Karen King Discusses Mary Magdalene as a Leader in Early Christianity

Interview Transcript

Shirley Paulson

I’ve been wondering how in the world I could introduce someone who has so profoundly impacted my life. This is Dr. Karen King. Possibly most of you listening to this podcast already know her, but maybe not everybody, so let me try to explain. When I read her book titled, What is Gnosticism? I was stunned to find someone who was answering questions from very deep in my soul. The scholarship was over my head at the time, but there were also some very meaningful things that I didn’t know anybody else understood. However, when I read her book, The Secret Revelation of John, honestly, my life stopped in its tracks. I had to find a way to get into a PhD program just because of that book. And then, in the middle of that PhD quest, I read her book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. And that’s when I knew I’d spend the rest of my life thinking and talking about these things—and here I am.

I asked Karen to give me a brief bio to share with you. Of course, I knew that would be impossible because there are just too many things to talk about, but I should mention a few of highlights. She is the Hollis Research Professor of Divinity, Harvard University’s oldest endowed professorship. Karen is the first woman to hold this chair. Besides her books and other publications, she’s the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in teaching and research. That’s whole other page of fascinating information which you’ll have to look up on our show notes, but I think you get the idea. Karen, I’m more than thrilled to have you with us today on The Bible and Beyond podcast.

Karen King

Well, I feel deeply moved and honored by the fact that my work has had some kind of impact, and I appreciate your generous comments. Thank you so much and I look forward to our conversation.

Shirley

Oh, great, I am too, thanks. So, I really want to start with the Gospel of Mary and frankly, your love for it. As I already mentioned, your thoughts about it resonate in a deep way with me as well. I’m just really happy that this ancient gospel that’s not in the Bible has become better known in the public over the past few decades. And I would say that that’s largely due to your own persistent efforts to make it known to the world for the past, what?—30 years or so.

One of the things that grabs our attention in this gospel is the picture of a woman, namely Mary, who is portrayed as an actual disciple of Jesus and takes on a leadership role among these disciples. Aside from that glaring headline that we will discuss some more, can you give us a brief overview of what this ancient book is about, and maybe where it came from? Let’s just start there.

Karen

Sure. First of all, lots of people have been working on this text and getting it out there. I think when people find the Gospel of Mary, it’s such a surprise that such a text exists at all. Then they want to talk about it and to learn and to know more. The text itself actually has an exciting history of discovery in the modern period, one that lets us know that in antiquity (even though it was probably written in the second century), it had a life at least 300 to 400 years before, in terms of being written in Greek and translated into Coptic. And different manuscripts were passed around as well as other nerdy details which scholars like me just love to talk about at length.

It also has this interesting history of modern find [discovery] in Egypt. There are three copies. Two were found in a trash heap—a very famous trash heap—which has some of the earliest little teeny fragments of the New Testament that we have, and one of those fragments, at least, was obtained illegally and taken out of Egypt. All of this is about colonialism and the antiquities trade and so forth. But this poor scholar—shall we say poor scholar, even though he kind of stole it—was bombed twice by U-boats in the Mediterranean and the ship went down, taking things back and forth. So, there’s kind of an exciting history about the recovery of these texts as well, but one that puts us as modern readers and modern scholars right in the midst of our own history of colonialism, the antiquities trade, and the history of scholarship and so forth. But the story of the text itself, inside the text—it again has its own story.

Now part of the reason I raised this issue about the antiquities trade and so forth is that somehow in the middle of all of this, over half of the Gospel of Mary was lost. It’s about 19 pages—18 pages, plus a few lines long—but we’re missing 10 pages. So, when the story starts, we’re in the middle of a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples who are asking him questions. Peter asks this really interesting question: “What is the sin of the world?” And Jesus says something so remarkable; he says, “There is no such thing as sin. But you’re the ones who make sin when you act in accord with the way the world is” and so forth. So I think this already leaves us understanding that the disciples had questions.

This question—what is the sin of the world? — probably comes from the Gospel of John, where John the Baptist says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And so, Peter’s saying, “What is the sin of the world?” And this text is trying to explain the whole of the cosmos, of salvation.  It gets a little twisted, I think, for the general reader. But it’s a remarkable text. And Jesus tells them they need to turn toward the inner self and away from the material things that mire humanity in sin and death. And then he moves on into a fairly well-known discourse where he commissions them to go and teach the gospel, and not to lay down any other rules beyond what he has set for them, lest they be enslaved by the rules that they themselves set—and then he departs.

When he does, the disciples are frightened. They’re wondering, “Look what happened to him!” Okay, that’s got to be kind of a reference to the crucifixion, perhaps. And Mary steps in and she comforts them…and she turns their thoughts to the teachings of the Savior. And she says this remarkable sentence where she said, “He made us fully human.” He made us fully human.”

So then, Peter turns to Mary and he asks her to tell them words of the Savior that she may know that they don’t know because as he said, we know that Jesus loved you more than other women, so she says she will. In one manuscript it says—actually, she says—”I’ll tell you what’s been hidden from you.” But in any case, it picks up when she says to them, “I saw the Lord and he said to me….” And so, she starts telling him about this revelation that she had from the Savior. And wouldn’t you know now, just when we’re really getting into the story, it breaks off and we lose six pages of the manuscript!

When it picks up again, interestingly enough, we are in a description. The Savior’s telling Mary about the rise of the soul to God, past powers. Now, these are powers of ignorance, darkness, wrath, and desire, and they’re trying to keep the soul in this world. But the soul knows what to say to them and how to escape their power, and gleefully moves on. And this ends, then, when the soul rests in silence and peace beyond time and eternity.

And it is here that Mary then mimics the soul and is herself silent. But at this point, instead of everybody going, “Thank you, thank you, Mary, for your teaching,” Andrew breaks in and says, “Well, I don’t believe this. Surely, you know, these are strange teachings,” and then Peter pipes in and says, “Well, he wouldn’t have told a woman things that he didn’t tell us. You know, this can’t be.” Okay. So, then Levi…Mary weeps, okay, and says, “Peter, really, do you think that I’m lying? That I’ve made all of this up in my heart?” And she’s crying. And Levi steps in and says, “Peter, we’ve always known that you’re hot-headed.” And course, this is the kind of picture of Peter that we get in the Gospels—that he goes off, you know?  But in this case, he says, “You’re behaving like one of the powers of wrath! Surely, the Savior loved her more than us. Surely, he knew her completely. And that’s why he loved her more than us. We should put on the perfect Human and go out and preach the gospel as he has commanded.” And then, again, the manuscripts differ. In one manuscript, Levi turns and goes off to preach, and in the others, they go out to preach the gospel and to dance.

Shirley

Oh my gosh, that was a beautiful rendition of the whole gospel. I don’t know how you did it, but you just did. So, this is a really exciting text on many levels. There’s one point of frustration that many of us feel when we get involved in this text. Mary doesn’t have a second name. Like, it’s just Mary. So, there are so many Marys in the Bible and even outside the Bible, we can’t really guarantee we know which Mary this is. Do you think the scholars can make a good case that this is Mary Magdalene as I want it to be?

Karen

Yes, I think they can. Okay, you’re right. And Tal Ilan did a study and about a fourth of women in this area were named Mary in this period. And we have all of these Marys in the New Testament gospels. They tell us, you know, of Mary the mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary and the son, and so forth. So which Mary is this?  But the key, I think, is precisely when Mary says to the disciples, “I saw the Lord.” And this is a quote from the Gospel of John. And so, what we’re seeing happening here is what happens in a lot of early Christian literature. We remember that we have four gospels, not one. We have retellings of the story.

And there are in particular impetuses to tell the story when there are gaps in the story. Here, what looks to be the case is that the Gospel of Mary is in some sense filling in holes in that piece of the narrative of the Gospel of John. When Jesus after the crucifixion, Mary comes to the tomb, she encounters the risen Lord, and he says to her, “I am ascending, but I have not yet ascended. Go and tell the other disciples.” And she goes and tells them, “I have seen the Lord.” And so, what we have here is…Peter’s sort of saying, “Well, what did he tell you?” And so she gives this revelation.  And we can see that that’s the figure of Mary Magdalene. And that, in my mind, and to the mind of many other scholars, ties her most clearly and most carefully with Mary Magdalene.

Shirley

So, you know, I have to confess that I just want her to be Mary Magdalene, which isn’t as scholarly as what you’re talking about, but that’s very interesting. Do you think it’s wrong to identify this Mary as Magdalene when she shares these other characteristics, like even with other periods besides this one you’re talking about, or even like women who share the name?

Karen

Well, I think it’s important to know that a character like Mary Magdalene…I think one of the reasons I can’t speculate about what you want it to be Mary Magdalene… But you know, that names carry a bundle of characteristics. And so when we think about Mary Magdalene, she is a leading disciple of Jesus. She’s been with him during his ministry. She is a witness to the resurrection. She’s a witness to the crucifixion. And then, of course, she’s at the tomb. And in the Gospel of John, she’s the first one to encounter the risen Savior. She receives this special teaching from him. So, she has all these characteristics of a prophet and of teacher, and apostle to the apostles, and as this leading woman.

But in addition to that, there is a way in which in antiquity—and today I think with storytelling—that it’s possible to interpret figures in terms of other figures. So, Mary was not the only one, for example, in the Gospel of Matthew, to go to the tomb. She went with another Mary, okay? They encountered an angel, but then they also encountered Jesus, these two women—these two Marys—on the way back. And then when they got to tell the disciples, the disciples didn’t believe them. And of course, this is a piece of the story we have also in the Gospel of Mary—that the disciples didn’t believe her. We also have the Samaritan woman, where the disciples are upset that Jesus is talking with this woman here again.

So there are ways in which characteristics from the story, and especially of other unnamed women, carry over. The most famous, of course, is the notion that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. And this comes from identifying Mary with unnamed sinner women in the Gospels: the woman caught in adultery in John, the sinner women in Luke 7, and so on and so forth. But those are not named Mary Magdalene. And there’s a whole huge tradition, especially in the Eastern Christianity, of Mary Magdalene as apostle to the apostles.

Shirley

Okay, so maybe you’re making me feel like it’s a more complex thing than I want it to be, but I get it. I think it has to be that way.

Karen

I always think my job is to make things more complicated. That’s what I do.

Shirley

Thank you so much. All right, well then, so when we make these connections then between Mary in the Gospel of Mary, and Mary in the other Gospels, or some Marys, we also find some disturbing pictures. Like I’m thinking about that one in the Gospel of Thomas, for example, where Peter says flat out, “Mary should go away because women aren’t worthy of life.” And again, it’s between Mary and Peter. Is there something bigger going on or what’s going on there—that nasty thing?

Karen

There’s absolutely something going on bigger there and that’s where this association of women and their characteristics becomes so important. I mean, really, when Peter says…I mean, we can think of Peter as a little bit on outrageous side anyway…but, “All women are not worthy of life or salvation!”  I mean, this has got to be one of the most radical statements to be found in all the gospel literature. What in the world would make that connect or make sense? And I think it’s precisely because women are “not worthy of life. Life!”—the mother of the living! This is Eve!

Shirley

Oh!

Karen

And who in this tradition is being credited with the death and the destruction of all of humanity? It’s Eve taking the apple…disobeying, right? And so the Gospel of Thomas has a larger theme about salvation as a return to creation.

When humanity was created in the image and likeness of God, male and female, He created them. So, we have the male and the female at the beginning. And so when Jesus replies to Peter, saying all women are not worthy of life, I sometimes wish Jesus would have been a little more clear on this point, but he says, “I will lead her and make her male and she will be like the living.” Well, of course, this is in some ways a way in which the teachings of Jesus show a path back to the original creation, in which male and female were not divided, and the possibility of making everyone having salvation and being a fully Human.

But in the Gospel of Thomas, it’s “make Mary male.” In the Gospel of Mary, it’s “make us fully Human.” It uses the word like we have in English…we can say, we can say “man” and be inclusive—or not. But when we say “male,” we mean, “male people”, and with “female,” we mean “female people.” But here too, you can do that in Greek and Coptic. And here, Mary says, “I will make you”…and then she uses the generic term “fully Human”.

And so, in this text—and maybe I’m leaping ahead a bit—but when Peter says surely he wouldn’t tell things to a woman that he didn’t tell to us, it shows how Peter doesn’t understand the teachings of Jesus. It is not about whether one is a man or a woman. It’s not about the differences written on the body of any kind (including gender), it’s the inner person. It’s the person who understands the teachings of Jesus, who can find the Human in which all humanity was created in this image of the true Human that brings salvation.

Shirley

That’s saying quite a lot. Are you saying then that you would think of Mary and Peter even representing the larger maybe kind of Christian ideal between orthodoxy and some other kind of way of understanding Christianity? Is bigger than their personal stories? Is that what you’re saying?

Karen

There are scholars who make that argument, that what we’re seeing here between Peter and Andrew on the one side, and Mary and Levi on the other, is showing us a dispute between the Orthodox and the heretics. In this case, trying to make a case, so to speak, for the heretics. I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s too early for that. I don’t think we have that sort of sharp division. I mean, if we look at the earliest literature of Christianity, which is—or the earliest literature about Jesus, the letters of Paul—there’s already lots of fighting going on, you know, between Peter and Paul, and among the disciples, and who’s right, and so on and so forth. I think that’s what’s going on here. It’s just that the issue that’s at stake here is different.

The issue here that is being debated is whether or not the teaching about the rise of the soul as the path of salvation is the true teaching of Jesus. It’s about whether or not women can be true and fully apostles or not. And those are issues that we see being debated in letters like First Timothy, where they’re trying to silence women.

We see these debates going on in other texts. Later, they get kind of hardened into those categories of Orthodoxy and heresy. But here, I think we’re just seeing the way that Peter often…he’s the one who denies Jesus. He’s the one who tries to walk on water and falls and starts to sink. He’s sort of the typical guy you use, if you will. And Mary is the faithful disciple.

Shirley

Wow, okay, one of the issues that comes up in this conflict then is the notion of returning to God that you brought up. I think it sounds kind of heretical to Orthodox ears anyway. And is that a topic then between Mary and Peter or is it just a different thing just with Mary?

Karen

I think this is one of the most important ways of going after this issue about the diversity of early Christianity. There’s a storyline that was invented later that Jesus told some things to his apostles, they weren’t changed, they were passed on, and then heretics came in. But if we look at this, what we’re seeing is Christians are thinking about what is the significance of Jesus’s teachings? What is the significance of his death? What is the significance of continued experiences of his life, his life among them, his life with them, the presence of the Spirit and so forth? And one of those, of course, turns out to be an atonement Christology: that he died for our sins and so forth.

But another one is the one that is found most clearly in the Gospel of John. And this is the notion that Jesus, the Son of Man, came down into the world, was incarnate, taught who God is because he alone knew the Father and could teach about him. And then the crucifixion is understood as part of the return of Jesus to the Father. In the Gospel of John, it talks about lifting up on the cross and so on and so forth.

And this is what we find elaborated in the Gospel of Mary. It is the spiritual life, as the rise of the soul toward God. So, it talks about it both in terms of space and something that happens after death, but it’s also very much a spiritual path in this life as one prepares for that. It may seem odd to many Christians, but of course the rise of the soul has a special place and a continual, enduring place in the mystical traditions of Christianity from the Gospel of John up until the present time. So it’s not something that was abandoned or left aside.

Shirley

Wow, related to this sort of spiritual—I guess is the right word—I love this way of thinking of what this is about. I also love the way you discuss the meaning of being Human as you see it in the Gospel of Mary. And I like the way you use Human with a capital H, which makes it different from just human, I guess. And it seems kind of close to the way Paul, I think, distinguishes between the inner and outer humanhood. How do you see the differences between someone’s inner and outer humanness?

Karen

So you let me know you were going to ask this question, so I looked Paul up. And in II Corinthians 4:16, to quote, he says, “though our outward man is dying or decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” And it seems that Paul here is distinguishing between that physical self that’s decaying and the spiritual self that’s being renewed day by day.

In the Gospel of Mary, one is called to put on the perfect Human, to find the Human within, to seek and you will find, and so forth. Here, that Human that one looks to is one’s essential likeness to God. Now, there’s a whole lot of ways of thinking about it. But one is if humanity is created in the image and likeness of God, that image and likeness is the Human—with the capital H—which one is created. And in the Greek—I know this is very weedy again, but it’s so interesting, so I’m going to say it anyway, okay?—but in the Greek translation of Genesis, when God says, “Let there be light,” that word is “phos.” It means light as we get our word photography and photosynthesis and stuff from it. But “phos”—depending on how it gets accented—also means “human,” “man”. And so, it’s, “let there be the light man”. And so, it is this man of light, this Human light that is the creation, that is the image in which humanity is created. And it is that light Human within which the Gospel of Mary, the Savior, is asking one to find and to seek. This is the closest that one is in one’s encounter with who God is.

Shirley

That’s just awesome to think about. My goodness, thank you for sharing that too. So, you mentioned that there was a big gap in the text, which is so frustrating. It is right where somebody’s soul starts talking to some powers on the way up somewhere. Without really context there, it feels kind of confusing when you just try to read it, but can you talk about that a little bit more? What is happening there?

Karen

So we have to imagine that they have a cosmos in which there are sort of cosmic powers that are…as the soul is rising back to God upward, it encounters these powers. There may be planets or something that try to stop the soul. But that happens in life too. So it uses this image of the rise of the soul as a way to describe the spiritual life. I like the way that he does it in terms of dialogue. You know? Where the power says, “Ha! I didn’t see you come down, so you don’t get to go back up,” and the soul says, “Well, I saw you.” It laughs and goes on.

What is going on here? If one looks very closely at what this says, there is a way in which I think it can be rewritten. I think if I translated this into sort of a modern dialogue of English, it says something like, “The soul is encountering the powers.” And remember, these powers are falseness, ignorance. They lie to the soul. They try to fill it with false desire. It’s wrath, it’s violence, that is being waged against the soul.

So, what does the soul need to say to overcome this kind of lying and ignorance and violence? The soul says, “I don’t belong to you. You don’t know who I really am” …  because the soul knows that its true identity is the Human within. “You judge me by a false exterior. You have no power over me. I have knowledge that is power to overcome ignorance and violence.” This of course comes from the teachings of Jesus, right? “I have been freed from your reach forever. You cannot continue to judge me wrongly. I have not done violence; rather violence has been done to me. You’re destined ignorance and violence…you’re destined for destruction. I haven’t done violence. I am headed for rest in silence forever.”

And so I think this is about how the soul has to name what’s true. It has to name what’s true about itself—its true identity as a child of God. It has to realize that its true nature is spiritual and not material, that it has to understand that it renounces the powers of this world that are unjust, that are about false judgment and so forth. That judgment can be a manipulative tool in a system, that is false.  And the soul has to itself renounce anger and violence. It has to come to a kind of a restful peace within. So, this is the path of the soul that is shown in this dialogue and I think it’s a little difficult the way it’s framed for modern readers to get. But this is the core of that teaching.

Shirley

Okay, so I have to say, this is what grabbed me in the first place when I started reading your writings, Karen. You have a way of bringing texts that seem a little bit wooden to us from antiquity and putting into the world of my life today where my soul is speaking. You just did it again right here. I really appreciate that very much. This is why I think these texts are so alive with meaning for us to know. And I love what you’re doing with this.

So I want to keep going if you don’t mind. What’s intriguing to me about this inner Human, with a capital H, is the way it helps people to learn it to turn to the good. Like they can overcome passions that in antiquity—I know that those passions were so destructive in life—how does this Human idea work, then, in daily life, dealing with these passions? Or is that the same thing that you were just talking about with the powers?

Karen

It is in part…I mean, in part it is the inner spiritual journey: to overcome the powers within. But it’s also the powers without, on the outside. And it is clearly is producing texts. Remember that the goal of the Gospel of Mary is that the disciples should understand the teachings and go out into the world and preach the gospel. And they should take with them the truth on a way of discerning the difference between truth and lies. This is as contemporary a message as you can possibly get in our day and age. How do you discern that? How do you fight for social justice, and for the truth, and for the good in the midst of all this? And it suggests meditation, study, seeking visions. I think there’s a possibility of a ritual here going on of the rise of the soul to God. But there’s also this sense that you imitate Mary and the Savior, you stand up for the truth, you speak the truth to power. Okay, I know that’s one of our phrases, but this text is actually doing it. You know, soul is speaking truth to power and calling them by their true names.

Shirley

Yeah. So does the word “good” have some special meaning here, “the good”?

Karen

The text never talks about God as Father or even uses the term God. It might be in the missing pages, okay? You can always say it’s in the missing pages! But I think it wants us to understand the divine as “the good”—as not masculine or feminine, but simply and straightforwardly as the good. And this is why the Savior can say, “There’s no such thing as sin.” Because if God is the good and if God is all that exists and encompasses everything that exists, then in some sense, evil and sin don’t exist. So, evil and sin are what happen when one turns away from God. And it creates in the light, it creates darkness, and shadow, and so forth. So, the turning back to the good is an acknowledgement of what’s really real.

Shirley

Wow, so it’s beautiful the way I think you’re helping me to think about this…living the life of good within is what makes you participate in the world in a way that’s quite strong. And there’s a really positive impact on the world. You’re not just trying to convert people to your way of being, you’re actually living a way that’s useful. Am I reading too much into this or am I…?

Karen

No, no, I think that’s right. I think because the story, for example, about the dispute among the disciples at the end of the text. Well, it basically is when Levi comes in and says, “You know, jealousy, anger… We’re behaving like the powers! Let’s quit doing that. Let’s get our act together. Let’s us together put on the perfect Human. Let’s go out and teach.” So, it’s a call for groups to get over their petty bickering about who is superior to who, and who Jesus loved more than the other person, and really get out. So, this is a very practical kind of message for getting along in the world. And it doesn’t ignore the realities of death and of illness and of suffering. It takes them on directly and dramatically, but it insists upon hope and that the reality is the good, the ethical life.

Shirley

Well, so this is why this speaks to me so deeply, because you’re talking about real things in my life, about hope, about wanting to live with a purpose and a reason and to be part of a community that’s doing something. So this is a very real, real text that you’ve brought alive for us here. You know, I just want to say that I know you have committed so much of your own life to this remarkable ancient book. Could I ask you maybe what you’ve learned over the years that makes a difference for you? You’ve been in this so long.

Karen

So I find that question oddly difficult to answer. And isn’t that odd? But spending my life with this text and with other texts has made me appreciate the journey that one has to be on in a spiritual life. And the Gospel of Mary is particularly strong in that regard. When I picked it up, I picked it up and started working on it because of the centrality of Mary as a leader. And feeling a need that the story of early Christianity should have this truth about the place—the position—of women and women’s leaders. So, it was part of the recovery operation in a way that so many scholars—women scholars, the feminists—were involved in getting the story of early Christianity right.

But of course, then it got more complicated. And one of the things that happened was when people would write to me who had read my book and said they were reading my book and the Gospel of Mary with people who were dying. And it made me realize again what kind of text and impact this text has that is for all humans—that it is about the human and for humanity—and it is about the spiritual journey and the importance of the journey we’re on.

And I had a student who said, “Really? Why is it that all women like you, like me, keep saying, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute? Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute.” Well, for some women, that’s basically putting us above other women. It’s putting us in a position of self-righteousness. And I had to confront that place and say, this text does not do that.

This is something that we as modern people…I as a modern woman am doing. And she helped me to understand the importance of the figure of Mary as the repentant sinner. And I have turned back to how much hope there is there, because in fact, I, too, am a sinner. I, too, need repentance, and I, too, need forgiveness and love.

And so, I turn back to that story in the Gospel of Luke of the sinner woman who anoints Jesus with her tears and with oil. And Jesus forgives her much because she loves much. And he uses that story to criticize the self-righteous men who say, how could you have anything to do with this sinner woman? And he said, she is the one who loves much. She is the one who has found God. And I think we need both these stories. We need to keep Mary our leader, our bold woman, and we need to keep the sinner woman who loved much.

Shirley

You know, I was one of those people who talked to you about the Gospel of Mary when my mother was dying. And it touched me in that way at that time too. And it was a deeply healing and beautiful story for me to be able to share with her when this book had just come out.

So, yeah, all I can say is that this is a profound story. It’s encouraging that women can see themselves as leaders, but also deeply real people in the world today. Thank you. I so appreciate talking to you today, Karen. Thank you.

Karen

Yes, likewise, and thank you so much for this opportunity to talk more about this marvelous text and to get to know you a bit better.

Shirley

Thank you so much. Thank you.