In Our Time - Mary Magdalene

Episode Date: February 25, 2016

Mary Magdalene is one of the best-known figures in the Bible and has been a frequent inspiration to artists and writers over the last 2000 years. According to the New Testament, she was at the foot of the cross when Jesus was crucified and was one of the first people to see Jesus after the resurrection. However, her identity has provoked a large amount of debate and in the Western Church she soon became conflated with two other figures mentioned in the Bible, a repentant sinner and Mary of Bethany. Texts discovered in the mid-20th century provoked controversy and raised further questions about the nature of her relations with Jesus.With:Joanne Anderson Lecturer in Art History at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonEamon Duffy Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene CollegeJoan Taylor Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College LondonProducer: Victoria Brignell.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Mary Magdalene has been a figure of religious, artistic, and literary inspiration among Christians for 2,000 years. In the Bible, she was at the cross when Jesus was crucified, was a key witness at the resurrection,

and followed Christ and the disciples along the shores of Lake Galilee. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, that's how she stays. and she celebrated as a mer-bearer at the tomb. In the Western Church, though, she quickly absorbed other characteristics, a presumed prostitute, a symbol of contemplation and penitence, and even the first apostle. In later legends, she travelled to France, or lived in the Egyptian desert, levitating.

She was vividly portrayed in medieval art, sometimes in thought, sometimes sensuous, naked, covered only by her long hair. She'd been many things to many people. Sevent years ago, texts found in Egypt put Mary on a more intimate level with Jesus, a deeply disputed idea that's inspired some modern writers. With me to discuss, Mary Maglin,

our Aymann Duffy, Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Maudlin College. Joan Taylor, Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College, London. And Joanne Anderson, lecturer in art history at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Joan Taylor, where do we find references to Mary Maglin in the Bible? Well, it turns out first, chronologically speaking in terms of written evidence in the Gospel of Mark, which is the first gospel to be written. And right at the very end of the Gospel of Mark, there is a reference to a group of women who are looking over at Jesus' crucifixion from afar. And Mary Magdalene is mentioned first, and she's among many women who follow Jesus in Galilee and serve him. Now in the Gospel of Luke, he retrojects that into the actual mission of Jesus in Galilee.

So Mary Magdalene is mentioned first, and there are these other women, Joanna, wife of Hoosah, Herod Stewart, Susanna, other women who are serving him in Galilee. But he also adds that Mary Magdalene had seven demons cast out of her. And that is a very mysterious thing to say about her. So everyone has debated what that means. When you say serving him, let's get this straight. They mean sort of Utah's. Well, not washing his socks.

Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, and in all the Gospels really, is the great servant. He has come to serve. So anyone who really serves him serves in the way that he serves. So to serve Jesus actually identifies you as someone who is. doing what he wants you to do to others, not just wanting to serve Jesus as their teacher. These are independent women who have decided to join the group of Jesus' disciples and be disciples and teachers themselves.

Can you flesh out a little bit what we get in the Gospels? Can you develop a bit? Because her role do seem to be, particularly being the first, to be told, to see him resurrected after he'd been entombed, a role seemed to be critical at critical times. Absolutely. I think Mary Magdalene, in all of the gospel accounts of the resurrection, what happens is you get a variety of different women mentioned, but Mary Magdalene is the key figure in all of these accounts.

She's the one that is mentioned consistently. So the gospel accounts were, There was a literary relationship between the Gospels, but they were also incorporating oral tradition, and they have different takes on how the resurrection takes place, how the women experience the empty tomb, what happens at the empty tomb. So Mary's companions vary in the Gospels,

and in two of the accounts, in fact, in the longer ending of the Gospel of Mark and in the Gospel of John, she's just on her own, experiencing seeing the risen Christ. So what that all boils down to is something absolutely critical about Mary Magdalene and the resurrection.

Is there any hint of what is special about her? I think she must have had a kind of duty of care. How can I say that more vaguely? That doesn't imply she was married to Jesus, but it might imply that among the women disciples. She was the most preeminent and she was somehow in charge of giving Jesus what was necessary in terms of the duties of care regarding the dead. So she comes to the tomb expecting to do things as a family member would for Jesus and she may have other women with her or she might have been

alone, but something happens and she finds this empty tomb instead of finding Jesus' body. And then she meets him and he says Mary and she says Rabonai. Yes, so in the Gospel of John there is this very extended conversation between Jesus and Mary where

initially she doesn't recognise him. She thinks he might be the gardener which is a curious thing. Why doesn't she recognise him? And then there is this... What's your explanation? Presumably he'd been transformed. And he doesn't want her to touch him because he's in a state

about ascending to heaven and so he's in a non-human state. So he says, you know, don't touch me because I haven't yet ascended. There's this conversation in which she calls him Rabuni, my master, my teacher in Aramaic. So it's preserving this Aramaic statements of Mary which seems very authentic.

And he says, no, don't touch me. But tell my disciples that I am going to ascend to my God and your God, my father and your father. It's a sense that everyone is children of God and everyone can call God Father at this point. So there's something miraculously transcendent that has just taken place. And to try and plumb the depths of that is to go deep into the esoteric vision, I think, of the Gospel of John. And Duffy, in the Eastern churches, that was how she remained, a mere-bearing, saintly woman, and she continued in that case.

In the Western Church, she was transformed. It used as propaganda, you might say. When did the first steps go in that direction in the Western Church, and perhaps why? Well, it boils down to a way of reading the texts. The composite figure of Mary Magdalene that emerges in the West, came from a desire to make sense of, for example, a series of events in Jesus' ministry when a woman turns up and washes or anoints him and wipes his feet with hair and then Mary Magdalene at the tomb with a jar of ointment.

And in Eastern exegesis, these incidents were treated as separate incidents involved, different people. And that creates a number of problems. It's a modern exegetical problem still. Was there one incident when this happened or several? In the West, they thought that they must all somehow relate to each other. And so you begin to stitch together these different figures. Who begins to stitch together?

Well, the key person is Pope Gregory the Great, who was Pope at the end of the 6th century. And in one of his sermon, sermon 33, he identifies the sinful woman who is forgiven much because she loved much and who comes to Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee. He links her to Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who appears both in the Gospel of Luke and in the Gospel of John.

so you get a sinful person who becomes the most intimate female friend of Jesus. Why did he want to do it? I don't think he wanted to do it in the sense of making a cold choice. I think in the order of Christian sanctity, a forgiven sinner, especially a spectacular sinner, is a more fascinating figure than somebody who's been good all the time. One of the energies that drives the cult of Mary Magdalene in history is her contrast and her similarity to the Virgin Mary.

If you had to choose the two female figures in the whole of the Gospels who are closest to Jesus, it's these two. And in Western tradition, the imaginative power of the idea that somebody who had been a sexual sinner could get pretty well as close to Jesus as someone who was virginal. That's a very powerful notion, imaginatively. And Gregory wanted to introduce very keenly on introducing the idea of penitence,

a penitential sinner. Sure. You say he wants to do this. What evidence did he? Did he produce that she was a sinner at the time? You said we needed it. It's as if we just, oh, well, we'll have one. We'll find, oh, ma'er, she'll do.

We'll make her a sinner. You're imagining that exegesis works, you know, somebody sits down and says, I would like this particular end result. He's a reader of texts, and he reads the texts in an associative way. Joanne Anderson, can you develop it? This homily that he gives in San Clemente in Roman 591 is an important moment about grafting these different elements of the saint.

And it really is. What's most important about this is the foundation that it's going to provide for future times. I mean, remember that the casting of the... Mayor Magdalene into the desert is actually something that comes later on and to do with the apocryphal legend, which I'm sure we'll come on to in due course with the golden legend. But he's uniting her together for a common penitent saint there, a model and exemplar for the Christian faithful. And it is about giving a signal of hope as much as a signal of the importance of cascating sin and making sure that we live up to a good Christian life.

Mary Magdalene is a symbol of hope. When he unnamed sinner in chapter 7 there, what he's saying is that someone who fell so low was also someone who loved the most. And she is there because she loved the most. She went into the house of the Pharisee and debased herself. And we see this in the visual arts as will come later on in the 13, 14, 15th centuries,

where we see her crawling on her hands and knees underneath the table on which the Pharisee and some of the apostles and his company are having dinner with Christ at the head of the table and she's there underneath crying, weeping that lacrimose, those tears of contrition underneath over Christ's feet and then she will dry them with that hair and then anoint them as well. So she's about love.

So what do you think the implication of Gregory's homily was on the future of women in the Western Church? I think that it's a very complicated element. I mean, Mary Magdalene is astonishingly complicated. And it's a product... I'm sure you can untangle it. I can untangle it, but it's a process of historical constructions of piecing together fragments of truth, of fragments of text, and how the visual arts have also participated on it. The visual arts have taken Gregory's homily to heart.

Yeah. They have lots of fun with the prostitute, don't they, in the red dress and so on? But what's your view? I mean, you've studied all this. What's your view? Well, I think that it had a damning indictment for women because she became a patron saint of fallen women. There were a number of convents and so on that they were associated with her. But she could also then become a positive role model in that respect so that women could, who have fallen also low, could redeem themselves later in life.

So yet again, she still remains a model, a pathway to salvation. and this is what actually mitigates and legislates for her enormous popularity across Western Christendom. But what do you think, Jeremy? I think that reading synthetically, there might be grounds for putting together the woman who is a sinner in Luke 7 with Mary of Bethany. But to put together Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, that's another thing again, because there's no reason to associate Mary Magdalene with Bethany. She wasn't the sister of Martha, as far as we can see in the Gospels and in the early church tradition. So that seems a very odd thing to just kind of mash together the Mary's because they have the same name.

Can we talk about Magdalene as a name? Where'd that come from? That again is contested. What's your view? Well, Magdalene, as a name, comes from the Aramaic Magdal, which simply means tower. And in Aramaic Syriac, in the versions of the Gospels and Syriac, she's called Magdalitha, which simply means Tower S, Tower Woman. And so people have assumed that that must indicate a place called Magdal or Magdala.

We know of various Magdal somethings in Judea in the first century, Magdal Sena, Magdal Edda, and the one that seems most likely as the place that could be associated with Mary Magdalene is called Magdal Noonaya, which simply means Tower of Fish, and it was located very close to Tiberius on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But Tower, I think you suggested, and you're on. notes could have been a nickname like Peter the Rock and like the two brothers James John are sons of thunder and so on.

Yes. That is exactly it. So the moment she moved away from Magdal Nunaya to any other place, especially when she was down in Jerusalem where we meet her called Mary Magdalene, she's called this name that seems to be something like a nickname. And we know that nicknames were characteristic of how Jesus. is called his disciples, you know, Peter, as you said, sons of thunder, maybe even Thomas, the twin could have been a nickname.

So if she had a nickname that indicates she was distinctive, it's very odd in terms of other women's names in the first century because they're always named an association with a male member of the family, usually their father or their husband. So having her simply called Magdalen, Delighter, Magdalene, indicates her as quite an independent, solitary figure too. Amen Duffy. So we have this composite figure, or this figure, sent into the world by Pope Gregory. What can you give us the trajectory of her? Can you tell her what impact the idea, the then-idea,

the prevailing idea of Mary Maglind had on Christianity? Well, I'd say there were two streams which are connected. One is this enormously powerful penitential dimension. The idea that you can sink as low as it's possible for a human being to get and then become as intimate with God as it is possible to be. And as Joanne said,

that's very much a theme which is seized on, particularly by the mendicant orders who are preaching repentance and restoration. The greatest evangelistic movement of the late Middle Ages sees on Mary Magdalene, sorry, Mary Magdalene, as the primary figure of hope. And the other theme which is very strong in the liturgy of Mary Magdalene is this theme of the love of God. And that will ramify in the notion of meditation of the contemplative life.

At a very, very early stage in discussion of Mary Magdalene in the third century, they begin to use texts from the Song of Songs Set me as a seal upon your arm Love is stronger than death Many waters cannot drown love And they put those words in Mary Magdalene's mouth The connection is that she goes about the city Looking for Jesus

As the lover in the Song of Songs does For her lover And Mary Magdalene at the tomb is seeking For the body of Jesus And that idea of Mary as the figure of the soul in love with God becomes enormously potent in piety and in preaching and subsequently in art.

Joanne Anderson, we move on, well, Amens's taken us through the next few centuries, and then we're getting to legends. We've had history, we've had myths, and now have legends. She became important in Burgundy and Provence in the 12th century. Could you develop that? Yes, this was the real,

moment here, particularly in the 11th century, when actually it starts off with the great Magdalene fermentation, as the great Magdalene scholar Victor Saxer called this, when there was an explosion of Magdalene devotion, particularly in France. And the arrival of Mary Magdalene in Vesley is one of the most fascinating parts in the history of Mary Magdalene. Because although in the past, we do have devotional sites to Mary Magdalene in earlier centuries, across Europe and in France, it's really in Vesolet when we see it take off. Now, it was founded in 8th century,

but in the 11th century, when the basilica is going up, the key patrons are the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Peter and Paul. Mary Magdalene is nowhere to be found. It is actually only later that we are going to find her brought in. Now, Veselaide went through. It's a Benedictine order. It's a great Romanesque abbey. And it was going through a particular difficult time with its populace. It was accused of squandering its wealth and its resources to the detriment of the community. So a new administrator was brought in, Abbott Jeffrey. And he was there to reinvigorate this abbey. And during this time, somehow, he was, he was there to reinvigorate this abbey. And during this time, somehow,

He manages to lobby to get Mary Magdalene into becoming a key patron saint of that church. Now, by Pope Leo the 9th in 1050, we have got a papal bull issued where Mary Magdalene's name is written at the top. A few years later, and the others are gone, Mary Magdalene has become the top Trump girl. Veselae becomes the fourth most important pilgrimage site in Christ in Christi. Christianity alongside Christ's tomb in Jerusalem, St. Peter's tomb in Rome, and St. James's tomb in Santiago de Compostela. Now, Vesela Abbey is on the route to Santiago de Compostela. So what is happening here is that Veselais will actually claim to get the body of the saint, but they have to do it through various different auspices. They never are able to prove that they have it. So they have to come up with a legend in order to prove it. And that's the golden legend. You talk about the old name. The golden legend. is a 13th century compilation by a Dominican of earlier material, and he's processing the Veselet story,

which is essentially invented in the 11th century from older materials to legitimate a new shrine. And it helps a bit that Veselae features quite prominently in 12th century. The Second Crusade is preached there. Beckett goes there and excommunicates the King of England while he's Invesalais. And once you get these great figures in a place that has a shrine, the shrine goes out. So the golden legend is just shorthand for this compilation of stories, which has Mary Magdalene, who is imagined to be the sister of Martha and of Lazarus,

and various companions, including Maximin, who's one of the 72 disciples sent out by Jesus, Being persecuted, they get into a boat, they end up in Provence. Lazarus ends up as the first Bishop of Marseille. Mary Magdalene preaches to the locals and then for 30 years spends her life in a cage, La Saint-Bome, where she doesn't eat or drink anything for 30 years, and she's raised at the canonical hours every day by a choir of angels, and her hair grows to cover her nakedness.

terrific stuff in terms of medieval romance and it went down a bomb with the painters and it went down a bomb with those who heard it whether they read it or were read too. Yes, it was compiled by the Dominican bishop Jacobus de Varajne who came from Liguria, he was the Archbishop of Genoa so this brings in the key role the Dominicans had in promulgating the cult of Mary Magdalene.

The Dominicans actually took her as their patroness in 1219. So in Provence, when the cult is, there's a sacram furtum, a holy theft. And they declared that in 1279 that the body of the saint was never in Veselais, that they stole the wrong body in the 8th century, that in fact, it was already still in province. And so Charles II of Salerno, who was going to become the future king of Naples, finds, does this invention, this rediscovery of the body, and sets up this new pilgrimage site in Samaksa Manla, San Bomb.

So it's very powerful, and the legend is sitting from 1260 right in between these two great pilgrimage sites. Joan Taylor, do you think that the fact that it's two things, isn't it? Do you think about there's so much known about her in the Bible and so much imagined about her after them? These two things were the potent force that took it forward. Well, people didn't know their Bibles that well in the main. Middle Ages. The Bible was very much the property of the priests and those who were educated and could read the Vulgate and Latin. So I think the golden legend was a way that people could access these remarkable characters.

And so you get this development of these folkloric traditions and just sheer fantasy blended in with this importance of place and really emphasizing pilgrimage. She was given miraculous power. She came to her boss and the rulers couldn't have a child. She said she'd intercede with God and they had a child and on their way. Yeah. So there is this idea of her being quite a remarkable woman with the Holy Spirit working with her and doing things and a teacher and enormously influential. So in that way it is retrieving something that was lost in the early church

that she still is very important. She's very much a wealthy woman, though, in the golden legend. And I think that that socioeconomic classification gives her license to do some of the things that she does. Martha Lazarus and Mary Magdalene are wealthy. Martha actually there is the woman who has been healed of an issue of blood. So she gets a kind of additional gospel story attached to her as well. Just to look back a second, Jim, we are talking about legend. There's no historical basis for this.

There's nothing. But golden legend means an important book to be read, Legendum. It doesn't have the later, though it came to have the legendary idea of, you know, made up garbage.

And by the 16th century, both Catholics and Protestants view the golden legend as really beyond the pale. It's rejected and sinks without trace, really, in the 17th and 18th centuries, resurfaces,

during the romantic movement in the 19th century as part of the Gothic revival. It had a good run in the Middle Ages, though, and then in resurfaces. Yeah, but remember, it's not a book to be read. It's a book for preachers to call stories out of it. You're being pointed out by Joan. And very important in pilgrimhood.

So when pilgrims arrived in Jerusalem and they were staying with the Franciscans in Jerusalem over breakfast, they would have the golden legend read to them, not the Bible. And we do have manuscript and illuminations where we can see Jacobus de Veragini preaching his legend. So this is important that these are meant to be heard, not read.

And it's the success of this. This is the medieval bestseller. It's translated into multiple languages. It shifts across Europe. It surfaces through the presses of William Caxton. And it becomes a really important source for the visual arts. But is, in the golden legend, is a Mary Magdalene, still the Mary Magdalene that emerged after Pope Gregory's homily?

Yes. So she stays. You seem, I'd like to know. I don't. Is she still the person who's close to Christ but became a penitent sinner? And because of that is of vast importance to people who, through whom, through whose penitential work they can achieve closeness to God. Is that what's still going on? You have all of that.

But there are additional elements added in, those apocryphal legends, when she's put in the boat with the 72 other Christians. I mean, what a bit of a story. story of our time, you know, of them being put into this ship without a sailor or rudder and they're set across the seas but miraculously make it. But you get all of this landing about this miracle. She becomes almost like a midwife because she helps that couple hold a child and she makes them do pilgrimage. But that golden legend also sets up an important relationship between Mary Magdalene and Peter because Jacobus tells us that Peter entrusted Mary Magdalene

to Saint Maximann when she went to France. So that relationship between Rome and Mary Magdalene is reinforced there. So, Eamon, she's working her way through the Christian history, the Christian culture, which is the dominant culture by the long way, both in Bible itself and in the legends and also in the art of the time, which we will come to in a moment or we can come to now. What's happening because people are learning through stained glass and so on and painting? Sure, and the legends become more and more elaborate and more improbable. I think one of the interesting things about them is the persistence of uncomfortable themes in the story.

We mentioned earlier Apostle of the Apostles. It's really difficult by the time you get to the 13th, 14th century to talk about a woman who's a preacher. But a feature of the story of Mary Magdalene in the Golden Legend is that she, She evangelises Provence. So she's acting as an apostle. So the theme is not only not lost, it's amplified. And so you get scholastic theologians. St. Thomas has a long discussion about,

in just what sense is Mary Magdalene and an apostle, because women can't preach, can they? But she does. So although the idea is theoretically uncomfortable and not a good fit for the way late medieval Christianity was developing, the notion of Mary, the biblical notion of Mary as the first witness of the resurrection, presents itself in this legendary form just as uncomfortably as it was in the New Testament. And in paintings, Joanna?

She is represented as a preacher amazingly. And one of the earliest instances where we actually see her taking this role is in a panel in the Gallery of the Academy in Florence called the Magdal and Master Panel of Vernon about 1280 and in one of the small panels around a great standing saint

where she's covered in her hair and one of the scenes there she is preaching to the people of Marseille and that gesture of the two fingers out there cutting them off and telling them that they need to convert and stop praying to the idols and follow the true word of God

and this preaching imagery even though is not really taken up by the Mendecan orders, interestingly enough. This is not a scene that they're terribly comfortable with. Actually, in parish churches up in the Alps where I'm working, this is quite a common scene for her to be shown as preaching. And they don't seem to shy away from it. So it is known in the visual arts.

So it's quite important. These are in mural paintings in the knaves and presbyteries. So the mural painting is probably more vernacular work than the works that have come down to us. Joan, aren't there, which is the one dominating theme in the work now? Well, you know much more about this than I do, Joanne, but that theme in terms of the artistic representation of the women at the foot of the cross with the Virgin Mary looking very much like a nun, very well wrapped up,

and Mary Magdalene looking very much like a harlot, not wrapped up at all. She hasn't changed clothes since she has been converted and repentant. She's still in her extremely revealing outfits. She has her anointing jar, her alabaster jar. She's got her long hair flowing down. So the idea of the whore and the virgin there at the foot of the cross is there time and time again in Western art. We do have that one, but we also then have the relationship with the Franciscan Order as well

because they saw Francis as a second Magdalene. They not only claimed Francis for being as alter-cry, but second Magdalene. So Magdalene, as you will often see, weeping at the foot of the cross, often clinging onto, really grasping hold of it, you know, so that her hair is round it and the blood's coming down and almost fusing often with that red cloak. You'll see transformed that often you'll suddenly find Francis in that place

that's creating that kind of visual association there. Of course, that red cloak one has to be very careful with because that's not a symbol of scarlet. harlot tree. That is anacharnistic reading. The red cloak there, red for the Dominicans under Thomas Aquinas, was of Caritas of true love. So that is the flame. That's the highest virtue, along with faith and hope in green and white. We have the discoveries after the Second World War in Egypt, Nag Hammadi, the Gnostic Gospels. And we have the Gospels according to Bair. The Gospels according to Philip, which were written much later.

When you tell us about them and what they're supposed to about it? Mary Magdalene clearly does feature in Gnostic writings in quite an interesting and prominent way as the companion, whatever that means, of Jesus. And there's one log-on in which the apostles complain that Jesus loves her more than... They ask him, why do you love her more than us? and he says, well, why don't I love you as much as I love her?

He turns the question. They're very puzzling texts. Their dating is terribly contested. The thing that always strikes me about reading them is how absolutely vaporized all historical particularity is in these texts. In all the canonical gospels, you know Jesus is a Jew living in first century of Palestine, even in John.

There's lots of reference to historical context. absolutely none in these Gnostic writings and he's a spaceman he's coming from the outer atmosphere he's not human and she isn't human either she's a symbolic figure I'll have to bring Joan in here before she explodes you're talking about the Gospel of Philip

yes there is a lot of esoteric material there in the Gospel of Philip and Mary Magdalene is associated with other women as well who are close to Jesus. I think there is more history in the Gospel of Philip that appears apparent at this side, because it's

very conscious... It's very conscious of the apostolic tradition as it is configured within that text. And it's conscious of issues of healing, the questions of how you can protect yourself from demonic forces,

which actually belongs in that time period. It has an association with the early Aramaic speaking church and that it configures the Holy Spirit as feminine, which it was in Aramaic and Hebrew. So I think there are lots of questions about how we place it historically,

but yes, it's concerned with more esoteric issues. But it's not completely... Do you give it any sense of validity at all, do you know? I do, actually. I think it's an early second century text that is coming, from an oral tradition and still very connected with the church in Palestine, in fact, and is conscious of different ideas, and it's countering different ideas.

And one of the different ideas is that Mary Magdalene should be marginalized. And in this text, she is the closest person to Jesus. And the other, the male disciples feel they don't have that special relationship. The kissing, I do want to say that it's not necessarily as we would configure it as some sort of a sexual or marital kiss. In terms of the Gospel of Philip, it is about intimacy, a spiritual intimacy with Christ. And overall, but that also is quite historically accurate because we know when Jesus was betrayed, he was betrayed with a kiss from his close disciple, Judas. and no one is suggesting that Judas and Jesus had an intimate relationship.

It just indicates that among his close followers, they had a very touchy-feely, kissy kind of relationship. In fact, in the story of the repentant sinner, Jesus says to the Pharisee, well, you didn't kiss me when I came into the house, but you look at her, she's kissing me. So he was really encouraging people to kiss. I think a lot of this builds, I don't know whether these people were familiar with the Johannine literature at all, beyond my expertise.

But that scene in the garden in John's Gospel is one of the tenderest pieces of ancient writing there is. The recognition scene where she's babbling on to this guy she thinks it's the gardener. And he just stops from her track by saying her name, Mary. he doesn't do that to anybody else in the Gospels and her response for Abuni which sort of places her as his intimate disciple there's nothing stronger than that in the Gnostic literature and you don't need the Gnostic literature here to highlight

I don't think the New Testament attempts to marginalise Mary when Mary goes to the disciples and tells them Jesus written they don't believe her. And the evangelist tells us that. He's not, he believes her, the disciples doesn't. So one doesn't need the sort of Dan Brown world to have an image, a genuine, I think, historical image of this woman who had an extraordinary closeness to Jesus.

Some people, of course, are saying that they were married and so on. There's a five-letter word for that idea. But that intimacy, I think, think is something to remember between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There was something that was also used by the early second century and through third, fourth century writers who felt marginalized by the mainstream church. So Peter then represents the kind of disciples that have got things wrong. And Mary Magdalene is the disciple that has got things right. So in the gospel of Mary, that the male disciples come to Mary

and they're the ones who are all terrified and they don't know what to do and they're stuck and she's the one who really leads them to understanding by revealing her experience of both the risen Christ and what I think he said to her before. He died. So Mary becomes the symbol of a church

that is itself marginalized in the second, third, fourth century. Jan, the Catholic Church separated the composite Mary Magdalene in 1969. What recent images about Mary Magdalene would you bring to mind? It's interesting to be thinking, I mean, that's in 1969, yes, that that separation happens. And I think around, there's some very interesting work. There was an exhibition just recently, well, in 2009 at the Metropolitan Opera, called Something About Mary riffing on the film of that title,

so that power of the name she now occupies that one. But there's a wonderful painting, actually. actually by Rachel Feinstein, where she actually paints on enamel on mirror. She ignores that separation of the penitence sent and removing it. She actually engages with it because of her interest in past artists. So she's there staring. It's called Mary Brackets Me. So she's looking into this mirror.

And in the background, we can see a gallery behind us. And she's looking almost like one of the Titian's paintings of the half-lengths where she's looking up in adoration and with her hair draped over her body and the breast slightly exposed, but it's a self-portrait in there. So there's still a sense of identification with that subject matter, but a real interest in how arts of the past have actually still informing our impression of her. But it's interesting just also thinking about just with that relationship between Judas and Christ and Mary's with the kiss and everything.

I was sitting listening to Lady Gaga's recent song, on Judas, it's called Judas, and she plays Mary Magdalene in this song. She's actually the only character with Christ that doesn't have their name on the back of their jacket. But she's dealing with all of these ideas from the past. In her lyrics, you can see here the whole history and the baggage of being the prostitute saint is there. Amen, what would you... I mean, she's had a massive influence on the development of Christianity since the 6th century, hasn't she? Yes.

Is there anything essential that we've missed out that we should have said about it? No, I think the point that Joanne's just been making about the persistence of the type of the redeemed sinner. I think that has been a very rich and on the whole benign influence. I think she has been a symbol of hope. The cleaned-up image, as the first witness of the resurrection, is fine. so long as the intimacy of Mary with Jesus, which the older sinful image preserved, isn't lost, the scene in the garden, I think, needs to be constantly reflected on.

Finally, Joan? John? For me, it's the fact that she was with Jesus in Galilee and very much involved in his mission with other women. So the historical Mary Magdalene, as a kind of leader of the women disciples of Jesus who were active in his mission is for me extremely important

and should guide us in terms of gender in the church today. Well, thank you very much, Joan Taylor, Joanne Anderson, Amon Duffy. Next week we were talking about the Dutch East India Company and thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So what did we miss out

And what would you like to have said? Who wants to kick off? We didn't talk about the gospel of Jesus' wife, which is found a few years ago, just a few lines, which seems to indicate that Mary is referred to as his wife companion. But there's questions about whether or not it's authentic. So until those questions are settled,

no one really knows what to say about it. Is there any notion of its dating? I suppose that's tied up with the authenticity. Well, yes, it is. I mean, you know, second and third century, Coptic text, just a few lines, very, very fragmentary. They've tested it and seen that the actual papyrus is old.

The ink, I think, is old. But now fraudsters can use this old material and still, you know, produce these spurious artefacts. So it seems to be derivative. it could come from a textual error that's written in one of the publications on the Gospel of Thomas. So there's all sorts of questions about it.

And I just don't know what to do with it. I don't know. I don't think they're holding their breath in the Vatican. Possibly the depictions of her as the Desert Hermit could be quite interesting. Because I'd like to be able to just over a couple of the sculptures that she were in quite a centralised way. Also about just the contents.

of our unduant vase because of the thing. I have actually, this is Spickenard. Have you ever smelled it before? No, I'd like to. Pass it in there. Yeah, it's lovely. I thought you might like to smell it. Just to see what it's like to bring in

the sort of sensory aspect of the colour. It's really quite, very aromatic. It is. There's a bitterness in it as well. Yeah, it's from the Valerium roots. It is. And it was used in healing. Yes, exactly.

It's a healing. It's a healing. That's what she had in her job. It's not just. Let's smell nice. That's great. Friars balsam. Yeah, so it's just interesting that that's in the content

and we often see in paintings with the jar open. It's inviting us to take a look in and think and start the sensory elements. There are many more religion and discussion programs from Radio 4 to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.ukuk slash radio 4.