity started to build and grow, one of the things that began to happen was the role of Mary Magdalene began to be hidden. So by the time you get to the sixth century, she's conflated with the figure who's the woman taken in adultery in the Bible. So at that point, she starts to become this lost woman, this penitent woman, who was seen as a prostitute, who was seen as a negative. The real Mary Magdalene was changed by a Christian Church when the Bible was written and rewritten and changed and written again. She was changed from a mystic, a wise woman, a noble woman, into nothing more than a hooker, a sinner, as all women were at the time. It was a male-dominated religion, and women had to be debased. Well, the Church decided early on that it was going to be an all-male affair. So they couldn't have the Magdalene being the role model for women. They wanted to keep women down, and boy, have they succeeded. And a large part of it was what they did to the Magdalene's image, turning her into this model of female shame. I mean, for generations, for centuries, fallen women were known as Magdalenes. I mean, that's horrible, and that's the ultimate spin.
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Really. Lyn Picnet has written two bestselling books on Mary Magdalene and has been researching the truth about her for over 30 years.
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So who was Mary Magdalene? Well, the Church's story about her is based on the Gospels in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And she's hardly in there by name. There are lots of other allusions to her which you can work out in the context that refers to her. But basically, she doesn't star very much until the crucifixion, when she turns up at the foot of the cross and then goes to the tomb. And she discovers that Jesus's body has disappeared. And then allegedly meets him in the garden, the resurrected Jesus in the garden. So that's her big moment. You know, at Jesus's death, she comes in. And quite clearly, she's been, she's so important. You know, she must be important. But there's not much in the actual canonical biblical Gospels that lead you to believe how important she is until the very end of the story.
"There is something greater coming to all of you. I know I have seen a vision so beautiful that I cannot put it into words."
Who's responsible for how she was portrayed in the Bible? It is entirely the work of the Catholic Church. There's no evidence, biblical evidence or evidence anywhere else, that she was a prostitute. But in the 8th Century AD, a Pope said, "Wait a minute. She's described as a sinner. She was a woman. She must have been a prostitute." And that became that. And the other thing is that women started off with Jesus. The immediate mission started off in positions of power. Women who preached and baptized, healed, and even administered the sacrament. And when the Vatican, the early Vatican, sent people to ask what was going on, they said, "But don't you know? This is how Jesus instigated things through Mary Magdalene." So the early Church knew about this. They knew that Jesus had empowered women, and that Mary Magdalene was, in fact, as described in the Gnostic Gospels, Apostle of the Apostles, not St. Peter. She was in charge.
"Those who seek Him shall find Him."
Women have historically been brushed out of history, and you're talking about a story that's 2,000 years old. Any woman relaying a message of that magnitude and importance, they wouldn't want that to be. They'd want it to be Jesus's message. And I think, interestingly enough, when you know in the readings of Jesus, to me, he sounds like a real hippie, like a kind of guy that's very egalitarian and fair. And one wonders if he probably wanted a female voice, you know, if he probably valued this voice in a way that many of the people that went on to write the Bible and preach the Bible perhaps didn't.
"Open your hearts, open your minds, and open your souls."
We can't forget that everything we know about Jesus and Mary Magdalene was written decades after they lived. So imagine a group of men in the First Council of Nicaea saying, "Right, boys, what's the story going to be?" I believe they created the story of Jesus Christ to cover up the fact that it was a woman, not a man, who was the leader of the spiritual movement in the early first century.
Perhaps the most incredible claim about Mary Magdalene was that when she fled the Holy Land to go to France, she was actually pregnant with Jesus's child. Mary reaches France, and all of a sudden becomes the center of a certain form of Christianity. She arrives there, spends 30 years in a cave as a hermit, but healing people, performing miracles. And of course, the big one is that the legend has it that she actually arrived in France with a child. Some people believe that Mary Magdalene may have even been Jesus's wife, and that they may have gone on to have a family together. I'm not sure what evidence exists about this. But one of the things I think that we can be sure of is, in those times, women were written out of history. So her role in Jesus's life is likely to have been minimized. Now, the extent to which her role was bigger in terms of their relationship or her effect on his ideas and therefore Christianity is underplayed. I think it's probably safe to say that just given the fact that she's a woman, probably.
This small French town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, or Saint Mary of the Sea, near Marseilles in the south of France, is where it's claimed Mary Magdalene and her party landed in a boat around 45 AD. Now, according to tradition, they had sailed from Alexandria in Egypt, and the party included Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus's uncle, and maybe even the body of Jesus himself. The church here celebrates this story. But to slightly confuse things, it venerates not one, but three Marys who were said to have come ashore that day.
"Eat this. This is a celebratory meal for all of you, the journeys that you've been on, and the journey that continues. I'm so proud of all of you. Enjoy. Drink."
The original church of St. Mary's was built sometime in the 9th century. And local guide and Magdalene expert, Martin Guillo, agreed to show me around.
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"Martina, what did Mary Magdalene do when she was here?"
Not only Mary Magdalene, but all the persons who arrived here are on a mission. The mission is to tell that Jesus is life, the message of the resurrection. So the Holy Marys stayed here. They were a bit old, about 60. And the others, and Mary Magdalene were younger. She was about 30-35. So they could go and speak about Jesus and the Gospels.
"So Mary Magdalene was preaching?"
Yes, I think so, because I think they came here for that.
In the Bible, you never really hear about Mary that much until the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection. And then she's gone. But then she reappears in a whole wealth of traditions in the south of France, where she supposedly went. Which makes perfect sense. You've just been exiled in the biggest Jewish community on the planet. Where are you going to go? The next biggest Jewish community on the planet, French Gaul. She didn't just go over and lay low, as it were. She went over and carried on his mission. So if she was involved in Jesus's life in some capacity, she was certainly intellectually and ideologically on a par with him, believed in what he believed in, and didn't take a back seat. Was there as a missionary to kind of spread the word? She was a rich woman who had gone on a mission. She came to the south of France. She preached, she healed, she probably even baptized. There are streams all over the Languedoc area of France called The Source Mélaine, Mary Magdalene stream, based on those old legends that she baptized there. So she was a very important, probably the first Apostle, right at the very top.
Of the Church of St. Mary's is a small private chapel that contains relics of the three Marys. Martin has given me special access to have a look around.
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"This is extraordinary."
"Yeah. So what is this? This is like a private chapel."
"The high chapel, we call this the high chapel. It's inside the bell tower. First, it was dedicated to St. Michel Archange, like all the high chapels in France. And after, arrived the relics of the Holy Marys."
"So this is the church we were just in?"
"Yes. And what is this? What is in this box?"
"You have the relics of Mary Jacobi in this box."
"Mary Jacobi?"
"Other box, Mary Salomé."
"There are two boxes together like that."
"What's through here?"
"Oh, it's also relics of Mary Salomé and Mary Jacobi. There are 11 pieces of bones. Dark because they're burned during the Revolution, the French Revolution."
"So these are fragments of Mary's bones?"
"Yes, yes, yes."
"Wow."
"As confusing as all the Maries are in this story, what kind of clarifies it for us is only one of them is called the Magdalene, which means tower in Hebrew, but in Aramaic, it means fantastic, exalted, excellent. And that feels about right."
What's really telling is that there's this story put about that Mary Magdalene ends up in the south of France, effectively being the figure that we suppose Jesus to have been. It's she who's going around being this kind of almost sort of Peter-esque figure, preaching the good word, and promoting this idea of compassionate Christianity. It's a nice idea.
"And why are there no bones of Mary Magdalene?"
"We have no body of Mary Magdalene here because she didn't stay here. When all the group arrived, only the two Marys, Mary Jacobi and Mary Salomé, stayed here. And Mary Magdalene went away."
"Where did she go? Do we know?"
"She's in Saint-Maximin."
So you find the relics of Mary Magdalene in Saint-Maximin, in Provence. Every May, this small town celebrates the three Marys' coming ashore with a huge Gypsy Festival. A wooden box containing sacred relics of the Marys is carefully lowered from the church tower in a special ceremony. This is followed by the procession of a sacred boat that is taken to the sea and blessed by the bishop in front of thousands of onlookers, all of whom venerating the arrival of the three Marys.
"So this boat gets taken down to the sea?"
"Yes, in the sea, over the sea, of course, but in the sea. And when the boat is in the sea, the Archbishop blesses the sea with a holy harm, the relic, with a relic. Because the sea brings us the Gospels."
Even the Catholic Church accepts that Mary came to France. Her relics are in Béziers Cathedral. So it's believed within the cathedral. The Orthodox story of Mary is that she did come to France. There are local stories and ideas. She had a following. But also, in the alternative Gospels, we read that she was party to the inner secrets of Jesus's teaching. The other Apostles ask her to tell them what Jesus has told her because she knows more than they do. In the south of France, they still keep a candle burning for Mary Magdalene. And actually, they say that she was actually integral to Christianity and Jesus's mission, and she was somebody that was a healer in her own right and a strong woman in her own right. So you have, even though it's a Catholic country, at least a part of it that says, well, no, we're not going to kind of buy into this biblical view of this woman. We think she had a much stronger position than what's portrayed.
In 1279, excavations of the crypt beneath a small church in Saint-Maximin in France uncovered first-century tombs along with a surprising find: a sarcophagus made of marble. Charles II, the Count of Provence, who led the excavation, claims he was spurred to do so by a dream in which St. Mary Magdalene appeared to him. When the sarcophagus was opened, a wonderful and very sweet smell was noted by all present to emanate from inside, which they believe to be symbolic of the perfume Mary Magdalene poured on the feet of Jesus before his death.
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Pilgrims and tourists flock to see the Magdalene relics today. And local priest, Father Florian Reiss, agreed to show me around.
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"Jimmy, let's go to the to the crypt of Mary Magdalene."
"And it's here that you have what's left of her bones. The skull. It's from the 4th Century."
"Okay. And you have a nice old grid here."
"So this is the origin of the church right here?"
"It's the origin of the church, yes."
"So, Jimmy, we are here in the crypt, and you can see some sarcophagi. And that's the one of St. Mary Magdalene. So it was made out of marble, beautiful marble that is translucent. If you put a light inside, you will see the light coming out. You have different parts of the life of Jesus and Mary Magdalene on this sarcophagus. And it's very damaged because many pilgrims, when they came, they wanted to take a little piece of marble to keep, to take back home. That's why it's so damaged, actually."
"So this is where Mary Magdalene was buried here?"
"Mary Magdalene was buried here. And so her bones were inside here. And then this is her. So that's you can see the skull of Mary Magdalene that is here."
"Wow. It's amazing."
"It's quite macabre seeing her skull. In Saint-Maximin, Provence, they claim to have the skull of Mary. And it looks completely authentic. And it's part of their rituals, their ceremonies, even today. And this sort of makes sense for someone that important. You would know where they were when they died. So where is the skull of Jesus? Don't tell me he went to heaven."
So it just leads you to believe that this is the real deal. This skull could very well have been the skull of the woman who lived and preached and taught in this area.
"He who has ears to hear, let them hear. He who has a mind to understand, let them understand."
For Christians, it's important also to go back to the tradition and to know that Mary Magdalene really existed. It's not a legend. So for many pilgrims, they are so happy to come here and to pray. Mary Magdalene. How do we know that this is actually Mary Magdalene's skull? Basically, she was buried here and then put in the sarcophagus in the 4th century. And then there was a time where the Saracens came here in the 7th century. So they had to bury everything. All the sarcophagi were put within the ground. And then the memory of Mary Magdalene was just a kind of oral tradition. We knew she was somewhere here, but there was nothing. Everything was destroyed. And it's in 1279 that Charles II of Anjou, he made some research and he found those sarcophagi that were probably deeper within the ground. And then he took the skull of Mary Magdalene and he went to the Vatican to see the Pope Boniface VIII. Boniface VIII at that time, and what's interesting for us, it's that they had the jaw, right? And so they just took the skull that was from here, the jaw, and they could see that it fit perfectly. And so from that time, the Pope Boniface VIII said, "The remains, the relics of Mary Magdalene are here in Saint-Maximin."
Interestingly, when the skull of Mary Magdalene was first discovered, there was still a piece of her skin attached to it that is said to have been touched by Jesus himself. When Mary Magdalene saw Jesus at the resurrection, she wanted to hold Jesus. So she fell at the feet of Jesus, and Jesus said, "Do not touch me." Like Jesus did that to Mary Magdalene. And so the Risen Lord touched this piece of skin of Mary Magdalene, and it's a sign. So we call it the "Noli me tangere." It was there on the skin, and then it was removed during the French Revolution, and it was put in this little vial. There you can see that. So that is the Mary Magdalene's skin that was touched by Jesus?
"Exactly, by the Risen Lord. So that's a sign of the Resurrection, I would say."
"So my quest, I guess, has been to find the real Mary Magdalene."
"And here she is. Here she is. You're right, you found her."
She's very important to the Catholic Church in this area. And I think the feeling is that somehow or another, the true Mary Magdalene had been known about because if she was in the neighborhood, they would know all those years ago. They would have known what she was like. And that sits rather uncomfortably with what the Church has done to her.
"Well, it's confusing for me because the Church seems quite happy to celebrate her here. There's no issue about..."
"But they're only celebrating their own version of her. They're not celebrating the partner of Jesus who was his spiritual equal. They're celebrating a reformed prostitute who, as a penitent..."
And this story took another bizarre twist just over a hundred years ago. In a Cairo bazaar, in 1896, a German scholar happened to come across a curious papyrus book, bound in leather and written in Coptic. He discovered the Gospel of Mary.
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If you look at the Gospels that were rejected from the New Testament by vote in the fourth and fifth century AD, the Gnostic Gospels, such as the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Indeed, she's the star. I mean, obviously Jesus is the star, but apart from him, she's the star. And a very, very different picture emerges. She is, well, first of all, extremely feisty, won't shut up, does not behave like a Jewish woman of that time and place at all. She, she doesn't, for example, she wears her hair loose, which, you know, and kind of flaunts it, which only really women of bad reputation did. But she didn't care. And her relationship with Jesus is astonishing. There is evidence in the Gnostic Gospels that not only were they very close, but they were in some kind of physical relationship. But also that she had power over him in some way, that he was besotted with her.
Well, if you read the wider gospel beyond the Bible, there is a Gospel of Mary, and there is a Gospel of Philip, which speaks about her being the most important of the Apostles, of her having what appears to be an intimate relationship with Jesus, and that he often kissed her, and that he loves her is stated very clearly. And one of the Apostles says, "Why do you not love us as much as her?" At one point, or "Why do you love her so much?" And he says, "Why do I not love you as much as I love her?" So clearly, according to the apocryphal Gospels, she is really important, and she's seen as his companion. She's described as the companion of Jesus. So they appear to be on an equal footing.
Mary's relationship to Jesus is a very controversial one. Most biblical historians, biblical scholars, come to it from a religious point of view. If you really want to strip away all the myth and legend to find the facts, you've got to dump the religion first, and then you look at it with a completely different mind. It's highly likely that Jesus would have been married to somebody. He's likely to have children. It would be strange if he didn't. So if we assume he's married, then you look and see, okay, well, this woman's constantly next to him. He's always spoken of as his favorite. In some of the other texts we have, he kisses her, he's walking around with her, he shares his life with her. You're pretty much saying he's married to her. If you look at what Mary Magdalene did, I mean, she's in possession of expensive ointments. She appears to be a fluent. She's kissing Jesus on the lips. She is there at his alleged crucifixion, pregnant. She's the first to see him at his resurrection. That is somebody who is in an elite position, such as a partner, such as a wife, such as a leader of a spiritual community, would actually have.
Well, whether Mary Magdalene actually had an intimate relationship with Jesus, or even possibly a child together, one thing we do know for certain is that here in the south of France, Mary is regarded as a hugely important figure in the Bible. She and a small group are said to have come here to continue their teachings and preach the Gospels. There are many relics dedicated to Mary Magdalene held in the Catholic churches in the area. Father Florian Reiss has agreed to show me another relic that was also discovered at the same time as Mary's skull.
"So now we're going to the sacristy of the Basilica. I have the key."
"You see that?"
"Yes. That's quite a key."
"It's nice key."
"You're not going to lose that one."
"No. All right."
"So it's supposed to be already here."
"All right. So this is the sacristy of the Basilica. And I want Jimmy to show you something that is very interesting. We have other relics here."
"Oh, right. Okay. All right. Oh, in the safe."
"Yeah. So here you have the hair of Mary Magdalene."
"Wow. Can I hold that?"
"Yeah, please."
"Wow. Look at that."
"So you can see hair of Mary Magdalene that were found, discovered with the skull of Mary Magdalene in 1279. Little piece of bone. And we did some scientific studies not long ago, and they found some pigment of red color. So we knew that Mary Magdalene had, you know, red red hair."
"And a lot of the paintings I've seen of Mary, her hair is quite significant, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is significant. And specifically because we find the hair in the Gospel when Mary Magdalene weeps on the foot of Jesus. No. And then she wipes the tears with the hair. And also she put the perfume on the foot of Jesus and she wipes again the feet of Jesus with her hair. That's why these hair are significant and important."
"I think the reason Mary is important is because she's closer to the source of Christianity. So if you're going to be a Christian, Mary would have been the route to go because the other Apostles accepted that she was closer to Jesus and had was party to his inner teachings. So there would have been an inner teaching within Christianity that we don't see in the Bible that she may have brought to France."
Various people have suggested that Jesus could have been her frontman because, after all, it was a male-dominated society, and it was maybe her message, but they wouldn't put up with her standing on her hind legs in Judea, so he did it. But I mean, he certainly, like that with her, spiritually as well. And there's evidence that she got him to change his doctrine publicly, and he didn't seem to mind at all when she did it. And she was very much keeping an eye on what he was saying. Yeah, I mean, she was very much behind it and did her best after he was out of the picture to keep it going.
Father Reiss had one more item he wanted to show me: a 14th-century cape that was used in processions dedicated to Mary Magdalene.
"And so now let's open that. It's very old, beautiful, fragile."
"That's amazing. Hold. Can you pull?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure."
"An extraordinary thing. So here, everything is made with golden thread, and it's made with a special technique that is a British technique of the 13th and 14th century. And you have all the life of Jesus, you know, the different parts of the life of Jesus. You can see the details, very beautiful. So it was used to make processions for Mary Magdalene."
"It looks like a tapestry, but it is..."
"Yeah, we can say. And can we see Mary Magdalene here anywhere?"
"We can see Mary Magdalene with holding Jesus at the resurrection. It's here."
"Ah, so you can see Jesus and Mary Magdalene."
"Yeah, here."
"So this is all hand-stitched, and it is what, 800 years old?"
"800 years old. And given to, given to the son of Charles II, who discovered the relics of Mary Magdalene. So it was made for him when he was consecrated as a bishop, and he could use that when they were doing all the processions for Mary Magdalene."
"The Church then believes that Mary Magdalene was a real person?"
"That's true, right?"
"Yes, we know Mary Magdalene was real."
"Yes. That she was once a prostitute but was reformed?"
"Yes, repentant."
"Yes. And it's her conversion from the prostitute to a disciple of Christ that is the important message of that?"
"Yes, yes. Really, really. It's a real, real way of real life."
Mary Magdalene is said to have retired to a cave on a hill near Marseilles called Saint-Pilon, where she gave herself up to a life of penance for 30 years.
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The cave is now a Christian pilgrimage site. Magdalene expert and author Lyn Picnet agreed to come along.
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"This is just the most amazing place. It's almost like it's like a church that's been... well, if you took the actual cave away, it is a church. I mean, it looks like any, you know, a very high-quality church. But it's the whole atmosphere because it is the grotto that she was supposed to have spent the last three decades of her life in. This is imbued with this extraordinary, magical ambiance."
"So according to the legend, Mary Magdalene spent... she lived here for 30 years?"
"Yes, according to the legend."
"And what was she doing? Was she... well, hiding out or..."
"Well, maybe she was hiding out because part of the traditional story is, you know, she was fleeing from the Holy Land because of persecution of the early Christians. So maybe she was partly hiding. But essentially, it was the ultimate spiritual retreat. She came here, and it is said that she spent all that time in meditation, prayer, and penitence for her sins, and obviously meditating upon Jesus and the crucifixion and so on. And her life as a disciple."
"I do believe that Mary Magdalene had special powers, mystic, healing, mediumistic, supernatural, whatever supernatural means. It's just something that we didn't understand at the time. And so she was much revered because of it. A priestess, a goddess, whatever you want to call her. What is religion if it's not about believing the unbelievable?"
"So actually, when you look at Jesus and you look at Mary Magdalene, Mary Magdalene is so much easier to believe. She's flawed like the rest of us. She's, you know, there's a transformation, a development like the rest of us. So one has to wonder if this woman, that was kind of in the background the whole time, didn't play a much bigger role."
"Go preach. Go preach this gospel to your holy kingdom. Share with them your learnings."
"And obviously, this chapel here is obviously a later addition?"
"Yes. It was set up and is still maintained to this day by the Dominican order of monks who are specially dedicated to her. And in this place, obviously, they maintain it beautifully and with enormous heart and soul. And it, you know, pilgrims come here. They still come here because of her."
"What I don't understand is, if she's traveled over here to spread the word of Jesus, why has she been 30 years on her own in the cave? It doesn't work, does it? It doesn't hang together at all. Although the idea seemed to be in the traditional story, and so far as you can kind of piece it together, that the chronology was, she converted the whole of Provence, and then she retired to the cave. And then presumably people made the tricky journey up to see her on a one-to-one basis or something to have a chat. But that's extrapolation from the few facts that we have, or the few bits of tradition that we have."
When you come here, it's amazing how many visitors and pilgrims are deeply moved by the whole Mary Magdalene story, not least because, I'm sure, she'd been maligned by the Bible for so long. It's astonishing to think that the Church treated her as a prostitute until 1969. And yet nowadays, to see her as a healer, a minister, and a leading advocate of Christianity doesn't seem in the least bit strange.
In many ways, Mary Magdalene is one of the most divisive characters in the Bible. Historians are pretty sure that she did really exist, but was labeled a prostitute by the New Testament scribes in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Why did they do that? Is the burning question. A growing number of historians and scholars now believe that it was to entirely discredit someone who may have actually been his lover and wife, and even, very controversially, the real Messiah herself.
"Do you think there'll be another chapter in this story? Do you think the truth will come out about Mary Magdalene?"
"If it's up to me, it will. And I never stopped trying to tell the story because it's got everything a story goes. And it has enormous relevance to people like me who are very interested in religions and the effect that religions had on culture and is still continues to have. If you're going to have veneration for Mary Magdalene, get her right. I don't think the historically accurate story of Mary will ever come out unless a document is discovered. I think if it's owned, it's owned by the Vatican, and it's not in their interest to release it. But I do think that the reason people are so interested in Mary Magdalene is because she does fulfill a lost archetype in Christianity of the emancipated woman and of the intuitive feminine spiritual side that's missing from religion, from Christianity in particular. And I think she embodies that for people, and that's why she's incredibly important today. And I think that's why people are inspired by her and are interested in her. I think in a hundred years' time, we will look on females and Mary Magdalene in a very different light to how she's been treated for the last 2,000 years. And all of a sudden, females will become equal to males, as they are becoming now, at long last. We're not there yet. And I think that Mary Magdalene may well be hailed as the new Messiah."
The irony is that only in the last few decades has the Church come out and fessed up and said, "You know, she wasn't a prostitute. We admit that." But the fact that they won't admit that she was the real deal makes her even more popular. She is a rock star today. She's a celebrity. She's a sacred icon of the feminist movement and the most revered woman in history. So take that, Catholic Church.
So was Mary Magdalene the lover and wife of Jesus Christ? Did she bear him one or possibly even more children? Or was she the real Messiah and head of the new Christian Church, who was simply written out of the history books several hundred years after her death and condemned as a common prostitute? Could the Church really have pulled off a lie like this? I'll let you make up your own mind. See you next time.
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