Mary Magdalene is rightfully considered the most mysterious character in the New Testament. We do not know anything about her childhood, or about her parents, or about her relatives. We do not know anything about her life either. In any case, none of the four Gospels can tell us how this woman lived after the execution of Jesus Christ …
When information is scarce, it is conjectured. The Church Fathers also had to speculate on this information when the question arose - to make a saint out of the aforementioned Mary or not?
Since Mary Magdalene first saw the resurrected Christ, it was difficult to get rid of this character. And she was canonized, but … under special conditions - attributing to the unfortunate actions and deeds that she never performed! In the church's understanding, the holiness of the Magdalene was expressed in the fact that she turned from a great sinner into a great righteous woman.
Scrolls from Nag Hammadi. Coptic theologian author claimed that Jesus often kissed Mary of Magdala on the lips and considered her a favorite disciple
One and a half thousand years have passed, and modern researchers of the life of Magdalene did exactly the opposite with her: they made a great sinner out of the great righteous woman and announced that it was wonderful. Who was this extraordinary woman really?
Entity multiplication
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Mary first appears in the text of the Bible when Jesus expelled seven demons from her. After being healed, the woman followed the Savior and became one of His admirers.
Mary of Magdala was a wealthy woman, she willingly covered Jesus' expenses. When Jesus was captured and sentenced to death, she attended the execution along with two other Mary - the mother of Christ and the sister of Lazarus. She participated in the burial of Jesus and anointed His dead body with Mir.
It was she who came to the cave where Jesus was buried, and found that His body had disappeared. And it was she who first saw the risen Christ and told the apostles about him. It was also mentioned that she visited Rome, where she also spoke about Christ.
Nothing else can be drawn from the New Testament. But in addition to the four canonical Gospels, there are several that are not recognized by the church, that is, non-canonical. These Gospels were rejected by the church because of their Gnostic (doctrine, hostile to Christianity) origin and content.
In the first centuries, when Christianity had not yet taken shape as a world religion, some Christians shared the views of the Gnostics, who asserted the knowability of God and the possibility of acquiring by any person with the help of knowledge of the divine essence. In the Gnostic Gospels, Mary of Magdala played a very important role. She was considered the beloved and most faithful disciple of Christ. Mary herself was the author of one of the Gospels - the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Judging by this text, Mary of Magdala was most interested in the posthumous transformation of the soul. No wonder the non-canonical Gospels claimed that this woman became the founder of a philosophical Christian community and her own church. Of course, official Christianity has blinded these Gospels as dangerous and wrong. And he offered a completely different image of Mary from Magdala.
From student to bpudnitsa
It was not worth a lot of work to turn a faithful student into a representative of the first ancient profession. It was only necessary to unite with Mary from Magdala all the women mentioned, but not named in the New Testament.
The first candidate to complement the image of the Magdalene was a woman who washed in the world and wiped the legs of Christ with her hair. Another candidate is the woman who oiled the hair of Christ. The third is the harlot whom Jesus saved from being stoned and who followed him. As a result, the unnamed women easily turned into the already known Mary of Magdala.
The image of the improved Mary became as follows: before, she walked with a painted face and loose hair and engaged in prostitution, but Jesus saved her from death, expelled demons from her, which should be understood as vices, and Mary became a virtuous and faithful companion of the apostles. Somewhere in the background of the Gospels, she was with Susanna, John and Salome. Only the mother of Jesus, in view of her complete integrity and divine inspiration, was allowed to take a place next to Jesus, and even then only because He was her son.
Orthodox Christians had a simple attitude towards women: they are all daughters of Eve, who succumbed to the temptation in paradise and thus burdened humanity with original sin. Mary from Magdala simply repeated the path of Eve, but in the opposite direction - she was cleansed by her faith from sin. And when the Christians in the fifth century had Saint Mary of Egypt, who in earthly life really engaged in fornication, but repented, the image of Magdalene was completed. Say, a harlot and nothing else.
The kiss that offended the apostles?
Centuries have passed. In 1945, the famous scrolls written in the Coptic language were found in the Egyptian Nag Hammadi. These were the same texts not recognized by the church that miraculously survived during the period of the struggle against heresies. Suddenly it was revealed that Jesus called Mary of Magdala his beloved disciple and often kissed her on the lips. And other disciples were very jealous of Christ and even demanded an explanation from him why he singled out this Mary to the detriment of the rest. Jesus answered this allegorically and evasively. Modern researchers immediately had a bad suspicion that Jesus kissed Mary of Magdala not at all as a disciple …
Mary Magdalene embraces the cross on which the Savior is crucified. She could not hug Jesus during her life, but she could after death. In all the paintings and icons, she worries about the death of the Savior more than any of the apostles.
Researchers were quick to note that Jesus did not just kiss Mary, but often on the lips. The peculiarity of such kisses in the 20th century was clear as day. There were two options why Jesus kissed Mary on the lips - either He lived with his disciple in sin, or He was simply married to her.
The sinful relationship somehow denigrated the name of Jesus. Well, the fact that Jesus had a wife did not contradict the then Jewish laws, on the contrary - a man at the age of Jesus simply had to have a wife! But if in the sixth century it was possible to turn the Magdalene into a harlot based on the text, then in the twentieth century it was no longer possible to turn Jesus into a married man. More than one generation of theologians has managed to work on the purity and purity of His image! So He could not have any wife, because it was not supposed to. And when asked why Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene on the lips, they began to answer with deadly logic: because in the first century among Christians, it was customary to kiss each other on the lips. But the essence of the question still eluded those who answered: why then did Jesus do this so often that the other disciples were offended and outraged?
Mother of Jesus' heirs
And then there was a revelation from British historians and archaeologists Bigent, Leigh and Lincoln "The Sacred Mystery", where Magdalene was declared not only the companion, disciple and wife of Jesus Christ, but also the mother of His children.
In general, there is nothing surprising in the existence of children for a married man. If, of course, not the name of this man. But in early Christian times, such versions happily existed. Let's say that some features of the knightly era are to blame for this. Even the name of Mary Magdalene was deciphered as "Mary from the city of Magdal-El", which in turn was simply translated as "Mary from the city with towers." Images of Mary of Magdala were readily complemented by a turret in the background.
In that remarkable era, apocryphal (hagiographic) texts appeared that depicted the life of Magdalene as follows. She was the spiritual wife of Jesus and through the Immaculate Conception bore from him a son, Joseph the Sweetest. This baby became the ancestor of the royal house of the Merovingians. To save the child, Magdalene had to flee to Marseille. But soon her earthly life ended, and Jesus took her to heaven in the Bridal Chamber.
There is another legend. According to her, Magdalene had two children - a boy and a girl: Joseph and Sophia. Magdalene lived to a ripe old age and was buried in the south of France.
Although Magdalene is mentioned only 13 times in the New Testament, after the declaration of her saint, holy relics from Magdalene also appeared. Bones, hair, splinters from the coffin, and even blood. For the relics of the Magdalene there was a desperate struggle, and in the eleventh century there was even a period that historians call "Magdalene fermentation"! Mary Magdalene was worshiped not only by the Albigensian heretics, but also by the Knights Templar. No wonder the knightly Baphomet personified the "baby Magdalene" Sophia, that is, Wisdom. But already in the Renaissance, the image of the penitent Magdalene became the favorite image of artists. What time is, such are the images and relics.
Nikolay KOTOMKIN
"Mysteries of History" November 2012