THE JESUS PUZZLE
Was There No Historical Jesus?
by Earl Doherty
BOOK AND ARTICLE REVIEWS
THE CASE FOR THE JESUS MYTH
Return to Home Page
A Magdalene Triptych
-
I
-
The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Doubleday, 2003
- II -
The Da Vinci
Fraud
Why the Truth Is Stranger Than
Fiction
by Robert Price
Prometheus Books, 2005
- III -
The Secret
Magdalene
an historical novel
by Ki Longfellow
Eio Books, 2005
Introduction
Mary Magdalene is
in the process of becoming something of a cult figure. She is being
pressed into service to fill several needs and roles in today's charged
atmosphere of religious evolution. The
Christian Church is under increasing pressure to sweep out the cobwebs
of
orthodox tradition and prejudice, while its patriarchal and
misogynist history and continuing tendencies are under attack by both
scholars and laity. The Gospels are no longer regarded as
reliable historical accounts, and the nature and origins of
early Christianity as presented by the Church in its canonical
literature are being increasingly questioned. A new branch of "feminist
scholarship" in the field of New Testament research has thought to
uncover a much less scrubbed and sanitized picture of Jesus and the
circles following him, in which women played a larger role than
official history has allowed. Mary Magdalene is
seen as a central figure in this 'golden age' pre-sexist period of
Christianity, both in her relationship to Jesus and in the growth of
the church after his death—in
ways which have shocked and
appalled orthodox sensibilities. From The
Last Temptation of Christ to The
Da Vinci Code, modern society has been both fascinated and
offended by the proposition that Jesus may have been a little more
human than we were led to believe. In this, we are seeing a
reversal of an almost three-millennia campaign by the Jewish and
Christian establishment to deny its God a female consort,
something that was virtually unparalleled in the religions of the
ancient world. Women
scholars and believers, frustrated by the male-dominant character of
their traditional churches, are turning to the figure of Mary Magdalene
to
create a
new role model for their faith and its origins.
Along with the move to bring Jesus down to earth
(as well as into the bedroom), scholars and other writers have
undermined
the longstanding view of what constituted Christian belief in the
earliest period. For almost a century, critical scholarship has
uncovered a picture of early Christian expression which was much more
varied and heretical (by orthodox standards) than anyone realized. Nor
was the now-accepted orthodoxy by any means always the first on
the scene, with heresy a later development. In fact, the earliest
evidence in several locales (such as Egypt and inland Syria) indicates
that orthodoxy came in as a much delayed runner-up. The "triumph" of
Christianity as we know it was not so much the winning over of paganism
and the Roman empire, but the eventual prevalence of orthodox views of
an historical Jesus over the many
divergent Christian sects of the first three centuries of the era. It
was
a political victory for the Church of Rome marked by a ruthless
extermination of its rivals and their writings, as well as of
conflicting viewpoints within its own ranks. A revision and doctoring
of its own records (along with many non-Christian documents that came
into its hands) kept pace with the Church's evolving christology and
picture of its past.
This is not simply a reference to the mythicist
scenario, an evolution from the belief in a solely spiritual Christ by
people like Paul to the adoption of an historical Jesus based on the
Gospels. Critical scholarship as a whole, even if preserving some
picture
of an historical figure at the base of the movement, has come to
perceive a style of faith in early Christian expression which was later
suppressed and rooted out, to be labeled heresy. This faith was known
as Gnosticism, a system of
cosmology and salvation based on the idea of esoteric knowledge ("gnosis" in Greek) which
conferred understanding of the self and personal salvation. We will
further explore
this broad philosophical movement in the second panel of our triptych,
in Robert Price's The Da Vinci Fraud.
While Gnosticism fully flowered only in the second century CE, it
existed in various seminal forms during the first century, and its
elements can be perceived in some of the earliest Christian documents,
mainly the epistles of Paul. Gnosticism is currently undergoing
something of a revival, an adjunct in some ways to the New Age
phenomenon but also as an expression of modern insights into the
nature of early Christianity. It appeals to many people who
have been disillusioned by established religion's long
petrification, as well as the evangelical fundamentalism that is
choking much of
North American society. Of course, it's really a pseudo-gnosticism,
since
much of what was integral to gnosticism in the ancient world is too
bizarre and unscientific to be any longer acceptable. Like all things
in the history of ideas, we preserve and recast those things which will
continue to work for us, though we retain, unfortunately, much more
than what ought to work for
us in the 21st century.
Novelist Dan Brown has made Mary Magdalene the
background centerpiece of his crack murder mystery, and in the
process he has intrigued the minds of millions of readers, much to the
Church's dismay. And the Church has a point of sorts, in that most of
that background is as fictional as The
Da Vinci Code plot itself—although it is
not presented that way. Robert Price takes up
the debunking of
Brown's underlying thesis (which may not perturb the now-wealthy
novelist one bit), but he does so as the starting point to a broader
debunking of Christian historical tradition as a whole, indicating that
the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. There is as much scholarship
and insight into Christian beginnings in this relatively small book
than in piles of more academic tomes from today's mainstream New
Testament research, including a detailed examination of the Mary
Magdalene myth. In the third panel of our triptych, novelist Ki
Longfellow has created an historical novel about Mary Magdalene of
unprecedented quality, both as a piece of writing and as a vehicle
offering a fresh look at Christianity's beginnings and the figure of
Jesus, one rooted in that long-buried gnostic nemesis of the early
Church. Even
if Jesus himself never lived, even if Mary Magdalene
is a fictional creation of the first Gospel writer Mark, Gnosticism is
not, and The Secret Magdalene
proves to be an ideal way to get in touch with what it was—not to mention a deeply satisfying reading experience in
itself.
- I -
The Da Vinci Code
I am not going to say a lot about Dan Brown's novel. For one
thing, I
don't want to be a spoiler to those who haven't yet read it. The Da Vinci Code
is an uncommonly gripping and intelligent thriller, though it has its
features stereotypical to the genre, and the reader's suspension of
disbelief is occasionally strained. The puzzles inherent to the plot,
which I assume are Brown's product, are a real treat. But what of its
background? The Da Vinci Code
has virtually given birth to a secondary field of literature:
analyzing, evaluating and refuting the background elements of Brown's
story. To what extent does Brown himself believe in them? It may be
hard to say, but Robert Price suggests that he has derived them from a
type of dubious scholarship that has recently become popular, most
notably The Holy Blood and the Holy
Grail,
by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. More
sensationalism than legitimate scholarship, such books have given rise
to all sorts of speculative theories about Jesus' life, his possible
survival of the crucifixion and subsequent career in other parts of the
world, often involving Mary Magdalene. At the very least, Brown cannot
claim to be honest with his readers, because he presents this
ill-founded speculation as
virtual established fact, and he starts out with what must be a knowing
misrepresentation of the nature of the Priory of Sion, a medieval
"secret society" which is integral to his plot.
This is unfortunate, because there is much in The Da Vinci Code which
legitimately questions established Christian tradition and uncovers new
ways of looking at the story of Jesus. But anything which breaks open
the musty vault of the Church's long monopoly on that story and lets
fresh air into the public mind has to be a good thing. (Some of this
fresh air has been circulating for over a century in the halls of New
Testament
academia, but prior to the recent Jesus Seminar was deliberately kept
from the
pulpit and the public eye.) But the reader might have benefited from
having a better basis for distinguishing between fiction and fact,
rather than being invited to swallow a farrago of fantasy which is
every
bit as egregious as the Gospel story.
Dan Brown's novel has reinterpreted the legendary Holy Grail as a
"truth" which would destroy the Church and Christianity if it were
revealed: namely, that Jesus did survive the crucifixion, married Mary
Magdalene and gave birth to his own bloodline which survived through
medieval times into the modern era. The physical element of this
"Grail" was not only a purported set of documents witnessing to that
truth, which Brown's characters are trying to track down—the location
of which has been guarded by the leaders of the secret Priory for
centuries and left behind in a series of puzzles by the final murdered
and dying member of the group—but it
includes the very body of Mary
Magdalene herself, her mummified remains wrapped with those telltale
documents. Naturally, the bad guys, connected with the Catholic
Church's infamous Opus Dei (a genuine modern 'secret' society), try to
prevent this discovery and revelation of the Grail, providing Brown
with his thriller plot.
Brown's story also owes allegiance to the modern reaction alluded to
above, against Christianity's long misogynist nature, its "suppression
of the feminine" (as Brown's characters put it) both in its traditions
of origin and its ongoing church institutions. Mary Magdalene as the
true Grail is an expression of this idea, which gives The Da Vinci Code an additional
appeal
to the more progressive reader, a factor operating as well in Ki
Longfellow's novel. Again, all of this can only be a good thing, and we
are certainly living in a period when old pillars are crumbling. The
tools of that collapse will be many and varied, and I have no objection
to rubbing shoulders with Dan Brown (as long as readers
differentiate the comparative quality of our research). Certainly The Da Vinci Code will reach more
minds than The Jesus Puzzle.
What ultimately matters is the effect they achieve, on whatever the
scale.
Could the Brown and Baigent type of plot conceivably be factual,
at least in its essence? Could Mary Magdalene, and the feminine element
she represents, have been a force in earliest Christianity, later
suppressed? Could she have had a relationship with Jesus that was
anything but kosher in the Vatican's kitchen? Is there any solid basis
to modern feminist scholarship on Christian origins which has
virtually reinvented the role of women and the Magdalene? My own
thinking is no. There is not a murmur of this Mary in the earliest
Christian record, not in the epistles, not in the Apostolic Fathers,
not in the rest of the non-canonical documents of the first hundred
years, and this is something which cannot simply be accounted for by
male sexist suppression. Nothing in that record points to a
particularly feminist nature to the initial movement, though some of it
may witness to a relatively healthy involvement of women in some
circles of the faith. Of course, the mythicist conclusion that this
same record strongly witnesses to the lack of any figure of an
historical Jesus in the early movement also helps bury the Magdalene
myth. Everything that Christian tradition has to say about Mary
Magdalene is based on her appearance for the first time in the Gospels,
which came to be much enlarged on in apocryphal invention from the
latter part of the second century onward. It can no more be trusted to
be based on reality than the many fantastical enlargements on the
activities of the early church as embodied in the "Acts" of this or
that supposed apostle. The human imagination is notoriously capable of
running amok, and no better example of that tendency exists than in the
Christian documentary record as a whole.
These issues will be examined in greater detail in the second panel of
our triptych.
- II -
The Da Vinci Fraud
Most refutations of The Da Vinci Code
have been written as a defense of orthodoxy. Not so
Robert Price's delightful new book. He assumes that Brown
has been taken in by the pseudo-scholarly lore found in
books like The Holy Blood and the
Holy Grail
and adopted it wholesale. Perhaps so, or perhaps Brown simply
recognized a useful and popular trend when he saw it. It is certainly
true that the novel presents a series of boners and plain silly ideas
as purported history, something Brown should not be forgiven for, and
Price is thorough at pointing these out. But he does more than that. We
get capsule histories of everything from the great Church Council
debates of the 4th and 5th centuries to the medieval Templars; from the
evolving Grail legend through medieval writers to modern religion's
focus on the Magdalene as a new "Christian
Goddess" in alliance with neo-paganism; from bite-sized accounts of the
various mystery religions and their Christ-like savior gods to a very
useful survey of the great variety of Christian and Gnostic documents
of the first few centuries. All of it is in Price's inimitable relaxed,
almost colloquial writing style, dotted with modern pop culture
references, as readable a page-turner as anything Dan Brown has given
us.
Rather than following a tightly-knit structure in pursuit of a
central thesis, The Da Vinci Fraud
dips into various fascinating aspects of Christian history and
tradition where they relate to claims made in Brown's novel. I propose
to present and discuss a series of these, mostly for intrinsic
interest but including when they
touch on the concerns of the Jesus Myth theory, something which Price
himself soft-pedals, though he raises the point occasionally to make
the reader aware of the option itself.
The Space-Alien
Syndrome
The first thing Price is at pains to reveal is the dubious basis on
which Brown has staked his plot, namely a recent spate of research
(Price calls it an "arbitrary, ill-informed and distorted business")
contained in several books, such as The
Holy
Blood and the Holy Grail and The
Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ
by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. Like true conspiracy theorists, such
authors (and each book seems to require a team of them) have plumbed
all manner of obscure and legendary material for any hint of the
secretive and sensational, and if an idea appeals to their agenda (and
it's always to 'blow the lid off' something, it seems), they present it
as virtually established fact. What is remotely possible becomes
something that must have been. "Baigent,
Leigh and Lincoln constantly connect the dots of data provided by
medieval chronicles, etc., linking them with the cheap Scotch tape of
one speculation after another: 'What if A were really B?' 'What if B
were really C?' 'It is not impossible that...' 'If so-and-so were the
case, this would certainly explain this and that.'...It is essentially
a creative enterprise, not one of historical reconstruction....We are
familiar with this logic from tabloid theories that space aliens built
the pyramids...." [p.23-24]
One of the planks of The Da Vinci
Code is a supposed set of documents unearthed in the mid-20th
century known as Les Dossiers
Secrets or the Priory
Documents. This turns out to have been a hoax perpetrated by a
fringe political sect in France which appropriated the name of the
long-dead Priory of Sion and sought to anchor its claim of descent and
receipt of secret knowledge from the medieval Templars through these
'unearthed documents.' Both the Baigent and Picknett teams were taken
in by the hoax which was later confessed to. Whether Dan Brown knew of
that confession and ignored it is not known.
In discussing Picknett and Prince's The
Templar Revelations, Price goes in some detail into the authors'
view of what Jesus really was, namely a sorcerer of Egyptian
derivation, "an initiated priest of the Isis religion who had
experienced orgasmic deification in a ritual union with Mary Magdalene,
a temple 'prostitute', one who sought to reintroduce the Egyptian gods
to Israel, regarding himself as Osiris and Mary as Isis." [p.35]
Perhaps
this is where Brown got his idea that the Priory of Sion worshiped
Mary as Isis. Very often, this evident similarity between ideas that
may be separated by either great time or great distance (as in
similar salvation systems identified at different times around the
world) tends
to be explained by direct derivation, something hypothesized as passed
along in secret or through obscure channels—a
core concept of The Da Vinci Code.
Price presents
[p.36] a much more cogent and simpler explanation, one I have advocated
myself, namely that the human brain tends to respond in the same ways
to similar challenges and data, no matter what the time, locale or
circumstances. It is only the same brain's fascination with the idea of
clandestine discovery and covert machinations which makes it fail to
recognize
and acknowledge its own universal workings. And of course, when we are
numbered among those who have uncovered such secret goings-on, the
appeal of such interpretations is only increased.
The Legend of the
Holy Grail
Most people today would identify the legendary Holy Grail as the cup
used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Price shows how this legend, based on
oral traditions (which included a role for King Arthur and
his Round Table), evolved even further at the hands of various writers
of the 13th century. This chapter on the Grail legend is a fascinating
one, forming a kind of 'prequel' to the quantum leap which the Grail
took in the 20th century at the hands of Baigent & Co., transformed
into a code for the bloodline of Jesus through Mary Magdalene. But the
whole tenuous thread shatters with one revealing insight into the
legend's earlier forms. Price shows (as have others before him) that
the written versions of medieval time contain a variety of odd features
which are unrelated to Christianity. In fact, these Grail romances "are
based on materials derived from Celtic myths and legends" [p.67]: the
Grail cup recast from the mythic horn of plenty of Bran the Blessed, a
Celtic god, the bleeding lance from the flaming lance of Lug, the Irish
sun god, and so on. The legend that took shape in medieval times was
simply a Christianization of various Celtic mythical elements, and thus
cannot go back through earlier Christian history. All Christian
coloring is secondary. This insight into the way legends evolve when
they pass from one community into another should provide a blueprint
for understanding how the Christian myth of Jesus of Nazareth could
have evolved in a relatively short time as the faith spread through the
various parts of the eastern Roman empire during the first and second
centuries. What resulted by the time of the emergence of orthodoxy in
the late second century (and we are lacking any Gospel manuscripts or
fragments prior to the third century) may bear little resemblance to
the
ideas about the Christ operating in the first century.
The Gnostic
Connection
Price provides a chapter in which he compares the death and
resurrection
stories of the Gospels with current Hellenistic romance literature,
finding many parallels between the two, as well as suggestions in the
Gospels themselves of an earlier version of the story in which Jesus
survived death in well-worn romance fashion. Then he moves to one of
the
central issues of the book. Was Christianity originally gnostic, and
did Mary Magdalene teach this type of doctrine?
Price approaches the subject by laying out a succinct definition of
what constituted ancient Gnosticism. Not that it was a unified
movement, but rather (like earliest Christianity) a hodge-podge of
sects
holding
a range of ideas that fell into much the same broad category. As Price
describes it, Gnosticism was a pessimistic world view held by those who
felt themselves a superior class, possessing knowledge about their own
nature as containing fallen divine elements destined to be reunited
with the Godhead in heaven. They regarded the physical world as having
been created by a distant offspring of the high God, an evil "Demiurge"
whom they came to identify with the Jewish biblical god Yahweh. Various
Gnostic sects believed they had been enlightened by a heavenly
redeemer who had come to earth (not necessarily in incarnated flesh) to
reveal the truth; such revealers eventually came to be identified
with the Gospel Jesus, such was the magnetic power of that Markan
creation. The threads of this complex development and mutual
association are difficult to unravel, but Price suggests that Jesus of
Nazareth may have coalesced out of gnostic predecessors, rather than
the other way around as the orthodox camp later came to claim (and
still does). Price's
picture of the riotous gnostic landscape of the second century and its
relation to more orthodox terrain is remarkably clear and accessible,
as are his insights into why Gnosticism was doomed to be overrun by the
institutionalized Church of Rome.
Just as Dan Brown seems to champion the idea of gnosticism as a viable
alternative for today's religion, there are New Testament scholars who
also promote the
essence of that ancient movement. And as Price shows, it all fits
appealingly into the intellectual spirit of our time, that as
individuals we need not follow the dogmatic dictates of any human
institution with its supposed divine laws, but rather that we can get
in touch with some higher truth for ourselves and fashion our own lives
and morality around it. Such an attitude could even function in an
atheistic setting. While this new version of pseudo-gnosticism
dismisses the fantastic cosmology of its ancient predecessor, Price
points out uncomfortable parallels to it in our attitudes within the
modern
world. The ancient gnostic texts (as in the recently discovered Nag
Hammadi collection) are
being appealed to as the basis for services and sermons, for the living
of a spiritual life. One might indeed think that there is nothing new
under the sun, but only reworkings of old ideas.
Constantine and
the Transformation of Jesus
Price says [p.117]: "One of the gross historical errors in The Da Vinci Code is the claim
that, in the interests of imperial propaganda, Constantine and his vest
pocket bishops abruptly replaced the hitherto prevailing understanding
of Jesus as a simple mortal with the mythic view of Jesus as a god who
only seemed to be human." Price corrects this "utter nonsense" with a
thorough survey of what went on in the 4th century as Christianity
became the state religion and succeeding emperors engineered several
Church Councils to sort out competing christologies. But Dan Brown and
his mentors are not the only ones guilty of such a misrepresentation.
Many mainstream New Testament scholars do it all the time, claiming
that Jesus really only attained the Godhead at those late Church
Councils. To support this, they have to ignore or reinterpret the
picture of Jesus presented in the New Testament epistles, where writers
like Paul and the author of Hebrews give us a Christ Jesus who is
already at the level of pre-existence with God, sharing in his nature,
the agent of creation and sustainer of the universe, ruler of all in
heaven and earth. (See 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:15-20,
Philippians 2:6-11, Hebrews 1:3 and so on, all without any
identification of such a cosmic Son with an earthly Jesus of Nazareth.
These were ideas, by the way, very dependent on Greek philosophy.)
The second century Gospels come down considerably from this lofty orbit
in their portrayal of Jesus, but this is because the human
character at the center of their story is essentially derived from the
idea of the Q founder figure, a Galilean preacher and miracle worker,
with which the Pauline type of cultic Christ originally had nothing to
do. From
that Gospel Jesus, behind whose expanding shadow the cosmic Son of the
earliest period tended to become obscured, there was indeed a
subsequent
elevation to the Athanasian
product of the Councils, the "unbegotten Son equal to the Father." This
three-century graph of the two zeniths at
either end with the dip in the middle is something that biblical
scholarship has failed to perceive or acknowledge, with the result that
our picture of
early Christianity has been consistently distorted.
From his discussion of the Church Councils and the controversies they
dealt with, including docetism (the idea that Jesus only seemed to be flesh and human) and
the question of the exact mix of Jesus' divine and human natures, I
can't resist
quoting one of Price's more chuckle-producing paragraphs [p.137]:
The story goes that Nestorius,
Bishop of Constantinople, was disturbed at hearing some of his
parishioners praising Mary as the Theotokos,
Mother of God. This made him reflect upon the Christological question:
how are the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ related? He
decided they could not be related in any way that would make it
meaningful to call Mary's infant son "God." He is said to have
exclaimed, "God is not a baby two or three weeks old!" Imagine the
scene at home with the Holy Family: "Mary, can't you change God's
diaper?" "Joseph, it's time for the Almighty's two o'clock feeding!" In
the controversial 1985 French film Hail
Mary, which sets the nativity story in the modern world, the
Holy Family is setting off for a picnic in the country when all of a
sudden, out of nowhere, young Jesus announces, to no apparent point, "I
am he who is." Joseph's reaction: "Get in the car."
Loose Canon
In another revealing chapter with the above title, Price surveys the
evolution of the Church's canon of authoritative documents that became
the New Testament. Talk about intrigue! One of Dan Brown's characters
pronounces the entire Bible as "the product of man, my dear." And any study of how
the bible, old and new, was put together has to bear him out. As Price
says [p.146], "there is no reason whatever to believe that either the
origin or the growth of the Bible was supernatural in character. Again
quoting Brown: "the modern Bible was compiled and edited by men who
possessed a political agenda—to promote the
divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify
their own power base." Of course, Brown at the same time gets
things horribly wrong by having his character declare that it was the
emperor Constantine who engineered this editing of the collection,
rooting out Gospels which portrayed Jesus as only human and
embellishing those that made him godlike, as though Jesus as a divinity
was essentially a Constantinian invention.
And thus Price leads us on the tortured history of the canon's
formation, beginning with the gnostic arch-heretic (so judged by the
orthodox Church) Marcion, who probably began the whole process in the
second quarter of the second century, either by adapting a collection
of first-century Pauline letters which he had put together, or by
simply forging the whole corpus himself in the name of that legendary
apostle whom few by this time had much interest in. Marcion's use
of Paul, real or imagined, was to change all that. His presentation of
Pauline doctrine was cast in the interests of supporting his
own gnostic theology about Jesus and the higher, true God (above the
Jewish Yahweh) whom Jesus had come to earth (in docetic form) to
reveal. The
emerging Roman orthodox Church would not stand by and see Paul so
co-opted, nor could they accept Marcion's use of what was probably an
Ur-Luke Gospel. With the latter and his collection of Pauline epistles
(not including the
Pastorals), Marcion had formed the first "canon" of documents having a
claimed authoritative
nature. Over the next half century the Roman Church responded with
a canon of its
own. It reclaimed Paul and his letters for itself. It added an
assembled
group of miscellaneous epistles from around the empire which were
assigned to legendary followers of Jesus, and chose (with some
reworking) four Gospels from the many that were now circulating. To
this was added a newly written Acts of the Apostles, which served
to
tie all the
early loose ends into one unified history and apostolic movement—leading, of course, directly to the Church of Rome and its
divine authority. New traditions that Peter and Paul had been to Rome
and had there undergone martyrdom were added to the mix. Unlike
Marcion,
Roman orthodoxy held onto the Jewish scriptures
as the
first part of its new "Bible," turning them into a prequel that
prophesied the supposed star of the new canon and Testament, the
human Jesus.
Price continues the history of the canon's fine-tuning from Irenaeus to
Eusebius to Athanasius, including a discussion of the alleged criteria
by which canonicity was decided upon. It was only with the
last of the above-mentioned figures, in 367 CE, that we encounter a
list of authoritative New Testament
documents matching the one we have today, though universal
acceptance and usage was not achieved for another millennium. Then the whole thing was thrown open again with the
Reformation. As Price points out, the human fingerprints in the
establishment of the proper
word of God are all over everything, for reasons which had nothing to
do with divine revelation or infallibility.
A Multiplicity of
Gospels
Now comes the chapter which by itself would be worth the price of The Da Vinci Fraud. In Brown's
historical fantasy, the remainder of the "eighty gospels" from which
the New Testament four were chosen seem to have been buried with Mary
Magdalene's mummy. They were secretly harbored by the inner circle of
the Priory
of Sion to be revealed at some chosen time (these things are always in
the future) that would be best suited to bring down the
Catholic Church. Many of these Gospels are purported to have described
Jesus as "a wholly human teacher and prophet" [p.170], and these are
said to include "The Magdalene Diaries,
Mary's
personal account of her relationship with Christ, His crucifixion, and
her time in France." To counter this dubious assertion, Price
leads us on a tourist's treasure trove of the major Christian gospels
of the early centuries (nowhere near eighty), including some of those
recovered in the gnostic Nag
Hammadi collection as well as important non-orthodox gospels of the
time that have survived only in fragmentary quotations in Christian
commentators.
The classic Gnostic gospel is styled as a Resurrection Discourse, that
is, a set of teachings in a dialogue setting between Jesus and
his disciples following his death and resurrection, but before his
ascension to heaven. Price tentatively places the Gospel of Thomas
(styled by the Jesus Seminar as the "fifth Gospel") in this category,
taking its opening reference to "the living Jesus" as implying that a
post-resurrection setting is envisioned for the sayings. He suggests
that
this type of gospel presupposes an historical Passion and Resurrection
narrative in the mind of the writer or the community which produced the
gospel, but I wonder if this is essential. While the versions we
possess may, under the influence of the historical Jesus juggernaut,
have taken on that coloring, the original forms may not have
presupposed any historical Jesus at all, but regarded such teachings as
spiritually imparted in revelatory fashion by a spiritual Christ. Price
notes [p.174] the
longstanding observation of mainstream scholarship that "early
Christians made no distinction between remembered sayings of a
historical Jesus and inspired prophetic oracles issued in the early
Christian congregations by prophets uttering a word of wisdom or word
of knowledge in the name of the Risen Lord." Such scholarship, however,
has failed to
note that nothing in the early record is actually placed in the former
category, leading one to think that no distinction was made because
only the second category existed for those early writers (like Paul).
The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel According to the Hebrews, to the
Ebionites, to the Egyptians, various Infancy Gospels, the Pistis
Sophia, the Dialogue of the Savior, Apocalypses and Apocryphons and
much more, are given handy bite-sized treatments for a good overview of
the range of Christian expression throughout the first few centuries.
The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) is taken by scholars such as Karen King
and Elaine Pagels as evidence that
prophetesses and female preachers were active in the early days and had
to fight their own battles with male counterparts who sought to
suppress them. This could be, as suggested by several confrontations
between Peter and Mary which we find in such gospels, along with the
occasional
emphasis on Mary's special talent for understanding. On the other hand,
Mary's primary role here is that of a
specially-favored recipient of Jesus' teachings in parallel with other
cases involving male disciples, such as Thomas or Philip, and Pheme
Perkins regards her as simply another
convenient figure close to Jesus to whom the reception of special
wisdom could be attributed. The writers of such documents with
Mary as a central character may have adopted her as their own channel
from
Jesus, grounds for the authenticity of their communities' teachings.
All this would not necessarily speak to a vibrant female
voice in the early Christian movement, let alone an historical
apostleship for Mary Magdalene, although Price is certainly right in
pointing out that women did generally 'better' in the more heretical
groups as opposed to those of emerging orthodoxy.
What this multiplicity of gospels and their dramatic variety
of thought reveals most is the universal and unscrupulous practice
across the entire Christian world of creating sayings, narratives
and traditions, or revising those of previous sources, to reflect the
producing community's own evolving faith and claims.
That there could be any notable distinction or exception to this
practice between the so-called apocryphal or heretical writings and
those chosen for the New Testament canon is simply insupportable.
Matthew or
Luke, who shamelessly revised Mark for their own purposes, can no more
be considered to reflect eternal or divine truth, let alone actual
words and deeds of an actual Jesus, than the Wisdom of Jesus Christ or the Gospel of Mary. We have no more
right to regard the canonical Acts of the Apostles (most likely a
product of the mid-second century, with no attestation before c.170) as
necessarily any more historical than the many legendary "Acts" of
various
apostles such as Peter, Andrew or Philip. That the later works tend in
most cases to be more fantastical and obviously apocryphal than the
earlier is simply because they have built on the example of the latter
and
carried their features to ever greater heights of imagination and
self-serving invention.
The Christian
Goddess
In his last two chapters, Robert Price focuses directly on the figure
of Mary Magdalene. In the canonical Gospels she is "a tantalizingly
enigmatic figure," revealed in a few "intriguing scraps," many of which
are obviously legendary, such as that she had been possessed by seven
demons or was a reformed courtesan. By contrast, several gnostic
gospels suggest that she was a central figure in Jesus' circle, favored
recipient of Jesus' secrets. Is there any history in these divergent
portraits?
After surveying the several gnostic texts in which Mary Magdalene is
featured, Price discusses the issue in present day scholarship alluded
to above, whether in fact the figure of Mary was appropriated as the
mouthpiece for
pro-women gnostic views. Many think that the focus on Mary by these
second and third
century writers is 'narrative representation' and does not speak to a
reliably authentic role that she actually played. All of it could be
based on the Gospel representation of her as the first one 'sent' to
the tomb to witness the fact of the resurrection, and to inform the
disciples of such. In fact, on the direct question of whether Mary
Magdalene had an apostolic ministry, Price on that possibility comes
down on the side of the negative. For him, the evidence points to her
appearance in the various documents surveyed as simply a "literary
mouthpiece," "a later propaganda argument on behalf of one side in a
theological dispute between Catholic and other types of Christianity."
[p.218-19]
Price devotes several pages, and much discerning analysis, to the
appearance and evolution of Mary within the four canonical Gospels.
What can be said about her pre-gnostic trajectory in the early record?
Price's examination is too long and detailed to go into here, but his
conclusion in regard to the resurrection story is that the personal
appearances of the Risen Christ to Mary Magdalene in both Matthew and
John are literary products of the respective evangelists. They are not
traditions the writers have preserved which point to the memory (real
or imagined) of a special role for the Magdalene in Jesus' resurrection
appearances
and in subsequent activity based on such an accorded privilege. There
is thus no solid evidence anywhere in the Christian record for Dan
Brown's "assumption" and modern scholarship's virtual "dogma" that Mary
Magdalene enjoyed a tradition of having been in a favored position in
regard to Jesus, and that she could have conducted an apostleship after
his death. To be honest about the matter, there is really no
solid evidence that she existed at all.
Finally, when we turn the coin over, might we find an obverse
image of Mary Magdalene as the representation of a
Christian "goddess"? Is she the literary translation of an
Isis-like conception? Price approaches this question by surveying the
parallels between Christian expression and the savior-god myths
of the Hellenistic mystery cults: Dionysus, Osiris, Attis, Tammuz and
so on. In other books, Price has made it clear that he has little
sympathy for the contrived efforts of apologists, especially within
mainstream scholarly ranks, to discredit any such parallelism. He
addresses the issue again here. His argument counters three main
apologetic points: One, that there is no real parallel since Jesus was
an historical figure—which is blatantly begging
an important aspect of the question under debate. Two, that there is no
evidence of dying and rising gods before Christianity and that if
anything, the mysteries borrowed the idea from Jesus. This, as Price
says, "is nonsense." Belief in the death and resurrection of Osiris,
Baal, and Tammuz is amply attested many centuries before Christianity.
In any case, the early Christian Fathers themselves acknowledged that
the mystery versions came earlier, since they have to explain such an
anticipation as "planned counterfeits" planted by Satan before Jesus'
time to confuse believers. Third, the claim that Jews would never have
borrowed from pagan myths is based on the erroneous assumption that
pre-70 Judaism was too monotheistic and monolithic to do any such
thing. But the pre-rabbinic period shows a very different picture which
is
well in keeping with the idea that some
Jews in some locales
could have come up with their own version of a Hellenistic savior cult
with little difficulty or opposition, especially if it was done in
league with gentile circles.
While traditional scholars like to think that this application of
Greek mythical interpretation to Jesus was done to a real man, Price
offers as an alternative "that there simply was no historical Jesus,
and that the gospel portrait of an itinerant healer and sage is a
subsequent attempt to 'historicize' the mythic Jesus figure, much as
Plutarch supposed Osiris and Isis had really lived, but that they were
the first king and queen of Egypt." [p.250] He declares the case "for
heavy influence upon Christianity from the religions of the resurrected
gods" a strong one. In this case, does Mary Magdalene symbolize an
important part of the borrowed myth?
It turns out that Mary Magdalene's portrayal in the Gospels does indeed
closely parallel the mythical goddesses attached to several dying
and rising gods. In such myths, "the savior is always
resurrected by his consort" [Price's emphasis, p.254], Osiris
by Isis, Attis by Cybele, Tammuz by Ishtar. Mary Magdalene's actions in
following Jesus on his journeys, witnessing his death and burial, going
to the tomb to anoint the body, are direct echoes of similar activities
in the cultic myths: women divinities mourning for the slain god and
seeking his body for anointing. Even the words John puts in Mary's
mouth in 20:13, "they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where
they have laid him" are a carbon copy of an Osiris mourning chant in
which Isis exclaims, "Evil men have killed my lord, and I know not
where they have laid him." Price sees a parallel to the anointing of
the god to produce resurrection in the reworked and transplanted
episode of the woman at Bethany who anoints Jesus feet in advance of his death. There
is good reason to regard this woman as a disguised Mary Magdalene from
an earlier version.
In sum, Price declares [p.260] "that a very good case can be mounted to
the effect that Mary Magdalene is a historicized version of an
underlying mythic redemptrix like the Egyptian Isis," just as—I would add—that Jesus of Nazareth
is an historicized version of the mythic savior god idea which seminal
Christianity created, one that was enlarged upon from another
direction, namely the idea
of an historic "Q" founder figure for whose actual existence there is
no better evidence than for an historical man lying behind Paul's faith
in a divine Son of God. If this is the case for Mary Magdalene, then it
is incompatible with the idea that she was an historical follower of
some crucified man and that she embarked on a teaching ministry of her
own. In both the Gospels and Dan Brown's Holy Grail recasting, she must
be cut loose from history.
- III -
The Secret Magdalene
None of this matters in Ki Longfellow's
superb story of a Yeshu and Mariamne Magdal-eder who lived and loved
in first century Palestine and helped give birth to Gnostic philosophy
and Christian soteriology. This third panel of our
triptych is filled with vibrant color, vivid characters and
settings, a picture of an emerging thought-world that rings
so true one can taste it. It matters not for her story that no Jesus
may ever have existed. Indeed, an historical novel often works best,
especially when its object is to convey the ideas and spirit of a time,
when the key characters are entirely fictional. One can portray them in
whatever way one wishes. Of course, those characters in The Secret Magdalene are based on
traditions which many do regard as historical; and
the novel presents an alternative way of envisioning a set of events
and lives which might have given rise to the much reworked and now
orthodox version of our Christian origins and originator. But like all
great literature, what really matters is the emotional and intellectual
effect created in the reader, and for that, Longfellow's novel can
neither be faulted nor found wanting.
Although I had already read the book in advance
copy and praised it highly, I was struck by the force of the
reactions expressed on Amazon.com by ordinary readers. Many of them
styled it as an epiphany. Here's a sampling:
I loved every moment I spent inside
this book. I loved every person I
met, every sight I saw, every new thought presented to me. I wish it
had gone on and on. I feel bereft now that I've closed the last page.
My whole idea about religion is in turmoil now. I think this book has
changed my life. I know that's a big statement, but this book is a big
statement.
I was completely caught up in this version of the story of Jesus and
the Magdalene's relationship, as well as the purpose and meaning of
Jesus' life...
Quite a departure from the traditional spin and it makes total
sense to me. Longfellow breathes life and humanity into all the
characters... I had tears as
the book ended, not only touched by its depth and drama, but sadness
that the book was over.
The story was a page turner, and the philosophy of gnosticism it
depicts, during the time of its origins, fascinated me. The philosophy
evolves naturally with the story, and humanizes Jesus as he struggles
with his personal questions and doubts. As a non-Christian, THIS is a
Jesus I could believe in. I had no idea of the complexities of Jewish
culture during those times, and the story of Jesus moved me deeply. So
much so that I cried both times I read the book....
I'll come back to these reactions later.
Historical novels have always been my own favorite genre of literature,
particularly those set in ancient times. I read Mika Waltari's The Egyptian at the age of 12 and
never looked back. The best historical novels create an atmosphere.
That was one of Waltari's great strengths, through language and
imagery, to immerse the reader in the world of the novel. I still
remember one review impressing my adolescent mind: "One can taste the
dust of Waltari's Egypt." And so it is
with Ki Longfellow's world of the Magdalene. One feels the stone
streets of Jerusalem beneath one's feet, one breathes the dust of the
scrubby Judean wilderness; the close air and beating sun by the
stinking salt sea of inland Palestine clog the reader's
pores. The great city of Egyptian Alexandria, lazing on the broad
breast of the Nile delta, sparkles not only in the Mediterranean
sunlight, it is lit by the intellectual vibrancy of its
philosophical schools, by the vast knowledge and artistic creativity
collected
within the walls of the ancients' greatest library. Within this world
of sand, sea and parchment moves Longfellow's heroine who has caught
the imagination of so many who have come to know her.
But however magical an achievement is the creation of Longfellow's
atmosphere of the ancient world, it is almost eclipsed by the book's
intellectual and emotional landscape. It is the richness of the
characters and their minds and feelings that dominate this novel. But
even this operates on two levels, a microcosm and macrocosm, if you
like. While the characters think and feel as individuals, it is through
such as them that a new philosophy, a new way of looking at the world
and the nature of humanity is emerging, and the novel conveys
that broader sense. The first century CE was one of those pivotal times
when one could say that human enlightenment was taking a leap forward.
Historians of the development of ideas identify another as around the
mid-point of the first millennium BCE, centered on the 6th century. It
can be no accident that many
seminal figures, real or later imagined, who are seen as having had an
impact on human thought and behavior, have been located in those
two periods: Confucius, Lao-Tze, Zoroaster, Solon in the earlier;
Jesus, Hillel and
other Jewish
rabbis in the later. They were also times of pivotal historical events:
the
Jewish exile, the advent of the Persian empire, the emergence of its
great rival the Greek city states and their democracies, and later the
first Jewish War (Rome's single greatest military undertaking in its
history). Through the lives of her down-to-earth characters, Longfellow
manages to convey to us that great things were afoot.
Gnosticism was a philosophy which eventually became burdened with a lot
of strange and fantastical trappings, carrying some of the basics of
Plato's thought about the universe (he did us no favor) to bizarre
lengths, although so did other religious philosophies, including
Christianity. One of the uncertainties about the history of Gnosticism
is exactly what ideas entered the picture at what point. Early in the
first century its overblown heyday still lay in the future, but even
the letters of Paul, if we may place them in the mid-first century,
show that basic gnostic ideas—perhaps
they should be styled
proto-gnostic—were circulating and
could be found in some of
his own thought about the new Savior-Son he was preaching. Longfellow
has distilled the best of these, perhaps with a tinge of the
idealistic,
within her main characters, and their awakening to the potential in
those ideas becomes our awakening. As one reviewer put it:
"...so talented
is the author that her efforts to educate us are transparent; we learn
along with the characters....Unlike other books about Mary Magdalene
that attempt to convey some larger message, this does not read like a
dry, preachy tome. It's a literary and philosophical treasure that will
be savored by the spiritual seeker and casual reader alike."
All the characters, even the secondary ones, are drawn with depth and
sensitivity. It may not be too much to say that Mariamne herself is one
of the most perfectly crafted figures in modern fiction, which makes it
no surprise that so many readers have taken to her so emotionally. She
will no doubt eclipse all other representations of Mary Magdalene for
some time. One reviewer writes:
Ki Longfellow has achieved, in my
opinion, the best Mary
Magdalene
novel ever written. She has left no trace of the weepy penitent, the
sultry courtesan, or the harlot with a heart of gold. Gone are the
demons, the groveling, and the superficial saintliness. The Magdalene
that has replaced these tired old caricatures is complicated, robust,
strong, tender, pensive, awkward, imaginative, and loving. In a word,
Mary Magdalene is finally human.
We are introduced to Mariamne as a young girl growing up in her
father's house in Jerusalem. Through the merchant friends that attend
Josephus of Arimathea's dinners, through Mariamne's secret contacts
with those who would overturn their Rome-dominated society, we learn of
the various political and factional currents that are shaping the time,
of Sadducees and Pharisees, of the hotheaded sicarii who assassinate in the
name of their God and the establishment of a new order, all under the
brooding rumor of the rising of a Messiah and the
arrival of the End Time. Mariamne and her childhood friend Salome, both
emerging into womanhood, become involved with a circle that includes
John the Baptizer whom many hope is the Messiah himself, and Simon
Peter, the rough and menacing Galilean and
his fellow daggermen. But the group also includes more thoughtful and
temperate members, including two brothers, Jude and Yehoshua. Mariamne
possesses abilities of a seeress, though she little understands them,
and it is her reputation as a prophet that gains her admittance into
this dangerous circle. But she and Salome must do so disguised as male
adolescents, and for several years this is how they are known. It is in
the midst of this God-ridden group, ever on the verge of rushing into
open political rebellion, that new ideas begin to emerge.
A crisis drives Mariamne from her father's house, and together with
Salome she flees into the Judean wilderness and into the company of
would-be
rebels and masses of the marginal and deprived, where "the world clots
with messiahs" and debates and quarrels dissect scripture, the Law,
God, and the future. After a time, Mariamne and Salome, in the company
of a male friend, seek a safer exile and travel to Alexandria in
Egypt.
In this riotous hub of the world's philosophy, Mariamne, who has all
her
short life lusted for knowledge, studies at the great library, her mind
growing with her body. Into these chapters, Longfellow has sown a
tantalizing variety of the ancient world's myth and thought, its
understanding of the heavens and the earth, its poets and philosophers
and historians. There, still disguised as male, they meet Philo Judaeus
and study for a time under his tutelage, introduced to the concepts of gnosis, the Logos, and the
mysteries of Osiris. We are also led, through the musings and
discussions of Mariamne and her fellow pupils, to the great questions
which will form the basis of Longfellow's portrayal of Yeshu/Jesus'
transformation into a visionary and teacher of a new idea.
Mariamne returns to Judea, now a woman, and there finds herself drawn
ever closer to
the pensive Yeshu who withdraws into the desert for his own epiphany
and emerges with transforming convictions. And while most of those
around him, chafing at the bit for revolt against Rome, fail to
comprehend his new
message, they follow him as their new leader after the arrest of John
the Baptizer, expecting him to lead them to political victory as
the looked-for Messiah. He embarks with them and with Mariamne
(revealed now for what she is) on a preaching mission, in which both
followers and audience struggle to understand his insights and
intentions. This is the birth of gnosticism—perhaps
somewhat romanticized, but symbolizing all that was best in that
ancient philosophy. Would that it could be true, that this moral and
world-transforming vision of reality was indeed offered to the world so
long ago by one fit to proclaim it, but then the corruption in what
became political and institutionalized Christianity with its petrified
Jesus would be all the
more painful to bear.
There are episodes in this ministry that "pre-echo" elements of the
canonical Gospels. Longfellow has cleverly cast the picture of Yeshu's
words and activities in ways that show how the very human and
non-miraculous could
have been turned into the later miracles of Christian tradition, how
Yeshu's teachings could have been sanctified and transformed (as well
as distorted) into those of Jesus the Son of God.
The figures around Yeshu, many familiar to readers of the
Gospel stories, show what could have been their true natures, before
the legend machine and its competing handlers came into operation. And
the fate of Yeshu himself? Without giving too much away, desperate
apostles have been known to take matters into their own hands, with
unpredictable and unfortunate results. Longfellow's ending
is both
heartbreaking and inspiring.
The ideas which lie at the heart of The
Secret Magdalene's presentation of
gnostic beginnings are a mix of those known from gnostic writings and a
broader expression of other currents of Greek philosophy. (The extent
and integrity of Longfellow's research is often amazing.) They are
sometimes expressed with a more modern resonance familiar to us from
today's popular focus on the quest for a "spiritual" understanding of
self and universe, but there is nothing illegitimate in that,
especially in a novel. Were we truly to write as the mind of the
ancient thinker would have spoken or written (as any reading of the
classic Gnostic documents will show), this would make for a difficult
write
and read. Much of it would be unintelligible (as some of Paul is).
We can only see and understand ancient ideas through the prism of our
own experiences and thought processes—a
limitation operating in both history and fiction. This is a limitation
that renders modern religion's interpretation of its origins so skewed
and misleading. (And it is the major impediment facing the modern mind
in understanding the philosophical basis of Christianity's
original non-historical mythic savior.)
I have often said that I am anything but a mystic (though some have
disputed that), and I prefer to use terminology that is non-"spiritual"
because I am convinced that all understanding of ourselves and our
universe can ultimately be arrived at and presented in a broadly
scientific manner. But I have long been drawn to the kinds of ideas
which Longfellow's characters express, though I would cast them without
their affiliation to religious conceptions. Mariamne, in listening
to one of Philo Judaeus' lectures in Egypt, muses to herself: "I
wonder: could not the visible world be God speaking to Itself?" When
she hears her male companion in Alexandria, Seth, say, "God, then, is
Consciousness itself," she wonders if she is alone in finding
something in this idea that transports her. For Mariamne, gnosis becomes this insight into
the relationship between the individual and the collective, between
human life and the universe.
"To a Jew, the Invisible God is always above and apart. And so He is to
all the prophets. He remains apart no matter the heaven they find
themselves caught up into. And they are sore afraid. But I have seen
with my own eyes that God is not above and apart. God is within and
without. There is nothing that is not God. In which case, there is
nothing to fear from God....As Seth once said, 'It is not that there is
one God. It is that God is One.' And as he also said, 'God is One,
meaning All, meaning All There Is. Therefore, it is not 'His' Mind that
moves all things, but 'Our' mind."
It is this same insight which has seized Yeshu in the desert
wilderness and which he struggles to impart to his followers and any
who will listen, for he sees it as the knowledge which will lift fear
and oppression and inequities from society. Yet it is an insight too
far above the capacities of most, and so he decides to offer himself as
a sacrificial god-man to his own people in the manner of the mysteries.
Other elements familiar from gnostic thought are also presented as
finding their genesis at this time and among people like these. The
basis of gnosis, together
with the conviction that the "spiritual" among men and women are those
who bear the fallen spark of divinity within them, could well have
begun with a more basic insight like this [p.217]: "Seth teaches that
all men and all women are angels of light clothed in the cloth of self—but do not know it. Not knowing it is the Dark in the
Center of the Soul. Seth says it is the heart of gnosis to know it, that merely to
know this one simple truth is to be set free." And there are the darker
thoughts of gnosticism being formulated and debated. I would like to
offer some excerpts from a more extended passage [p.350-1] because it
is a superb presentation of how ideas arise out of the minds of people,
and, knowing what we know of the future of these particular ideas, how
they can be turned into dogma and even millstones. (The same may be
said for some of the ideas presented by Yeshu in his ministry.)
By the riverbank sit Mariamne and Yeshu and an assortment of followers:
....By now, Dositheus
never uses the forbidden name, Yahweh...but only the name Plato gave
his Maker of the Universe: Demiurge
or "Craftsman," because, as says Dositheus, "This god has
'fabricated' a copy of the higher world, which by its nature can only
be base imitation." But where Plato thought the Craftsman worked to the
best of his ability and therefore his copy is as good as it can
possibly be, Dositheus thinks the Craftsman is fatally flawed by
self-centeredness and arrogance and the desire to dominate human
affairs, and therefore his copy is fatally flawed....
Eleazar, leaning over far enough to fall as he sits
near us, though not quite with us, pretends to skip a pebble over the
water, and Dositheus follows its course with a gloomy eye. "More and
more, I come to believe as it is taught in certain secret sects that
there is a realm of the Spirit which is good and is called Pleroma, and over against it there
is a realm of Matter which is evil and is called the World. I am
entirely convinced that is it not the Supreme Being who calls this
World forth, but the Demiurge
who is the Master of Matter. And into this evil matter we have fallen,
and cannot find our way out again, being tormented by the Nephilim who mimic the Divine, but
who are lesser deities of the chief Archon,
and evil in themselves...."
Yeshu is staring out at the sea, but he is listening,
especially now as Seth is moved to reply to Dositheus of Gitta. "You
would have two realms, then? One dark and one light, each antithetic to
the other, indeed, opposed to the other?"
"I would."
"And therefore you would say that Duality is at the root
of all things, as is conflict and discord?"
"Yes. I believe this is where my thought takes me."
"As it takes others. But tell me—in
this World of Evil in which we take vital part, consciously knowing no
other world, have you come to believe that men and women themselves are
evil?"
Dositheus holds up his hands, his woeful face
wreathed in worry at the very thought. "No. No. I cannot bring myself
to think that, though there are surely evil men, or at least men who do
evil...."
"It seems to me," replies Seth, "as it did to
Parmenides of Elea, that the very thoughts of man and of woman are the World, and if there is evil
in it, it is our evil, and if
there is goodness, it is our
goodness. I maintain there is no battle between Good and Evil that is
outside the self. There is only a mastery of the eidolon, or smaller self, that
leads to Knowing...."
Here we can recognize that demon Duality which still governs the view
of so
many in modern society, of dual worlds and forces of good and evil, the
natural and the supernatural, divinity and humankind. For all the human
mind's
wonderful inventiveness, insight and discovery, it has always been
capable of
following dark and tortuous paths and creating millstones for itself.
Seth, incidentally, declares that he is working on a book which he
thinks to call On The Origin of the
World, and hopes that his companions will read it. Those
familiar with the Nag Hammadi collection will recognize this as one of
its components, a product of so-called Sethian Gnosticism (as there
later arose a form of "Dosithean" Gnosticism), though in its surviving
form it would hardly go back to the early first century; gnostic
documents like everything else show signs of emendation and evolution
as ideas developed over time. But it's a nice touch, and the novel is
full of nice touches like this. Another "incidentally": lest it be
thought by my focus here on the "ideas" dimension of The Secret Magdalene, that the
novel is over-dominated by such material, or that it is not agreeably
balanced by action, characterization and sheer pleasurable reading, let
me disabuse you of any such impression. And when the ideas themselves
are presented with such clarity and lyricism, intimately linked
with the characters, there is no ill-effect involved.
(Besides, some of us thrive on the rush and tumble of ideas.)
It is Yeshu's personal expression of gnosis
and its ethics which seems the most appealing and promising, more
optimistic and
human, more free of the terror of Deity than any of them. The passage
in which Yeshu recounts to Mariamne his epiphany in the desert is
almost unbearably powerful and affecting. Over time—which Mariamne,
composing this record in her old age with Seth as her amanuensis, comes
into touch with—it was
swamped and adulterated and buried, and so we
could see it as buried even until today, though there are those who
would
like to regard it as now undergoing resurrection. Perhaps so, though if
so, it is through the wedding of intuitive insight (if we may style it
that) with scientific and rationalistic advances which the ancients had
little access to. And it still faces opposition greater and more
hostile than ever.
Did Christianity really begin with this sort of gnostic philosophy
at
its heart? It would be nice to think so, and it might be possible to
think so. But we have very little to go on, especially considering that
the one source for that early period we regarded as reasonably secure,
the genuine letters of Paul, may not be so secure after all; and the
Gospel traditions, many springing from the minds of the evangelists,
provide too few clues, if any. The current disposition to see "Jewish
Christianity" (in sects like the Ebionites) as going back to the
initial period, having a view of Jesus simply as a human prophet and
sage, is ill-based on the evidence, which all comes from later periods;
in any case, it does not particularly point to a gnostic character.
Perhaps the closest we come to a gnostic
message attributed to Jesus is the so-called "mystical" sayings within
the Gospel of Thomas, but scholars are unsure as to whether they go
back into the first century. (This Gospel's attribution of its sayings,
the repetition of the little "Jesus said" prefaces, is most likely a
second century
addition.) Q's root message in its "wisdom" sayings,
no matter who or when it goes back to, are not really gnostic in
character. Yet there are fingerprints of incipient gnosticism in the
Pauline
epistles (which I happen to think are largely first century products),
and
classic Gnosticism itself did not spring full-blown with the advent of
the
second century. The picture of gnostic philosophy presented by
Longfellow, while tinged with modern overtones, could well lie at the
roots of classical Gnosticism. And who better to represent its genesis
and spread, if only symbolically, than a young Judean woman with a
thirst for knowledge, consort to a visionary whose
great heart
and consuming passion to better the lot and understanding of those
around
him led him on a doomed ministry? Heaven on earth is hard to establish,
but someone has to start somewhere.
The reactions to Ki Longfellow's novel show that her envisioning of the
Mary
Magdalene figure and the visionary Yeshu has struck a chord with many
readers. For several decades there has been a growing
disillusionment with established religion—even
as the ranks swell, especially in North America, of those who have
surrendered their intellects and much of their humanity to the darkness
of a closed and often bigoted mind. Those readers and many others like
them seek a focus,
a philosophy, a vision of reality upon which to lay the light they
themselves sense and are trying to articulate. As often happens, they
may turn to a past, or an envisioned past, to figures which seem to
embody the
elements of that search for meaning. And even with modern
scientific enlightenment, there is still the tendency to cast such
meaning in
perceived manifestations that are larger than ourselves or the world
around us. It's a new kind of myth, perhaps, to have the God out there,
as Yeshu and Mariamne present it, take up residence in human self, to
see
ourselves as the expression of a great spiritual force which has so
much worthier a promise than its previous incarnations. Maybe it's
simply a
matter of the language we use, but I believe we will take the last
step to maturity when we realize that our myths are entirely about
ourselves and the visible world we are a product of, its and our
(which are the same thing) inmost features and capacities, strengths
and flaws, that we don't need to extrapolate them onto divinities,
literal or figurative, much less to identify them with unique
historical figures who never really lived except as previous
manifestations of what we still are: an evolving life form groping to
find ways to understand the marvel of the universe in which we find
ourselves
and the bodies it has formed of which our minds are a part. Again, they
are
really two aspects of the same thing.
I take The Secret Magdalene
as symbolism, and as such it enriches and exhilarates me, it nourishes
my optimism and further washes away any fear of the unknown.
Mariamne in her old age, immortalizing her thoughts for future ages,
tells Seth [p.174]:
You
said that all men experience themselves first as the eidelon, which is the mortal self, the personality—becoming lost in the
belief that their eidelon was all there was to self, and when this
died, they died. Blinded by the eidelon, small and suffering, they could not do
otherwise than perceive God as "other" and separate: That Which Is
Enormous and Unknowable. Anything that is enormous and unknowable is
also a thing to be feared. As this small self, they would see their
higher self, which Socrates called the Daemon, as also separate; they would think it an
independent thing, call it a Guardian Angel. But to those who blessed
themselves by seeking gnosis,
or complete Self Knowledge, the Daemon would be discovered to be the Divine I,
the One Soul of the Universe, the Consciousness in all men and in all
things. To know this, all men could say: I am God. To know this would
be to know what is meant by I AM.
*
Ki Longfellow's The Secret Magdalene
is available from http://www.eiobooks.com and www.amazon.com.
Robert Price's The Da Vinci Fraud
is due to be published by Prometheus Books in September 2005 and will
be available from Amazon.com.
...and you don't need me to tell you
how to get a copy of Dan Brown's The Da
Vinci Code.
Return to Home Page