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Who was Mary, what was she?

Different cultures had varying views of her, Sarah Foot discovers

He Qi’s Mary Magdalene © not advert
He Qi’s Mary Magdalene is the cover illustration of the book reviewed here

The Mary Magdalen Cover-Up: The sources behind the myth
Esther de Boer

T. & T. Clark £13.99 (978-0-567-03182-2)
Church Times Bookshop £12.60

WE HAVE come a long way, in our perceptions of Mary Magdalen, from Felicia Hemans’s saccharine image of the weeping woman at the sepulchre:

And thou, that so hadst erred,
So wept, and been forgiven, in trembling faith,
Didst cast thee down before the all-conquering Son,
Awed by the mighty gift thy tears and love had won!

Thanks to popular books such as The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code, Mary the reformed prostitute has given way to various competing Marys: the goddess or priestess; Mary the wife of Jesus (and mother of his children); the feminine disciple whom Jesus loved; the author of the Fourth Gospel whose identity the Church later suppressed; the Mary whom Jesus entrusted with a mission to build his Church.

Disentangling the different Marys in the Gospels and early Christian writings is far from easy. The critical editing of various Gnostic texts, particularly the so-called Gospel of Mary, while fuelling the Magdalen-myth industry, has scarcely helped to damp down debate about the historical Mary.

Esther de Boer has written about the Magdalen and the Gospel of Mary before; this book draws on and complements that earlier work, by providing an anthology of all the texts that may refer to Mary from the Gospels to the sixth-century sermons of Gregory the Great. Despite its title, this is a considered and thoughtful study, far from the conspiracy theories adduced by Dan Brown’s excitable Sir Leigh Teabing.

Starting with the most vexed question, “Who was Mary?”, ex-tended quotations from the sources take us through the representations of the reformed prostitute, Jesus’s wife, the perfect initiate, the disciple and witness to the resurrection, and the invented figure.

We are introduced to Mary’s own teaching, and we encounter early church writings about the limited roles and functions allowed to women.

Eastern and Western views of Mary are contrasted through Gregory of Antioch’s image of Mary as a teacher of the faith who preaches the message of mercy, and Gregory the Great’s constructed image of the Magdalen as a penitent and a reformed prostitute.

This book would lend itself to educational use. Sufficient historical context and explanation is provided for non-specialist audiences, but equally the scholarly apparatus is adequate for higher-level use. A feminist sensibility underlies the whole, but, while Esther de Boer is not reticent about her own views, she does not seek to convert her readers.

As a whole, the study illustrates — perhaps unsurprisingly — the ways in which different cultures constructed a Mary Magdalen appropriate to their own times. De Boer makes a powerful plea for the Magdalen she has created: one who might speak to contemporary needs. Her Mary is driven by inner steadfastness. She does not sit wordlessly at the Lord’s feet, but speaks and acts autonomously.

Professor Foot is Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, and a Lay Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.

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