“All natures, all forms, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.”

- The Gospel of Mary

These words from the opening passages of the The Gospel of Mary speak to us across time and space about the true nature of our interconnectedness and all that fundamentally lies beneath the surface.

Whether we look outside at the trees or up at the sky, we are met with a reflection of what is ancient and eternal. These cycles of life and the seasons fall onto the “wheel of life,” an ancient symbol of a circled cross that is round like the compass to your own North Star. 

At the peak of summer we launched The Magdalene Thread, sharing stories around an ancient, enigmatic woman and all she touches.

We began this project standing in a paddock of buttercups and sheep, not knowing what the future held, but we followed inspiration into glorious fun, flow, and magic at every turn—which found it’s way to you through our essays and podcast episodes.

Years as stay-at-home mothers to our children, eight in total across our two families spanning ages 2 to 15, we have learned that following the rhythms of life is essential to both vitality and groundedness.

The fall season asked new questions of us: what was next?

We knew one thing for certain—we were called to Glastonbury, and somehow the stars aligned for us to board an airplane with two tickets, not only as writers and researchers, but as best friends on an adventure that felt miraculous.

A place where ancient indigenous symbols and stories meet and weave with Christianity, our pilgrimage to “Avalon” met us with unexpected discoveries.

Overcast, and cool, wind whipping through our hair, but one lone buttercup greeted us at the base of our climb up the Tor, with sheep scattered around. Still damp from our dip in the White Spring, the energy of joy and mystery is what carried us up all 305 steps.

Brief as our trip was, our days traveling from New York to the the English countryside, with a final stop at the Tower of London, were sacred and transformative.

In a way, all that was potent, packed, and fast on this trip mirrored the speed and depth of the fourteen pieces we had published here from June through October. Insights, downloads, and the research continued to build. We waited patiently to be shown how to share it next as we felt, with the seasons changing, that there was a shift being shown to us.

Together, we held a space of possibility for what was to transpire at The Magdalene Thread and as usual, we were led forward—as each of us is by the divine, even when it only speaks to us in the most subtle of forms.

Synchronicities have always been a guiding force—the signs, symbols, clues, messages that let you know “you’re on the right path, keep going!” England generously bestowed these upon us in abundance. It only takes the “eyes to see and ears to hear,” a skill honed during years of trying to do it “our way,” as we continue to work at embracing the messy art of surrender.

“Rest, integrate, let go” is what seemed to whisper from the bottom of the red spring’s well, as clearly as familiar words echoed to us on what elements of our English adventure to share publicly. “Keep it sacred,” the heart said, in defiance of what may be the “right” way to grow an online platform.

Again autumn called to us, leaves gently falling as we drove through winding Somerset roads, asking: what do you need to let go of, what needs to be harvested, and what to be composted?

Winter asks less questions and more so insists on subtle actions, especially in the cold of the North. She forces us to remember us that the roots growing deep beneath the soil’s surface are no less important than the flowers blooming midsummer. Like the empty tree limbs, this season may look bleak, but in truth it is a magical time of fostering future growth through maximizing resources.

Perhaps if we were younger, and not mothers, we would ignore the energetics of the wheel of life and forge ahead at a rapid pace.

But the blessing of our many years on unique spiritual and personal journeys, as well as from working together, is that we have learned through experience to following the greater rhythms of life. This is our version of “the feminine” way.

The healing powers of the natural world are unlocked only when we surrender and follow the spiral path that will unfold in time, like a fern shooting out of the damp, even snowy, soil in early spring to slowly open, unfurling in harmony with the Fibonacci sequence.

In the space between the falling leaves and renewal of spring, the world seems still, but in fact, each and every creature from the plants to the animals are being “resolved again into their own roots” through their dormant nature, in the words of the Savior in Mary’s gospel.

Mary Magdalene is known, according to French legend, to have retreated to a cave in her later years, mirroring the way the gospel written in her name guides spiritual seekers on an interior pathway of gnosis—not unlike other female Christian mystics from Marguerite Porete to Teresa of Avila.

What these women knew is that the quiet, interior pathway is not darkness and cold, but cozy, magical, and necessary for both creativity and spiritual connection.

Over the years, we have each learned the hard way what it takes to be whole—the levels of nourishment, mixed with realistic optimism, an openness to possibility, living from the heart, and following flow, even when it takes us like Frozen’s Elsa “into the unknown.”

While The Magdalene Thread may mirror the winter months, in truth, we will be living, breathing, growing, even singing under the surface while creating from the roots up all that will burst forth and bloom in divine timing.

What may read as darkness to you, dear reader, whom we cherish, is the cave of creativity we now sit within.

Flow, that sense of alignment both intuitively felt and recognized by psychological science, has spoken—not unlike Florence and the Machine whose words rang out in our rental car as we drove past Stonehenge, “it’s always darkest before the dawn.”

To be perfectly honest, we are absolutely brimming with inspiration and epiphanies, in a way that almost makes it hard to rest—and even sleep! We cannot wait to bring all that is pouring through us to you at the highest level of integrity and excellence that you have come to expect (we hope) from our work here.

We remain deeply grateful for your sacred attention as subscribers and readers—fellow seekers on a path that has connected us each with the Magdalene.

Spring will come, and we will return to sharing in this space, but for now we will do our best to rest in the silence of our cave.

xx,

Alicia & Kelly

“Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act, anything -- we need only listen.”

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

The divine feminine is on the rise in the collective consciousness.

Turn on social media, or do a google search, and you will notice that she is manifesting in a myriad of ways, under many labels and names. So many of us, women and men, long to unearth what we deeply sense is incomplete, because the missing feminine has been covered up and erased for centuries.

Even when we go to open the Bible, we are met with conflicting ideas about women’s roles and leadership in spirituality. Inside and outside of organized religion, you will find the same sort of fractured ideas around those words, “the divine feminine,” and what they might mean to an everyday modern woman. 

Is she the creative witchy herbalist, feet in the soil, speaking to the trees and stars? Is she the “trad” wife, in a sundress surrounded by children in a field milking a cow? Is she the sensual priestess, working with the powers of the womb space? Is she the boss babe spiritual CEO, seemingly able to “manifest” all her heart desires at the shift of her intention?

Or, is she only meant to be held in the images of goddesses and saints— “perfected” women, like Mother Mary, Brigid, Isis, and Mary Magdalene? 

The truth is that the feminine is multifaceted, and this is why the “goddess,” once solely the ineffable oneness of mother-nature, gained many names over millennia as civilizations grew. 

Ultimately, this transformation was the divine feminine expanding to mirror our complexities and uniqueness, which varied across both time and culture. Letting go is an organic part of growth and flourishing, but for all we’ve gained, much was lost—even before the divine feminine was relinquished to the shadows of our patriarchal world.

We seek to remember what’s missing, and our lost goddess is resurrecting through those who are called to remember her. However, the “divine feminine” is rising with a sense of separation that persists around defining and identifying what these words and ideas mean and seek to understand:

What is the feminine expression we need to heal and restore balance?

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The One Called Magdalene

In this cacophony of well-intended expressions, Mary Magdalene sits in the middle—a historical figure with a name that translates to “tower,” indicating a preeminence that has been tarnished by centuries of lies. In an effort to parse truth from fiction, we set out to uncover Mary Magdalene from the chaos of confusion that surrounds her, and on July 22nd (her feast day), we began sharing a series of essays and conversations that laid the foundation of our work here at The Magdalene Thread:

• To begin, read or listen to our manifesto, Perspectives and Possibilities on Mary Magdalene.

• Women Sex and Sin (Podcast): How and why doctrine diminished the power of Mary Magdalene, and all women in early Christianity

• Goodness in the Garden (Article): Illuminating the role of women in early Christianity has the power to restore spiritual sovereignty for us all

• The Greatest Lie Ever Told (Episode): How and why the pernicious rumor of Mary Magdalene as prostitute was crafted and sold for 1,400 years

• Fortress of Truth (Article): How the choice to speak "gnosis" to spiritual authority lies at the center of heresy-and how to transcend it

• The Power of a Name (Podcast): How Mary Magdalene’s name is a treasure trove that guides us closer to the truth of who she was & means for us

• Immaculate Deception (Article): Restoring Mary Magdalene and Jesus' female followers from the margins of the Gospel of Luke's masterful storytelling

• Christ Maker (Podcast): Exploring the details of the mysterious anointing woman illuminates truth about the legacy of Mary Magdalene

• A Tale of Two Sisters (Article): Mary, Martha & the matter of feminine worth. Is there really a better part?

• Life After Death (Podcast): How the power of mindset and miracles lifts the veil on resurrection

As we have written and discussed, the issue at hand is not simply that Mary Magdalene was diminished. She very well might be the “missing” key to the metaphorical Kingdom of God, but it is important to “zoom in” even further on the details and recognize how she, and subsequently all women, were separated and splintered in the process. 

We find Mary Magdalene in fractals, coming to life in pieces of treasure we put back together slowly. Each gathered piece of the whole is what we must view with a kaleidoscopic lens to fully understand, just like the divine feminine itself and the unique ways it manifests within each of us.

This is why Magdalene embodies an archetype of wholeness—she is beyond a singular historical person, holding all she encompasses, illuminates, and brings together as a modern manifestation of the ancient mother-goddess. 

The Feminine Mystery

“Separation did not exist in the mythologies of the Great Mother,” writes Campbell, painfully echoing to us the radical split we have endured for the last few thousand years, and likely dating back to at least Babylon’s rise.

With Magdalene, we are called not to only remain in the realm of the esoteric, on the surface of where she is trending, but to return to the sacred scriptures of early Christianity—from the Bible to the gospel written in her name, and even farther back in time.

The first iterations of the Divine in Old Europe, the Levant, the Near East–the geographic area that was the birthplace not only of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, but all of Western civilization–was that of the mother-goddess. Yes, she was feminine, but she was total in the way that many Christians now consider God represented as the Trinity. She was the Earth itself.

It is almost impossible for us to fathom what life, human consciousness, and spiritual practice would have been like for these ancient ancestors that venerated the mother-goddess as the central divinity from 9,000 to 4,000 years ago (roughly). It is equally as difficult to comprehend all the shifts that led to the splintering of the divine feminine, which was part of both the inevitable evolution of a rising civilization and a purposeful power-play that resulted in the subjugation of women. 

All we cannot know has always been mirrored by the divine feminine herself—as we wrote in Goodness in the Garden:

“Mystery lives at the edge of fear and devotion–it is this razor’s edge that both elevated the goddess to the highest levels of reverence and the fear of her power that brought her to be demoted.”

Matriarchal Worth

Fear arises naturally when we go looking for the goddess, a felt sense of negativity that even goes beyond the notion within Christianity that the “goddess = bad.” 

Yes, worship of the divine feminine was outlawed in 392 AD as Roman emperor Theodosius I, a few hundred years after the Hebrew scriptures had commanded it. “Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles,” reads Exodus, a reference to sacred trees and places of worship created to honor the feminine counterpart of God called Asherah by ancient Hebrews.

Even without the formality of Christian history, when we go looking for the feminine in esoteric books and through Instagram gurus, it can often still feel “off’,” for lack of a better expression.

There is this sense that we are not seeing the full picture, that only certain facets are being amplified above others, and a creeping sense of “better than” lurks around.

It is important not to forget that hierarchical power structures of control were not unique to Judeo-Christianity. Many spiritual traditions, religions, and even ancient mystery schools venerated by modern students of the esoteric, were rife with negative conditions. 

This is why it is essential to realize it is not about Mary Magdalene, as a person or a singular goddess limited to any particular lineage or way. Any time we raise one above the rest, we end up in an imbalance of power that swiftly tips towards ranking order.

Matriarchy can be just as toxic as patriarchy—or any other “archy.” The same principle applies to pushing one form of spirituality over another—or any “way” that points the individual to external sources of authority.

Indeed, the ancient matter at hand in our modern world revolves around the concept of spiritual sovereignty, and the time has come to examine all the structures that both support and stifle our inherent worth.

The Great Unknowing

What is often cultivated with positive intentions of supporting others in thriving inevitably falls short when built upon the foundation of a mindset calling for a “better part,” a higher level of accomplishment to attain, or some sort of “Holy Grail” out there hidden on the horizon.

It is tempting to follow these pathways of “success,” with their clearly defined, organized, packaged, and promised outcomes of positive growth–spiritual or otherwise. 

But what the divine feminine begs of us is something less certain.

The feminine is the darkness of the womb, the process of life, death, and rebirth—an embodiment of this sacred transformation that has mystified humanity, imbuing awe, wonder, and gratitude since the very start. 

Courage is required to not only go searching for the divine feminine in this swirl of uncertainty and negativity around her, but then to double-down on the energetics of her innate unknown quality.

Vulnerability gives us strength to sit in the discomfort long enough to see what this darkness holds, but feeling all our feelings borders on a very real fear, ingrained in our survival wiring. Lions and tigers are not chasing us down anymore, but everyday moments of stress trigger us on a constant basis, from the news cycle to the mundane frustrations of daily life to larger traumas that affect each and every person.

Tribal instincts tell us to stay close to what is safe and known, but for some, the call to remember what has been forgotten is too loud to ignore. 

Bravely, we might take one step outside the boundary lines, into the unknown, searching for the Divine we feel and know. But then we must remain in uncertainty, for what we desire to give shape and form to is just that—ineffable, beyond words. 

The Birthplace of Love

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” poetic prose of John that rings of truth.

What is the Word we are searching for?

What is God?

The Word is Love. 

When we choose to believe that God is Love, that is what allows us to step into this unknown space, to grow and expand often in ways we cannot fathom, in a delicate dance between determination and surrender. 

Magdalene brings us into this space, and yes, in doing so opens up ancient, hidden wounds, asking us about the stories we have lived and written.

What do we want to believe?

What do we desire to let go of?

In this adventure, we are met with a new range of feelings that may challenge us, from a transcendental sense of remembrance and connection to the primal rage that confronts us when we realize the extent of the violence, physical and psychological that has been wielded against the divine feminine-and therefore the woman.

But when we are anchored into Love, all of those troubling feelings and the narratives we’ve wrought around them open up, and new perspectives on old stories emerge.

Conscious Choice

It is tempting to demonize those who have diminished the feminine—following the urge to fight (burn the patriarchy!), to flee (run and ignore what is hard), or freeze (staying silent as we have been told to do as “good” Christian women).

Holding Love, above all, is what allows us to cultivate unity through paradox, transcending the left and right, good and bad, light and dark, right and wrong to ultimately remember the oneness that the divine feminine was meant to point to all along. 

If we honor the sacredness of the Word, what are the stories that we want to tell? 

Can we let go of the narratives that no longer serve us, not only in the modern world we exist within in this moment, but in the future we are co-creating through every choice, in each moment?

Mary Magdalene matters because she represents a story—a great story of the divine feminine—that we may breathe new life into with a Love that we have not yet known. 

Fear is an illusion, there is only Love. This is a choice we make and one that Magdalene may guide us towards, as a beacon of Love that lights the way in troubled seas, bringing forth the new dawn that shines from within each and every one of us. 

Seasons of Creativity

We meet you here not as gurus or scholars, but as best friends who are stay-at-home mothers, with eight children between our two families. 

This collaboration is an extension of who we are, what we believe, and what we do even in the quiet of our own caves—where for years now, we have been studying, reading, writing, and dreaming of a day when we would bring this work to the world. 

We are no strangers to the spiral nature of creativity, and what began as a limited series podcast, a summer project, has flourished.

We follow it into the unknown future with faith in our hearts, amidst the messiness of our own lives, evolving schedules, and the stages and phases of our growing children. 

Our desire to be whole in motherhood as we co-create The Magdalene Thread has left us both inspired and stretched, at every turn.

We have learned not to worry about the “how,” but are devoted to nurturing this work in alignment with the “feminine” in its truest sense, and remain unwavering in our commitment to making this work sacred and sustainable as we continue to follow the friendship, flow, and magic that brought it all to life.

Since “attention is the beginning of devotion,” as our muse Mary Oliver says, we are deeply mindful of our own use of time and energy, just as we are endlessly grateful that you, dear reader, are here placing any of your sacred time and attention with us. 

New facets to the wholeness of The Magdalene Thread are coming forth in the next few weeks and months—ones we can foresee and ones we are certain will surprise and delight us. 

Shifting with the seasons themselves, we are leaning into new forms of creating this sacred work, and we cannot wait to reveal each one to you.

As is natural to the expansion and contractions of birth, we will be taking a pause in sharing here for a week or so.

An adventure awaits us, quite literally, as do some deep breaths and rest as we settle into the rhythm of fall and the days fade into winter.

Thank you for allowing us to share these treasures with you. 

We are so grateful.

xx,

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The concept of resurrection is art of wrapped in tradition and doctrine—but early Christianity was a riot of pluralism and there were many competing views about the story of Jesus, from literal to mystical. If you are willing to join us with an open heart and mind, the question we ask is:

What do you choose to believe? 

Death is the ultimate shift in perspective, as we consider views on resurrection and a life well-lived from mystery school traditions to positive psychology to better understand what “divinity” actually means and how it is connected to “the Good within our midst” in the words of the Gospel of Mary. 

In this episode we cover: 

• The courage it takes to challenge our conditioned belief systems, in Christianity or otherwise

• Ancient perspectives on death and resurrection, and the symbols associated with them 

• Mysticism and visions, how these play into “rising” and “the kingdom of God” 

• Connections between mystery school traditions and the science of positive psychology, including post-traumatic growth theory 

• How transformation, life-death-rebirth, is possible for all of us 

• Miracles as a matter of mindset—what we can derive from ancient practices and apply to our modern world

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Learn more about The Magdalene Thread:

A selection of sources: 

• Animism is Normative Consciousness, The Emerald Podcast

• Authentic Happiness, by Martin E. P. Seligman

• Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being By Martin E. P. Seligman

• Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer

  by Diane Wolkstein Samuel Noah Kramer

• Jesus Found in Translation: The Story Within the Story of the Bible's Earliest Gospel by Lizzie Berne DeGear

• The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-up in History by Michael Baigent

• The Lost Art of Resurrection: Initiation, Secret Chambers, and the Quest for the Otherworld by Freddy Silva

• The Masks of God, Anthology on Ancient Mythology including Primitive Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Oriental Mythology, and Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell 

• The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Elaine Pagels

• Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World by Karen Armstrong

• Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor by Joseph Campbell

• Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel by Sandra M. Schneiders 

You can see our full source list at: 

https://themagdalenethread.substack.com/p/living-resources-on-mary-magdalene

“We are love, and we don’t have to earn or prove or deserve this fact. And if we can recognize that we’ve never been separate from it, and bring it forth outside of us, this is what saves us.”
― Meggan Watterson

Truth has never been so elusive. This is an inconvenient reality that greets us not just in the daily news but when we are deep in deciphering Mary Magdalene’s story. 

It remains remarkable that across all four canonical gospels Jesus was anointed by a woman—a detail that could not be deleted. The sketch of the story is there, hidden under edits and redactions that resulted in the anonymization of the anointing woman, of whom Jesus stated, “throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Yet, how does one proclaim the memory of a nameless woman?

For a moment, imagine the anointing woman as plainly incognito and inclusive of every negative detail that the Gospel of Luke lays upon the scene. Even then, the anointing woman presents us with an picture of immense courage:

She strides bravely into a sea of masculinity, where she is unwelcome to perform this sacred ritual, criticized at every movement. Rather than freezing, she allows her emotions to flow freely, weeping quietly. We may not know the reason for her “maudlin” tears, that are to become synonymous with Magdalene in the Middle Ages, but it is clear that her vulnerability is the birthplace of her bravery. 

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Whatever her intentions or the meaning of the way she addressed Jesus with this holy oil, the anointing woman rises from the ashes of confusion whenever we go looking for Mary Magdalene.

So, let us consider the long-held possibility: was Mary Magdalene the anointing woman? The idea that Mary anchored this defining moment, which transforms Jesus into Christ, is not as far out as it may seem. 

It was a tradition so deeply seated in early Christianity that for someone like Pope Gregory, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene being one in the same was a fact—plain and simple. 

1400 years later, some scholars look at the text itself, with the clear indication that Mary Magdalene’s full name is not present in any anointing scene, as all the proof they need to parse these characters entirely. Some feminist theologians have supported the notion that separating the four anointing women is the simplest means to clearing Magdalene’s from the sexual shadow and the negativity that surrounds it.

This is a tempting course of action to restoring the legacy of Mary Magdalene. Yet, moving in this direction risks creating an unintended glass ceiling around her potential as a feminine leader and greater significance. 

If Mary Magdalene was the anointing woman, it would mean that she was one-in-the-same with Mary of Bethany, a figure found in one story in the Gospel of Luke and in two stories in the Gospel of John. In both accounts, Mary of Bethany is inextricably tied to her sister, Martha—in more ways than are traditionally considered. 

Martha is yet another female figure in the story of Jesus we take at face value, rarely going beneath the surface of what the pulpit or the legends tell us about who she was. But, when we dig into the matter of Martha, down to the details, new information arises. In that process, it seems easiest to isolate her from Mary, thereby segregating her into a version of femininity that’s often judged or overlooked. 

Yet, if we choose a metaphorical lens that seeks to unite all the fractured voices of women’s worthiness, then other possibilities come to light around the famous duo of Mary and Martha that are of profound significance to the story we’ve been told.

Sister Sister

While tradition held that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene were the same person, the two are never clearly connected in the Bible you may hold in your hand. 

Mary Magdalene appears 13 times across the canonical gospels, most often at the death, burial, and rising of Jesus, and once before hand in Luke. Mary of Bethany appears in three stories, all during Jesus’ ministry—a scene in her and Martha’s home in Luke, the Jesus raising her brother Lazarus from the dead in John, and the anointing scene, also John.

When church father Irenaeus proclaimed all four gospels must only be read together, the stories of the sisters of Bethany became muddled amongst each other—just as he intended. 

These women are pivotal figures in Jesus’ story, involved in key moments such as Mary’s anointing of Jesus as Christ, Martha’s “Christological confession” of verbally proclaiming Jesus as Christ, and the famous scene with their brother Lazarus—one of Jesus’ most powerful miracles on record. 

Bethany, the purported town they inhabited (actually called Al-Eizariya “the place of Lazarus”), became a pilgrimage site as early as the Crusades in the Middle Ages, when Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem, purchased the village and built a Benedictine abbey there named for Martha and Mary. 

A century later, the Golden Legend, a compilation of stories on the lives of saints, was published by Jacobus De Voragine, the archbishop of Genoa. This tome recorded and amplified legends of Mary Magdalene and Martha as her sister, that had been long held in folklore and told orally for arguably centuries. 

These are the tales Magdalene seekers know well—the sisters and company arriving in a rudderless boat on the shores of France, Mary living out her life teaching and praying in the South of France, and Martha going on to slay dragons (quite literally). 

The gospel stories held in the Bible date from at least the second century, but the sisters we see in John and Luke appear vastly different. Scholars searching for clues as to whom the sisters were have concluded that, as usual, the written record entwining the sisters of Bethany was predated by oral stories. 

In Martha from the Margins, Allie Ernst demonstrates that Martha was a figure of authority, particularly in the Johannine community (followers of the Gospel of John), but her stories were widespread and significant before they ever made it into paper (or papyrus). 

A “far richer fabric of traditions woven around this figure” held that Martha was present at the tomb of Jesus with Mary Magdalene and even attended the Last Supper. Ernst paints a picture of a widespread Martha tradition that transcended John or Luke, with her as a resurrection witness in the Ethiopic and Syrian texts. 

Ernst emphasizes that in early Christianity:

“Martha is charged with a great deal of authority in some early Christian texts, to the point that she is called not only the ‘apostle to the apostles’ but also ‘a second Peter’.”

This is a level of rivalry of Peter traditionally recognized between him and Mary Magdalene and a key in the Mary-Martha puzzle we will return to.

Even in the emerging Western Church, Martha shows up prominently in the work of church father Hippolytus of Rome, and his rendition of the Old Testament Song of Songs (also called Canticle of Canticles)—a sacred love poem known for its erotic qualities.

Hippolytus blends non-canonical traditions with canonical ones, possibly drawing upon oral stories, with explicitly Greco-Roman mythological references, and consistently elevating Martha to place her alongside not just Mary of Bethany, but Mary Magdalene. 

At first glance, his rendition of Song of Songs reads as borderline absurd, with two women (Mary and Martha) in a romantic scenario where they pine for one man (Jesus): “I have found whom I love and I will not let him go.” The creative license Hippolytus takes with the ancient archetype of hieros gamos (sacred marriage) begs an odd question:

Are we reading about Jesus in a scene of menage-a-trois meets polygamy, or is this a brilliant literary device that speaks to us allegorically?

Maybe (at least this) church father knew something about the nature of who Martha was that has been lost and misunderstood in all the strangeness.

What if Martha and Mary—as Hippolytus imagined—were one in the same person as Mary Magdalene, in that each individual woman is simply a reflection of the whole?

We understand that this idea may seem as absurd as a three-way-love-poem written by a man known to be sexually repressed. Therefore, we ask: was Martha was an expression of a facet of Mary, who too is a woman emblematic of the expression of the divine feminine in Jesus’ story?

Lady of the House

Even within the narrow scope of the canonical gospels and what they have to say about Mary and Martha, clues are apparent in details typically overlooked. 

We meet Martha in Luke chapter 10, verse 28, when Jesus is deep in his traveling ministry, performing miracles. He takes a rest stop at a village, “where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.” 

That Martha is called by her personal name and not tied to any man as a wife, mother, daughter, or sister is remarkable. It is, emphatically, her home—a controversial detail, because there is evidence on both sides of the argument when it comes to the contemporary rights of women. While Jewish scripture forbade women from possessing property, evidence exists for female home ownership in the New Testament and beyond—but either way, Martha’s authority isn’t a typical scenario.

Continuing with Luke’s brief but impactful story, Martha had a sister “called Mary” and the famous scene is painted of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to his teaching while Martha busies herself with the tasks of cleaning and serving. Martha approaches Jesus and pleads for him to help her motivate aimless Mary: “Tell her to help me.” 

Jesus replies, “Martha, Martha,” a double-edged sword of potential endearment and chastisement, then goes on to tell Martha that she is “anxious” and it is Mary who has “chosen the better part” by listening to his teachings. 

This scene sticks out like a sore thumb in the way Jesus calls Martha’s name, echoed later in the silly Brady Bunch scenes of Jan saying, “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, always Marsha!” Two sisters, pitted against one another, one receiving praise and recognition (Marsha/Mary) and the other feeling forgotten (Jan/Martha).

“Martha, Martha” reminds us of the Wedding at Cana in John where Jesus harshly calls to his own mother, “Woman, what does this have to do with me.” 

We wonder—do these scenarios accurately reflect how Jesus spoke to women near and dear to him? 

As we shared in Immaculate Deception, Luke’s account of women is questionable, but this scene in particular raises more questions than it answers. Furthermore, it leaves us with a distinct sense that Luke’s author was carefully crafting these scenes to highlight negativity around female characters. 

Luke’s version of events, with putting the words “the better part” in Jesus’ mouth, had serious consequences for the treatment of women. Only in the last century, with the rise of feminist theologians and scholars like Barbara Reid’s (Op PhD), have we been able to clarify the biased perspective that may have driven this pivotal scene with Martha and Mary. 

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A Family Affair

To untangle the similarities and differences of these scenes, and therefore better understand who the sisters of Bethany were, we must jump to the two stories of John’s they feature in.

(To note, scholars generally believe that John was written or compiled after Luke, and John is generally considered the “outlier” gospel, different from the other three “synoptics,” so named for their similarities.)

In John 11, we meet Lazarus of Bethany who is “ill” and from “the same village as Mary and her sister Martha”—notice that they are of the same village, not household, and Mary’s name precedes Martha’s. Next, there is a foreshadowing to the following chapter John 12 with the anointing scene: “This Mary, whose brother Lazarus was ill, was the Mary who anointed the Master.” 

In sum, the sisters send a message to Jesus that “the one you love is ill,” referring to Lazarus.

Jesus comes quickly as “Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus,” confirming the intimacy of the relationship between Jesus and this family (a repeated theme). 

Jesus even has to argue back to his disciples who lament that going to Bethany means retracing their footsteps—so, what was so important to him about Lazarus and his sisters? Martha runs out of the house to greet Jesus, Mary stays at home, and this is when the pivotal Christological confession happens—more on this in a moment. 

Only after that statement does Mary of Bethany enter the scene, repeating the same words Martha had said, “Master if you had been here my brother would not have died.” 

Mary of Bethany weeps, Jesus weeps, everybody weeps. Many fail to notice that Mary of Bethany does not weep during her anointing of Jesus in the following chapter—but Luke’s nameless anointing woman does cry, and as mentioned, Magdalene is very often portrayed as tearful in art. 

These are details that are easily glossed over but matter deeply. No one believes Jesus is capable of this miracle, but his faith in himself and God never falters—Lazarus walks straight out of the tomb, wrapped in burial clothes. 

Moving forward a chapter to John 12, we enter the anointing scene, with Martha hosting a dinner with Lazarus and Mary seated below Jesus, blessing his feet with spikenard perfume. Here, Judas is the one to argue with Jesus over the pricey potion (in Matthew and Mark it’s the disciples who take the position of the questioner, in Luke it’s the Pharisee).

Jesus says “leave her alone,” as he notes that this oil will be used for his burial too. 

Just after this scene is when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling an ancient Hebrew prophecy of the Messiah’s path—an indication that this anointing of “Christ,” the Greek word for “Messiah,” was a peak moment.

In sum, we know that Mary and Martha are sisters, living in a town of Bethany, apparently sharing a home in Martha’s name, who are likely wealthy and independent. They follow Jesus and have a level of intimacy with him where he “loves” them. 

Their dynamic reads like a family affair, because from tears to accusations, they are comfortable being vulnerable and honest with each other.

John’s gospel has long been thought to have deep layers of symbolism and meaning written into it, from the stories highlighted to the hidden patterning in the text, as detailed in books like the Genius of John: A Compositional-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel by Peter F. Ellis and The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center by Bruno Barnhardt. 

When you layer these elements together, even going beyond John 11 and 12 into John 20’s famous scene of Mary Magdalene and the risen Christ in the garden, it feels as though John is transmitting a truth to us about who Mary was that Martha’s presence overshadows.

The Matter of Martha

Philosophers and scholars have spent millennia debating the role of Martha, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene in the context of feminine leadership in the church. Whether we realize it or not, the feminine portrayals have had a direct impact on all women influenced by Western culture—this is why “Martha” matters. 

In Immaculate Deception, we detailed the way that Luke’s rendering of women, namely his anointing woman story, impacted the legacy of Mary Magdalene and well beyond. We relied heavily on Reid’s brilliant analysis in her book, Choosing the Better Part, and a reference to the praise Jesus bestows on Mary—now, let’s look further at Martha, in particular.

Martha embodies action and Mary contemplation, a dichotomy that has been preached from pulpits ad-nauseum for centuries.

The positive side of this presentation is the way that Jesus gives us all a permission slip to set aside our mundane tasks in favor of cultivating our relationship with God. Yet, all too often this story has been used for priests and pastors to push the silencing of women, an agenda embedded in Christianity’s patriarchal culture. 

Questions abound, from the way the women are pitted against each other in comparison, judgment, and favoritism, to the nature of Jesus’ message in this moment. 

Why doesn’t this compassionate leader, who supports all those downtrodden, have greater words of support and empathy for Martha? So often women identify with Martha, as we struggle to juggle all the demands of life from work, to personal relationships, to the household, to being a mother, partner, and in Martha’s case, sister and hostess. 

Reid writes:

“From such a stance, there is no good news from a Jesus who not only seems indifferent to the burden of the unrealistic demands but even reproaches one who pours out her life in service.” 

In this moment, we remember how the stories of Jesus were spoken aloud in communities, passed down for generations in Aramaic and Hebrew before being written in Greek, and then translated, edited, and re-transcribed through centuries. The first versions we have of these gospels all date to no earlier than the second century—a truth that forces us to admit what we would rather not: no one fully knows what Jesus actually said, or did.

Is Martha and Mary’s conflict in Luke a true representation of an incident from the life of historical Jesus? Or, does it reflect the need to resolve a tension around the role of women in the community Luke’s author was writing for? As we suggested in Immaculate Deception, could Luke have been drawing from an earlier source, written or oral, that portrayed women in a more positive light?

What if Luke’s author twisted the narratives to limit the authority and prominence of women in his own account?

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The Better Part

The emerging Church, for their part, took Luke’s story as we know it and ran with it, heaping praise on the humility of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. 

For Augustine of Hippo, Martha and Mary represented the Church—Martha, the present Church which “receives the Lord into her heart”; Mary, the future Church which “shall delight in Wisdom alone.” Origen commented how “action and contemplation do not exist without one another.” Then, there’s Hippolytus, who placed Martha in a scene that she does not exist in—chapter 20 of John where Mary Magdalene (not Mary of Bethany) sees risen Jesus in a garden. 

While John’s Mary and Martha of Bethany are not as clearly pitted against one another as they are in Luke, traces of comparison remain in the depiction of these women. 

This is especially clear in John 11 when Lazarus is raised. Martha runs out of the house to greet Jesus, again in an animated role, whereas Mary hangs back at her home, emotional, quiet, and being comforted by friends and neighbors. Active and passive, their roles in John 11 mirror their roles in Luke 10.

Next, each sister cries out to Jesus in the same way, a curious detail in which their despair borders on accusation, (paraphrasing) “if you were here, this wouldn’t have happened!” In addition to the closeness demonstrated by how the sisters address Jesus so informally, there is the issue of how their words are identical to one another—a peculiar indication that textual critics have picked upon.

Even more intriguing is the way the scene ends, in John 11:45, with no reference to Martha, only Mary:

“Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.” 

To briefly address John’s anointing scene, Martha and Mary are again put in the roles of active and passive, mundane and spiritual, as Martha serves and Mary performs the anointing ritual. A significant, if mysterious detail, is the way Mary anoints Jesus’ feet, not his head, which would be traditional for the ceremony of a king or priest. 

We wonder: is Mary’s choice of Jesus’ feet a show of humility or an editorial deflection to diminish the power of the event? 

These are the subtle details that point to the power struggles woven into the fabric of these pivotal moments where Martha and Mary seem to carry archetypal roles of women manifested in two forms.

What this reveals is that these women have been used as tools to direct the role of all women within the church since its infancy.

When it comes to the feminine embodiment of Jesus’ teachings, is there truly a better part to choose? The question continues—how did human hands of gospel authors, church leaders, and even scribes shape Jesus’ divine message over time, often for political reasons?

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Textual Instability

P66 is an unassuming set of letters and numbers that sits at the center of a mystery around Martha’s presence and significance in John’s gospel. 

Martha is surrounded by what expert Elizabeth Schrader Polzcer, PhD, calls “textual instability,” and Polzcer’s meticulous, groundbreaking research demonstrates that Martha may not have been present in copies of John that predate the second century. 

To zoom out and rewind for a moment, all ancient texts were copied and transcribed on a regular basis due to the simple fact that papyrus disintegrated and ink faded relatively fast. Scribes were responsible for making these copies, and deviations in the text naturally occur throughout history–Bible and otherwise. P66 (Papyrus Bodmer II), discovered in 1952 near Dishna Egypt, is a codex containing only the Gospel of John dated to around 200 CE and it is well known for having a squirrelly scribe. 

Polzcer painstakingly shows how Martha’s presence is fraught with issues, with “instability” plaguing not just P66, but one in five Greek manuscripts, and one in three Old Latin ones.

Everyone was getting nervous about what to do when writing Martha in! 

Examples include unexpected omissions of Martha’s name entirely, “Mary” being changed to “Martha,” “Mary” appearing instead of an expected “Martha,” a clear change to nouns, verbs, or pronouns around the sisters of Bethany, and a different person named first among those whom Jesus “loved” in John 11:5. Further, changing the names was simple because “Martha” and “Maria” in Greek are only different by one letter.

Polzcer makes her interpretation of her findings clear:

“Martha was added to John’s Gospel in order to discourage readers from identifying Lazarus’ sister Mary as Mary Magdalene, an identification that was happening in patristic and extracanonical literature as early as the third century.”

We first discovered Polzcer’s edits through a viral sermon by Diana Butler Bass, “All the Marys.” You can listen to it here:

The Cottage

All the Marys

Here’s my sermon from the Wild Goose Festival, based on Luke 10: 38-42 and John 11. Sorry it is a little late! Our drive home last night took much longer than expected…

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4 years ago · 184 likes · 93 comments · Diana Butler Bass

Radical as it may seem, Polzcer is not the first to believe that Martha was written in with the intention of obscuring the significance of Mary.

Allie Ernst, author of Martha in the Margins, names Eugene Stockton, Marie-Émile Boismard and Arnaud Lamouille, Gérard Rochais, and Jacob Kremer as scholars who have posited that Martha’s presence may have been added later and there was only one sister from Bethany in John’s original storytelling.

Can these discrepancies be dismissed as mundane and innocent scribal errors? 

Doubtful, posits Polzcer. For one, it was often the same scribes who easily and correctly transcribed the sisters of Bethany in Luke 10 from one papyrus to another, who then “produced variants” when it came to copying the same names in John. 

The chance that it was all a minor mistake declines when considering the long-standing tradition that equated Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene. Further, many early Christian thinkers, orthodox and gnostic, believed that Mary Magdalene was from Bethany, and “Magdalene” was a moniker solely (as we discussed in The Power of a Name).

Polzcer theorizes that the Mary edited out here is Mary Magdalene and this action was taken specifically to obscure her identity. To make sense of how John and Luke connect, Polzcer believes the Bethany sisters from John are in Bethany, whereas elements of Luke point to the sisters of chapter 10 being from Galilee or Samaria—her theory is that these may be two different families.

Why was Mary of Bethany not called Magdalene in the text? Many reasons exist, including that her identity was purposefully being shielded. 

In a way, it makes sense—we notice how the scenes with Mary of Bethany occur in the intimate personal space of her home and family, a place where so many of us are called simply by our first names. If Magdalene was an honorific title, it is logical and plausible that her title would be used when she was outside of her home and rather her first name only be used within it.

Another possibility along these same lines is that Mary may have earned the title “Magdalene” later in time, perhaps after she anointed Jesus as Christ, making her the Christ-Maker.

The lingering question, after considering Polzcer’s consequential findings, is:

How does this shift the power dynamics around the sisters of Bethany and the way their examples have implications for the spirituality authority of all women?

Christ Proclaimer 

One of the most influential moments across all four canonical gospels resides in the voice of Martha in John—the Christological confession.

In Matthew, Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus speaks one of the most famous lines in all of Christianity: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church.”

This is a high point, recorded across the synoptics, and used as the basis for apostolic authority from the earliest days and up until now in the Catholic Church. John does not record a similar event with Peter, and instead contains an almost identical confession of faith in chapter 11—spoken by Martha, when Jesus has come to raise Lazarus. 

Jesus then says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Martha responds: “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.” Her words are almost verbatim the same ones that Peter has spoken.

Why is the Christological confession so important?

It quite literally holds the key to St. Peters—this is the “rock” that the Church built its case upon to create the institution of hierarchical power that claims absolute control over the teachings and legacy of Jesus Christ. 

To put the Christological confession in the mouth of a woman is significant, on its own. 

If we look at the picture of Martha being painted in the text—chastised in Luke, never named at the crucifixion or resurrection scenes—it makes little sense that she would be the one to speak in this pivotal moment.

Martha’s feminine Christological confession becomes an anomaly at best, a footnote at worst—when all the gospels are bound together, diminished under Peter’s rising authority. 

But was Martha the one to speak these crucial words to Jesus? Or was it Mary of Bethany, who also anointed him in John?

The earliest clue comes from Tertullian, the second-century church father, who mentions in his writing that Mary, not Martha, speaks the Christological confession. Echoing this indirectly, St. Ambrose in the fourth century mentions how “Jesus loved Lazarus and Mary,” no Martha noted. Fast forward to the present day, Polzcer believes that based on her research, it was Mary of Bethany who was the original “confessor”—not Martha.

If it was John’s intent for Mary Magdalene to speak the Christological confession in John 11:27, this would suggest that her leadership role in John was akin to Peter’s in the Gospel of Matthew. This possibility is not so far out when held side-by-side with repeated claims in gnostic texts that Mary Magdalene and Peter rivaled each other in power. 

In the Gospel of Mary, Peter critiques and doubts Mary’s vision of Jesus and transmission of his teachings, and Levi comes to her defense: “but if the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.” 

If we look at the canonical gospels, there is a clear tension in the post-resurrection scenes—who saw Jesus first? In all four, the women are at the tomb first. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene initially, but in Luke, Peter is the one who has the real interaction with the risen Christ before anyone else. 

This matters here because if the resurrection scene echoes the Peter—Mary comparison, then it would make perfect sense for the same juxtaposition to be present with the dualing Christological confessions of Matthew and John. 

But if Church authority is at stake, edits would need to have been made to elevate Peter and minimize Mary, laying the matter of leadership amongst these two and their followers to rest. 

Further, and unsurprisingly, Polzcer has identified the same “textual instability” surrounding Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, because in early manuscripts, discrepancies and “anxiety” are clear amidst scenes that feature Magdalene in the canonical Gospels. Polzcer suggests this “editorial activity,” is problematic, because it creates “real exegetical consequences,” meaning that these slight deviations had serious repercussions for the interpretation of the role of Magdalene in the Biblical account. 

Polzcer says:

“This surprising intersection of instability around a character in all four Gospels should make us question our certainties about who Mary Magdalene was, and devote more attention to all gospel story variants that feature her.” 

If Martha did not belong in John, we are brought back to the question about where she came from in the first place. Was the story of the sisters of Bethany in Luke 10 always present? Did John’s author, or later scribes, take the character of Martha and add her into his story—and if so, why? 

None of these options seem to make much sense, especially given Ernst’s research that demonstrates an oral tradition of Martha seemed to exist outside of and possibly predate both of the gospels.

The point of confusion seems to hinge upon the assumption that these stories were literal accounts of historical events.

If we can shift our perspective, even slightly, to view these women and their roles as literary devices with allegorical meaning, then what other answers emerge around a tale of two sisters and their entanglement?

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What’s in a Name?

This conundrum of where Martha came from dips us into “chicken or the egg territory”—is she from Luke? From John? An oral tradition? A literary device?

It does not seem that a clear-cut answer about Martha’s origins is feasible, but if we are willing to question everything, then addressing her name itself raises unexplored (as far as we know) questions.

“Mary” is the most abundant feminine name in the New Testament, appearing 54 times in 49 verses. As we noted in The Power of a Name, an Israeli historian named Tal Ilan undertook the staggering task of surveying all ancient documents to poke at the question: how prevalent was the name, “Mary,” really, in the first century Hebrew community? 

Out of 317 names she pulled together, 80 of them were “Mary,” and 62 “Salome”–she pointed to the popularity of Miriam the sister of Moses in the Old Testament and the historical princess Mariamme I, a wife of Herod the Great, being the impetus for Mary’s commonality. 

Linguists believe that “Mary” comes from the root “mer” or “mery” meaning “love” or “beloved.” In Hebrew, “Miriam” is connected to the root “mr,” meaning “bitter” or “mry,” meaning “rebellious.” 

Reid points out that “Mary” may also be linked to the Hebrew noun, “mrym,”meaning “height” or “summit.”  St. Jerome famously translated “Mary” as “drop of the sea” leading to the title for Mother Mary (“Star of the Sea”) and “Maris” is a Kabbalistic (Jewish Mysticism) title for “mother”—pointing to the very ancient name for all prominent mother-goddesses, “Queen of Heaven.” 

“Martha,” on the other hand, seems to be a derivative of “Mary.” 

Some sources say “Martha” means “lady” or “mistress of the house,” a description that seems to derive from the Bible rather than predate it, because the signature of Martha in Luke and John is that she serves and commands her own home.

Digging deeper into the etymology, “Martha” is connected to the root, “myrrh,” just like “Mary,” and the verb, “to be bitter,” just like “Mary.” Whereas Mary has etymological meanings, Martha has few, most tied directly to the name Mary which in part could be explained simply by their common root “Mar.”

Yet, one of the more curious parts of the P66 edits Polzcer identified is a prime reason it was so easy for the scribe to switch Mary’s name to Martha’s—in Greek, “Maria” to “Martha” is just one letter different. An “iota” is easily changed to a “theta,” without much notice.

Is there any possibility that “Martha” the name is not unique but a derivation of the name "Mary?” What would that mean for who Martha (the figure) might be and the potential that all we are examining is, at its core, symbolic? 

Again and again, there is a subtle theme that even the church fathers suggest—the closeness of the sisters may not be something for us to untangle but for us to fully understand on a metaphorical level:

What if Martha and Mary are two sides of the same coin, cleaved from one another for the purposes of telling a more compelling story?

This may seem outlandish but it is a very simple solution that solves all the so-called problems around Martha and Mary—including the way these names were used to diminish themselves, each other, Mary Magdalene, and the authority of all women.

Inherent Worth

Who was Martha?  

Was she a very real first century woman and friend to the living Jesus Christ or an allegorical archetype representative of a human facet of the divine feminine wholeness?

Martha continually has served as a representative of what is human, from her description in John and Luke, to how artists have portrayed her over the centuries.

She embodies our busyness, our desire to be “good,” the shame we feel when a loved one chastises us, and the fear deep in our hearts when our family member is ill. 

Martha remains quietly in the background, but also proclaims her faith with a confident and pure heart—she embodies seemingly paradoxical forces that any honest person can easily identify within themselves. 

In the Gospel of Mary, Mary rallies the troops, so to speak, when the disciples are in a moment of despair. She says:

“Let us praise his (Jesus’) greatness, for he has prepared us for this, He is calling upon us to become fully human.” 

To be “fully human” is a concept unfamiliar to traditional Christians and the Greek word it comes from is “anthropos.” Jean-Yves Leloup, a translator of the Gospel of Mary, describes anthropos as wholeness—complete within its form, integrated of left and right, masculine and feminine, of spirit and of earth in a state of harmony long understood by indigenous and ancient cultures.

At the end of this text, when Levi speaks up for Mary, he infers that it is through being “fully human” that the “Teacher takes root in us.” 

What if Martha was showing us that pathway all along—one where we must embrace our humanness to fully open to and connect with the divine? 

If you are accustomed to taking everything at face value, to doubt the veracity of Jesus’ words can seem sacrilegious. But what if Luke’s rendition of Jesus in this pivotal moment was wrong?

Embracing our humanity means integrating the “Martha” and the “Mary” within us, and there is no “better part” on a path to becoming whole.

Since we view Mary Magdalene as the embodiment of a great feminine spiritual story we desperately need, then Martha cannot be rejected—even if she is not physically present in certain texts we have been conditioned to believe she is in.  

Whether or not Martha is historical or figurative, she represents a facet of our humanness we must not overlook or dismiss if we are to fully heal and integrate, especially given all that has been hidden for the sake of power and control.

Ultimately, if Mary and Martha are expressions of the feminine long repressed that mirror energies within us all, then we are called to listen closely to hear these lost voices emerging from the sands of time with a story about the Love that we seek—but already are. 

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Sources

Choosing the Better Part? Women in they Gospel of Luke by Barbara E. Reid

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup

Hippolytus between East and West: The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus by J.A. Cerrato

Hippolytus’ Commentary on the Song of Songs in Social and Critical Context by Yancy Warren Smith (2009)

A homily of Gregory the Great and Mary Magdalene (Text of Homily 33) by Roger Pearse (2020)

Is Martha an Interpolation into John’s Gospel? by Tommy Wasserman, Evangelical Textual Criticism (2019)

Martha and Mary: It’s Not That Simple, by Christopher M. Bellitto, Catholic Digest

Martha: A Remarkable Disciple, by Robin Gallaher Branch, Biblical Archeological Society (2023)

Martha from the Margins: The Authority of Martha in Early Christian Tradition by Allie M. Ernst

Martha, Peter’s Equal, by Gordon Lindsay, The Bible’s in my Blood Blog (2014)

Mary or Martha?: A Duke scholar's research finds Mary Magdalene downplayed by New Testament scribes by Eric Ferreri, Duke Today (2019)

Mary the Tower by Diana Butler Bass

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume 

A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, compiled and edited by Hal Taussig

Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century? by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, Harvard Theological Review 110:3 (2017)

What do the Church Fathers say about Martha and Mary? by Nicholas Senz, Aleteia.org (2019)

Woman with the Alabaster Box by Shane Clayton, Wandering Stars

Read our full source list:

Yet—none of the four anointing scenes bears Magdalene’s name. As usual, parsing the details and examining each separately reveals clues otherwise hidden. Questions arise about who the anointing woman was, what this act indicates, and what it means in terms of Mary’s legacy. 

While many scholars would rather cleave Mary Magdalene from the anointing scenes entirely, such a pathway diminishes her potential significance. A notion supported by the ground-breaking research done by Dr. Elizabeth Schrader Polzcer, who has clearly demonstrated changes to the story of Mary of Bethany, who is the anointing woman in John long held to be the same as Magdalene. 

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In this episode, we cover:

• Untangling the details of the anointing woman to present this key scene in the scripture in a way that’s clear and digestible 

• Shining light on clues around the anointing scene and all they may reveal to us 

• Possible historical truth that links the anointing woman with rituals of high priestesses 

• Highlight research by Dr. Polzcer that shows Mary of Bethany was edited out of key scenes in the Gospel of John in the 2nd century 

• Sharing our perspective on whether or not Mary Magdalene was the anointing woman 

Learn more about The Magdalene Thread here. Subscribe on Substack for the latest episodes & essays.

A selection of sources mentioned in this episode include:

Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor by Susan Haskins

A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, compiled and edited by Hal Taussig

Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century? by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, Harvard Theological Review 110:3 (2017)

Woman with the Alabaster Box by Shane Clayton, Wandering Stars

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail by Margaret Starbird

Read our full source list here.

Subscribe at The Magdalene Thread.Substack.Com for new episodes and to read our full length articles that accompany each podcast episode—read Immaculate Deception here, with The Matter of Martha publishing next week.

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“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

—The Gospel of Luke, 11:9-10

When we choose to believe that words written and crafted by human hands come directly from the divine, and are therefore infallible, it inherently creates a knot that complicates any attempt to separate truth from fiction. 

Dare we ask:

Who wrote the books bound together as the Holy Bible? 

It is well known that the gospels modern Christians know as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were circulated as oral stories and anonymous texts for decades before being marked with the names we associate them with. Creating “the canon,” also known as the approved list of sacred texts included in the Holy Bible, was a long and very human process–politics, agendas, biases, and natural flaws included. 

Around Mary Magdalene, the pendulum swings back and forth, with a schism in the middle. 

Some of Mary’s advocates stand within the realm of Christianity and biblical scholarship–this includes a wide range of opinions from the normal dismissals of her relevance to renegade feminist scholars elevating her to new heights. Yet, many within the Church will only take their questioning and curiosity so far–there is a felt sense that if you speculate or poke holes in too much of the history and doctrine, it becomes dangerous territory. 

On the other end of the spectrum are spiritual seekers who tend to sidestep the deep murky waters that surround Christian history and the Bible itself, following other pathways of knowledge and understanding. We believe that all narratives, stories, ideas and perspectives are not only worthy of investigation, but that each holds clues and magic to uncover, even if found unseen in the margins.

The secrets we seek are hidden in the texts–all of them. Even what we wish we could dismiss holds opportunities for deeper reflection, especially when it comes to Mary Magdalene. This is why we believe that examining her portrayal in one of the most revered scriptures in Christianity–the Gospel of Luke, the only gospel to name Mary Magdalene before Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection–is essential work for any true Magdalene follower. 

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There is more than meets the eye with the author of Luke (who we will call “Luke” from here on out)–often lauded as “a friend of women” simply because this text includes more references to all women than others.

Rather than ignoring or disdaining this text, which marked Mary Magdalene with elements that led to the pernicious prostitute rumor, investigating Luke leads to a revelation of how and why Mary was diminished in the text–a potentially true story stranger than fiction.

The Infallible Four 

The question isn't who was Luke, because it is widely acknowledged that “Luke” was not the author of the gospel that bears his name. The inquiry that precedes authorship must be how and when the gospels were identified. 

Irenaeus, a Bishop of Rome based in Lyon (ancient Gaul, modern France), was the first in recorded history to mention the gospels by name–and not until 180 CE, well over a century since the death of Jesus’ and any eye witness accounts. 

This was a time of dividing the wheat from the chaff, separating heretic from true believer, and Irenaeus was one of the Church fathers leading the charge.

His five-volume work “Against the Heresies,” written around 185 CE, was a take-down of gnosticism, the early Christian school of thought that led the believer on an inner spiritual pathway. 

What is known is that the canonical gospels are not named for their actual literary authors, though they were long associated with the direct apostles of Jesus. Justin Martyr, another anti-heretical Christian writer, referred to the texts simply as apostles’ “memoirs.” Tying the apostles who followed Jesus in his lifetime to the emerging hierarchy of the Church through the sacred scriptures was a powerful way to increase clerical authority—the basis of apostolic succession.

Not only was Irenaeus the first to refer to the canonical gospels by name, he was the first to insist on four gospels being the center point to the canon–with an arguably “pagan” reason behind the number four. To him, this specific quantity of gospels represented the “four zones of the world in which we live” and “four principal winds”–ideas that connect to more ancient concepts, such as the four directions and the four elements of creation. 

Ireneaus insisted Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, above all the other gospels circulating, were perfect truth–specifically when held all together. He rejected the use of individual gospels calling it heresy, for example the Valentinian gnostic’s preference of the Gospel of John and the Marcionite use of a “mutilated” version of Luke. 

Irenaeus was right on one count: when you disentangle the four gospel stories’ from one another, carefully evaluating each one and all its unique idiosyncrasies, the truth emerges naturally–the one he perhaps intended to hide. When it comes to Mary Magdalene’s legacy, two canonical gospels stand out, above the rest: John* and Luke. 

Luke’s name came to rest on this text for the first time in Irenaeus’ own writing, a full century after most scholars believe this gospel was initially recorded on papyrus. 

If Luke wasn’t the true name of the gospel’s writer, who penned this well-crafted and highly impactful canonical gospel?

Every author has a lens through which their work is filtered, conscious and unconscious, and often with a specific intention and agenda. Revealing what we can about who “Luke” was illuminates the landscape from which this gospel—so impactful to Mary Magdalene’s legacy, emerged from. 

Paging Doctor Truth

Contemplating the possibilities on who Luke’s author was leads us into a deeper mystery, because the version of this gospel we have now is in a form different from the original. Following this trail, you end up within the niche realms of biblical scholarship, where fluency in Greek is required, and experts spend years holding every text side-by-side, including gospels you have never even heard of. 

Marcion, one of the leading gnostic Christian thinkers of the second century, had a gospel of his own most often referred to as the “Gospel of the Lord” or the “Gospel of Marcion.” In fact, he was the very first to create his own “canon” collection of texts, which included his preferred gospel and eleven of Paul’s letters–and excluded the Old Testament. 

One of the pressing questions for scholars in this field centers around whose gospel came first: Marcion’s, Mark’s or Luke’s—an inquiry part and parcel in the quest to understand who copied whom. 

This is a rabbit hole of ancient intrigue, the kind that surrounds Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, in that the truth–if we are honest–is something we can never fully know.

What surfaces from the swirl of the unknown is that the gospels we have now are later versions of the originals. These books were born of stories and ideas first spoken, then written down, then copied and edited, moving through a long list of (masculine) hands. 

The primary author of Luke, as we know the gospel today, seems to be a well-educated gentile (non-Jewish) Christian who was writing for a predominantly Gentile community using Greco-Roman literary forms. He** admits, in the text, that he was not an eyewitness to the events he accounts, while emphasizing the care with which he has investigated the tradition that he passes on. 

There has long been speculation about whether Luke’s author was one in the same with “Luke the beloved physician” mentioned in Colossians, one of Paul’s letters in the Bible. It is true that Luke expands on descriptions of illnesses in healing stories in a way that is unique, and that some manuscripts of this gospel lack the derogatory comments in Mark about doctors. Another complication to the Luke-as-physician claim is that Colossians was not written by the Paul himself. Thus, the case for certainty on this possibility of “Dr. Luke’s” authorship is not strong. 

Acts of the Apostles, the book of the Bible directly following the gospels, is generally believed to be written by the same author as Luke. This opens another realm of possibilities about who Luke’s author may have been, but conviction remains elusive upon a closer examination of Acts itself, which is a veritable “can of worms.” 

While Acts claims to tell its tales on the apostles in the years after Jesus’ death from a seat of great authority–being written by a traveling companion of Paul, many have pointed out that its narrative simply does not stand up to examination.

This argument is built on a long list of reasons, leading scholars believe that Acts is an entirely fictional account. It must be stated that Acts of the Apostles was one of many in the same genre of literature from this time period–including The Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Thomas—the list goes on. 

This is the kind of nitty-gritty work that happens when you step foot in the territory of the authorship question. All the points are wobbly in and of themselves when you take into account the cultural context and scribal translations.

Yet, this conversation holds juicy details about the true messiness of early Christianity—how little we actually know and how prominent figures that stand cloaked in mystery may have been instrumental in the creation process of the Bible we now have.

Accurately Anew

To stand on more solid ground, it’s important to know that while Luke is usually grouped with Mark and Matthew, and referred to as the “synoptics,” it is very different in tone, style, and content–especially the treatment of women and Mary Magdalene. 

Most scholars believe Luke relied on Mark as one of his primary sources, yet there are 230 sayings common to Luke and Matthew, but absent from Mark. Many experts also believe that the gospel authors used a hypothetical written source dubbed “Q,” but it seems as though Luke had sources unique to him, including a potential document referred to as “L.”

It is clear that the Gospel of Luke is not the product of pasting together material from other sources. Rather, it was carefully composed to convey the good news of Jesus Christ and shaped with a particular audience in mind.

Precision was his stated intention, expressed specifically in the first lines of the gospel that he undertook the project with the aim of “investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence.” 

By ancient standards, Luke is an excellent historian. Although he was likely a gentile, he layers in context about Judaism and ancient Hebrew people that brings Jesus’ story to life and honors the culture it emerged from. Luke’s vocabulary and literary style indicate a refined education, with arguably the highest mastery of the Greek language seen across New Testament texts. Moreover, Luke is a skilled storyteller, who crafted his narration with the desire to console, guide, and challenge his faith communities, especially common people. 

Many of the most famous stories of Jesus are unique to Luke’s account–such as Jesus’ infancy, from the Annunciation of his birth to his Mother Mary and (aunt) Elizabeth to the events that play out in the Christmas story. Tales of impact and legacy that are found in Luke only include the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector and the Rich Man and Lazarus. This gospel holds a wide cast of characters, with over a hundred unique individuals showing up throughout, from high ranking aristocrats and rulers like the Herod family to crowds full of ordinary people–fisherman and farmers. 

Stories are staggeringly powerful and arguably shape the world we live in, wrapped as we are daily in our minds of beliefs and thought. Narratives give form to our imagination, finding expression in literature, art, and everyday conversations.

As the famous saying goes, history is written by the victors—but it’s the compelling storytellers that stand out above them all. 

Across the landscape of Western and religious history of mankind, Luke easily reaches the heights of one of the most famous and talented storytellers. Even standing alone, without the rest of the Bible, his words craft a vivid picture of Jesus’ life and character, told in a way that evokes our senses and emotions. To this day, rituals, beliefs, and practices at the heart of Christianity derive heavily from Luke’s interpretation of the story.

One unique aspect of Luke has been explored by feminist scholars in recent years, and that illuminates Mary Magdalene, is the portrayal of women. 

Luke is known for bringing scenes in Jesus' life into sharper detail, bringing forth names, origin stories, and legacies left fuzzy in other accounts. Women appear more in his gospel than any other text in the New Testament.

The question arises, especially with a feminine lens: what was Luke’s intention around how his narrative wove in the women in Jesus' life? 

What does his account, so “thoughtfully” written by such an adept reality-crafter, offer for the female figures, and women’s agency, authority, and equality? 

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Quality Not Quantity 

On the surface, Luke’s quantity of women seems to point towards a positive inclination of the feminine. He mentions 13 women not spoken of elsewhere in the Bible. He includes lengthy scenes between women, such as the annunciation to Mother Mary and the exchange between the sisters of Bethany. He frames women and men together. In 18 different places, Luke adds a woman to a scene where there is only a man present in Mark’s gospel.

If Luke was focused on accuracy, lauding his own attention to detail, and more highly educated than all other gospel writers, then what does this mean for his inclusion of women? 

A natural assumption, based on Luke’s stated depth of research, would be that he was factually accurate–women had a prominent role in Jesus’ story. The following thought would be: Luke must have had access to other sources with more women included that the other gospel writers did not have—or chose to exclude.

It is well known that books of the Bible were often written to answer lingering questions in the centuries after Jesus’ death about what happened and what we should believe about it all. This “question answering” mission was the primary intention clear in all of Paul’s letters—and the church Father’s own tomes.

What if the Gospel of Luke was crafted to answer this question of the role and place of women in this new religion? If we read it that way, subtly, what do we find out? 

What we do know is that with the abundance of women in Luke, this gospel has been fundamental to how women have been viewed and treated throughout Christian history—and Western civilization for the past 2,000 years. Thanks to the depth of scholarship by courageous feminist theologians, the truth has risen to the top. Namely, that Luke’s perspective on women has been problematic and damaging from the very beginning.

Truth is scarce in this arena, but we can gather clues in unexpected places if we follow this trail.

This brings us back to Marcion again. Marcion’s gospel hints that original material used by Luke’s author, or possibly an older version of Luke itself, placed women in an even more positive role. Writes scholar Markus Vinzent, “​​The move from [Marcion’s gospel] to Luke highlights a shift from the authoritative role of women to that of men at the expense of women.” 

Vinzent points out that Luke differs from Marcion in subtle ways. Luke minimizes the connection between Jesus and “two women,” who are later identified as none other than Mary Magdalene and Joanna. Further, there are contrasting elements between Marcion and Luke’s gospels accounts of the female resurrection witnesses. Writes Vinzent, ”Luke seems to need Peter to confirm the story of the empty tomb, which reduces the standing of women as witnesses even further.” 

This is brushing the surface–as we are certain that even more hidden puzzle pieces exist in the mysterious muddle of biblical scholarship around Luke and women.

The “devil” is in the details and thankfully, renegade feminist scholars over the last few decades have worked to uncover the truth about Luke’s women with grit and brilliance. 

Scholar Mary Rose D’Angelo points out, beyond the infancy narratives, where Mother Mary and Elizabeth appear as passive, submissive vessels, no woman speaks in Luke, except to be corrected by Jesus. Throughout Jesus’ stories in Luke, even though women appear as part of the scenes, they do not bear responsibility within the movement, notes Jane Schaberg. Luke’s women are never actively preaching, teaching, healing, or praying, instead, they are silent and receptive, having “chosen the better part,” writes Barbara Reid in her book by the same name. 

What, then, are the features Luke documents around Mary Magdalene—and how have they impacted her legacy?

Naming Magdalene 

Let us return to Pope Gregory’s thesis and untangle it. As we shared in The Greatest Lie Ever Told, on why he painted Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, Gregory said in Homily 33, 591 AD: “We believe that this woman [Mary Magdalen] is Luke's female sinner, the woman John calls Mary, and that Mary from whom Mark says seven demons were cast out." 

Although there are three separate characters here (and he references three different gospels), the entire case he builds for “Mary as prostitute,” and all of her accused negative attributes are derived from Luke’s account, solely. 

It is important to briefly address Mark and then John before focusing on Luke’s sinner and Mary Magdalene.

Though Gregory references Mark as the gospel associating Mary with “the seven demons,” this reference to Mary in Mark comes from a curious part of the gospel—the added endings. Most scholars agree that Mark originally ended at verse 16:8. Meaning that Mark 16:9 where it states “when Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons” was tacked on later, likely copied from Luke.

Gregory references “the woman John calls Mary”—this is Mary of Bethany who is never explicitly called Magdalene found in the gospels of John and Luke, but with differing stories. Tradition at the time held that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene, a point of contention debated by scholars to this day, and one we will address in depth in future writing.

Gregory includes Mary of Bethany, who he and his audience believes is the same as Magdalene, because Mary of Bethany is John’s anointing woman. What Gregory is trying to do is to draw a direct line between Mary Magdalene, John’s anointing woman Mary of Bethany, and Luke’s anointing woman, known as “the sinner.” 

To return to Luke—we find Mary Magdalene associated with negativity, off the bat. In Luke 8, it is written that there are “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases” following Jesus, including “Mary called Magdalene from whom seven demons had come out.” But to the ancients, “demons” did not mean “sins” explicitly—there are many possibilities to this term.

Demons could have meant an illness, a poison, or a purification initiation of high spiritual authority, especially given the sacrality of the number 7. Whatever Luke meant by the inclusion of this label, it was amplified by Mark’s forged ending, a negative connotation stuck that followed Mary Magdalene.

Many do not realize that the “seven deadly sins” do not exist in the Bible—just like “Mary as prostitute.” Rather, these were ideas floating around in early Christianity formally codified into doctrine by none other than our Gregory. 

The Sinner Who “Loved” The Most 

It is significant that the reference in Luke 8 to Mary Magdalene and her “seven demons” directly follows the ending of Luke 7, where he tells the story of the unnamed sinner who anointed Jesus as Christ.

Yes, “Christ” means “anointed one,” which is why we must pay attention to these anointing scenes and women in particular. Many believers and even scholars gloss over the discrepancies between the four anointing stories. A sacred ritual enacted by a woman across the canonical gospels, it is a significant moment in which the smallest details hold the shiniest treasure–in Luke, especially. 

Gregory, for one, takes the feature of Luke’s story of the anointing woman and expands upon them, generously. 

The holy oil the woman uses for anointing Christ becomes perfume in Gregory’s eyes, used to “give her flesh a pleasant odor.” Her demonstration of love becomes “coveted earthly eyes” and her show of devotion “penitence.” A detailed read of Homily 33 borders on eroticism in the way Gregory spins the components of Luke 8 into the lies that would follow Mary Magdalene for 1400 years, mirroring the Song of Songs, a romantic poem of the Old Testament long associated with her and Jesus. 

If we step back for a moment and question the entire scene, the obvious issues become apparent. 

Why would such a sacred act as the anointing of Jesus as “Christ” be done by an anonymous woman, let alone a “sinner”? Is this not a ritual performance reserved for male priests or other more favored apostles? With such a great value to this moment in Jesus’ story, why would she remain nameless in Luke, Mark, and Matthew?

How does her anonymity pair with the fact that in Mark and Matthew Jesus proclaims of the anointing woman: “throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her”? 

Gregory does not seem to mind that in Luke’s text, Jesus defends and forgives her, a subtle foreshadowing to his ultimate act of forgiveness on the cross. Jesus says, “therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” The person he is addressing in this scene is another crucial clue—only in Luke, Jesus speaks about the anointing woman directly to Peter, the apostle who founded the Church.

As Reid points out, this section of the text had no title in the original Greek version, but later English Bibles have never failed to mark it with words highlighting the negative qualities of the anointer. Why, asks Reid, would we not perceive this woman the way Jesus did? A most accurate description of Luke 8, when perceived with eyes of compassion, might be “A Woman Who Shows Great Love.” 

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Hidden in Plain Sight 

When we shift our perspective to the positive around the anointing woman, Mary or not, it breathes new life into an old story that makes it hard to overlook the problematic nature of Luke’s narrative.

Again, the minute aspects of a story that are easy to gloss over are where the author’s beliefs about women—and possibly Mary herself—come into sharper focus. 

Small details stand out, like how in every other canonical gospel Mary Magdalene is noted by name to be present at the crucifixion, except in Luke which leaves her and all specific female names out. But there is another anointing scene in the gospels that is arguably more important, in which Jesus’ followers go looking for his body and find that he has been resurrected, and it ties to all of this.

If read holistically, the anointing woman scene foreshadows what’s to come in a very direct sense.

In Matthew, Mark and John, the anointing woman is referred to as the one who will perform the burial anointing after Jesus death. Luke omits this detail—the burial anointing is not mentioned in the anointing scene, standing in stark contrast to the other three gospels. However, Luke does name Mary Magdalene as one of the women at the burial anointing and amongst the women receive the “good news” of Jesus rising from the two men at the tomb, presumably angels. 

For a skilled storyteller, this is a curious discrepancy from two gospels that most scholars believe are earlier. Matthew and Mark have Jesus himself saying that the anonymous anointing woman will prepare him for his burial—and none other than Mary Magdalene is who shows up to do the burial anointing in Luke’s own account. 

This connection was not ignored by the first Christians—it is likely a significant reason that Pope Gregory assumed that Mary Magdalene was one in the same with the anointing woman and Mary of Bethany. 

A final detail to note in this burial scene—in Luke’s gospel, when Mary Magdalene and the women have received the good news, they are not believed by the other apostles, “because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” For Luke, it was only when Peter ran to the tomb that their circle began to understand what had occurred to Jesus’ body and spirit. No mention of the women’s inadequate word is recorded by the authors of Matthew, Mark, or John. 

As the evidence piles up, it becomes clear how feminist scholars like Barbara Reid have concluded that when it comes to women, Luke is “ambiguous at best, dangerous at worst.”

Even in spite of this, the framework in Luke remains open for anyone with a positive lens on Mary Magdalene to reimagine her, if willing to transcend the conditioning of the belief systems we have been given.

Magic in the Margins 

Swinging the pendulum as far as possible is the common response when we have realizations about an idea or story we once held to be true to us. How easy would it be to blame and vilify the author of Luke for the negativity surrounding Mary Magdalene and the minimization of women in the Church? 

Feminist theologians have done a beautiful job of balancing the harder truths with a liberationist approach to hermeneutics—a fancy way to say that it's possible to empower women without throwing away the text, and with it all the positive culture, traditions, beliefs, and stories it contains in it. 

While it is traditionally taboo to question the veracity of the Bible in this way–to ask questions about the intention and imperfection of stories first held in people’s memories, then spoken in communities, and eventually captured and woven into scripture. 

Yet, when we consider the pathway the story of Jesus would have taken in a practical way, with a human lens, another possibility arises. 

What if earlier oral traditions, that may or may not have made it into text, held positive portrayals of all women across Jesus’ story?

As depicted in the earliest Christian art and non-canonical literature, women were active leaders in sharing the good news with communities across the Levant, Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, even into Western Europe—as we discussed in Goodness in the Garden and Women Sex & Sin.

What if the quantity of women described in Luke’s narrative is a remnant of this truth?

Could it be that while the women were not completely erased, a sketch remains though their goodness and mastery redacted from the story? 

We recognize that this is a possibility that sits on the fringes, or margins, of Christian thought. So often we turn away from questions like these out of fear that opening up to other historical narratives might suck all the good out of our cherished beliefs and stories.

The magic Luke creates is undeniable—from his synchronistic conception scenes followed to the precious humility of the nativity, the birth of a king into unexpected circumstances. Careful analysis does not need to negate all the good so many find in this gospel, and any of the other biblical stories.

Every single one of us has a lens on the truth—it is natural that we narrate the plot of our lives through a perspective colored with beliefs and experiences. We only deceive ourselves and others when we fail to take that filter into consideration in our own unique processes of discernment.

If we choose to remain bound by the perfection of what we are told is the only allowable truth, we miss the opportunity to cultivate compassion and gain wisdom from what we find in the messy margins of this human story.

To greet new perspectives on Mary Magdalene, we must enter this liminal space and the potential these realizations have to bring us on a trail of discovery where there is magic at every turn.

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*John’s portrayal of Mary Magdalene we will begin to dive into next week!

**We use the word “he” here, as another way to refer to Luke’s author, but it’s imperative to note that the gospels may have been written by groups of authors. This is a common theory around John’s gospel. Irregardless of it simply being another possibility, the truth is that all the gospels were written by many people in that each was edited, redacted, and naturally influenced by the scribes who copied them over time. This too we’ll discuss more in depth in our next article.

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Source List

Against Heresies, St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Choosing the Better Part? Women in they Gospel of Luke by Barbara E. Reid

Did Paul Write Colossians? by Bart Ehrman (2020)

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Gospels are Finally Named! Irenaeus of Lyons by Bart Ehrman (2014)

A homily of Gregory the Great and Mary Magdalene (Text of Homily 33) by Roger Pearse (2020)

How We Know Acts Is a Fake History by Richard Carrier (2023)

Holy Women in Early Christianity by Markus Vinzent (2021)

Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz

Mary Magdalene and the Women Disciples in the Gospel of Luke By Barbara Reid

A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, compiled and edited by Hal Taussig

The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament by Jane Schaberg

So: Was Luke Luke? by Bart Ehrman (2020)

What is distinctive about Luke’s gospel? by Ian Paul (2021)

Read our full source list, updated regularly, here:

Names, as cloaks of identity, greatly influence how we think of others, especially when it comes to figures in history. “Magdalene” has been shrouded in mystery since the very beginning, sometimes dismissed as a simple footnote, and at others elevated as a point of reverence.

Here, we peel back the layers, examining each theory of what “Magdalene”—and “Mary”—might mean, syllable by syllable. This is a process that inspires curiosity and leads to a larger question, arguably the most essential one in all of religion: what is allegorical and what is literal? 

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In this episode, we cover:

• All the competing theories on what “Magdalene” means, from the city on the Sea of Galilee to an honorific title

• How Mary Magdalene may be linked to ancient prophecy and what her name has to do with that

• What her name has to do with Mary’s connection to Egypt and priestesses

• How Mary’s name ties her to a famous Biblical poem that is very ancient, and connected to the goddess

Learn more about The Magdalene Thread here. Subscribe on Substack for the latest episodes & essays.

A selection of sources mentioned in this episode include:

Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile by Margaret Starbird 

Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor by Susan Haskins

Mary Magdalene's Turn: Text Criticism and Reception History of John 20:16 by Michael Peppard, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (2020)

Mary the Tower by Diana Butler Bass

The Meaning of 'Magdalene': A Review of Literary Evidence by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer & Joan Taylor, Journal of Biblical Literature140:4 (2021)

Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century? by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, Harvard Theological Review 110:3 (2017)

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail by Margaret Starbird

Read our full source list here.

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So thank you, we are so glad you’re here, and if there is anyone else you believe would enjoy this treasure trove on Mary Magdalene, we would love for you to share it with them.

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“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...”

- Jesus Christ in The Gospel of Mary 

In the garden, Eve wielded her free will by making a choice–a choice that Christian doctrine deemed negative, solely. The way the “fall” of humanity was tied to Eve, and all women, was a masterful revision of a much more ancient story about the connection between nature and feminine divinity. Eve and her choice–from knowledge to the serpent–became associated with the source of sin, shame, and even evil. 

“Heresy” literally means choice–derived from the Greek word “hairesis.” From the earliest days of Christianity, this word was one of judgment, pointed at those who failed to conform to what the emerging Church believed to be good and right. 

In the eyes of the Church–ancient and modern–when we consciously choose to listen to our inner voice, emotions, intuition, discernment, we are being a “heretic.” Choosing to listen to ourselves, over outside authority, means that we take on a new level of responsibility and step into the unknown. This is a space that can feel uncomfortable and even scary–this place of mystery is also that of possibility. 

Here, you begin to question–what do I believe? 

A higher perspective becomes all the more complex as listening within brings new insights to light. This type of revelation was mirrored by the discoveries of early Christian scriptures found in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Divine timing, and advancements in archeology, illuminated a treasure trove of information that had been lost for almost 2,000 years—including The Gospel of Mary, Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi.

This body of work belonged to ancient heretics–and the loss of their texts was not accidental. Scrolls hidden in jars by monks, so as not to be burned, were recovered centuries later, revealing wisdom and ideas that sent shockwaves through the Christian world. 

Who was featured prominently in many of these key heretical texts? Mary Magdalene, as in them she was portrayed as a teacher, leader, visionary, favored apostle–possibly even “koinonos” (partner) of Jesus Christ.

This new awareness of Mary Magdalene amplified key aspects of her story that existed in the “approved” canonical texts, in which Mary is witness to the resurrection and present at key moments in the life of Jesus. Holding all these facets of Mary together, including a gospel in her name, makes it crystal clear that Mary had a “right” to high spiritual authority in Christianity–possibly rivaling that of Peter.  

However, power is not what Mary was after (at least not if you read into these texts). Mary Magdalene exemplified “gnosis,” which is an inner spiritual pathway for connecting with God, where no outer authority is needed. This gnostic way was problematic, to say the least, for the movement to create one, holy, catholic*, and apostolic Church, with a capital C.

A Credible Witness 

In today’s age when true crime series are among the most popular media, it is common knowledge that the witness is key–and must be highly credible. According to the gospels, when it comes to the mysterious circumstances of Jesus’ death–a messy trial, a brutal punishment, a missing body–Mary Magdalene was the witness in question. 

This is it–Mary’s prominence as a witness to Jesus’ resurrection was the primary reason she could not be erased entirely. As convenient as it may have been to edit Mary out, she was needed to support the narrative of the resurrection story. The Church’s solution for how to handle Mary Magdalene, and all that surrounded her, was formed over centuries, eventually crystalized under Pope Gregory the Great in his Homily 33 in 591 CE. Enter the greatest lie ever told, a narrative crafted to legitimize and diminish her, simultaneously: Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. 

Still, in the canonical texts lay an inconvenient truth: Mary, who despite being a woman, qualified for the highest level of authority under their own criteria for apostle. 

An apostle, or disciple, was considered one of the inner circle of Jesus Christ. It is from this lineage that the Church rests their claim to power and authority. The technical term is “apostolic succession”: the teaching that bishops represent a direct, uninterrupted line of continuity from the first Apostles of Jesus Christ.  

Acts of the Apostles–a canonical text that many believe was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke–states the criteria that must be met for a follower to be an apostle. Based on Acts, a case can be made for Mary Magdalene meeting these standards. But, when the heretical texts such as the Gospel of Mary and Gospel of Phillip are brought into play, the argument for Mary as apostle grows exponentially.

There is one aspect, though, to apostolic succession that stands out among the rest: to witness Jesus in the immediate days following his resurrection. Even then, there was a catch.

Among the early Jesus movement, there was a vast spread in perspectives on how the death and resurrection of Jesus happened and what it meant. The orthodox (or emerging Church) view was literalist: they believed that Jesus’ resurrection happened with his full human body supernaturally rising to heaven.  

The orthodox perspective was that “Jesus himself had come back to life,” Elaine Pagels writes in her compelling case for why this is the linchpin of Church authority. As she describes in The Gnostic Gospels, a literal interpretation of the resurrection event was the primary link between Jesus Chrsit and the authority of the “worldwide organization that developed within 170 years of his death into a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons.”

However, this was only one end of the spectrum, when it comes to theories surrounding what the resurrection meant to early Jesus followers, namely the gnostics perspective, which connects back to Mary Magdalene. The competing perspectives on the details of Jesus’ resurrection were the primary reason why these heretics were not just dismissed, but destroyed in order to protect the literal version of this key story–and the power it created. 

Gnosticism 101 

Gnosticism is perhaps as misunderstood as Mary Magdalene, both inextricably connected to how certain narratives and voices won out in the long battle of history. 

Who were the gnostics? 

This is a challenging question given that for centuries, all we knew about these early Jesus followers was filtered through the lens of their harshest critics–the Church fathers, creators of the orthodox doctrine. Even the term itself is controversial. “Gnostic” is one of those blanket words that in one sense captures the essence of its subject perfectly–and in another, it is wide enough to cause confusion to the point of infamy. 

What does gnostic mean? 

Quite accurately, the philosophers, theologians, and practitioners who fall under the gnostic category are focused on “gnosis,” a Greek word that means knowledge. It is a specific sort of knowledge, as Pagels writes: “gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge — rather it’s intuitive insight through observation or experience.” 

The gnostics believe connecting with God is a personal pathway where the journey is the destination. While the means and methods may differ from group to group, the intention of all gnosistic methods are (Pagels again) “to know thyself, at the deepest level, is to know God… this is the secret of gnosis.” 

Gnosticism is not unique to Christianity. This form of spiritual practice that highlights the individual's experience with the divine can be traced all the way back indigenous practices across cultures, geographies, and timelines–a story for another day. 

What do Christian gnostics believe?

Gnostic expert Pagels identifies the following shared core beliefs: 

• God was both male and female;

• God is in each and every person;

• Jesus did not suffer on the cross; 

• Life is not a battle against sin, but of the lies of this world; 

• And lastly, that resurrection of Jesus was spiritual, not physical.

If one word needed to be used to describe the gnostics, it would be mystery. 

Mystery surrounds them–in that there is so much we do not know about them, and how mystery sits at the very center of their teachings, as a philosophical and spiritual practice of communing with Life’s enigma. This element of gnosticism transcends Christianity. For thousands of years–there have always been religious groups with “mystery traditions” in which some had access to higher, secret teachings, usually enacted through ritual. 

Still, the ultimate heresy of the gnostics was not the pathway within and how this inherently subverted the power of the emerging Church’s authority. It wasn’t Mary Magdalene’s portrayal, or the way gnostic communities tended to uphold women teaching, preaching, and baptizing. The nail in the proverbial coffin was the gnostic belief in a spiritual and metaphysical interpretation of the resurrection–rather than the literal tradition that became the backbone of orthodox theology. 

The “faith of fools” is how The Gospel of Phillip, referred to the idea that Jesus rose from the dead with his literal body. As wild as it might seem, there are gnostic texts where Jesus doesn’t die at all, including the First Revelation of James. Crazier still, this idea that Jesus did not die is corroborated by none other than a very holy text of an entirely separate religion–the Qu’ran. 

For the gnostics, resurrection happens while one is living–a belief that aligns with ritual practices of other more ancient mystery traditions. 

In Body or Spirit? 

With all these competing perspectives around this pivotal event of Jesus’ Christ legacy, we might ask: why did orthodox Christians double down on a literal view of the resurrection and reject all other beliefs as heretical? 

As usual, it had to do with power. Pagels believes that this doctrine specifically–of a literal resurrection–serves as the basis of papal authority to this day stating, “the doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves an an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter.” 

Gnostic Christians, who did not interpret the resurrection as a physical event had a lesser claim to authority, Pagels says. But this begs the question: why was the Church hedging this strongly against a metaphysical interpretation of the resurrection event? 

There is a very specific and little discussed reason why the Church felt it necessary to consolidate and differentiate the details of Jesus’ resurrection: he was far from the first resurrected god-man.

Stories about deities that die, descend to the underworld, and return with higher levels of divinity had been told for millennia before Jesus Christ, across cultures and gender lines. To go back even further in the historical record, the very first story of a resurrected deity was that of Inanna of Sumeria. Inanna is the first goddess in the written record, the original “Queen of Heaven” a title later bestowed on other goddesses, and eventually Mother Mary. 

Often, if not always, the religions that contained divine death and resurrection narratives had “mystery traditions,” in which the initiates went through rituals that acted out elements of these stories. In mystery schools, initiates enacted rituals we see in the gospels, like baptism and resurrection. Initiates would symbolically “die” to their lower nature and be spiritually reborn in divine essence–not unlike how many indigenous traditions believe shamans must die on some level to access higher realms of spiritual wisdom. 

This was the culture that had surrounded the Hebrew people for hundreds of years by the time of Jesus, from Osiris in Egypt, to Dionysus in Greco-Rome, to Marduk in Babylon, all deities with resurrection stories. Putting these puzzle pieces together, it begins to make sense why the narrative surrounding the death and rising of Jesus Christ needed to transcend all the others. To stand out and gain traction, every element of Jesus’ story had to be extraordinary in order to reflect his ultimate divine power.

The same metaphorical interpretation Christian gnostics applied throughout their theology was behind how they regarded Jesus’ resurrection. For them, Jesus rising was a spiritual event that reflected the divine potential of all of his followers. 

Indeed, the gnostic view that resurrection was a spiritual event aligned with and possibly explained one key method of gnosis–visionary insight. In the Gospel of Mary, the Apocalypse of Peter, arguably the Gospel of John and even the book of Revelation, the resurrected Jesus appears and shares teachings in his apostles’ visions–in the mind's eye, not the body’s.

It begins to all make sense–why the gnostics would not have believed in a literal resurrection, why they would not have cared for external power structures of authority. Connecting with the divine, for them, was a sovereign experience, with Jesus accessible at all times through inner vision. As the Gospel of Phillip describes this egalitarian outlook: “whoever is reborn of the Heavenly Father and heavenly Mother becomes a whole person again… holy down to the very body… for this person is no longer a Christian, but a Christ.” 

So if apostolic authority was tied to a literal resurrection in the eyes of the nascent Church, the gnostics, for lack of a better term, didn't care. This philosophical posture would naturally put Jesus Christ's legacy along the same lines of earlier resurrected divinities of other cultures–which is a key reason why the gnostic view of the resurrection was flawed and even dangerous in the eyes of literalist orthodox theology. 

This divide is what separated the orthodox from heretics, exterior from interior, literal from figurative, known from unknown. Gnosticism’s power stemmed from its disinterest in control and oppression–yet what made this contrary ideology unique, and empowering on an individual level, is what left it open for criticism.

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Reframing Dualism

Until the revelations of gnostic texts in the last hundred years (or so), all we had were critical accounts written by Irenaeus, Tertullian, the early Church Fathers attacking the leaders of the gnostic movement, namely Marcion of Sinope and Valentinus of Rome. 

Marcion was a groundbreaking leader in Christianity. He was the first to put forward a potential “canon,” eleven books total, consisting of a selection of Paul’s letters and a gospel of his own called The Gospel of the Lord, that was a shorter (and possibly more true to the original) version of Luke. He was highly popular–another critic of his, Justin Martyr, wrote that Marcion influenced that he “caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies.”

Marcion’s canon left out a group of books that came to dominate the orthodox Bible–the Hebrew scriptures that Christians call “the Old Testament.” To Marcion, there were clear differences between the God that Jesus’ described, “the Father,” and the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh. Mattias Klinghardt, the preeminent scholar on Marcion, describes how difficult it is to determine the truth about this figure who became a lightning rod as the Church struggled to establish itself: “Marcion’s portrayal, therefore, demands utmost caution.” 

This level of care is necessary with all of gnosticism, including the leader Valentinus of Rome. Trained in Alexandria, Pagels describes him as a man held in the highest esteem during his lifetime, no matter the controversy: “even his enemies spoke of him as a brilliant and eloquent man: his admirers revered him as a poet and spiritual master.” Some believe that it was Valentinus’ himself who penned the pivotal gnostic texts The Gospel of Truth and The Gospel of Phillip. 

Valentinian gnostics are believed to have practiced an initiation, reminiscent of other mystery traditions, that catalyzed them into the desired state of gnosis. Pagels describes the beliefs behind this process:

“Achieving gnosis involves coming to recognize the true source of divine power–namely, “the depth” of all being. Whoever has come to know that source simultaneously comes to know himself and discovers his spiritual origin: he has come to know his true Father and Mother.”

Once this level of “gnosis” was achieved, the initiate received the sacrament of “redemption,” whereby they were released from the “sphere of judgment” of the lesser earthly deity called “the demiurge.”  Spoken aloud, the initiate would declare spiritual independence, stating: “I am the son of the Father–the Father who is preexistent…I derive from Him who is preexistent, and I come again to my own place whence I came forth.”

“Dualism,” as much of gnostic thought has been labeled, was not about polarity–it was about the transcendence attained by moving beyond not only the spiritual forces of division and control, but the human ones too. However, the rejection of the Old Testament law and texts was too much for the orthodox tradition, which took steps increasingly over the centuries to identify and stamp out gnostic heretics.

Power of Words

Even if the gnostic leaders fell short of apostolic succession due to their lack of belief in a literal resurrection, a position in the hierarchy they did not want anyway, their beliefs and texts continued to spread ideas that (at best) poked holes in and (at worst) destroyed the Church’s claim to power. 

It is difficult to cut someone–or many–out of a system they do not desire to exist within. This reality infuriated the early Church fathers who believed that priests and bishops were there to rule “in God’s place,” railing against the personal pathway of gnosis.  

On the one hand, the Church fathers saw the gnostic teachings as arrogant and irreverent, as Tertullian complained: “every one of them (gnostics), just as it suits his own temperament, modifies the traditions he has received, just as the one who handed them down modified them, when he shaped them according to his own will.”

Where the orthodox leaders saw “danger to clerical authority” (Iraneaus), the gnostics saw their hierarchy as an empty desire “to command one another; outrivaling one another in empty ambition” (The Tripartite Tractate). The gnostics scoffed at the Church leaders who “name themselves bishop, and also deacon, as if they had received their authority from god,” snidely calling them “waterless canals” who do not understand mystery, in the Apocalypse of Peter. 

Eventually the gnostic texts were outlawed, buried, and burned, but before then, the emerging Church made an even more decisive power play against them. No, the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE did not create the canon–the list of books that are in the Holy Bible, but it did create the Creed–specifically to screen and stamp out the heretics. 

To this day confusion around this abounds and while the details of what happened may be cited incorrectly often, the energetic truth is correct: the intention of the Council of Nicaea was to stamp out the heretics, not through what was written, but what was spoken.

Let’s separate truth from fiction.

The Council of Nicaea was a real event, in Turkey, in 325 CE, initiated by the Emperor Constantine. Yes, Constantine I did convert to and decriminalize Christianity in his lifetime, but he did not crack down on pagans in one fell swoop. The canon, the list of books in the Holy Bible, was not created at this Council event–in fact, the Bible was not created through pure inspiration or conspiracy. It was humanly debated in a process that happened over centuries, and the Bible was not formally affirmed until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  

What did happen at the Council of Nicaea was the creation of the Nicean Creed: the formalization of a spoken ritualistic pledge of faith with the direct intention to consolidate power and eliminate heretics. Namely, the gnostic Marcionites and the Valentinians. 

Spellbound  

To ancient people, and arguably all humans, oral rituals were more potent and powerful than those written in a text. 

The idea of a creed, words spoken in unison during spiritual worship, was not new to Nicaea or Christianity. This religious practice is as old as humanity itself, with modern anthropological and psychological science shedding light on the mechanics of why the Nicene Creed would have been such a turning point. 

A mystical, but scientifically supported truth is that religion, spirituality, and belief in supernatural forces is natural to human consciousness. Evolutionary psychologists believe that being highly sensitive to patterns, seen and unseen, would have enabled early humans to gain information about the world that supported survival. If belief in the power of what we cannot see but only sense is inherently human, then stories are the innate way we hold and express these beliefs, with rituals the primal way we embody them. 

Mythical storytelling is how we make sense of the ideas that sit in the space between what we can explain and what we cannot, the known and unknowable. Ritual is the way we create a sense of safety and community that brings these ideas to life. We are wired for belonging, with positive emotions broadening and building our cognition and connection to one another according to psychological science. Ritual is a powerful tool for how we have coalesced the tribe, invoking and creating sustained group cohesion. 

The Nicene Creed, based on the older Apostles & Roman creeds, is spoken with a rhythm, in unison, as a profession of faith in worship services. It begins, “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth” and ends with an affirmation of the resurrection, concluding with “and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end.” 

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In the positive, rituals are known to be calming, allowing us to reach more transcendental states of awareness, feeling closer to the divine (Bronislaw Malinowski). But there is also a cadence of unity to ritual and repetition created with an exercise like the Creed that comes with negative aspects. For example, marching in a drill is known to “inculcate automatic unthinking obedience” in soldiers so they can go farther and longer together in unison (William H. McNeill). 

There is a reason that words spoken in a certain way have been called “spells.” 

Where does the line end and begin, between transcendental community experience and mindless group cohesion? 

If we turn to the Creed, there is one key line added later–at the Second Ecumenical Council of 381 CE, placed there for a specific intention: we believe “In one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”

Rituals like this have long been how humans judge and understand one another in order to identify their “own.” This is exactly how and why the Nicene Creed was formulated–to separate the “wheat from the chaff” allowing the clergy to find and exclude heretics. Church officials paid close attention to who would speak these words, professing their allegiance to the Church, with a capital C, and who would not. 

It is said that Marcion and his followers refused to speak the Creeds–but Valentinians took another stance, conforming where necessary. Iranaeus called this practice of the Valentinians out, “such persons are, to outward appearances, sheep, for they seem to be like us, from what they say in public, repeating the same words (of confession) that we do; but inwardly they are wolves.” This, and other statements, demonstrates how the Church directly used the Nicene Creed to coalesce their power not only through group cohesion, but as a tool to weed out the heretics who threatened their claims to authority. 

The Heretic’s Stones

If only we could divide history into the villains and the heros–this is exactly the tactic the Church itself took in its vilification of gnostic heretics, but unfortunately the truth is messier, and more human.

It was exactly because the gnostic Valentinians valued inner authority that it did not bother them to adhere to certain practices so they could survive, and flourish, if quietly. Doing what was required, some Valentinians were absorbed into the Church. This trend is apparent through those who surround Mary Magdalene’s story–figures and groups who you may want to condemn at one point are champions at another turn. Bernard of Clairvaux the medieval monk, for example, led the persecutions of the Inquisition but protected Hildegard of Bengin–a topic for future podcasts & essays. 

The truth most will not admit is that there is so much we don’t know and cannot know surrounding Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene, and this early religious movement’s story. Pointing fingers and casting blame is easy and instinctual. A pause of breath, and a higher holistic perspective, is required for us to move forward with open heart and mind when the truth is what is desired. 

Organized religion is arguably how Christianity survived and spread over thousands of years. What if the gnostics had a little more fight in them? What if they had been more organized? Would their ideas around Jesus have touched more people, guiding them in a more autonomous spiritual path? Or, if it weren’t for the Church, would even more of Jesus’ teachings, and Mary’s, have been lost to the sands of time? 

What if the unfolding of new perspectives on gnosticism, Mary Magdalene, and a sovereign form of faith is all happening in divine timing? 

This dynamic play between personal and collective power is at the heart of Mary’s story and legacy, both why she was diminished and what she leads us back to when we come to find her. 

The “secret teachings” found in the Gospel of Mary turn the reader within, to a space called the nous, a place where heart meets mind, intuition meets logic. Paradoxically, all that we desire to know is found in the unknown–hence why gnosis is all about mystery. It is in this same space that we must be in, the mystical arena where Mary accessed her visions of the resurrected Jesus himself, in order to access the truth we seek.

Mary, the Toweress, represents a different sort of fortified power than we are offered by the old, enormous strongholds of the Church–this is a choice, a heresy unto itself, but one inextricably tied with the nature of our human free will. Whether Tertullian likes it or not.

We can walk into the fortress of beliefs built for us, speaking aloud our allegiance as we cross the moat and enter the gates of what is already decided and known. Or, we can stand outside these walls, resting in the unknown space, between the sun and the moon, slowly building our own towers, choice by choice, stone by stone.

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Source List

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Luminous Gospels: Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Philip by Lynn C. Bauman, ward J. Bauman & Cynthia Bourgealt

The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, by Matthias Klinghardt

The Original Nicene Creed

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–450 by Maijastina Kahlos

The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religion by Matt J. Rossano, Review of General Psychology, (2006).

What Intense Rituals Signal to Your Brain, by Brian Gallager, Nautil.us (2023).

When Did We Get the Final Canon of the New Testament? by Bart Ehrman, The Bart Ehrman Blog (2022).

Find our full source list here:

For the church fathers, it would have been convenient to cut Mary out entirely, like they did to so many important figures, texts, and belief systems of the early Jesus movement. Mary’s prominence in the four canonical gospels—and the gnostic texts that put her on par with Peter—put pressure on the emerging church institution to confirm her personage while diminishing her power and authority.

This is the story of what was done, how it happened, and the roots of why it all went down the way that it did, because restoring Mary’s name is about reclaiming power for all of us.

In this episode, we cover:

• How Mary Magdalene actually appears in the Bible and the influence of her position as the resurrection story’s key witness 

• What gnosticism is & how this early version of Christianity—and how Mary was portrayed in it—played a role in the way she was diminished 

• What exactly Gregory the Great said about Mary Magdalene when he laid out his case for Mary as the “penitent prostitute” in 591 CE 

• Why the anointing women and their role, particularly the gospel of Luke, are essential to understanding this complicated story 

Learn more about The Magdalene Thread here. Subscribe on Substack for the latest episodes & essays.

A selection of sources mentioned in this episode include:

Choosing the Better Part? Women in they Gospel of Luke by Barbara E. Reid

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

A homily of Gregory the Great and Mary Magdalene (Text of Homily 33) by Roger Pearse (2020)

Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor by Susan Haskins

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume 

Read our full source list, updated weekly, here.

“We must learn to read the silences and hear the echoes of the silenced voices.”

- Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza

Ancient humans honored the woman and the goddess as the source of creation. 

All evidence demonstrates that, at least in the heritage of the Western world, the ineffable divine was embodied in the feminine form first. 

From the Venus of Laussel, carved into a stone of a cave in France at least 25,000 years ago, to the feminine figurines of the same name found across Paleolithic Eurasia, the archeological record brings to life the mythic one. Truth held in stories, was passed down through spoken word and symbols for tens of thousands of years before writing, in any form, was invented. 

The image of the mother-goddess permeated spiritual and religious thought from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age, Old Europe to the Near East, until everything shifted towards the dawn of the Iron Age. This is when, as Joseph Campbell puts it, “the old cosmology and mythologies of the goddess mother were radically transformed, reinterpreted, and suppressed.”

This shift in consciousness is how we came to have the story of the goddess we now possess, embodied in Eve. She is pervasive within the collective consciousness of Western culture as the woman who sinned, owning her role in the deception instigated by the serpent. This is a choice that led to the death of a god who was sacrificed in the ultimate act of forgiveness. 

It was not always this way: the motif of the sacred garden and tree, with a guardian serpent, and a goddess form, was not original to Genesis, and it wasn’t negative. Rising above and choosing to see the higher view of ancient history demonstrates how the goddess lost her goodness and sinfulness became tied to the feminine–setting the stage for the characterization of Mary Magdalene in the greatest story ever told.

The Edge of Mystery 

There is no simple way to trace the story back or blame to neatly place on a single authority for how the goddess fell from grace, but her demonization was integral to the rise of the patristic monotheism that has dominated the last two millennia.

The underlying psychology behind the goddess, and her rise and fall, is very simple, and even relatable for the modern mind to comprehend: life is a mystery, and it begins in the womb of a woman.

Goddess and god, feminine and masculine, woman and man–these are expressions of the duality inherent in this universe, with each polarity embodying aspects of the whole. The feminine is the unseen, ineffable, and emotional side of that coin. From the process of conception and birth to the enigma of intuition and emotion, the feminine carries, expresses, and epitomizes the mystery of creation. 

Mystery lives at the edge of fear and devotion–it is this razor’s edge that both elevated the goddess to the highest levels of reverence and the fear of her power that brought her to be demoted.

The human mind is a meaning-making machine. Worship is a pathway through which we seek to commune with and even control what we cannot fully know–and so is suppression. 

As Campbell wrote, “the fear of woman and the mystery of her motherhood have been for the male no less impressive imprinting forces than the fears and mysteries of the world of nature itself.”

Fear of the mystery is an essential part of how the goddess, the feminine, and the woman came to be viewed as negative, a projection onto the divine feminine that followed her throughout the growth and evolution of religion.

Descent of the Goddess

As civilization was born, with agrarian societies birthing new cities, ways of being, and eventually the written word, the divine feminine shifted forms–going from boundless unity of the mother-earth archetype to a variety of goddess beings with unique traits and stories. 

Geography may have played a role in the descent of the goddess. The development of civilizations around the great rivers of the Near East and Egypt necessitated a new level of organization to track and harness the fertile powers of their cyclical flooding. Alongside science, mathematics, and writing, urbanization catalyzed a more complex social structure that was reflected in the growing and multifaceted divine pantheons of gods.

Just as the goddess went hand-in-hand with nature, the rise of the male gods went hand-in-hand with the rise of technology. The geographies of the goddess dominance were abundant with resources–flowing spring waters, rich land, and an easeful transition into agrarian culture, while the male gods took dominance in desert tribes, living in harsh conditions for cultivation. This naturally led to a more nomadic, herding-based lifestyle correlated with tribal clashes, and ultimately, war.

Male gods rose to prominence as the goddess was diminished, and the way this manifested across cultures was complex and unique:

In Babylon, the goddess goes from blessing the first warrior king Sargon I in 2350 BC, to being demonized in the form of Tiamat, whose mythological death at the hands of sky-god Marduk comes into play by the time of Hammurabi in 1750 BC. In pre-Olympic Greece, the goddess was revered, for even Medusa was a benevolent queen and granddaughter of Gaia.

We all know how her story unfolded–as Zeus marries, sires, and rapes his way through the local goddesses as the empire spreads and rises. What was a way to integrate new land through mythological synchronization became a patriarchal religious paradigm that shaped the evolution of Western thought and culture. 

Already on a decline, goddess culture collapsed with the volcanic eruption of Thera, now known as Santorini, in 1480 BC. This was the center of Aegean goddess culture, and it was destroyed in the explosion, along with a succession of tidal waves that devastated Crete, Egypt and Palestine, a geological event that played a major factor in the collapse of an age, taking the goddess down with it.

Eve’s Folly

It was in the wake of these dark ages, as the Bronze Age collapsed and the Iron Age arose, that the ancient Hebrew people coalesced their tribe, clarified their religious beliefs, and the Kingdom of Judea emerged. This was a tribe that embodied the archetype of the desert herding tribes, with an inherently patriarchal view to the culture and mythology that led to a single male god figure: Yahweh. 

Archeological evidence demonstrates that the ancient Hebrew people did not always, solely, worship Yahweh, but that this deity–and the concept of monotheism–evolved slowly over time. The Hebrews would have originally been part of the Canaanite tribes, worshiping a fuller pantheon of gods, including El, of whom there are traces of in the Hebrew word “Eloheim” found in the Old Testament.

The goddess Asherah is an archetypal mother-goddess descendant of Inanna/Ishtar of Sumeria/Babylon. Multiple archeological artifacts, from an Eighth Century BC inscription in a Hebron cemetery to a Fifth Century BC temple just south of Jerusalem with two altars, indicate that Asherah was widely venerated in Ancient Israel. 

The powerful presence of Asherah is essential, as it helps explain why the pendulum swung against her, all goddesses, and other deities in the following centuries as the religion now known as Judaism evolved and progressed. Genesis, an oral tradition before it was written down around the Fifth Century BC, is the example that rings most clearly for modern day Judeo-Christian culture of where the goddess in the garden went from being good, to being the prime example of feminine folly. 

Eve, meaning “life,” transforms the perfection of God’s created garden into the original sin by following the the instructions of a malevolent serpent, leading to a curse on humankind, especially women.

Given the harshness of these words, it is surprising that the only known Jewish text to present a negative theological judgment of Eve is the Sirach, circa the Second Century BC: “In woman was sin’s beginning, and because of her we all die.” Apart from this text, the common view was that sin began not in Genesis 3, but in Genesis 6, with the cohabitation of “fallen” angels with human women. 

It seems that in Hebrew culture and doctrine, the goddess became an “abomination” (2 Kings) less so due to the actions of Eve, and more so based on the intention to coalesce the tribe around a sole belief in the god named Yahweh. What the Torah taught was more nuanced than “Eve led Adam to sin.” The concept of blaming Eve directly for the “fall of humanity” doesn’t appear till early Christianity, as documented in Epistle of Barnabas in 130 AD.

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The Devil’s Gateway

Just as the ancient Hebraic doctrine against goddess worship was a polemic–a contrasting position taken in order to coalesce thought, culture, and power around a single god, the “Church fathers” doubled down on Eve and the feminine as the source of sin in an effort to discredit the rising power of women in leadership positions in early Christianity. 

Irenaeus of Lyon, a Second Century bishop based in Gaul (ancient France), claimed lineage directly to the Apostle John through his teacher, a bishop named Polycarp. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus makes the link from Jesus and Adam to Mary and Eve–both women are virgins, visited by angels, and each are given a choice. According to Irenaeus, Mother Mary is “found obedient,” her choice of submission to God’s will brings “salvation” into the world. But Eve is disobedient, and her choices in the garden create “the cause of death both to herself and to the entire human race,” otherwise known as original sin. 

Tertullian, writing less than half a century after Irenaeus, builds upon his argument and applies the story of Eve to all women.

For him, Eve was the direct cause of Jesus' death, her folly so great that she caused God himself to die. However, Tertullian gives away the source of his rage against women in another writing where he rails against female priests, who were teaching, and baptizing, saying, “the very women of these heretics, how wanton they are!” 

Augustine of Hippo, writing almost 200 years after Tertullian, does his best to make all pleasure and goodness involved in human sexuality to be negative. He pines for sex to be mechanical in nature, instructing that sex is only sinless with the intention of procreation, and places the blame squarely on the “horrible wickedness of the woman who changed the natural use into that which is against nature.” Translation: Eve and women are the source of “lust”, the desire that he believes is unnatural to humans and the truest source of sin itself.

Even before her choice to eat the fruit, Eve had the “lust to investigate things unknown and irrelevant to our eternal wellbeing.” Again, we meet the divine feminine’s connection to the unknown, and the inevitable fear it perpetuates. Augustine writes, “besides, there is a great mystery here: that just as death comes to us through a woman, life is born to us through a woman.” 

However, texts outside of the canon that were considered part of the gnostic school of thought had alternative beliefs about Eve. Elaine Pagels, writer of The Gnostic Gospels, notes the “The Hypostais of the Archons described Eve as a spiritual principle in humanity who raised Adam from his merely material condition” and The Testimony of Truth tells the Garden of Eden story from the serpent’s (benevolent) point of view.

Scholar Birgen Pearson points out a gnostic author commenting on Genesis using an “Aramaic pun” to equate the serpent with an “instructor.” So while the emerging mainstream Christian orthodoxy we have today had one concept of Eve, there were other perspectives present on her, and likely very popular in their own day, that were squashed and eliminated.

This was a time when the goddess was still being worshiped, her devotion not formally outlawed in the Roman empire till 500 AD–the same century in which Mary Magdalene formally became a “whore.”

License to Evangelize 

With innumerable pieces of art and text destroyed over thousands of years for both pernicious and practical reasons, there is so much that has been lost that would tell us exactly how and when women were diminished and erased from positions of power in Christianity. 

It was not until the Fourth Century that male priests were formally forbidden from marrying, having sex, and producing children. The first official Church manuscript describing ordination of men priests dates to the Ninth Century, leaving hundreds of years to be imagined. The art and literature we do have demonstrates that women were exceptionally involved in Jesus’ ministry and the early spread of his movement, as outlined by Ally Kateuz in her book Mary and Early Christian Women. 

Biblical and extra-biblical literature, from Paul to Pliny the Younger, describe numerous women as leaders–ministering, baptizing, teaching, and spreading the “good news.” Little thought of is that Mother Mary herself was one of the earliest leaders most prolifically described and depicted in early art and literature, but evidence abounds about female evangelists teaching the ways of Jesus Christ, from Rome to Iberia. 

Hidden in plain sight, the signs of leadership in ancient art may be subtle to our modern eye, but patterns of body language can indicate shifts in social structures. In early sculptures and paintings, women are shown with their hands raised, holding censers, and other objects indicating their active engagement in liturgical roles. Over time, women are shown with hands and eyes cast down, if they are present at all. 

Thecla, an early Christian saint and martyr whose story is chronicled in texts called The Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Life of Thecla, is an example not only of power, but of faith and courage. Tertullian rallied against her directly, writing that Thecla’s example was a “license,” in Kateuz words, for women to teach and baptize. Subsequently, all traces of Thecla were destroyed, and her story exemplifies the influence and renown of female leaders in the early Jesus movement. The art and literature created in her name, pervasive in its own time, was destroyed, including the eyes and hands of her depiction on the walls of the Grotto of Saint Paul, hands raised in a gesture of authority, being burned off the walls. 

Speaking of Paul, one of the most infamous and damning sections of the New Testament in regards to women lies in one of his letters: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent" (1 Timothy 2:12). Yet, this passage, used for centuries by Church leaders to marginalize women is now widely acknowledged to be a forgery. In fact, there is no manuscript of Paul’s letters that exists before the Third Century, making it possible that Church leadership “standardized” the text to align with emerging doctrine.

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The Apostle OF the Apostles

Holding these ancient texts and artifacts side-by-side with the commentary of the Church fathers’ on women, a more nuanced story begins to unfold. By “reading the silences,” as Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza writes, we can glean that the diminishment of women was being perpetrated, not in spite of, but due to, the power of women in nascent Christianity.

Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene are among the most powerful women in the Bible itself and extra-Biblical storytelling, from oral traditions, to art and literature. Scholars agree that Mary Magdalene’s prominence was such that early Christians understood her to be in competition with Simon Peter, the founder of the Church.

But “the Mary’s” were not portrayed as “apostles” or “disciples,” with words used to indicate members of Jesus’ inner circle given the task of spreading the good news in the texts that came to form the New Testament.

An apostle is “one sent on a mission,” and the criteria for what it meant to be an apostle of Jesus Christ clearly laid out in the Acts of the Apostles (the fifth book of the New Testament that scholars now believe was not written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke). One, an apostle must have followed Jesus during his entire earthly ministry, from the baptism by John to his ascension into heaven; two, an apostle must have seen Jesus after his resurrection; and three, an apostle must have been appointed by Jesus himself. 

Mary Magdalene, according to Luke 8, followed Jesus throughout his ministry. Mary Magdalene, according to Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1, Luke 24:10, and John 20:1, witnessed the resurrection. Notably, none of the male apostles were specifically named to be at the crucifixion. Who was at the crucifixion? Mary Magdalene, noted by name in Matthew 27:56, Mark 16:40, and John 19:25.

The intention of apostolic succession was, presumably, to keep the teachings of Jesus Christ as pure as possible, linking the Church leaders directly to the original group who followed him. By definition, it means that “bishops represent a direct, uninterrupted line of continuity,” and in practice, it has meant the consolidation of power within the Catholic Church. 

Even in the gnostic text, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, published in the Nag Hammadi Codex III, the translation reads that after Jesus rose from the dead “his twelve disciples and seven women continued to be his followers,” when the Coptic actually refers to “twelve male disciples and seven female disciples.” This difference in wording may seem slight, but if we gather this subtle evidence about Mary Magdalene, and arguably, Mother Mary–women who clearly meet the criteria of “apostle”–then the figurative “keys to the Church” fall into question.

Reclaiming Spiritual Sovereignty 

As spiritual power was removed from the individual and allocated solely to the voice of the Church, authority was wrested from not only from Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary, but all women and humans.

Jesus may have said, “ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” in Matthew 7:7. But for Tertullian, those who exerted free will in the expression of their spirituality was inherently a heretic: choice, itself, was the culprit, and common people had no right to think or act freely.

Meanwhile, free will has been espoused as an essential reason why the divine intelligence we call God chose to create humans their own “image.”

The divine woman, also called a goddess and known as Eve, we are told, ate the fruit of knowledge, at the behest of the wise serpent, rather than eating from the Tree of Life solely. Yet, this itself is a confusion of the laws of nature–an allegorical reading of cutting-edge science tells us the Trees of Life and Knowledge are not separate, but one in the same. 

Life itself evolves and grows through the gathering of information, synthesized into meaning, that directs the choices we make–a process propelled forward by the differentiated lenses of our unique and individual embodiments of consciousness. 

As God’s image pertains to our human intelligence, the agency of choice is its clearest actualization, and as the image applies to our human bodies, the woman’s facilitation of life’s creation is its most concrete manifestation. 

The woman and choice, to Tertullian’s dismay, are together inextricable from life’s divine creation. Meaning, we have had the power all along, just as the divine made us–as above, so below, male and female. But to fully claim our divine ability to choose and create, it’s necessary to reframe original sin—and remember the goodness not only in the goddess, but in our own nature. 

Follow The Magdalene Thread

As you can see, the source of Mary Magdalene’s feminine power is as inextricable from the divinity of the goddess as it is from the humanity of Eve. From Mary’s legend to the rumors that have followed her, the Church fathers may have tried their best to extinguish the light of the feminine, but the truth always rises, and our natural inclination is to find balance and wholeness.

We are here to explore the inherent goodness, spiritual sovereignty, and extraordinary faith Mary Magdalene models for us as a reflection of our own potential. You may listen to our latest podcast episode titled Women, Sex and Sin for a continued deep dive into the context that molded both Mary Magdalene and all women in early Christianity.

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We invite you to subscribe to continue this journey with Mary—and please share your reflections and send to a friend you know would resonate with this message.

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Source List

You can read our full resource list, updated weekly, here at Living Resources of the Magdalene Thread.

Augustine’s Literal Adam, by Peter Sanlon, The Gospel Coalition (2011)

Archeology of the Hebrew Bible, featuring the work of William Dever, PBS (2008)

The Curse of Eve: A Jewish Perspective on Women in Society, by Tova Bernbaum, Chabad.Org

Early Christianity’s Concept of Sexuality, CBE International

Eve: Apocrypha, by Alice Ogden Bellis, Jewish Women’s Archive

Eve: Midrash and Aggadah, by Tamar Kadari, Jewish Women’s Archive

Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

A History of Religious Ideas, Anthology including Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, Vol. 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms by Mircea Eliade

In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

The Invention of God by Thomas Römer, translated by Raymond Geuss 

Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz

A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, compiled and edited by Hal Taussig

Patterns in Comparative Religion by Mircea Eliade 

Why the Early Church Thought Mary Was the New Eve, by Joe Heschmeyer, Catholic.Org (2024)

The truth is that it wasn’t always this way. Women played an integral role in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ—and for thousands of years before him, women, priestesses, and the divine feminine, were essential to the earliest forms of religion and human spirituality.

It was not in spite of, but due to the power of women that the early Church fathers coalesced their arguments around the ties between women, sexuality, and sinfulness, drawing a thread from Eve to Mary Magdalene to the modern woman.

In this episode, we cover:

• How the messiness of humanity played a central role in the creation of the Bible and the canon as we know it today

• Why the concept of original sin emanating from Eve, being tied to sexuality, and the heritage of all women is unique to early Christianity

• Evidence of the leadership of women during Jesus’ ministry, from the Bible to non-canonical literature, to ancient art and artifacts

• Why Mary Magdalene is integral to this conversation around the role of women in power in early Christianity

Learn more about The Magdalene Thread here. Subscribe on Substack for the latest episodes & essays.

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A selection of sources mentioned in this episode include:

• A History of Religious Ideas, Anthology by Mircea Eliade

• Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell 

• How St. Augustine Invented Sex, by Stephen Greenblatt, The New Yorker

• The Invention of God by Thomas Römer

• (m)adam: Adam’s Rib Reframed by Lizzie Berne DeGear

• Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz

• Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor by Susan Haskins

• The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity by Cynthia Bourgealt 

Read our full source list here.

As an alternative to the classic bibliography, we have opted to create a living, breathing list of wisdom written by brilliant scholars and researchers. From the Bible we choose to use to articles with the latest textual research, every entry here is a source of inspiration and information for us at The Magdalene Thread.

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As we mentioned in our manifesto, the conversation around Mary is diverse in a multitude of ways, spanning a wide breadth from chosen focus to quality of evidence.

While we are stay-at-home mothers, each of us (Alicia & Kelly) come from scholarly backgrounds. Alicia received her Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from University of Pennsylvania, and her BS in Arts Administration with a Dance Minor from Wagner College. Kelly received her BA in History and Literature from Harvard. While we choose to see goodness in all the resources available on Mary, we are devoted to historical accuracy and we hold a high bar for the way we filter the information we share. 

Much of the time, sources on Mary stay in the worlds they came from—from academia to the esoteric—and our intention is to bring all voices forward with love and discernment. Each text we hold with gratitude and pull from it the threads of information we then carefully weave into the larger story we are slowly creating over podcast episode and articles.

This is a living and breathing document–with every episode we will update the below list with additional sources that have come into what has been written and spoken through The Magdalene Thread. 

Below is our living source list, that will be updated with each episode and article, shared in alphabetical order (of source name):

Sacred Scripture 

Berean Study Bible

The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous)

Come Forth: The Promise of Jesus’s Greatest Miracle by James Martin, SJ

The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel by Peter F. Ellis

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean Yves Leloup

The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union by Jean-Yves Leloup

The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus by Jean-Yves Leloup

The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center by Bruno Barnhart

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Kybalion 

The Interior Castle by Theresa of Avila

The Luminous Gospels: Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Philip by Lynn C. Bauman, ward J. Bauman & Cynthia Bourgealt

Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle by Karen King

The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume 

A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, compiled and edited by Hal Taussig

The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, by Matthias Klinghardt

The Original Nicene Creed

Open English Bible

Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels 

The Song of Songs: The World’s First Great Love Poem by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch

The Works of John Cassian by John Cassian

Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel by Sandra M. Schneiders 

Mary Magdalene

14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine: Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene by Joan Norton and Margaret Starbird

Magdalene’s Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity by Margaret Starbird

Mary Magdalene: A Visual History by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona

Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile by Margaret Starbird 

The Mary Magdalene Cover-Up: The Sources Behind the Myth by Esther De Boer

Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History by Philip C. Almond

Mary Magdalene: Lost Goddess, Lost Gospels by Jan McDonald

Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor by Susan Haskins

Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet by Meggan Watterson 

Mary Magdalene Understood by Jane Schaberg with Melanie Johnson-Debaufre

The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity by Cynthia Bourgealt 

The Mystery, Biography & Destiny of Mary Magdalene: Sister of Lazarus John & Spiritual Sister of Jesus by Robert Powell

The Other Goddess: Mary Magdalene and the Goddesses of Eros and Secret Knowledge by Dr. Joanna Kujawa

The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament by Jane Schaberg 

The Secrets of Mary Magdalene: The Untold Story of History’s Most Misunderstood Woman by Dan Burnstein and Arne J. De Keijzer

Venus in Sackcloth: The Magdalen’s Origins and Metamorphoses by Marjorie M. Malvern Ph.D.

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail by Margaret Starbird

Religion, Spirituality & Mythology

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels

After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott, and Hal Taussig

Choosing the Better Part? Women in they Gospel of Luke by Barbara E. Reid

City of God, by Augustine of Hippo

The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby

Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions by Julie Faith Parker

Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm by Cynthia Bourgealt

The First Love Stories: From Isis and Osiris to Tristan and Iseult by Diane Wolkstein

Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell 

Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine by Margaret Starbird

A History of Religious Ideas, Anthology including Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, Vol. 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms by Mircea Eliade

Holy Blood Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln

The Holy Place: Saunière and the Decoding of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château by Henry Lincoln 

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer

by Diane Wolkstein Samuel Noah Kramer

In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

The Invention of God by Thomas Römer, translated by Raymond Geuss 

The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-up in History by Michael Baigent

Judas and Jesus: Two Faces of a Single Revelation by Jean-Yves Leloup

Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Château by Henry Lincoln

The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas (Author) & Miriam Robbins Dexter (Editor)

The Lost Art of Resurrection: Initiation, Secret Chambers, and the Quest for the Otherworld by Freddy Silva

Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Lost Teachings of the Cathars: Their Beliefs & Practices by Andrew Phillip Smith

Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz

The Masks of God, Anthology on Ancient Mythology including Primitive Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Oriental Mythology, and Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell 

The Oak King, the Holly King and the Unicorn: The Myths and Symbolism of the Unicorn Tapestries by John Williamson 

The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Elaine Pagels

Patterns in Comparative Religion by Mircea Eliade 

Put the Blame on Eve: What Women Must Overcome to Feel Worthy by Melinda J. Rising, Ph.D. 

The Perfect Heresy: Life and Death of the Cathars by Stephen O’Shea

Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend by Bart D. Ehrman

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–450 by Maijastina Kahlos

The Rock and the Tower: How Mary Created Christianity by S. P. Laurie

The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary: The Sexual Mystery at the Heart of the Christian Tradition by Jean Yves Leloup

Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World by Karen Armstrong

The Tarot Trumps and the Holy Grail: Great Secrets of the Middle Ages by Margaret Starbird

Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor by Joseph Campbell

The Unicorn Tapestries by Margaret B. Freeman

Was Jesus Married? The Distortion of Sexuality in the Christian Tradition by William E. Phipps

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars’ Rebellion Against the Inquisition 1290-1329 by René Weis

Words and Translation

Aramaic Light on the Gospel of John by Dr Rocco A Errico, Dr George M Lamsa

Aramaic and Unchanged Near Eastern Customs by Rocco A. Errico and George M. Lamsa

(M)Adam: Adam’s Rib Reframed, created by Lizzie Bernie DeGear

Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original meaning of Jesus’s Words by Neil Douglas-Klotz

The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life & Death by Neil Douglas-Klotz

Articles, Podcasts & Video

As you will see, we recommend many of Diane Butler Bass articles & sermons, listed in alphabetical order - but if you want to dive in, This is where to find The Cottage on Substack:

The Cottage

Part retreat, part think tank. A place for inspiration and ideas about culture, faith, and spirit.

By Diana Butler Bass

A homily of Gregory the Great and Mary Magdalene (Text of Homily 33) by Roger Pearse (2020)

Augustine’s Literal Adam, by Peter Sanlon, The Gospel Coalition (2011)

Christ Is Risen: The Nonsense of a Hysterical Woman, CBE International

The Curse of Eve: A Jewish Perspective on Women in Society, by Tova Bernbaum, Chabad.org

Early Christianity’s Concept of Sexuality, CBE International

Eve: Apocrypha, by Alice Ogden Bellis, Jewish Women’s Archive

Eve Disobeys. Mary of Magdala Obeys. A Reversal?, Bible Bits (2020)

Eve: Midrash and Aggadah, by Tamar Kadari, Jewish Women’s Archive

Elizabeth Schrader on Preaching John 11 by Diana Butler Bass (2023)

Hidden in Plain Site by Diana Butler Bass (2023)

How Many Books in the New Testament Were Forged? by Bart Ehrman (2019)

How St. Augustine Invented Sex, by Stephen Greenblatt, The New Yorker (2017)

I Have Seen the Lord by Diana Butler Bass (2023)

In Memory of Her by James Tabor (2017)

Mary Magdalene and the Anointed One by Diana Butler Bass (2022)

Mary Magdalene and the Women Disciples in the Gospel of Luke By Barbara Reid

Mary Magdalene's Turn: Text Criticism and Reception History of John 20:16 by Michael Peppard, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (2020)

Mary or Martha?: A Duke scholar's research finds Mary Magdalene downplayed by New Testament scribes by Eric Ferreri, Duke Today (2019)

Mary the Tower by Diana Butler Bass

The Meaning of 'Magdalene': A Review of Literary Evidence by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer & Joan Taylor, Journal of Biblical Literature140:4 (2021)

Passion and Paradox: The Myths of Mary Magdalene in Music, Art and Culture by Kaylee Asbo, PhD of Philosophy

'Rabbouni,' which means Lord: Narrative Variants in John 20:16 by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer and Brandon Simonson, TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 26 (2021)

Researcher: Artifacts show that early church women served as clergy by Sarah Mac Donald, National Catholic Reporter (2019)

A Retrieval of the Traditional View of Mary Magdalene From the Fringes of Theology by Clement Harrold, Church Life Journal from University of Notre Dame (2023)

Signs of Mary Magdalene in John 11 Interview with Elizabeth Schrader Polczer with Amy Frykholm, The Christian Century (2023)

The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religion by Matt J. Rossano, Review of General Psychology, (2006).

The Rise and Rise of the Queen of Heaven by David F. Lloyd, Vision (2005)

There’s Something About Mary… Magdalene (Part 1) by James Tabor (2016)

There’s Something About Mary… Magdalene (Part 3) by James Tabor (2016)

They Were Afraid By Diane Butler Bass 

Understanding Asherah—Exploring Semitic Iconography by Ruth Hestrin, Biblical Archeological Society Library (1991)

Under the Banner of Love: Mary Magdalene Author of the Fourth Gospel by Robin Jones

Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century? by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, Harvard Theological Review 110:3 (2017)

Was Mary Magdalene the same person as Mary of Bethany? by Jeffrey Bütz on Tabor Blog (2020)

Was Salome at the Markan Tomb? Another Ending to Mark's Gospel by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin 8:2 (2022)

What Intense Rituals Signal to Your Brain, by Brian Gallager, Nautil.us (2023).

When Did We Get the Final Canon of the New Testament? by Bart Ehrman, The Bart Ehrman Blog (2022)

Who framed Mary Magdalene? By Heidi Schlumpf by U.S. Catholic.Com (2016)

Who Was Mary Magdalene? by James Carroll, The Smithsonian (2006)

Why the Early Church Thought Mary Was the New Eve, by Joe Heschmeyer, Catholic.com (2024)

Woman with the Alabaster Box by Shane Clayton

Women Erased: The Magdalene Mystery with Elizabeth Schrader and Joan Taylor 

News Articles   

Pope Francis I on Mary as the Apostle of Hope 

*In the spirit of full disclosure, as Amazon affiliates we receive a small commission on all books purchased with Amazon links.

We invite you to leave a comment with your favorite resource on Mary Magdalene that you would recommend to us, or others on this journey!

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Published on the 22 of July—Mary Magdalene’s feast day, this “Prologue” episode is an introduction to what The Magdalene Thread podcast will be sharing over the course of the 13 episodes first season. “Perspective and Possibilities on Mary Magdalene” sets the intention for all the awe, joy, and sacred creativity you can find in this space.

The Magdalene Thread was born of a thousand stories exchanged within the daily routines and rhythms of nurture, in friendship and the messiness of motherhood.

To read more, read About The Magdalene Thread.

Subscribe to themagdalenethread.substack.com for updates on the latest episodes, essays, and resources.

If we move beyond the boundaries of good and bad, we can shift our perspective to new possibilities and the potential for expansion. We want to know who Mary Magdalene is and what she has to teach us about our individual capacity for healing and positive transformation. The Magdalene Thread reimagines Mary Magdalene as the feminine embodiment of heart-based spirituality and extraordinary faith. By gathering and weaving threads of goodness into essays and conversations, we reveal a tapestry of hope to inspire your spiritual sovereignty. Through stories, science, and ancient spiritual wisdom, we seek to redefine the narrative, demystify wholeness, and amplify the truth about Love, as we have not yet known it.

Alicia + Kelly

The Good Within Our Midst

Peter said to him, “Since you have explained everything to us, tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world?”

The Savior said, “There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called ‘sin.’ That is why the Good came into your midst, coming to the good which belongs to every nature, in order to restore it to its root.”

 -The Gospel of Mary

These words from The Gospel of Mary confront us with a timeless debate about our true nature, the purpose of our existence, and the polarities of human experience. 

The first and only known gospel written in the name of a woman, the words in this text turn sin upside down, sitting in opposition to Peter’s Church and the doctrine of Judeo-Christianity.

What if sin isn’t what we think it is?

The word itself reveals a truth to us: to “sin” comes from the Greek word hamartia, or the Hebrew word hata, both of which mean “to miss the mark.” 

Are we inherently broken sinners in need of external salvation? Or, are we innately good, on a path of embodied learning, with potential for positive transformation?    

What happens if we consider a new perspective on an old familiar story? And what does Mary Magdalene have to do with any of it?

Who Is Mary Magdalene?

Answers to the question of who Mary Magdalene was swing from sinner to saint, whore to holy woman, penitent prostitute to leader of the early Christian community. There is no short answer to who she was, which means this centuries-old question demands both attention and deep contemplation. 

Since the unearthing of The Gospel of Mary in 1896, scholars and researchers have slowly revolutionized how we view her. New information and the positive light it casts on Mary Magdalene, alongside the Catholic Church’s embrace of her as the “Apostle of Hope,” has led to Mary’s rise in our collective consciousness.

Yet, when you go searching for Mary Magdalene, the plot seems to thicken—at least as an everyday woman:

Where do I even begin?

This question reflects the confusion we feel after taking a step towards Mary, because we are confronted with a cacophony of voices speaking with an equal amount of passion and contradiction about who she was.

Spend enough time following her trail, and you will recognize that the conversation about Mary is fragmented—from the hallowed halls of academia, to mysterious channeled esoteric texts, the question about “where to begin” is followed by:

What is true, and what do I believe? 

At The Magdalene Thread, our inclusive approach draws out the goodness in the various opinions on Mary across a multitude of domains. By considering a nuanced and holistic perspective, our intention is to demystify Mary and all she encompasses, allowing her multidimensional nature to mirror and empower our own. 

What’s Missing

When we begin to commune with Mary’s story, it becomes clear that she has been hidden in the shadow of tradition and rumor. As we recognize all the ways she has been marginalized, we innately sense that she embodies what is missing. 

What’s missing and Mary Magdalene? Why does that sound familiar?

Where does this lead you but straight into the mystery surrounding the Holy Grail. What Mary and the Grail each reflect, at their root, is a deep longing to find and reintegrate all that’s been lost. The story of the Grail, with the fascination it elicits, has an intricate connection to the divine feminine. 

The feminine is missing from Western culture and the Christian tradition. The repercussions are clear and present in our daily life, from exterior division in war and politics to the personal crises of mental health and chronic illness.

What does the feminine really represent? 

There is no linear answer, as the feminine is the ineffable, ruling the realms of our emotional nature, our intuitive senses, all that is unseen and unknown, and the mystery of creation itself. This is why, as far back as we can tell, the goddess has been associated with nature, as the earth models to us these cycles of life, death, and rebirth. 

While progress has been made to consider the feminine archetype, the imbalance is so pervasive that healing demands patience and conscious effort. It is a labyrinth walk to bring the feminine to light in a masculine-dominated world of logic and materialism, let alone integrate it. 

The Magdalene Thread recognizes the need to restore balance through a mindful exploration of the divine feminine encompassing both the ancient mythology of the goddess and the story of Mary herself. Across cultures and genres—from history and literature to ideas and symbology, our aim is to facilitate integration and cultivate wholeness. 

Wholeness 

Wholeness is perhaps as misunderstood as Mary Magdalene, and as elusive as the Grail. 

What is wholeness? 

Wholeness is mistaken for a stagnant state, conflated with the perfection we falsely believe is attained through a straightforward trajectory of growth external to ourselves. We chase rainbows on the horizon, yet being whole requires a delicate dance between determination and surrender as we navigate life and its variety of unpredictable experiences, seeking opportunities for learning and growth.

Introspection has been an alluring spiritual path across cultural traditions that challenges the individual to enter a place where there is no formula or measurement for success. Mary Magdalene’s teachings reorient us within while holding the intention to know thyself and recognize the goodness in our own nature, which is eternally a reflection of the good within our midst.

The reality is that we are not linear: the cyclical nature of our being is reflected by the seasons of change and the eternal process of life-death-rebirth. All that feels messy, complex, and even broken is a resistance to the natural form of life and of our true essence, which unfolds in a spiral. 

What if there is nothing wrong with us?

Even if our modern existence insists we are wrong, the failure we feel is not personal, but structural. We are left little room for an authentic process of becoming. Transformation requires patience, humility, and a willingness to experience, honor, and accept all that we feel and are.

This comes from turning inward, to what The Gospel of Mary calls the “nous,” and kindles a deep intuitive knowing. While many translate “nous” as “the mind”—aligning with left-brained masculine qualities—a more accurate interpretation of nous draws upon the right-brained feminine qualities which are harder to define, but described as “the space between” or “the eye of the heart.”

What if we’re looking from the mind, when the treasure is in the heart?

The Magdalene Thread shares a kaleidoscopic, holistic view of Mary Magdalene to hold a higher level of understanding of who she was, what she meant, and all that she mirrors to us about wholeness. With a shift in perspective and new possibilities around Mary, our hope is to inspire a way of spiritual sovereignty. 

A Tapestry of Hope

Most don’t pause to realize how extraordinary it is that a woman, let alone a leader, rumored to be an equal teacher and even a married partner to Jesus Christ was not harmed or martyred for her steadfast faith. Equally miraculous is the resilience of her memory—for while her reputation was intentionally destroyed and her worthiness dismissed, she has withstood all of it—remaining “The Tower,” indicated by her moniker, “Magdalene.”

Holding this higher perspective reveals an abundance of possibilities for Mary, and what she might mean to us in our modern world.

The Magdalene thread traces unseen connections across time and space to uncover a treasure of truth, magic and miracles that illuminate our inherent goodness. By gathering these threads, and weaving them with love, we reveal a tapestry of hope to inspire your spiritual sovereignty. 

A tapestry begins with color, shape, and texture meeting each other in surprising ways, and the pattern becomes a story, open to symbolic and personal interpretation. 

To begin a tapestry, warp threads are established first and held stationary—in a vertical pattern on the loom, their intention is to be resilient and hold the foundation. Our warp threads are research, logic, critical insights, and a history-based lens. Weft threads are variable in nature and in their different sizes, weights, and colors, they create the pattern in the fabric. Our weft threads are intuition, synchronicity, and moments of wonder and awe. 

What happens when we choose to transcend the duality of our wholeness and recognize the power that exists in unconditional Love? 

Every source has a filter on the truth, influencing our perspective, new possibilities, and the momentum they might create. At The Magdalene Thread, we believe that fear is an illusion–there is only love, and we meet you here to reimagine Mary Magdalene as the feminine embodiment of heart-based spirituality and extraordinary faith.

xx,

Sources

Shared roughly in order of inspiration:

All quotes from The Gospel of Mary are from A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts 

Pope Francis I on Mary as the Apostle of Hope.

Karen King, a Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University was the first to bring her gospel mainstream in The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.

Cynthia Bourgealt brings the perspective of a modern Episcopal priest in The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity.

Holy Blood Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln layers the complex puzzle pieces across history, symbology and legend that inspired an uprising of new theories on Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ - this is Dan Brown’s source material for The Davinci Code. 

Margaret Starbird’s avant-garde hypotheses on Mary Magdalene and the connection to the sacred feminine across multiple books, beginning with The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail.

Jean Yves Leloup’s is a French theologian, writer, and translator of Greek and Coptic texts brings a deeply contemplative and poetic voice to his translation of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Susan Haskins book Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor covers 2,000 years of Mary in art, literature, and history to give a cultural understanding who Mary was and all she encompasses.

Joan E. Taylor and Elizabeth Schrader Polczer thoroughly outline the case for the true meaning of “Magdalene” in their journal article The Meaning of Mary Magdalene.

If you bring forth what is inside of you, what is inside of you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside of you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

-The Gospel of Thomas, Circa 1st century CE

Here is the secret of life: the Holy Grail does not exist hidden on the horizon of a French Pyrenees sky, under a rainbow, or any place outside of you.

Rather, it lies deep within you—the space of the “nous,” as Mary Magdalene explains in the gospel written in her honor.

This is the Magdalene Thread

The Magdalene Thread reimagines Mary Magdalene as the feminine embodiment of a heart-based spirituality and extraordinary faith. By gathering and weaving threads of goodness into essays and conversations, we seek to redefine the narrative to create an archetype of wholeness.

Through stories, science, and ancient spiritual wisdom, we reveal a tapestry of hope to inspire your path of spiritual sovereignty. 

Our intention is to hold a space of possibility for the truth about Love, as we’ve not yet considered it.

Bringing You The Treasure

We playfully call our method of intuitive research a “treasure hunt of goodness,” but in this context, treasure reflects the original meaning of the word. It is a “precious storehouse” of curated resources, information, and unique insights on Mary for all who desire to know her and what she has to teach us.

We bring you a kaleidoscopic perspective of Mary Magdalene, inspired by a multitude of topics and sources that range from academic to outlandish, including but not limited to:

• Christianity, from early and little known histories to traditional Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox doctrine, inclusive of modern feminist theology.

• Sacred wisdom, including geometry, numerological patterns, holy sites like archaic megaliths and cathedrals, and archetypal concepts, such as hieros gamos, the cosmic serpent, and the chalice. 

• Ancient history, reaching back to prehistoric spiritual art, mythology, and constellations with a focus on the goddess, across time and space from Mesopotamia, Europe, and Africa.

• Spiritual and religious scriptures and doctrine, covering a wide range of perspectives and positions.

• Symbology, art, literature, and music hidden and overt, from medieval art to Renaissance greats, to more modern books, songs, poems, and even the Tarot.

• Famous figures covered in depth from ancient goddesses, kings and queens, to Biblical figures, and icons connected with the legend, teachings, and archetype of Mary Magdalene.

We hold each source with a reverent intention to draw out its goodness, gathering and offering these gems with a humble sense of discernment and gratitude for all the creatives, scholars, and writers we learn from. 

Navigating the Thread

In an effort to parse truth from fiction, we set out to uncover Mary Magdalene from the chaos of confusion that surrounds her, and on July 22nd (her feast day), we began sharing a series of essays and conversations that laid the foundation of our work here at The Magdalene Thread:

• To begin, read or listen to our manifesto, Perspectives and Possibilities on Mary Magdalene.

• Women Sex and Sin (Podcast): How and why doctrine diminished the power of Mary Magdalene, and all women in early Christianity

• Goodness in the Garden (Article): Illuminating the role of women in early Christianity has the power to restore spiritual sovereignty for us all

• The Greatest Lie Ever Told (Episode): How and why the pernicious rumor of Mary Magdalene as prostitute was crafted and sold for 1,400 years

• Fortress of Truth (Article): How the choice to speak "gnosis" to spiritual authority lies at the center of heresy-and how to transcend it

• The Power of a Name (Podcast): How Mary Magdalene’s name is a treasure trove that guides us closer to the truth of who she was & means for us

• Immaculate Deception (Article): Restoring Mary Magdalene and Jesus' female followers from the margins of the Gospel of Luke's masterful storytelling

• Christ Maker (Podcast): Exploring the details of the mysterious anointing woman illuminates truth about the legacy of Mary Magdalene

• A Tale of Two Sisters (Article): Mary, Martha & the matter of feminine worth. Is there really a better part?

• Life After Death (Podcast): How the power of mindset and miracles lifts the veil on resurrection

You can always find our full bibliography, updated regularly, at Living Resources on Mary Magdalene.

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Who We Are

We come to you as two Ivy League educated stay-at-home mothers who have spent years of self-led study on everything from positive psychology to holistic health, ancient history to esoteric spiritual traditions. Brought together in friendship and curiosity, we share a quest to understand the Truth about Love.

Alicia Assad is a mother of five and writer on faith and flourishing - you can read her work at The Artistry of Faith. 

Kelly Ingraham is a mother of three and writes about ancient astrology and the divine feminine - you can read her work at Ancient Future Heart. 

The Magdalene Thread was born of a thousand conversations exchanged within our daily rhythm and routine of nurture. We believe that fear is an illusion–there is only love, and meet you here to reimagine Mary Magdalene as the feminine embodiment of heart-based spirituality and extraordinary faith.

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