New probe into Mary Magdalene

The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament, by Jane Schaberg. (New York and London: Continuum, 2002.

In this brave and groundbreaking book of feminist biblical research, Jane Schaberg, professor of Religious Women's Studies, University of Detroit and a working poet, admittedly trespasses into fields outside her discipline. Nonetheless, she succeeds brilliantly in bridging the interests of Religious Biblical Studies and Feminist Studies in general.

The title links Mary Magdalene with the resurrection (hers, Jesus', ours?), introducing a fascinating historical, critical investigation into the New Testament and the Gnostic, legendary texts about Mary Magdalene.

Schaberg takes Virginia Woolf as her interpretive companion. Why Woolf? Because feminism's desire for a committed feminist and deeply political Woolf corresponds to its desire--for a feminist Mary Magdalene, an ancestor with whose help we might construct a religion or a spirituality of one's own.

Schaberg describes the neglected archaeological site of Migdal (Magdala) in modern Israel, which she visits periodically, and finds in the decayed traces of the past, a powerful metaphor for absence or rejection: incentives for reflection or restoration. Migdal is our necessary ruin, reminding us that the voices and lives of the first century Common Era women are buried and overgrown by the words of Christian Testament and by centuries of interpretation. She next investigates both modern and ancient Magdalene legends, which depict Mary as the looney, the whore, the madwoman in Christianity's attic, showing how the harlotization of Mary Magdalene provided a distorted lens through which some still read and even scientifically research the Christian Testament texts about Mary Magdalene. The silence and confusion surrounding Magdalene in the gospels and the conflation of the various gospel stories about Mary Magdalene yield the image of an anointed Jesus by Mary Magdalene the sinner. Schaberg notes that such distortion may not have been a conspiracy, but neither was it just an innocent mistake. It was rather an effort to honor and punish Magdalene, an intelligent and authoritative, but sexual female. The author refutes the legend of Mary Magdalene, the repentant whom, continued in numerous patristic, medieval and modern mythology, as well as in modern literature and film.

Drawing from the gnostic, apocryphal writings, especially the early second century work, The Gospel of Mary, Schaberg illuminates a Mary Magdalene startlingly different from the Mary of the legends. In this work, Magdalene represents women's prophetic power; she is a prominent figure who exists in a world of androcentric language and sexist ideology, one who speaks boldly, playing a leadership role among the male disciples by whom she is opposed. She is a both a visionary and intimate companion of Jesus and is defended and praised for her superior understanding.

The complexities and confusions in the Christian Testament texts dealing with Mary Magdalene are then explored. Was the Jesus movement a discipleship of equals? (Fiorenza), or is such an idea wishful thinking? Was the role of the women at the cross and burial historical or not? What is the relationship of the empty tomb narratives to the appearance narratives? How can one explain the different depictions of Mary Magdalene?

Before offering her own reconstruction, Schaberg critically assesses scholarly approaches to the Christian Testament texts about Mary Magdalene. She includes Robert M. Price's suggestion that the historical Magdalene was a privileged disciple of Jesus, and that her demonic possession (Luke 8:1-3) was not a historical remembrance but rather a trace of polemics against what was regarded as her heresies, and hence her authority. Karen King's treatment of the great prominence given to Mary and her teaching in the apocryphal writings emphasizes that this was a position tenaciously held by these communities despite fierce and prolonged opposition.

Schaberg asks if and how the tradition of an appearance to Mary Magdalene, alone or with other women, relates to the story of the discovery of the empty tomb. She accepts the historical nature of the accounts that some women, including Mary Magdalene were present at the crucifixion, despite the danger to themselves, and that they also witnessed the burial and the empty tomb. It was the women's belief in the suffering and resurrection of the Human One, understood as corporate, that enabled them to process the emptiness of the tomb. The empty tomb was not proof of the resurrection but was rather an inspiration of the women's resurrection faith. The traditions of the empty tomb express this political faith in the resurrection and vindication of the executed Jesus and of all others who live this alternative way of life.

Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene was not a minor, private, personal, or unofficial encounter between Jesus and his female follower, as opposed to the official and public Easter appearances to male witnesses, commissioning them to carry on his mission in the world. Rather, the four canonical gospels present women as the primary witnesses to Jesus execution and the first proclaimers of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene the most prominent among them. She can thus be considered a creator of the Christian belief in the resurrection, and the first great interpreter of Jesus.