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Why Mary Magdalene?

Perhaps it began when I read Simone Weil's “Letter to a Dominican.” As is known, she was a Catholic, but in her letters she is fiercely critical of Christianity. She primarily turns against the appalling claims of the church to possess the only real truth. In whose name through the ages has judged and condemned human beings.

How did Jesus, whose foremost message is forgiveness and mercy, become the judgmental god? How could his determined distancing himself from priests and those learned in the scriptures lay the foundations to a religion with such harsh regulations, domination, and hierarchy?

Simone Weil put into words the questions that have always upset me when I read the gospels with all their contradictions. She herself says that a correct understanding of our religion is impossible because the early days of Christian history are wrapped in mystery.

This interested me. I began to read theology, the history of religion, mythology, and Greek philosophy. Delighted and astonished, I devoted myself to Sophia, the daughter of the God, Wisdom, whose preaching bears great similarities to that of Jesus.

I quite soon realized that many of the contradictions in Christianity go back to the conflict between the Judeo-Christian congregation in Jerusalem and the Apostles who wanted to take the new message to the “heathens.” Jerusalem's Christians maintained that all those who wished to convert must first become Jews, obey all the hundreds of decrees in the laws, and be circumcised. The foreign missionaries, with Paul in the lead, were opposed to the Jewish congregation and, is known, won the battle. As always, the victors wrote the history, the evangelists. That was how we, for instance, were given the story that it was the Jews who killed the Son of God—with terrible consequences throughout history.

After a while, I started playing with an idea, or rather a daydream perhaps. Supposing there had been a free, clear-thinking person among his disciples, someone who was open, unprejudiced, and acquainted with both Jewish and Greek thinking. Briefly, someone who had “ears to listen.”

One day I was looking for something in the Nag Hammadi Library and happened to come upon the fragment that remains of the gospel of Mary Magdalene. In it she accounts for what Jesus said in personal conversations with her—among them: “Make no rules of life on this which I have revealed to you. Write no laws as the law-makers do.” And it struck me: here is perhaps someone with ears to listen, eyes to see, and a mind to understand. The disciple whom Jesus loved the most. And a woman with no power to influence.

That was how my Mary Magdalene was born.

Marianne Fredriksson

She heard him speaking in the marketplace in Antioch, the man called Simon, who came to be called Peter. He was the same as usual. The fisherman from the shore of Lake Gennesaret had kept his lofty figure and rocklike features. And his gaze, childish and shallow.

She also recognized some of his words.

Like an echo.

“Love one another,” said the man in the marketplace.

Jesus had said that. But only now had she realized that he had never understood how little love people have.

“Love one another.” The large man repeated the words, giving them a ring of law.

Then she could see that his gaze was ingenuous.

A moment later, Simon spoke of the light that was not to be hidden, and she thought with surprise that Jesus had not known that people were condemned to the shadows.

His own light dazzled him, she thought.

Perhaps that was why he chose the darkest of all deaths.

Then finally the prayer she knew so well. “Our Father…” And the crowd dispersed. A mocking laugh or two could be heard, but they soon ceased. Simon Peter's words contained a luminosity, a reflection of what had once been said. But they had lost their mystery.

Was it a long time ago? Was it still going on? On her way home, she thought about how she had hated the big-mouthed fisherman, and was ashamed. So she tried to pray: “Dear Lord, forgive me my wicked thoughts.”

Then she thought she should never have gone to the meeting. She should have known better. She had needed a great many years to forget, and she now no longer remembered Jesus' face, nor his hands, nor even his eyes or the mouth forming those amazing words. She had even banished the sweetness of the night from her memory. The smile was the most difficult. That could afflict her at any time in her everyday life.

A neighboring wife had told her that a prophet from the new sect was to speak in the marketplace in the Jewish sector of the town.

“I'm curious, but daren't oppose my husband,” she had said.

“I'm curious about the new zealots, too,” Mary had replied, with a bitter smile as she remembered Simon Peter thrice denying the Lord.

As she was making breakfast, her curiosity overcame her and became compelling. I'll go. I'll put on my black mantle and a veil over my face. No one will recognize me.

It had gone well and no one had noticed her, a black crow among all the other black crows.

She could not sleep the night after the meeting, nor weep, although it was grief afflicting her, her heart, beating as if about to burst.

She got up and tried walking across the floor, but her legs would not carry her. For a while she tried blowing life into her old hatred of Simon and all those damned fishermen. And of Jesus himself, he who had preferred a cruel death to a life with her.

But her bitterness had gone.

Suddenly, with crystal clarity appeared the memory of her last meeting with the disciples in that dark hall in Jerusalem the man with the water jar had taken them to, the sun making its way through the high windows and weaving rays of glittering dust through the air. And the words, asking her, “Give us the words he spoke to you and which we do not know.”

She could see now the men were weeping. How strange that she had forgotten their despair, she thought. Then she heard her own young voice.

“I saw the Lord in a vision and greeted him. He said: ‘Blessed are those who are not afraid of the sight of me. Wherever is your spirit lies the treasure.’”

She was so eager, she failed to notice the faces of the men round the table clouding over, and untiringly she went on telling them what he had said.

“‘Be of good cheer, the Son of Man is within you. Follow him, he who seeks him will find him. Write no laws of this that I have revealed to you. Write no laws as the scribes do.’”

She was still talking, of death, of everything man had to overcome while his soul was still in his body: anger, desire, and ignorance. She repeated a conversation between body and soul: The body says, ‘I did not see you.’ And the soul replies, ‘I saw you. But you neither saw nor recognized me.’ I asked him, ‘What are the sins of the world?’ And he answered me, ‘There is no sin in the world. You create it yourselves when you falsify reality.’”

That was when Peter had cried out, “These are strange teachings.” Then he turned to the others. “I don't believe our Lord spoke these words. Why should he speak privately with a woman and not openly with us?”

“Brother Peter. Do you think I would tell lies about the Lord?”

There, in bed in Antioch, she was at last able to weep. As the first dawn light was coloring the sky, she slept, an uneasy sleep disturbed by images from her wanderings round the blue lake, and it was long into the day when she woke and felt the weight of stones inside her.

But her heart was beating as it should and her head was quite clear.

That was when she knew she had to go the whole way back, break her way through overgrown paths, stung by nettles and slashed by the undergrowth.

She got up and as she washed, in her mind she could see his smile. He was encouraging her!

“But I'm only one human being,” she said aloud.

Then she sat down to pray and sent her prayer straight to the Son of Man.

“I have at last understood that you loved me with the love that embraces all. What confused me was the constant talk by the disciples about whom you loved best.

“You loved and perhaps felt gratitude for teaching you bodily love, so increasing your knowledge of the condition of humankind. Your mother tried to talk to you about the inescapable cruelty of life, but you did not listen. You did listen to me. With your body.

“God in heaven, how lonely you were.

“Yet I contributed to making you into a human being. But then you did not learn of the world of shadows until you were at the cross.

“I remember you were often surprised. ‘How can you see the splinter in your brother's eye and not see the beam in your own.’

“I could have told you how great the fear was. But I was only twenty. And a whore.”

When Leonidas arrived, the house smelled of spices, flowers, and roasting lamb. He sniffed at the aroma and laughed aloud with delight. As usual, he took her two hands in his.

“Every evening on my journey” he said, “I try to remember how beautiful you are. But I have a poor imagination and you always surpass my images.”

“Silly. I'm beginning to grow old.”

“You'll never grow old.”

“The eyes of love,” she said, smiling, but then he noticed the dark circles around her eyes.

“Mary, something's happened.”

“This evening,” she said. “We must have a long talk this evening. Now you must take a bath, then eat. Then Livia is coming.”

He groaned.

When he emerged from the bath, she saw what she did not want to see, that he had aged, that his supple body was gradually slackening and his dark hair had gray streaks in it.

They ate. The meat was tender and the wine red and heavy.

“You've time for a sleep before your sister comes.”

He nodded gratefully, disappeared into the bedroom and a moment later she heard him snoring.

When Livia arrived, Mary was washing the dishes.

“I can't think why you don't buy yourself a slave girl” her sister-in-law said as usual.

Mary had the words on the tip of her tongue but kept her mouth shut. Livia would not have understood “Serve one another.”

“Some wine?” she said instead.

“Thank you, but I must keep my head clear. Give me some of that drink you brew from herbs instead.”

They went and sat in the garden with a goblet each, and looked at each other. She doesn't age, thought Livia. She is as young as the day she came. Just as fair. Dark blue eyes, still so clear, reflecting the good sense that the gods had given her. But she seldom uses it, simply goes around enclosed in her own strength.

She is not really beautiful, her nose too long and her mouth too small for that narrow face. And it reveals every shift in her vulnerability, in strange contrast to that forceful and penetrating gaze.

A flock of white storks with black wings flew over the garden on their way to the cold waters of the Teutons far away in the north. Livia watched them, thinking how free they were.

Then she looked searchingly at Mary.

“You look tired.”

“I slept badly last night.”

“Were you lonely?”

“Yes,” said Mary, relieved that she had not needed to lie.

She answers promptly to all questions, thought Livia and manages to hide everything behind her simple words. She does not lie. She is too intelligent for that.

And yet she has great secrets.

A group of flamingos flapped over the rooftops, coloring the sky pink. This time it was Mary watching them.

“They came down along the river,” she said.

Livia was still thinking about her sister-in-law. Perhaps it is her secrets that give her strength; perhaps we would all have greater strength if we possessed a piece of inner land into which no one had access.

She sighed. She herself was like an open book.

She could see now that the darkness around Mary was denser than usual. Livia had long known her sister-in-law had bad memories. Leonidas had told her about her parents, the father crucified as a rebel and her mother and brothers hacked to death.

Jews. That stubborn people, thought Livia, insolent enough to maintain there was only one god and that he was theirs.

Fanatics.

But Mary did not seem particularly Jewish, noticeably fair-skinned and blond as she was. And those eyes, a brilliant blue like the spring gentians flowering in the mountains. She did go to the synagogue, occasionally, but if she were religious, her faith was slight.

“There's a prophet in town, a Jew recruiting people to a new religion,” said Livia. “Have you heard about him?”

Mary was saved from replying, for at that moment Leonidas appeared on the threshold. But both he and Livia saw all color in Mary's face drain away when she swayed slightly as she rose from the table.

“Please excuse me,” she said. “I'm not feeling well.”

“Mary dear, go and rest.”

Leonidas followed her to the bed, looking worried. “Who?” he whispered.

“Simon Peter.”

“We'll talk tonight.”

But there was no talking that night. Leonidas and Livia had decided to go to the marketplace to listen to the new prophet.

“I must be allowed to see him.”

“Mind neither he nor his companions recognize you.”

“You won't come with us?”

“No, I couldn't…not again.”

“You were there yesterday?”

“Yes.”

Livia had gone home to change. Like Mary, she chose black clothes and a large headcloth. When she returned to fetch them, she was told that Mary was still not feeling well.

“Anyhow, she's not interested in dreamy prophets,” said Leonidas. Livia realized her brother was less clever than his wife. He lied quite unnecessarily.

Leonidas came back late that night. Mary was asleep, but he found he could not sleep. All the incredible things he had heard were swirling around in his head, fantastic images interwoven into an incomprehensible legend. At dawn, he went into her room.

“We must have a talk now.”

She was less burdened than she had been the night before, but her heart was fluttering as if beating emptily in her chest.

She could see from his eyes that Leonidas was deeply disturbed and filled with rage. He said Simon Peter had turned into a great liar. The apostle had told a story that was all magical nonsense from various religions.

“What do you mean?”

“I'll tell you. Jesus was born of a virgin and conceived by God himself.”

He laughed.

“The god of the Jews has clearly begun to resemble the Zeus of the Greeks, seriously addicted to earthly virgins. Jesus came into the world in a stable in Bethlehem. It says in some old prophecy that the Messiah was to be born there. He is also descended in a direct line from King David, a family that died out a hundred years ago.”

He fell silent, thinking for a moment before going on.

“Some of these legends are taken from the Jewish scriptures, others just superstitious public property. It's all been woven together into a fantastic myth to confirm that Jesus was a god who out of compassion allowed himself to be born among people.”

Strangely enough, Mary was not surprised. He looked at her and said challengingly: “Did you ever hear him saying he was the Messiah?”

“No, no. He called himself the Son of Man. I knew his mother, a good worldly woman. She was the widow of a carpenter in Nazareth, had many children and a hard life.”

Leonidas groaned before going on. “After three days, Jesus rose from the dead. Like Osiris, Isis' husband. As you know, she also gave birth to a son of god.”

Mary was not interested in Osiris.

“Did the disciples see Jesus in a vision?”

“No, his body. They could feel the scars from the wounds he got on the cross. After forty days, he went to heaven and he'll soon be returning to judge us all.”

“Jesus never judged,” whispered Mary. “He judged no one, neither publicans, whores, nor other wretches.”

Leonidas was not listening, and went on. “According to Peter, he died for our sins. We were to be cleansed by his blood. He sacrificed himself like a sacrificial lamb, the kind the Jews slaughter in their bloodstained temple.”

She tried to calm her heart. Then she remembered.

“He said we had to take up our cross and follow him.”

They sat in silence for quite a while before Mary resumed.

“It's true he chose his death, but people didn't understand him. Neither then, nor now.”

She looked at Leonidas, so certain in his interpretations. She herself held no opinions, but thought that if you sought to understand Jesus, it was not at all strange that you took strength from all the dreams the world had dreamt from the very beginning of time.

Then she remembered the old prayers she had heard as a child in the synagogue in Magdala, about he who was to come to awaken the dead, succor the fallen, cure the sick, free the captives, and be faithful to those sleeping in the dust.

“They call themselves Christian and have adherents everywhere,” said Leonidas. “With the help of these legends, they could be successful.”

Again they sat in silence.

Mary finally found the courage to speak of all the thoughts she had had during that difficult night—that she should go back into her memory and give expression to every word and every action from the years of wandering with the Son of Man.

Leonidas grew eager. “Write, write down everything you can remember. After all, you were the one closest to him, and knew him best.”

Mary shook her head, thinking no one had known him, and every one of His followers had understood him in his own way.

“It'll be difficult,” she said. “He was too great for us.”

Toward evening, as agreed, they went to Livia's to a welcome-home dinner she had invited them to. They took the route around the handsome Daphne portal, and while Leonidas went to check that his goods had gone through customs, Mary climbed the steep steps in the town wall to look out over the huge caravan camp. Thousands of sheds and tents extended across the plain until they vanished over the horizon. Hundreds of camels were swaying along the alleys between tents, sheds, and the throngs of people in exotic clothing. The distance was too great for her to be able to hear what they were shouting, but that did not matter, for she knew she would not understand those foreign tongues.

Mary let her gaze roam to the west, following the long stony fortress out toward the sea and the harbor town of Seleucia. She saw the poor quarters clinging to the wall and thought about the exhausted drunken men, the whores trying to survive by selling their bodies, the children begging and rummaging in the garbage from the ships.

It was an unbearable world and she firmly turned her eyes in the other direction. There she could just make out the caravan route across the mountains. Slowly, day after day, it would wind its way eastward toward the Euphrates and on toward the heart of the kingdom of Parthia.

When Leonidas came to fetch her, he was pleased, for all had gone as expected, but he was muttering as usual about the high cost of the tolls.

Livia lived by the shore of the Orontes, not far from the river island where the Seleucians had built their palace. As they sat down at table, they could hear the murmur of the sluggishly flowing river and watch the evening birds settling along the shores for the night. Livia's daughter and her husband were also there. Mary greeted Mera with great warmth, a young woman with a confident relationship to God. She worshipped Isis and was daily absorbed in prayer before the great goddess' stone in the temple.

As always at Livia's, the food was exquisite, but that had no effect on Leonidas, who was short-tempered and gritty-eyed.

But his sister was filled with the previous evening, impressed by Simon Peter, and she spoke eloquently of the tremendous force radiating from the man.

“He must have been amazing, that young prophet in Palestine,” she said. “I thought there was something moving about the stories about his virtues, something gentle and innocent.”

Mary was surprised. So that was what Livia had heard. For a moment she was tempted to confide in her, but a look from Leonidas stopped her. Then, Livia went on.

“As far as I can make out, his teaching is much like that of Orpheus. And these new Christians do resemble many other fraternities of slaves and the poor all over the Roman Empire, where everyone is indifferent to their sufferings.”

“You forget that those slaves and the poor are in a dangerous majority,” said Nicomachus, her son-in-law.

“But he was no revolutionary, this young prophet.”

“He was crucified as a troublemaker, anyhow.”

Livia was not listening.

“It seemed to me,” she went on, “that he…whatever his name was…yes, Jesus, refused to see that people are fundamentally evil. He was naive.”

Mary wanted to cry out that Jesus was much greater than Livia would ever understand, but she made herself keep quiet, remembering that she herself had had similar thoughts. “His light was so strong, he found it difficult to see clearly.”

Simon Peter stayed for a few more days, speaking in the handsome public square in Antioch. He was successful, and the first large Christian congregation outside Jerusalem was founded.

But Mary did not go to his meetings.

Mary found remembering difficult. Day after day, she found herself sitting in front of her empty papyrus roll.

“Don't bother about the sequence of events,” Leonidas said. “Just start with an event whenever it happened.”

Again she tried to capture the scene in the house in Jerusalem at the time when Simon Peter had repudiated her. Then she remembered what Andrew, Simon's brother, had said the moment she had stopped speaking.

“What strange things you are preaching. And I don't believe you.”

The next moment, Simon spoke the contemptuous words that Jesus did not speak privately with a woman. But then she remembered there had been another voice.

“You're hot tempered, Simon. Now you're fighting with the woman as if with an enemy. If the Savior found her worthy, who are you to judge her? He sensed her spirit, so was able to give her knowledge that we wouldn't have understood.”

Jesus had said that. The gentle Levi had said those words. Why had she forgotten them?

Mary's heart filled with pride, and she went out into the garden to delight in every flower.

What was it Jesus had seen in her?

She knew that the tremendous question of just who he was would never be answered. All she could do was to give her testimony on what was incomprehensible insofar as she had understood it. But to do that, she first had to know who she herself was. She would take Leonidas' advice and start from the beginning.

She was born in Magdala on the shores of the Gennesaret, her village poor, the people scraping a living from the meager fields, and the lake, which was rich in fish. Sheep and goats grazed on the dry hillsides. Mary was not yet five when she was sent to watch the animals on the slopes round the village. Her mother warned her not to go in among the trees higher up the slopes. There beneath the terebinth trees and among the gray trunks of old oaks, wild dogs and the laughing hyena lay in wait, greedy for human flesh.

Mary was an obedient child, but was occasionally defiant and went into the forest, where it was quiet and dignified in the shimmering foliage beneath the trees. The child realized that that was where God lived.

God was often talked about at home. Every winter morning she heard her father thanking the Almighty: “Praise be to Thee, oh Lord, King of the Universe, for not creating me a woman.” And her mother's voice answering: “Praise be to Thee, Lord, for creating me according to Thy will.”

The father never looked at the girl, but past her or through her, as if she did not exist. She was afraid of him, the darkness that surrounded his coarse figure, and that closed face with its hard eyes.

It was a relief when spring came, not just because of the warmth and the flowers, but because it never failed that as the breeze rocked the red anemones on the hillsides, and whenever her father went away, a great peace fell over their home. “Where does he go?”

Her mother's reply was always the same. “Up into the mountains.” She said it with pursed lips, as if reluctant to let the words out, and the girl realized she should ask no more questions.

But her mother was also more lighthearted after her husband had gone. Not that she showed it, and perhaps Mary was the only one to know her secret. When the two of them went to the well to fetch water, they might stop on the way and look up at the mountains where the oleanders were flowering pink among the honeysuckle and broom. If the child asked properly, she could persuade her mother to read aloud from the scriptures.

“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with their tender grape give a good smell….”

Then they smiled at each other.

Mary's family owned neither fishing boat nor vineyards, but they had one great wealth—the largest fig tree in the village growing outside the door of their house. This blessed tree with its thousand green fingers gave shade during the hot summer and was generous to the poor, providing two crops each year. In mild springs, the first sweet figs might ripen as early as at Passover, then toward winter, before the rainstorms came, the fruit on that year's shoots ripened and were carefully, almost reverently, gathered from the tree.

Her mother gave birth to a child every summer, four sons in an equal number of years, the births always occurring most inappropriately in the middle of harvest. She gave birth without a whimper and was back in the fields again a few days later, a new child in a bag on her back. The neighbors helped as best they could, but not until after the new son had been circumcised.

It was when the latest infant was ill with a high fever after circumcision and was being cared for by Mary that she noticed for the first time that her father was not the only one who looked away from her—no, the neighbors, too, even her mother's brother behaved as if she did not exist. She understood then that it was a curse to be born a girl, and in addition the firstborn.

But that was also not the whole explanation for her becoming an outsider.

Then there was the headcloth. The other little girls were allowed to let the cloth down when the wind cooled the work in the fields. But not Mary. Every morning, as soon as her mother had rolled up the sleeping mats, she brushed Mary's hair, wound it into a hard plait and pulled the cloth tightly around her little head, then finally tied the knot under her chin, so hard the child could not possibly untie it.

The girl was ashamed of her hair. Once when she was alone among the sheep, she managed to ease the cloth down over her shoulders and pull a strand of her hair out of the plait. She was frightened and saw with horror that her hair was unnatural, as yellow as ripe wheat. From that day on she no longer complained about her headcloth—on the contrary, she helped tie the knot even harder and pushed the cloth down over her forehead so far that the hairline was hidden.

Her mother sighed in the mornings as she plaited Mary's hair. One day she said that the headcloth served no purpose as long as it could not hide the girl's eyes.

“What's wrong with my eyes?”

“They're beautiful,” her mother said, flushing. “Blue as the spring irises in the field.”

For a moment Mary sensed a suppressed longing in her mother's voice. It was strange, but she realized that in some secretive way it was to do with her and the bond between the two of them. No one else could see it, but Mary knew that she was the child her mother loved most. She was the one who had a piece of newly baked bread secretly slipped to her, and sometimes when they were alone in the stable, her mother gave her the rich top layer of the milk.

She felt comforted now—she had beautiful eyes. But that very same afternoon, she began secretly looking into the eyes of the other children. Some were so dark the pupil was impossible to distinguish, but most were various shades of brown. One or two were lighter, one boy's actually gray, and when she looked more carefully, she found his hair was also lighter than the others. Not as horribly yellow as hers, but when the sun shone on it, it could glint like silver.

Only once did she see a man with blue eyes. That was when a troop of Romans rode through the village and people cowered inside their houses, pale with bitterness and fear. The soldiers rode close to the houses, and, peering round from the stable, Mary suddenly met the eyes of a young soldier, eyes as blue as the sky, and beneath his helmet a glimpse of his hair—yellow like hers.

A moment later, he had passed, but it made a deep impression on her. She looked like the hated strangers!

Some time later, she happened to overhear a conversation between a neighbor, Abiathar, and one of his sons. They were talking about the Romans who had come riding through the village and the Jewish rebels gathering in increasing numbers in the mountains to practice the art of war. The young man wanted to join them.

“God wishes his people to be free.”

“Only madmen follow Judas of Galilee into the mountains. Crazy men like Barak. He's left his wife and children to look after themselves and thinks we can throw the Romans out.”

“But God wishes…”

“God wishes that his people shall suffer and wait. When he finds the time is ripe, he will give us a sign. And he has not done that, either now or before the other wars. No miracles occur here.”

He raised his voice to a shout.

“Rebellion leads to slaughter, women and children murdered, fields and villages burnt. And those heroes in the mountains are crucified.”

He spat out the last word as they walked on and Mary dared emerge from the undergrowth where she had been listening. She ran as fast as she could to her mother, who was just lighting the oil lamp.

“Mother, is there going to be war?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Is father a warrior practicing in the mountains?”

Her mother had never lifted her hand to Mary before, but now she struck her hard across the face. “That's dangerous talk, Mary. Never, never must you pass it on, not to a single person.”

Mary rubbed her cheek, the tears flowing. Her mother pulled herself together. “Let us pray for peace. But first you must promise me by God's holy scripts never again to take such talk on your tongue.”

The child wept and promised. But during prayers, she sat silently, and behind her tightly closed eyes she reckoned what Abiathar had said to his son must be true. “Women and children murdered, fields and villages burned. And the heroes in the mountains crucified.”

Why otherwise would her mother be in such despair?