Clearly Mary is spiritually more advanced than the male disciples; because she did not fear for her life at the departure of the Savior and did not waver at the sight of him in her vision, she is able to step into the Savior's role and teach the others. She thereby models true discipleship: the appropriation and preaching of the Savior's teaching.
Elaine Pagels has suggested that the Savior's injunction was written specifically against Paul's attempt to silence women by appeal to the law. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church 1 Corlb I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor 1 Tim Could the Gospel of Mary have known these passages?
I find no obvious evidence that it knew them directly, but the issue of women's leadership roles in the churches was wide-spread and appeal was made to law, whether natural or written, to support various positions. Any such regulation must necessarily be the product of jealousy and a deep misunderstanding of the Savior's teaching.
Because the Gospel of Mary was in circulation for over three hundred years, we have to assume that the Savior's command against oppressive laws was interpreted in a variety of contexts by various groups of readers. It could have been read as resistance to the establishment of various kinds of external restraintsnot only certain aspects of Jewish law, but also the formation of an exclusive Christian canon,12 restrictions on prophecy and visionary revelation, the exclusion of women from official positions of leadership, or even against colonial Roman law.
If we are to imagine a second or third century setting in Egypt, for example, it is quite possible that many people would associate a "lawgiver" as readily with the Romans as with Moses.
In the end, however, it is the law that they themselves set that would come to rule and restrict them. Spiritual advancement is to be sought witMn, not through external regulation, The context for this kind of command in the Gospd of Mary applies most clearly to mtraChristian controversies, not to relations with Jews or Romans. It is identified as the true Image of nature to which the disciples are supposed to conform, the image of humanity's true spiritual nature.
The Savior commands them: "Follow it! Those who search for it will find it" The verb "to follow," says Pasquier, "in the Gospel of Mary, as with certain Stoics and Pythagoreans, appears to have the meaning of'grasping something as a model'. Those who search for it will find it, the Savior assures his disciples. Note how one is not to find it: by looking outside of oneself.
The Gospel of Mark, for example, understands the Son of Man to be a messianic figure who will come in clouds with power and glory in the end times In contrast, the Gospel of Mary admonishes: "Be on. The Gospel of Mary does not understand "Son of Man" as a messianic title and never uses it to refer to Jesus. Nor does the phrase mean simply "human being," as it does for example in Jesus' saying that the son of man has nowhere to lay his head Matt For the Gospel of Mary, it refers to the ideal, the truly Human.
Plato had posited the existence of a Form of Man Greek anthropos 3 existing in the Divine Realm apart from all the particular humans that share in that Form.
But there are significant differences. For Plato, the Form of Man was clearly imagined as a male image; indeed Plato had suggested in the Timaeus that women were deviations from the ideal male norm, divergences which had resulted from cowardice. That cannot be the case in the Gospel of Mary, for when Mary comforts the disciples, she admonishes them: "We should praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us true Human Beings" Both terms can refer either to humanity in general or to male persons, much as the English word "man.
Furthermore, they were already human beings in the strict sense; the Savior after all did not turn them from asses into humans, as happened to an unfortunate character in Apuleius' story, The Golden Ass; there a man had unwittingly been magically transformed into an ass and was made human again only by the intervention of the Goddess Isis. In the Gospel of Mary, being made human means that the Savior's teaching has led the disciples to find the Image of the child of true Humanity within.
They have grasped the archetypal Image and become truly Human. Levi's reiteration of the Savior's teaching at the end of the work reinforces this interpretation: "We should clothe ourselves with the perfect Human, acquiring it for ourselves as the Savior commanded us" Here, too, the notion of the perfect Human Coptic:. Salvation means appropriating this spiritual Image as one's truest identity.
The passage in the Gospel of Thomas reads, Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven" GThom Much as the scene later in the Gospel of Mary, this passage also pits Peter against Mary but the import of the Savior's teaching is quite different.
In the Gospel of Mary, the Savior uses the generic term, "human being" Coptic: pcuMe , and he makes both Mary and the male disciples into Human Beings. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus uses the non-generic term "male" Coptic: 2 0 o y r and he specifically says that he will make Mary male, and other women "will make themselves male resembling you males. However we interpret Jesus' saying in the Gospel of Thomasand numerous suggestions have been made such as conforming to the male ideal or taking up asceticismit clearly understands the male condition to be superior to that of women.
Not so for the Gospel of Mary. It is straining to articulate a vision that the natural state of humanity is ungendered, while constrained by language that was suffused with the androcentric values of its day. The theological basis for this position lies in the understanding that the body is not the true self; the true self is spiritual and nongendered, even as the divine is nonmaterial and nongendered. Remember that God is not called Father in this work, but only the Good, a term that in Greek can.
In order to conform as far as possible to the divine Image, one must abandon the distinctions of the flesh, including sex and gender. After the Savior departs, Peter asks Mary to disclose any words of die Savior which she knew, but which were unknown to the other disciples Mary reports a dialogue she had with the Savior.
It began with her telling the Savior that she had seen a vision of him. He, in turn, praised her for her steadfastness, saying: "Blessed are you for not wavering at seeing me. For where the mind is, there is the treasure" The term "wavering" carries important connotations in ancient thought, where it implies instability of character.
The saying about treasure reinforces the Savior's praise. The term "mind" points the reader back to Mary's earlier ministry to the other disciples in which "she turned their mind toward the Good" POxy It is because Mary has placed her mind with God that she can direct others to the spiritual treasure of the Good.
The saying about treasure is often quoted in early Christian literature. She asks whether one receives a vision by the soul or the spirit. The Savior responds that "a person does not see with the soul or with the spirit. Rather the mind, which exists between these two, sees the vision and that is what. Enough remains of the Savior's response to glimpse an intriguing answer into a very difficult issue: how does a prophet see a vision?
Early Christians were fully part of ancient Mediterranean society and shared the concepts common to that culture. It was widely believed that gods and spirits communicated with people through trances, possessions, and dreams.
Opinions differed about how that occurred, and the issue was widely discussed among ancient scientists, philosophers, and physicians.
Christians also had differing opinions on the matter, depending upon which intellectual tradition they drew upon. In the Gospel of Mary, the Savior is taking a very specific position on the issue. The significance of his answer to Mary can be better appreciated by comparing it with the views of the church father Tertullian, who wrote A Treatise on the Soul De anima at the turn of the third century. He discussed this same issue, but took a different position than the Gospel of Mary.
Both Tertullian and the Gospel of Mary valued prophetic experiences highly and considered them to be authoritative for Christian teaching and practice. They believed that only the pure could see God in visions, because sin and attachment to the things of the flesh dim the spiritual comprehension of the soul.
There the similarity ends. They disagreed on almost every other important issue. The most fundamental basis of their disagreement rests on conflicting views about what it is to be a human being. Tertullian understood a person to be made up of a body and soul, joined in a completely unified relationship. He maintained that the soul, as well as the body, is material. It is shaped in the form of the human body and even "has its own eyes and ears owing to which people 7 see and hear the Lord; it also has other limbs through which it experi-.
Souls are even sexed: "The soul, being sown in the womb simultaneously with the flesh, is allotted its sex simultaneously with the flesh such that neither substance controls the cause of sex" De anima He regarded male souls to be superior to female souls by nature.
For the Gospel of Mary, a human being is composed of body, soul, and mind. The mind rules and leads the soul, so that when the mind is directed toward God, it purifies and directs the soul toward spiritual attainment. As the Savior said, "Where the mind is, there is the treasure" GMary In contrast to TertuUian's view, the body is seen as merely a temporary shell to which the soul has become attached. It is this attachment of the soul to the body that causes sickness and death.
At death the soul leaves the body and ascends to its immortal rest, while the material body returns to its originally inanimate, soulless nature. The Gospel of Mary also denies that souls are sexed; sexuality and the gender differences inscribed on the body belong to the material nature that the soul must transcend.
Differences between men and women are therefore ultimately illusory since they don't belong to the true self, but only to bodies that will cease to exist at death. They belong to the world of matter and the passions, not the spiritual Realm.
Because their views about human nature diverged, Tertullian and the author of the Gospel of Mary also disagreed about the nature of sin and salvation.
Tertullian believed that the soul was polluted from the moment that pagan birth rituals were performed under the influence of the devil. Only the regeneration of the soul through faith in Christ, sealed in baptism and confirmed through proper instruction in the rule of faith, could purify the soul and lead a person out of sin. The final hope of the believer was for the physical resurrection of the body, including the material soul. When the soul becomes attached to the body, it is overcome by the frailties and passions of the material nature, leading to sickness and death.
By turning away from the body and recognizing one's true self as a spiritual being, the self can find the child of true Humanity within and conform to that Image. The teaching of the Savior brings the salvation of the soul, not the resuscitation of a corpse.
Their views about how prophecy occurs are directly tied to these views. Tertullian held that all souls have some measure of original goodness on the basis of which they can prophesy. This power we call ecstasy, the departure of the senses and the appearance of madness De anima , 3. Not all dreams, however, are prophetic. Dreams can come from three sources: demons, God, or the soul itself. For since human beings have been formed in the Spirit, they must be deprived of sense perception particularly when they behold the glory of God, or when God speaks through them, since they have been manifesdy overshadowed by the divine power Against Marcion This view was widely held among Christian theologians.
The famous third-century Egyptian theologian, Origen agrees:. God, moreover, is in our judgment invisible, because He is not a body, while He can be seen by those who see with the heart, that is the mind, not indeed with any kind of heart, but with one which is pure Against Celsus Mary, for example, is praised by the Savior because she has not wavered at the sight of him. Mary has clearly achieved the purity of mind necessary to see the Savior and converse with him.
The vision is a mark of that purity and her closeness to God. Because the mind is not associated with the senses, it is not dimmed in the presence of the Spirit. Madness and ecstasy are not necessary characteristics of true prophecy from the Gospel of Mary's point of view; rather the purified mind is clear and potent. In short, Tertullian and the Gospel of Mary differ in their conceptions of the fundamental nature of the person whether human nature is fundamentally material or spiritual , the character of sexual differentiation and gender roles whether natural or illusory , and the role of the human mind in relationship to God whether dimmed or potent.
It is clear, even from this brief overview, that the discussion of how prophecy occurred was intertwined with such central issues of early Christian theology as attitudes toward the body, the understanding of human nature, sexuality and gender roles, and views about the nature of sin and salvation.
All these issues are at stake in answering the question: "Lord, how does a person see a vision? When the story resumes after the four-page hiatus, we are in the middle of an account of the rise of the soul to God. Mary is recounting the Savior's revelation about the soul's encounters with four Powers who seek to keep it bound to the world below.
The missing beginning of the account must have included the soul's encounter with the first of the four Powers, probably named Darkness. And you did not recognize me. Desire here attempts to keep the soul from ascending by claiming that it belongs to the world below and the Powers that rule it. The Power assumes that by attempting to escape, the soul is claiming that it does not belong to the material world.
From Desire's point of view. But the soul knows better and exposes the Power's ignorance. It is true, the wise soul responds, you did not recognize me when I descended because you mistook the bodily garment of flesh for my true spiritual self. Now the soul has left the body behind along with the material world to which it belongs. The Power never knew the soul's true selfas the Power has itself unwittingly admitted by saying it didn't see the soul descend. The response of the soul has unmasked the blindness of Desire: the Power had not been able to see past the soul's material husk to its true spiritual nature.
But the soul did see the Power, thereby proving that its capacity to discern the true nature of things is superior to Desire's clouded vision. Having thus exposed Desire's impotence and lack of spiritual insight, the soul gleefully ascends to the third Power. Again, it came to the third Power, which is called Ignorance. You are bound by wickedness. Do not judge! I have been bound, but I have not bound anything. They did not recognize me, but I have recognized that the universe is to be dissolved, both the tilings of earth and those of heaven" GMary Again the Power attempts to stop the soul's ascent by challenging its nature.
Ignorance judges the soul to be material, and therefore bound by the wickedness of the passions and lacking in discernment: "Do not judge! But the soul turns the tables: it is the Power of Ignorance who is judging; a soul is bound to the lower world, not by its material nature but by the wicked domination of the Powers. This soul is innocent precisely because it acts according to the nature of the spirit: it does not judge others nor does it attempt to dominate anything or anyone.
It has knowledge of which Ignorance is ignorant; it knows that because everything in the lower world is passing away, the Powers of that transitory world have no real power over the eternal soul. Only because of the domination of the flesh does sin even appear to exist. Without the fleshwhich is to be dissolvedthere is no sin, judgment, or condemnation. The soul's insight into its own true spiritual identity enables it to overcome the illegitimate domination of the Power.
Again, the wit in the passage lies in the fact that it is the Power itself which has acknowledged that the soul's knowledge is true: wickedness is due only to the domination of the flesh. This insight frees the soul and it moves upward to the Fourth Power. When the soul had brought the third Power to naught, it went upward and saw the fourth Power which had seven forms.
The first is darkness; the second is desire; the third is ignorance; the fourth is zeal for death; the fifth is the realm of the flesh; the sixth is the foolish wisdom of the flesh; the seventh is the wisdom of the wrathful person.
These are the seven Powers of Wrath. They interrogated the soul, "Where are you coming from, human-killer, and where are you going, space-conqueror? In a [worjld, I was set loose from a world [an]d in a type, from a type which is above, and from the chain of forgetfulness which exists in time.
From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest i[n] silence" GAfory The names of the seven Powers of Wrath may correspond to the astrological spheres that control fate,4 but above all they show the character of the Powers that attempt to dominate the soul: desire, ignorance, death, flesh, foolishness, and wrath.
Their collective character and name is Wrath. Like the other Powers, Wrath seems disturbed at the soul's passage and questions both its origin and its right to pass by. But again the Power ignorantly plays into the hands of the wise and playful soul who knows that it derives from above and is returning to its true place of origin. Wrath charges the soul with violence, stating that it is a murderer because it has cast off the material body and a conqueror because it has traversed the spheres of the Powers and overcome them.
These terms of approbation are greeted happily by the soul. The soul dramatically contrasts the subjection to material bonds, desire, and ignorance it has escaped, with the freedom of the timeless realm of silence and rest to which it ascends; it distinguishes the deceitful image below from the true Image above, and mortality from immortality.
Even as the soul finally finds perfect rest in silence,5 so, too, does Mary become silent, modeling in her behavior the perfect rest of the soul set free. A successful conclusion was far from assured. More often the soul's passage was thought to be fraught with numerous perils that few could overcome.
A glimpse into the soul's trials after death is given in the Apocalypse of Paul, one of the works discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in This work is an elaboration of the visionary journey that Paul described in 2 Corinthians: I must boast; there is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heavenwhether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradisewhether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knowsand he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter 2 Cor Of course, this unnamed man was most likely Paul himself.
The author of the Apocalypse of Paul draws upon Paul's own account, but does not share his reticence about revealing what he saw and heard. This author is happy to imagine everything and tell all.
In the Apocalypse of Paul, the third heaven is only the beginning of Paul's journey. At the fourth heaven, he sees angels whipping a soul who had been brought out of the land of the dead. When the soul asks what sin it has committed to deserve such punishment, the tollcollector brings out three witnesses who accuse it of various misdeeds. Obliged to face the truth, the sorrowful soul is cast down again into a body that had been prepared for it.
In the fifth heaven, Paul sees an angel with an iron rod and others with whips, all goading souls on to judgment. He manages to get past them and on to the sixth heaven only because his guide is the Holy Spirit.
In the seventh heaven, an old man seated on a luminous throne and dressed in white interrupts Paul's ascent, demanding to know where he is going, where he has come from, and how Paul thinks he will be able to get away from him. Paul replies with the correct answers and, at a prompt from his guide, gives the old man a sign that allows him to proceed.
He then joins the twelve apostles and ascends with them to the ninth heaven, and finally goes up to the tenth heaven where he greets his fellow spirits. This account contains many of the elements common to ancient stories of the souls' rise. Antiquity was home to a wide variety of postmortem scenarios that involved rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. Such views were sometimes elaborated with stories about the righteous ascending directly to God. These notions were based on current astrological beliefs that the planets were powers who governed the fate of all beings in the world.
The soul's ascent was seen as an attempt to escape from their arbitrary and unforgiving rule by successfully passing through each of the planetary spheres. Sin was considered to be a determinative impediment to escape because sinful souls, unable to pay the price, were returned to the fleshpresumably to try to do better.
Moral purity was absolutely essential since ultimately only the souls of the good would ascend. Yet because of the journey's extreme dangers, it was sometimes held that moral purity and righteousness alone might not be enough. Preparation was necessary to ensure safe passage. Special guidance, revealed knowledge, and ritual signs contributed to the success of the.
This instruction often included learning the questions the gate-keepers would pose and the traps they would set. Having the right answers and the capacity to see through their devious machinations could protect the soul. Given that after-death experience undoubtedly presupposed esoteric knowledge, the necessary instruction obviously had to be based on revelation. This information could come through reports of a visionary journey through the heavens such as Paul took, or it could be given by a divine messenger-instructor such as the Savior in the Gospel of Mary.
Additionally, ritual purification and empowerment were often considered essential to aid the soul in its journey. Such purification most often included baptism11 and ritual enactment of the ascent itself,12 but it could include other rites and magical practices as well, some of them quite elaborate. In the process of descent, the soul or its vehicle had acquired accretions that needed to be removed in order for the soul to ascend back to its divine sphere.
As one account from the Hermetic corpus describes it, And then the soul rises upward through the structure of the heavens. And to the first zone of heaven he gives up the force which works increase and decrease; to the second zone, the machinations of evil cunning; to the third zone, the lust which deceives people; to the fourth zone, domineering arrogance; to the fifth zone, unholy daring and rash audacity; to the sixth zone, evil strivings after wealth; and to the seventh zone, the falsehood which lies in wait to work harm.
And then, having been stripped of all that was worked upon him by the structure of the heavens, he ascends to the substance of the eighth sphere, being now possessed of his own proper power; and he sings, together with those who dwell there, hymning the Father; and they that are there rejoice with him at his coming.
And being made like to those with whom he dwells, he hears the Powers, who are above the substance of. And thereafter, each in his turn, they mount upward to the Father; they give themselves up to the Powers, and becoming Powers themselves, they enter into God.
This is the Good; this is the consummation for those who have got knowledge Poimandres la. The gate-keeper in the Apocalypse of Paul, for example, righdy judged a soul's wickedness and sent it back into the body until like Paul it should be purified through faith. But in other accounts the gate-keepers are presented as wicked and ignorant beings who are wrongly trying to keep pure souls trapped below.
In the First Apocalypse ofJames, for example, the Lord warns his brother James about the difficulties he will face: "A multitude will arm themselves against you in order to seize you.
And in particular three of them will seize youthe ones who sit as toll collectors. Not only do they demand toll, but they also take away souls by theft. When you come into their power, one of them who is their guard will say to you, 'Who are you or where are you from? When he also says to you, 'Where will you go?
Here the toll-collectors are clearly malevolent thieves who steal souls. But the questions they ask only demand that James know his true identity and place of origin.
Knowledge is sufficient to escape their attacks. His moral condition is not an issue, and there is no hint of judgment for sins. In the Gospel of Mary, however, we find both themes: the malevolent character of the gate-keepers and the moral judgment of the soul. When combined they produce an astonishingly sharp image of the. The dialogues between the soul and the Powers show that their domination is based on lies, blind ignorance, and false justice; their condemnation of the enlightened soul for wickedness and violence is rooted in their own blindness, lust for power, and ignorance of the Good.
The soul opposes their lies with truth, their adultery with purity, their ignorance with knowledge, their judgment with refusal to judge, their blindness with true vision, their domination with freedom, their desire with peace, and their mortal death with life eternal.
The soul's entire battle with the Powers focuses on overcoming their illegitimate domination. Although it is quite possible that this section on the rise of the soul was originally a separate literary source only later incorporated into the dialogue framework, it amplifies important themes in the Savior's teaching raised during the initial dialogue with his disciples. In the account of the soul's rise, salvation is conceived as overcoming the passions, suffering, and death that are associated with the physical body and the lower world.
The Savior's admonition not to lay down any law is elaborated as we see the Powers, sitting like corrupt judges in a law court, working to condemn the soul in its struggle to escape their domination. Law, it would seem, is set up to work on the side of those who wish to enslave the soul.
The soul's refusal to judge is also a refusal to be bound by their unjust and ignorant laws. Those who judge, the Savior teaches, are ruled by laws that can then be used to judge them. Such laws are really domination; such knowledge as the Powers offer is really ignorance.
The whole dialogue between the soul and the Powers is characterized by a sharp contrast between the world above and the world below. The Divine Realm above is light, peace, knowledge, love, and life; the lower world is darkness, desire, arrogance, ignorance, jealousy, and the zeal for death.
More is going on in this contrast than merely a simple belief in the immortality of righteous souls, or even the struggle against the arbitrary powers of fate. The dialogues instruct the reader in the truth about the very nature of Reality by contrasting it with the deception that characterizes life in the world.
The dialogue of the soul with the Powers stresses as does no other ancient ascent account the unjust nature of the Powers' illegitimate domination. In so doing the Gospel of Mary presents a biting critique of how power is exercised in the lower world under the guise of law and judgment. How are we to understand this critique? The Gospel of Mary is. But cannot a religious work incorporate a political message? Indeed if we overlook the subversive implications of the Gospel of Mary, I think we miss one of its most important elements.
It has been a commonplace to exclude covert forms of resistance from consideration as real political activity. In fact, religious teaching like that of the Gospel of Mary, which points the soul toward peace in the afterlife, is often seen not only as apolitical, but as anti-political an escapist ideology that serves only to distract people from effective political engagement by focusing on interior spiritual development and flight from the material world with all its troubles and demands.
Research among social scientists has changed this view dramatically. Let me cite at length the conclusion of the most influential researcher in this area, James Scott. He writes: Until quite recently, much of the active political life of subordinate groups has been ignored because it takes place at a level we rarely recognize as political.
To emphasize the enormity of what has been, by and large, disregarded, I want to distinguish between the open, declared forms of resistance, which attract most attention, and the disguised, low-profile, undeclared resistance that constitutes the domain in infrapolitics. For contemporary liberal democracies in the West, an exclusive concern for open political action will capture much that is significant in political life.
The historic achievement of political liberties of speech and association has appreciably lowered the risks and difficulty of open political expression.
Not so long ago in the West, however, and, even today, for many of the least privileged minorities and marginalized poor, open political action will hardly capture the bulk of political action. Nor will an exclusive attention to declared resistance help us understand the process by which new political forces and demands germinate before they burst on the scene. How, for example, could we understand the open break represented by the civil rights movement or the black power movement in the s without understanding the offstage discourse among black students, clergy, and their parishioners?
Taking a long historical view, one sees that the luxury of. The vast majority of people have been and continue to be not citizens, but subjects. So long as we confine our conception of the political to activity that is openly declared, we are driven to conclude that subordinate groups essentially lack a political life or that what political life they do have is restricted to those exceptional moments of popular explosion.
To do so is to miss the immense political terrain that lies between quiescence and revolt, and that, for better or worse, is the political environment of subject classes. It is to focus on the visible coastline of politics and miss die continent that lies beyond. Finally, millennial imagery and the symbolic reversals of folk religion are the infrapolitical equivalents of public, radical, counterideologies: both are aimed at negating the public symbolism of ideological domination.
It is just such opposition and reversal that characterizes the soul's dialogues with the Powers. As Scott points out, groups labeled heterodox or heretical have always been significant sites for ideological resistance. We might do well to remember here that the Romans persecuted Christians under the charge of atheism and undermining the public good. Such groups stand at a critical distance from the dominant society, a distance that enables diem to articulate "an original attitude toward die meaning of the cosmos.
Its critique of the body and the world with its suffering and its wrathful rulers draws its power precisely from an uncompromising commitment to the values of justice, peace, and stability pervasive throughout the Roman world.
It is these elements of Roman ideology that provoke the feeling of betrayal. From this perspective, the Gospel of Mary is not aimed at nihilism, but at cultivating an uncompromising, Utopian vision of spiritual perfec-. Social criticism and spiritual development were irrevocably linked together in this vision. The criticism offered by the Gospel of Mary is very general; it does not seem aimed at anything or anyone in particular.
Such generality is part of the strategic method of covert resistance, for it affords both discretion one can easily deny that any criticism was intended and potential long-term effectiveness since it allows for adaptation to diverse and changing circumstances. This doctrine not only explains the existence of evil and injustice, but also locates an object at which resistance can be aimed. I was not recognized, but I recognized that all will go free, things both earthly and heavenly.
The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth the arousing of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the wisdom of the folly of the flesh, the seventh is wrathful wisdom. These are the seven participants in wrath. From this time I will reach rest in the time of the moment of the Aeon in silence.
When Mary had said this, she was silent, since the Savior had spoken thus far with her. For I do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are of other ideas. Peter also opposed her in regard to these matters and asked them about the Savior. John ], in preference to us, and not openly? Are we to turn back and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart or that I am lying concerning the Savior?
Now I see that you are contending against the woman like the adversaries. In feminist studies of the Gospel of Mary, scholars have decided that the Mary of the lost gospel is Mary Magdalene and have called for a review of her legend. In both cases, the medieval Mary is rejected as a product of the patriarchy, while the Gospel of Mary is offered as a true portrait of a historical figure, who worked alongside Jesus of Nazareth.
Bryan S. Turner West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, , p. These writers rejected Biblical accounts because they depicted supernatural events, and sought to discover the historical Jesus through the use of all available sources, including non-canonical texts.
In the case of the Gospel of Mary, the significance of these papyrus fragments has been exaggerated by feminists and used as a hook to draw readers into a more complex and longstanding debate about women in Christianity. In the study of ancient texts relating to Christianity, favour is given to earliest sources as they come closest to the point where the message of God originated.
De Boer reasons that attitudes towards women expressed in the canon28 prove that the original gospel was written between 90 and CE, yet it could be even earlier in date due to oral transmission.
Puech had originally suggested that the gospel consisted of two separate writings that had been conjoined at a later date. Many of the feminist accounts mentioned in this article were written in order to be accessible to a popular as well as an academic audience and passages from other Gnostic texts are quoted as if they had come from the Gospel of Mary. See De Boer, Mary Magdalene, pp. See Tuckett, The Gospel of Mary, pp. Attention is only given to context when strange terminology is present.
Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. Patterson and James M. The Gospel of Philip features the passage: There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion.
His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary However, feminist theological analyses have dominated scholarship on the gospel, sidelining alternate readings. What is more problematic is that feminist theologians appear to operate according to their own set of academic criteria wherein evidence is secondary to the objectives of investigation.
All written in the name of a woman. As such, feminist theological readings of the Gospel of Mary should be understood as being a part of a broader debate about gender within the Christian tradition. However, from another perspective, rhetorical language distorts scholarly knowledge of historical artifacts like the Gospel of Mary. This has a wider effect as subsequent scholarship inevitably picks up on earlier material while attempting to establish basic information about the gospel.
Even in terms of dating the gospel, agendas are at work as the gospel is characterised as evidence of a feminist view, and then placed as early as possible. I see Magdalene Christianity as disconcerting, demanding, and horribly vulnerable. It attempted the impossible.
Can art and theologies and mysticism and action for social justice be produced which free up resources through egalitarian collaboration? Can there be is there a religion of Outsiders? Magdalene Christianity offers an alternative and a challenge to Petrine Christianity, which has never been able to silence it. However, it is true that many of the ideas that are championed by feminist theologians have found their way into popular culture, and in that realm, the legend of Mary Magdalene has been significantly altered.
Conclusion As we have seen, feminist theologians have sought the historical Mary Magdalene at the core of a lost gospel, and have not necessarily found her. What seems to be up for contention in these studies is the symbolic language of Christianity itself and whether it should be considered oppressive to women.
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