The Voice of Miriam
O, Enlightened Soul, who has found this letter I sealed within this clay urn, may you hear my voice rise from these pages, and may your ears be opened to the sweet music of Truth. Just as the buzzing bee dripping with honey flies home to nourish its queen, may the light of Wisdom descend upon your mind and nourish your spirit.
I will begin by telling you all about myself. My name is Miriam. I am the granddaughter of Anna, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. In our lineage runs the powerful blood of Zilpah, the mother of Asher, who cherished the ways of the Divine Feminine in all of Her forms, and offered Her great tribute her entire life.
I was in the service of the Temple as sagerin until last year. I did not leave because I chose a different path. Fate abruptly changed the course of my life, like a stream being diverted from the influence of a large, fallen tree. Until the day I walked out of the Temple, all of my sisters loved, cherished me and extolled my talent. I am a singer by profession and play the frame drum. No one can sing the Song of Songs in my style. My voice has a deep tone that is unmatched by any other female singer, and often I am told that my voice resembles a man’s. My voice that I cherish is the same voice that has brought me great pain and sorrow. It is the same voice that came down many generations as a gift from my mother’s side, through Asher’s mother Zilpah, to my grandmother Anna, and then to me.
Anna spent every day in the Temple for over forty years praying to and praising Yahweh. In fact, many people who knew of her referred to her as a saint and thought of her as the exemplary Jew. She was a prophetess in the temple of Jerusalem when the Savior was presented to the Lord. She told my mother that the heavens opened up and messengers descended to speak to her. She said, “Behold, Jerusalem, your redemption is within the body of this tiny boy-child.” After saying this she took private council with Simeon, the priest who performed the rite of circumcision on the blessed child, and weeping said to him, “The messengers of the Lord asked me to proclaim tidings of joy, yet I see a vision of blood flowing out from this great Temple of our Lord. More blood will be shed over the ages because of this child; he will be the cause for even more grief than the most hideous of all Herods.”
According to my mother, Anna was greatly troubled by what she saw, yet Simeon who also knew the child would be cut down, like grapes from the vine, said to her, “Anna, be not afraid. Today you were in the presence of the sacrificial lamb, the Messiah, who will open the way to the heavenly Father for all of Israel's children.”
Anna wisely replied, “We all go to the Lord, who loves and cares for us in heaven. I know this because I am so close to the time of departure, my old friend. But why must there be so much blood shed for the cause of one man? And now, how can I still believe he is the Messiah? The fate he must suffer, so unbearable to think about, it makes me shudder with terror.”
No matter what Simeon told Anna to quiet her fears, she believed in her heart that this child was the bearer of blood to all who followed him. My mother believed that the vision sent by the Lord’s messengers was too much for her to bear, and from that point on she seemed on the verge of insanity. Sadly, Simeon disclosed her fragile mental state to my father and asked if he would take her into his house, since she was very old and her days were short. Anna had lived most of her life in the Temple––she arrived shortly after the death of her husband and would not take being “asked” to leave the Temple lightly. Not surprisingly, she conceded with dignity and embraced Simeon warmly before she left.
After moving into my mother’s home, she still seemed uneasy, as if she were haunted by evil thoughts; my mother reported to me that Anna would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. My father had no sympathy for her and told my mother that she must quiet Anna, otherwise he would make her sleep outside.
Every time my mother took Anna to worship at the Temple, she would call out to the bystanders, “Watch out for the Son of God, who will rise from Nazareth, and bring death in his wake.” Most people ignored her, shaking their heads. They knew she was once a powerful prophetess and devout servant of the Lord. My father, who couldn’t handle her outbursts any longer, finally told her to stop voicing blasphemy and struck her across the mouth. Anna did not recover from this show of public disrespect and never spoke another word. She died silently two years later, along with her voice.
My mother never met the Savior and out of suspicion and reverence to Anna, avoided his presence. My father never uttered a good word about him, and never referred to him as the Son of God. When Jesus was teaching in the Temple, I was forbidden by my parents to attend his sermons. All of the Pharisees knew of Jesus and spoke of him highly, while also maintaining a skepticism for his more radical interpretations of the Torah and Didache. Jesus’ radical ideas were not completely out of line with Pharisaic thinking, but his radical actions seemed to them extreme, rebellious and unbecoming to a rabbi.
Fatefully, last year, I finally met the man who changed the course of my life forever. The day I met Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior, was not at one of His sermons in the wilderness, but in the Temple. I was in the side room reading from Exodus 2, at the part when the child Moses is fished from the river by the beautiful Egyptian princess, which always delighted my sisters. Suddenly two men came into the room.
“Stop your reading at once and come with us.” The man grabbed my arm and I knew something was wrong. I began to pull away. The other man grabbed my other arm so strongly that he left bruise marks. I cried out from the pain and then terror struck me and I began to scream.
My sisters began to cry and many ran out to go to my parents for help. I was now on my knees begging for justice and forgiveness. Two weeks before I was asked to sing from the Song of Songs for Caiaphas’ sisters wedding banquet. My voice sounded unusually resonant and haunting, even bringing tears to the likes of Annas! When I finished the performance, I noticed the groom staring at me. I could sense a dangerous fire running through his veins. This did not escape the notice of Caiaphas’ sister. I did my best to avoid his gaze and kept a safe distance for most of the night.
After the banquet ended I stood in the courtyard waiting for my father to walk home with me. A loud wailing came out of the room to the left of where I was standing.
“I saw you! I saw you savoring that singer, that young, devious harlot! Stay away from her or I will send you away!” Now I knew that my intuition was right about that man––he wanted me, no, he wanted my body. That night, my voice changed my fate.
I am ashamed to say I also felt a longing for him. Worse, I claimed that very thing I desired, but that did not belong to me.
They dragged me across the floor, shouting, “Keep your mouth shut woman!” I could hear the sound of my mother wailing outside the door, along with my sisters, mourning, tearing out their hair and beating their breasts.
They threw me down before the Messiah and said, “This woman is an adulteress and deserves to be put to death.”
My face felt hot as I just stared at the sandaled feet in front of me. My shame was too great to look him in the eyes. The silence seemed to last an eternity and then I heard Joseph of Arimathaea say, “Jesus, why do you not answer?”
My breathing was labored as I was fighting back tears, fearful that he might address me and I would have to find my voice. At this moment I was so afraid, I knew I could not form a single intelligible word.
“Stand up woman and face your judge,” bellowed Caiaphas. Now, I was no longer the glorious singer and educated prayer leader, Miriam. I was a no name. I slowly stood up, barely able to balance myself.
At this, Jesus bent down and sat on the floor in front of me.
He started writing with his finger on the floor. He first etched the name of the man with whom I committed adultery in the dirt. Without looking up, he wrote the names of three other Pharisees who had committed adultery with women who served in the Temple and lived in Jerusalem. How did he know all of this?
Jesus looked up at the astonished and terrified group of men in front of him and said, “The one of you that is without sin may now cast the first stone.”
The sound of heavy breathing and whispers were the only sounds audible as heavy footsteps walked out of the Temple, leaving me alone with the Savior. He waited a long time for me to look at him and did not say a word. I’ve never seen more compassion flowing out of anyone’s eyes before or since. He reached out his hand to me and I gently helped him to his feet, and then he did the most peculiar thing. He bowed his head slightly and said, “Miriam, granddaughter of Anna, of the tribe of Asher, is there no one here to speak against you?”
“No, Rabbi. There is no one.”
“Then go in peace, your sins have been cleansed.”
I could barely breathe and the shock of the incident also took away my sense of speech. But my mind was filled with so many questions, like voices that were all crying out at once to be heard. How did Jesus know my name and my grandmother who has been dead for so many years? And, where did he get the power and authority to forgive sins?
As he was holding my hand, I could feel a life of burdens, sins and guilt flowing out of my body. And the warmth from His soul enveloped me. When he finally let go, I looked at him and he seemed to emanate a golden light, a transparent iridescence unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I knew He was no ordinary man, he was God Incarnate, the Divine wrapped in human flesh. I never spoke to the Son of God after this encounter, yet I know that he will greet me when I travel to the other side of death.
I left my service in the Temple, as I had no choice in the matter. I was both fortunate and thankful to have escaped a sure death sentence. I spent months hiding out at my mother’s house keeping a low profile and helping her weave linens to be sold at market. One morning, two women from my prayer group came and asked me to join them to hear one of Jesus’ most beloved disciples, Mary of Magdala, speak. Mary was known as the disciple who knew the All. Her wisdom was unsurpassed by any of Jesus’ other disciples, including Thomas, the Twin, and John, who were both wise in their own right.
When I went to hear her speak, I was so excited that I could barely contain myself. I noticed both men and women, rich and poor, about forty or so people. That morning, the air was still cool and quiet when all of us sat together on the ground around a small, dark-haired woman. As she spoke her eyes dazzled like a dark sun that would shine inside the deepest, darkest cave.
And then, Mary began to speak: “Peace be with you, my brothers and sisters. What I am going to tell you, will be the most beautiful words you may hear in this life, and these words will heal your broken spirits. Laws and rules are not the way of the new Kingdom of God, as they are for the Romans, the Herods and the Temple priests. Love and wisdom are the ways of the Savior, as He has brought it to all of us. God’s love is ever-present––all you need do is open your eyes, for the Savior has said, ‘The Kingdom is inside you, and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will see that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are the poverty.’”
Mary then told us how difficult the teachings of the Savior are for those who live in wealth and comfort, but for those of us living under great oppression, the teachings would open our eyes, hearts and minds to the ways of the Lord and make us rich in love.
After she spoke there was a deep silence. She looked at the expressions on all of the faces around her; some appeared consoled, while others looked perplexed. Many people were weeping because these words of God’s love were like nothing they had ever heard spoken to them in their lives. Most of these people were outcasts, unloved and possibly even hated. I am now an outcast, reviled by all respectable citizens of Jerusalem. The stain on my name and on my family will never be undone. God’s love and Jesus’ words are all I have left.
I continued to go hear Mary’s teachings each week and soon began to study readings from the Torah with her. She interpreted the texts using the teachings of the Savior as a guide for a new understanding of the stories. She even retold the story of Adam and Eve as if she were the snake! She told us that the snake was Wisdom, the female principle of God that the priests seemed to have forsaken. Many hours would fly quickly by in lively discussion, as we all shared our dreams and expectations of the new life that was present, here and now. We laughed, cried and sang together every day.
Then it all came to an end.
I noticed many women within Mary’s group were in Jerusalem when the Savior was put to death. But I didn’t see any of the men and almost none of the other disciples. Mary followed Jesus as he carried his cross. That day she was his partner in suffering just as she had been by his side spreading his word throughout the land. After seeing Jesus suffer so greatly, I now understand why my grandmother was so distraught over her vision of the Son of God.
Since the Savior was crucified on the sabbath, Mary could not anoint his body for burial. I helped to find a safe house for her and many of us stayed with her all night long, weeping and grieving for Jesus. She left in the morning, alone with her jar of ointment to anoint her Savior that had so graciously given his life for the cause of all humanity.
Before she stepped over the threshold, she turned to us and said, “Grieve no longer, for the Savior is, and will always be among us, for he said, “I am the light which is before all things. It is I who am all things. From me all things came forth, and to me all things expend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up the stone, and you will find me.”
I never saw Mary of Magdala after this day, and no one is really sure where she went. Some say she had gone to Egypt to escape the wrath of Annas and Pilate just days after she went to the tomb.
Now, I am sure you are wondering why an untouchable such as myself feels the need to document important events in her life and why she is hiding them from the authorities. My story is not long; my life will be cut short at any time. The Pharisees will turn me over, along with many others, to the Romans to be tortured and put to death. The Romans have killed at least three hundred of us now, as I am writing in a dark cave by oil lamp. I have escaped their wrath once, because of His intervention, but I will not escape death now. My teacher Mary, along with Thomas and James, have fled since the death of Jesus, and all of her followers, including myself, have been meeting in secret within caves ever since. We are just one of many groups that have split off from the Temple and are trying to find a foothold in this new Life taught by Jesus of Nazareth. It has been two years now––two years of loneliness, fear and running. I am now considered a seditionist as well as adulteress. I have decided to stay and meet my death face on because I know it will not be the end.
My hope for the world is that the great Sophia will descend upon the minds of all people so that they may come to know the Truth. I will continue to write until my oil lamp is drained and darkness enfolds me. If I do not leave this cave, I will die of starvation or from thirst. I can face my death with strength knowing that I have seen and heard the Truth. I do not want to die in vain, for, I know the Truth will be concealed from the rest of humanity for ages to come. I seek to pass on my knowledge through this letter. This letter is my voice; the voice that will never die, just as my soul will live for eternity in the New Kingdom.
Blessings to you, Enlightened Soul, and may God’s Peace reign on the earth, and in your heart, forever.
The Research Behind the Story
Early Christianity, which includes gnosticism and many other movements which were still in the fold of Judaism during the first century, shows the diversity and chaos of new myths being born before the onslaught of orthodoxy. Most of the research for my story centered around Elaine Pagels’ books, The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, as well as many other scholarly sources which highlight the feminine forces of the Divine, such as Ariel and Chana Bloch’s The Song of Songs, and The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, And the Christian Testament, written by Jane Schaberg.
Most of the current mainstream interest in Mary Magdalene and the gnostic gospels has spawned from the fictional work of Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. Admittedly, I read the book and was intrigued by the author’s theory of Mary Magdalene as carrying the bloodline of Jesus, the royal Davidic line. According to Brown, Magdalene is the Holy Grail.
Although, the legends of the Grail interest me, I did not feel that it was the most interesting or appropriate train of scholarship to follow. I decided to research the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene from the perspective of their Jewish backgrounds, especially since Judaism is the matrix from which early Christianity arose.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is an inspiring, modern midrashic rendering of the story in Genesis referred to as the “rape of Dinah.” The biblical version of the story barely touches Dinah, as is the case with many mentions of female characters in the both the Old and New Testaments, yet Diamant recreates and re-imagines the story of Jacob’s sons and wives through Dinah’s eyes. I found that Diamant’s moving novel helped me to write in my own female voice, through the character Miriam’s point of view.
I chose the small snippet from the Gospel According to John about the stoning of the adulterous women because, like the Dinah episode, we are given no information about her, except that she committed adultery. Nothing is revealed by the narrative––her age, her station in life, if she was married or not, her name––which leaves a good deal of room to stretch the imagination. I wanted to know about her. The only way to do this was to re-mythicize her, giving her depth, scope, a life. “To engage in midrash is to look at what’s troubling in a biblical text, to note contradictions, missing details” (Downing, Luxury 16).
My story has threads running through it that come from both the Old and New Testaments. In the Gospel According to John, an adulterous woman is brought to Jesus by the Pharisees, so that they can “test” him to bring charges against him.
Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her? (John 8:5)
Jesus bends down and starts to write with his finger on the ground:
And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.” (John 8:7-11)
My own religious background in Catholicism at first made it difficult to conceive of bible stories as “mythical,” especially since my view of the religion was based on orthodoxy. Rewriting a story from the Bible felt a little blasphemous, and at the same time it was “wicked” fun. I have felt a deep connection with the adulteress who appears in the New Testament since childhood, and wanted to explore the dimensions of the story, through my own research and imagination. Jesus’ famous phrase, “Let the one among you without sin cast the first stone,” still echoes in my memory as a reminder to think on my own foibles before I judge someone harshly for their mistakes. I was also surprised to find out that even though I believed my character, the adulteress, to be Mary Magdalene all these years, she was not.
Another interesting observation I made while researching for the story, was that this particular adulteress narrative is only found in the Gospel According to John, whereas the woman with the alabaster jar story is found in all four gospels. I imagine that the writer of the fourth gospel focuses on Jesus’ preaching that the Kingdom of God is present, now, on earth, and that to enter into it is simply to be born into a new life, through a new understanding of God. Part of this new understanding, to be slightly reductive, is that God’s love is for everyone––not just His chosen people, the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well. The adulteress in John is most likely a literary device devised to get this point across.
Utilizing the creative imagination to conceive of how early Christianity may have looked is a way of entering the mythic material of the bible and of the codices found at Nag Hammadi, which are so richly textured. Myths contain within themselves micro-universes that evolve and change as the human imagination expands into new cosmos.
In spite of canonization, the Old Testament continues to be reinterpreted and the stories within rewritten in the Jewish tradition of midrash. Christine Downing talks about the intertextuality of the biblical texts, how a thread runs through each one, weaving them into their own cosmos, their own family of stories (Downing, Luxury 16). Karl Jaspers further describes how intertextual myth is when he says: “The myth is a carrier of meanings which can be expressed only in the language of the myth. The mythical figures are symbols which, by their very nature, are untranslatable into other language [...] Myths interpret each other” (Jaspers 16).
Miriam, my adulteress, is connected to a rich mythic heritage in the Old Testament that she will never completely reject, as it is a part of her personal, family and national history. In Judaism, history and myth commingle and encompass one within the other.
Yahweh's realm is not nature but history. The God of Judaism is a god whose character it is to act. (Phillips 12)
Another face of Yahweh is His relationship to His worshippers, who are in effect co-creators with Him. Philosopher Martin Buber in his essay, “Myth in Judaism,” further explains the unique nature of Jewish myth and Yahweh:
[...] every man is called to determine, by his own life, God’s destiny; and every living being is rooted in the living myth. (Buber 106)
Even though Miriam has a strong Jewish heritage, she is eager to listen to Jesus’ teachings. She is in a state of spiritual crisis after her banishment from the temple and finds an opening to express her voice when she becomes a student of Mary Magdalene. Miriam’s desire to see the Divine all around her, as an omniscient, sentient Being, rooted her in Judaism, while at the same time opening her up to a “re-mything” of her religious upbringing as a Jew.
Miriam generously shares her experiences and lineage, bringing the reader further into her world. She states that she is the granddaughter of Anna, the prophetess, mentioned briefly in the New Testament, Luke 2:36:
And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher; she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and as a widow till she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:36)
Miriam’s connection to the tribe of Asher, son of Jacob, connects her also to Zilpah, mother of Asher, who is described in The Red Tent as a goddess worshipper: “From the age of her first blood, Zilpah thought of herself as a kind of priestess, the keeper of the mysteries of the red tent, the daughter of Asherah, the sister-Siduri who counsels women” (Diamant 14). Dinah, the narrator, goes on to say that Zilpah wasn’t a true priestess (according to Diamant, the priestesses were in service to the gods in the great city temples, not the goddess) and that she merely practiced rituals that venerated the Great Mother.
In order to give my story more weight, I conceived Miriam as an inheritor of Anna’s powerful ties to prophecy and the temple, as well as of the royal Jewish bloodlines through Zilpah and Asher. Miriam is by lineage connected to the Temple and to prophecy. She serves in the Temple as a sagerin, a woman prayer leader to a group of Jewish women (Cohen). Although, Miriam is not a “priestess” in the ways of the ancient Hebrews, she has learned the ancient art of playing the frame drum while singing. “The Bible mentions a ruler and Prophetess of ancient Israel called Deborah, the “Queen Bee”; her priestesses are known as Deborahs as well [...] Mastery of the frame drum was a primary spiritual duty of these priestesses.” (Redmond 53).
Miriam’s favorite poem from the Bible is the “Song of Songs,” and she sings so beautifully, with a deep resonating voice, that even the high priest Caiaphas asks her to sing it at his sister’s wedding banquet. She also brings the high priest Annas––Caiaphas’ father in law––to tears. “One would suppose that professional woman singers (sarot, mesorerot) also sang love songs, particularly when they performed at banquets and festivals (2 Sam. 19:36, Eccles. 2:8, Ezra 2:65)” (Bloch 21). Miriam knows that listening to a song of Divine origin can transform one’s own relationship to God:
In Hasidic tradition, where performance of a song is believed to be one of the most effective vehicles for achieving what is termed devekuth (literally, “adhesion” [of the soul to God] ), an ecstatic experience through which one receives divine knowledge. (Shelemay 302)
In the translation of the bible I was utilizing, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, there was no mention of the name “Mary Magdalene” connected to the word “prostitute”: “Even the term prostitute is a misnomer. This term, chosen by modern translators, is applied to the hierodulae, or “sacred women” of the temple of the Goddess, who played an important part in the everyday life of the classical world” (Starbird 29). I checked the King James Version as well and did not find any correlation between the word “prostitute,” either sacred or profane, and Mary Magdalene. In fact, when she is first mentioned in the Gospel According to Luke, she is described as a woman who possibly provided for Jesus and his disciples:
Soon afterward he went on through the cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means. (Luke 8:00)
Mary Magdalene may have been a powerful disciple of Jesus, who had a voice. Jane Schaberg, in her book The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, discusses a gnostic writing named the Pistis Sophia which describes Magdalene as the disciple who truly comprehends Jesus’ teachings:
“My Lord, this is the interpretation of the mystery of the repentance of the Pistis Sophia” (I, 34). She is called “the beautiful in her speech” (I, 24,2), “thou [who] dost seek everything with certainty and with accuracy” (I, 25, 2-3) [...] She can, that is, follow the radical gnostic reinterpretation and root it in the older traditions.” (Schaberg 142)
In fact, Jesus may be thought of as a re-interpreter of myth and perhaps he was impressed that Mary Magdalene could also make the same interpretive leaps. In the Gospel According to Thomas, Magdalene appears to be the more wise of all the disciples, and may even symbolize, Wisdom, herself. The goddess Sophia, whose name means “wisdom” in Greek, is often named as the female consort or feminine counterpart of God in the Jewish mystical tradition, Kabbalah.
Elaine Pagels’ book, The Gnostic Gospels, gives a well-written overview of the content contained in the codices discovered at Nag Hammadi as well as other gnostic texts found earlier. One of these earlier texts, the Gospel of Mary, shows Mary Magdalene having a visionary experience, communicating with Jesus through thoughtful and insightful questions: “How does he who sees the vision see it? [Through] the soul, [or] through the spirit?” He answered that the visionary perceives through the mind” (Pagels, Gnostic 11). In this particular version of gnosticism, the feminine is the intelligence of God, not just a representation of it, and the mind is the mediating force.
However, as pointed out by Pagels, in Valentinian gnosticism and many gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, power is only given to women, such as Mary Magdalene, because they become more like men.
But they were grieved. They wept greatly, saying,
“How shall we go to the Gentiles and preach the
gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man? If they
did not spare Him, how will they spare us?”
Then Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to
her brethren, “Do not weep and do not grieve nor be
irresolute, for His grace will be entirely with you
and will protect you.
But rather, let us praise His greatness, for He has
prepared us and made us into Men.” (The Gnostic Society Library Online).
So perhaps, to become a religious leader after Jesus’ death, Magdalene had to emphasize more of the so-called “masculine” traits in order to be accepted by the other apostles and the society at large. It seems, through her portrayal in these Early Christian, gnostic texts and the Christian testament, that she was not successful in becoming an accepted public leader.
Women, such as Miriam and Mary Magdalene, in the time of the Second Temple enjoyed more rights because of the Pharisees, who put in place laws to protect women and the family itself: women were encouraged to stay in the home after childbirth, instead of having to stay outside of the family because of their unclean state; the Pharisees also introduced the marriage document, Ketubah, in order to protect wives from the caprice of their husbands (Kohler). Women could also be involved in the Temple as readers, but stayed within women’s groups kept separate from men. A woman could not be a “rabbi” in the traditional sense of the word. Women were also believed to be co-creators with Yahweh, but in a private, personal and family way, not in a public capacity.
A woman’s voice is a powerful metaphor for her capacity to contribute to her community, her family, her nation. My adulteress Miriam only wished for her voice to be heard, that it may reach out and spread the Divine Wisdom that was imparted to her by Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Miriam’s wish is that her song will bring souls closer to God because she knows the human voice is the co-creative element that works through and with divine will.
Works Cited
Bloch, Ariel and Chana Bloch. The Song of Songs. Afterward by Robert Alter. New York: Random House, 1995.
Buber, Martin. “Myth in Judaism.” On Judaism. New York: Schocken, 1972. 95-2107.
Cohen, Francis L. “Sagerin.” Jewish Encyclopedia.com. 28 Dec. 2004.
Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martins Press, 1997.
Downing, Christine. “How Little it Resembles Memory: The Book of Ruth––Its Biblical Context, Its Contemporary Meanings.” The Luxury of Afterwards: The Christine Downing Lectures At San Diego State University 1995-2004. New York, Lincoln, Shanghai: iUniverse, Inc., 2004. 14-31.
Jaspers, Karl. “Myth and Religion.” Myth and Christianity: An Inquiry into the Possibility of Religion Without Myth. New York: The Noonday Press, Inc., 1958.
Kohler, Kaufmann. “Pharisees.” Jewish Encyclopedia.com. 28 Dec. 2004.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1989 & 1979.
---. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003.
Phillips, John A. Eve: The History of an Idea. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984.
Redmond, Layne. When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997.
Schaberg, Jane. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, And the Christian Testament. New York & London: Continuum, 2002.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “Mythologies and Realities in the Study of Jewish Music.” Ed.
Lawrence E Sullivan. Enchanting Powers: Music in the World’s Religions.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. 299-315.
Starbird, Margaret. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail. Santa Fe: Bear & Company Publishing, 1993.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible With the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. Ed.
Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford UP, 1973, 1977.
“The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene.” The Gnostic Society Library Online. 10 Dec. 2004..
I will begin by telling you all about myself. My name is Miriam. I am the granddaughter of Anna, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. In our lineage runs the powerful blood of Zilpah, the mother of Asher, who cherished the ways of the Divine Feminine in all of Her forms, and offered Her great tribute her entire life.
I was in the service of the Temple as sagerin until last year. I did not leave because I chose a different path. Fate abruptly changed the course of my life, like a stream being diverted from the influence of a large, fallen tree. Until the day I walked out of the Temple, all of my sisters loved, cherished me and extolled my talent. I am a singer by profession and play the frame drum. No one can sing the Song of Songs in my style. My voice has a deep tone that is unmatched by any other female singer, and often I am told that my voice resembles a man’s. My voice that I cherish is the same voice that has brought me great pain and sorrow. It is the same voice that came down many generations as a gift from my mother’s side, through Asher’s mother Zilpah, to my grandmother Anna, and then to me.
Anna spent every day in the Temple for over forty years praying to and praising Yahweh. In fact, many people who knew of her referred to her as a saint and thought of her as the exemplary Jew. She was a prophetess in the temple of Jerusalem when the Savior was presented to the Lord. She told my mother that the heavens opened up and messengers descended to speak to her. She said, “Behold, Jerusalem, your redemption is within the body of this tiny boy-child.” After saying this she took private council with Simeon, the priest who performed the rite of circumcision on the blessed child, and weeping said to him, “The messengers of the Lord asked me to proclaim tidings of joy, yet I see a vision of blood flowing out from this great Temple of our Lord. More blood will be shed over the ages because of this child; he will be the cause for even more grief than the most hideous of all Herods.”
According to my mother, Anna was greatly troubled by what she saw, yet Simeon who also knew the child would be cut down, like grapes from the vine, said to her, “Anna, be not afraid. Today you were in the presence of the sacrificial lamb, the Messiah, who will open the way to the heavenly Father for all of Israel's children.”
Anna wisely replied, “We all go to the Lord, who loves and cares for us in heaven. I know this because I am so close to the time of departure, my old friend. But why must there be so much blood shed for the cause of one man? And now, how can I still believe he is the Messiah? The fate he must suffer, so unbearable to think about, it makes me shudder with terror.”
No matter what Simeon told Anna to quiet her fears, she believed in her heart that this child was the bearer of blood to all who followed him. My mother believed that the vision sent by the Lord’s messengers was too much for her to bear, and from that point on she seemed on the verge of insanity. Sadly, Simeon disclosed her fragile mental state to my father and asked if he would take her into his house, since she was very old and her days were short. Anna had lived most of her life in the Temple––she arrived shortly after the death of her husband and would not take being “asked” to leave the Temple lightly. Not surprisingly, she conceded with dignity and embraced Simeon warmly before she left.
After moving into my mother’s home, she still seemed uneasy, as if she were haunted by evil thoughts; my mother reported to me that Anna would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. My father had no sympathy for her and told my mother that she must quiet Anna, otherwise he would make her sleep outside.
Every time my mother took Anna to worship at the Temple, she would call out to the bystanders, “Watch out for the Son of God, who will rise from Nazareth, and bring death in his wake.” Most people ignored her, shaking their heads. They knew she was once a powerful prophetess and devout servant of the Lord. My father, who couldn’t handle her outbursts any longer, finally told her to stop voicing blasphemy and struck her across the mouth. Anna did not recover from this show of public disrespect and never spoke another word. She died silently two years later, along with her voice.
My mother never met the Savior and out of suspicion and reverence to Anna, avoided his presence. My father never uttered a good word about him, and never referred to him as the Son of God. When Jesus was teaching in the Temple, I was forbidden by my parents to attend his sermons. All of the Pharisees knew of Jesus and spoke of him highly, while also maintaining a skepticism for his more radical interpretations of the Torah and Didache. Jesus’ radical ideas were not completely out of line with Pharisaic thinking, but his radical actions seemed to them extreme, rebellious and unbecoming to a rabbi.
Fatefully, last year, I finally met the man who changed the course of my life forever. The day I met Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior, was not at one of His sermons in the wilderness, but in the Temple. I was in the side room reading from Exodus 2, at the part when the child Moses is fished from the river by the beautiful Egyptian princess, which always delighted my sisters. Suddenly two men came into the room.
“Stop your reading at once and come with us.” The man grabbed my arm and I knew something was wrong. I began to pull away. The other man grabbed my other arm so strongly that he left bruise marks. I cried out from the pain and then terror struck me and I began to scream.
My sisters began to cry and many ran out to go to my parents for help. I was now on my knees begging for justice and forgiveness. Two weeks before I was asked to sing from the Song of Songs for Caiaphas’ sisters wedding banquet. My voice sounded unusually resonant and haunting, even bringing tears to the likes of Annas! When I finished the performance, I noticed the groom staring at me. I could sense a dangerous fire running through his veins. This did not escape the notice of Caiaphas’ sister. I did my best to avoid his gaze and kept a safe distance for most of the night.
After the banquet ended I stood in the courtyard waiting for my father to walk home with me. A loud wailing came out of the room to the left of where I was standing.
“I saw you! I saw you savoring that singer, that young, devious harlot! Stay away from her or I will send you away!” Now I knew that my intuition was right about that man––he wanted me, no, he wanted my body. That night, my voice changed my fate.
I am ashamed to say I also felt a longing for him. Worse, I claimed that very thing I desired, but that did not belong to me.
They dragged me across the floor, shouting, “Keep your mouth shut woman!” I could hear the sound of my mother wailing outside the door, along with my sisters, mourning, tearing out their hair and beating their breasts.
They threw me down before the Messiah and said, “This woman is an adulteress and deserves to be put to death.”
My face felt hot as I just stared at the sandaled feet in front of me. My shame was too great to look him in the eyes. The silence seemed to last an eternity and then I heard Joseph of Arimathaea say, “Jesus, why do you not answer?”
My breathing was labored as I was fighting back tears, fearful that he might address me and I would have to find my voice. At this moment I was so afraid, I knew I could not form a single intelligible word.
“Stand up woman and face your judge,” bellowed Caiaphas. Now, I was no longer the glorious singer and educated prayer leader, Miriam. I was a no name. I slowly stood up, barely able to balance myself.
At this, Jesus bent down and sat on the floor in front of me.
He started writing with his finger on the floor. He first etched the name of the man with whom I committed adultery in the dirt. Without looking up, he wrote the names of three other Pharisees who had committed adultery with women who served in the Temple and lived in Jerusalem. How did he know all of this?
Jesus looked up at the astonished and terrified group of men in front of him and said, “The one of you that is without sin may now cast the first stone.”
The sound of heavy breathing and whispers were the only sounds audible as heavy footsteps walked out of the Temple, leaving me alone with the Savior. He waited a long time for me to look at him and did not say a word. I’ve never seen more compassion flowing out of anyone’s eyes before or since. He reached out his hand to me and I gently helped him to his feet, and then he did the most peculiar thing. He bowed his head slightly and said, “Miriam, granddaughter of Anna, of the tribe of Asher, is there no one here to speak against you?”
“No, Rabbi. There is no one.”
“Then go in peace, your sins have been cleansed.”
I could barely breathe and the shock of the incident also took away my sense of speech. But my mind was filled with so many questions, like voices that were all crying out at once to be heard. How did Jesus know my name and my grandmother who has been dead for so many years? And, where did he get the power and authority to forgive sins?
As he was holding my hand, I could feel a life of burdens, sins and guilt flowing out of my body. And the warmth from His soul enveloped me. When he finally let go, I looked at him and he seemed to emanate a golden light, a transparent iridescence unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I knew He was no ordinary man, he was God Incarnate, the Divine wrapped in human flesh. I never spoke to the Son of God after this encounter, yet I know that he will greet me when I travel to the other side of death.
I left my service in the Temple, as I had no choice in the matter. I was both fortunate and thankful to have escaped a sure death sentence. I spent months hiding out at my mother’s house keeping a low profile and helping her weave linens to be sold at market. One morning, two women from my prayer group came and asked me to join them to hear one of Jesus’ most beloved disciples, Mary of Magdala, speak. Mary was known as the disciple who knew the All. Her wisdom was unsurpassed by any of Jesus’ other disciples, including Thomas, the Twin, and John, who were both wise in their own right.
When I went to hear her speak, I was so excited that I could barely contain myself. I noticed both men and women, rich and poor, about forty or so people. That morning, the air was still cool and quiet when all of us sat together on the ground around a small, dark-haired woman. As she spoke her eyes dazzled like a dark sun that would shine inside the deepest, darkest cave.
And then, Mary began to speak: “Peace be with you, my brothers and sisters. What I am going to tell you, will be the most beautiful words you may hear in this life, and these words will heal your broken spirits. Laws and rules are not the way of the new Kingdom of God, as they are for the Romans, the Herods and the Temple priests. Love and wisdom are the ways of the Savior, as He has brought it to all of us. God’s love is ever-present––all you need do is open your eyes, for the Savior has said, ‘The Kingdom is inside you, and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will see that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are the poverty.’”
Mary then told us how difficult the teachings of the Savior are for those who live in wealth and comfort, but for those of us living under great oppression, the teachings would open our eyes, hearts and minds to the ways of the Lord and make us rich in love.
After she spoke there was a deep silence. She looked at the expressions on all of the faces around her; some appeared consoled, while others looked perplexed. Many people were weeping because these words of God’s love were like nothing they had ever heard spoken to them in their lives. Most of these people were outcasts, unloved and possibly even hated. I am now an outcast, reviled by all respectable citizens of Jerusalem. The stain on my name and on my family will never be undone. God’s love and Jesus’ words are all I have left.
I continued to go hear Mary’s teachings each week and soon began to study readings from the Torah with her. She interpreted the texts using the teachings of the Savior as a guide for a new understanding of the stories. She even retold the story of Adam and Eve as if she were the snake! She told us that the snake was Wisdom, the female principle of God that the priests seemed to have forsaken. Many hours would fly quickly by in lively discussion, as we all shared our dreams and expectations of the new life that was present, here and now. We laughed, cried and sang together every day.
Then it all came to an end.
I noticed many women within Mary’s group were in Jerusalem when the Savior was put to death. But I didn’t see any of the men and almost none of the other disciples. Mary followed Jesus as he carried his cross. That day she was his partner in suffering just as she had been by his side spreading his word throughout the land. After seeing Jesus suffer so greatly, I now understand why my grandmother was so distraught over her vision of the Son of God.
Since the Savior was crucified on the sabbath, Mary could not anoint his body for burial. I helped to find a safe house for her and many of us stayed with her all night long, weeping and grieving for Jesus. She left in the morning, alone with her jar of ointment to anoint her Savior that had so graciously given his life for the cause of all humanity.
Before she stepped over the threshold, she turned to us and said, “Grieve no longer, for the Savior is, and will always be among us, for he said, “I am the light which is before all things. It is I who am all things. From me all things came forth, and to me all things expend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up the stone, and you will find me.”
I never saw Mary of Magdala after this day, and no one is really sure where she went. Some say she had gone to Egypt to escape the wrath of Annas and Pilate just days after she went to the tomb.
Now, I am sure you are wondering why an untouchable such as myself feels the need to document important events in her life and why she is hiding them from the authorities. My story is not long; my life will be cut short at any time. The Pharisees will turn me over, along with many others, to the Romans to be tortured and put to death. The Romans have killed at least three hundred of us now, as I am writing in a dark cave by oil lamp. I have escaped their wrath once, because of His intervention, but I will not escape death now. My teacher Mary, along with Thomas and James, have fled since the death of Jesus, and all of her followers, including myself, have been meeting in secret within caves ever since. We are just one of many groups that have split off from the Temple and are trying to find a foothold in this new Life taught by Jesus of Nazareth. It has been two years now––two years of loneliness, fear and running. I am now considered a seditionist as well as adulteress. I have decided to stay and meet my death face on because I know it will not be the end.
My hope for the world is that the great Sophia will descend upon the minds of all people so that they may come to know the Truth. I will continue to write until my oil lamp is drained and darkness enfolds me. If I do not leave this cave, I will die of starvation or from thirst. I can face my death with strength knowing that I have seen and heard the Truth. I do not want to die in vain, for, I know the Truth will be concealed from the rest of humanity for ages to come. I seek to pass on my knowledge through this letter. This letter is my voice; the voice that will never die, just as my soul will live for eternity in the New Kingdom.
Blessings to you, Enlightened Soul, and may God’s Peace reign on the earth, and in your heart, forever.
Early Christianity, which includes gnosticism and many other movements which were still in the fold of Judaism during the first century, shows the diversity and chaos of new myths being born before the onslaught of orthodoxy. Most of the research for my story centered around Elaine Pagels’ books, The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, as well as many other scholarly sources which highlight the feminine forces of the Divine, such as Ariel and Chana Bloch’s The Song of Songs, and The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, And the Christian Testament, written by Jane Schaberg.
Most of the current mainstream interest in Mary Magdalene and the gnostic gospels has spawned from the fictional work of Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. Admittedly, I read the book and was intrigued by the author’s theory of Mary Magdalene as carrying the bloodline of Jesus, the royal Davidic line. According to Brown, Magdalene is the Holy Grail.
Although, the legends of the Grail interest me, I did not feel that it was the most interesting or appropriate train of scholarship to follow. I decided to research the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene from the perspective of their Jewish backgrounds, especially since Judaism is the matrix from which early Christianity arose.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is an inspiring, modern midrashic rendering of the story in Genesis referred to as the “rape of Dinah.” The biblical version of the story barely touches Dinah, as is the case with many mentions of female characters in the both the Old and New Testaments, yet Diamant recreates and re-imagines the story of Jacob’s sons and wives through Dinah’s eyes. I found that Diamant’s moving novel helped me to write in my own female voice, through the character Miriam’s point of view.
I chose the small snippet from the Gospel According to John about the stoning of the adulterous women because, like the Dinah episode, we are given no information about her, except that she committed adultery. Nothing is revealed by the narrative––her age, her station in life, if she was married or not, her name––which leaves a good deal of room to stretch the imagination. I wanted to know about her. The only way to do this was to re-mythicize her, giving her depth, scope, a life. “To engage in midrash is to look at what’s troubling in a biblical text, to note contradictions, missing details” (Downing, Luxury 16).
My story has threads running through it that come from both the Old and New Testaments. In the Gospel According to John, an adulterous woman is brought to Jesus by the Pharisees, so that they can “test” him to bring charges against him.
Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her? (John 8:5)
Jesus bends down and starts to write with his finger on the ground:
And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.” (John 8:7-11)
My own religious background in Catholicism at first made it difficult to conceive of bible stories as “mythical,” especially since my view of the religion was based on orthodoxy. Rewriting a story from the Bible felt a little blasphemous, and at the same time it was “wicked” fun. I have felt a deep connection with the adulteress who appears in the New Testament since childhood, and wanted to explore the dimensions of the story, through my own research and imagination. Jesus’ famous phrase, “Let the one among you without sin cast the first stone,” still echoes in my memory as a reminder to think on my own foibles before I judge someone harshly for their mistakes. I was also surprised to find out that even though I believed my character, the adulteress, to be Mary Magdalene all these years, she was not.
Another interesting observation I made while researching for the story, was that this particular adulteress narrative is only found in the Gospel According to John, whereas the woman with the alabaster jar story is found in all four gospels. I imagine that the writer of the fourth gospel focuses on Jesus’ preaching that the Kingdom of God is present, now, on earth, and that to enter into it is simply to be born into a new life, through a new understanding of God. Part of this new understanding, to be slightly reductive, is that God’s love is for everyone––not just His chosen people, the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well. The adulteress in John is most likely a literary device devised to get this point across.
Utilizing the creative imagination to conceive of how early Christianity may have looked is a way of entering the mythic material of the bible and of the codices found at Nag Hammadi, which are so richly textured. Myths contain within themselves micro-universes that evolve and change as the human imagination expands into new cosmos.
In spite of canonization, the Old Testament continues to be reinterpreted and the stories within rewritten in the Jewish tradition of midrash. Christine Downing talks about the intertextuality of the biblical texts, how a thread runs through each one, weaving them into their own cosmos, their own family of stories (Downing, Luxury 16). Karl Jaspers further describes how intertextual myth is when he says: “The myth is a carrier of meanings which can be expressed only in the language of the myth. The mythical figures are symbols which, by their very nature, are untranslatable into other language [...] Myths interpret each other” (Jaspers 16).
Miriam, my adulteress, is connected to a rich mythic heritage in the Old Testament that she will never completely reject, as it is a part of her personal, family and national history. In Judaism, history and myth commingle and encompass one within the other.
Yahweh's realm is not nature but history. The God of Judaism is a god whose character it is to act. (Phillips 12)
Another face of Yahweh is His relationship to His worshippers, who are in effect co-creators with Him. Philosopher Martin Buber in his essay, “Myth in Judaism,” further explains the unique nature of Jewish myth and Yahweh:
[...] every man is called to determine, by his own life, God’s destiny; and every living being is rooted in the living myth. (Buber 106)
Even though Miriam has a strong Jewish heritage, she is eager to listen to Jesus’ teachings. She is in a state of spiritual crisis after her banishment from the temple and finds an opening to express her voice when she becomes a student of Mary Magdalene. Miriam’s desire to see the Divine all around her, as an omniscient, sentient Being, rooted her in Judaism, while at the same time opening her up to a “re-mything” of her religious upbringing as a Jew.
Miriam generously shares her experiences and lineage, bringing the reader further into her world. She states that she is the granddaughter of Anna, the prophetess, mentioned briefly in the New Testament, Luke 2:36:
And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher; she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and as a widow till she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:36)
Miriam’s connection to the tribe of Asher, son of Jacob, connects her also to Zilpah, mother of Asher, who is described in The Red Tent as a goddess worshipper: “From the age of her first blood, Zilpah thought of herself as a kind of priestess, the keeper of the mysteries of the red tent, the daughter of Asherah, the sister-Siduri who counsels women” (Diamant 14). Dinah, the narrator, goes on to say that Zilpah wasn’t a true priestess (according to Diamant, the priestesses were in service to the gods in the great city temples, not the goddess) and that she merely practiced rituals that venerated the Great Mother.
In order to give my story more weight, I conceived Miriam as an inheritor of Anna’s powerful ties to prophecy and the temple, as well as of the royal Jewish bloodlines through Zilpah and Asher. Miriam is by lineage connected to the Temple and to prophecy. She serves in the Temple as a sagerin, a woman prayer leader to a group of Jewish women (Cohen). Although, Miriam is not a “priestess” in the ways of the ancient Hebrews, she has learned the ancient art of playing the frame drum while singing. “The Bible mentions a ruler and Prophetess of ancient Israel called Deborah, the “Queen Bee”; her priestesses are known as Deborahs as well [...] Mastery of the frame drum was a primary spiritual duty of these priestesses.” (Redmond 53).
Miriam’s favorite poem from the Bible is the “Song of Songs,” and she sings so beautifully, with a deep resonating voice, that even the high priest Caiaphas asks her to sing it at his sister’s wedding banquet. She also brings the high priest Annas––Caiaphas’ father in law––to tears. “One would suppose that professional woman singers (sarot, mesorerot) also sang love songs, particularly when they performed at banquets and festivals (2 Sam. 19:36, Eccles. 2:8, Ezra 2:65)” (Bloch 21). Miriam knows that listening to a song of Divine origin can transform one’s own relationship to God:
In Hasidic tradition, where performance of a song is believed to be one of the most effective vehicles for achieving what is termed devekuth (literally, “adhesion” [of the soul to God] ), an ecstatic experience through which one receives divine knowledge. (Shelemay 302)
In the translation of the bible I was utilizing, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, there was no mention of the name “Mary Magdalene” connected to the word “prostitute”: “Even the term prostitute is a misnomer. This term, chosen by modern translators, is applied to the hierodulae, or “sacred women” of the temple of the Goddess, who played an important part in the everyday life of the classical world” (Starbird 29). I checked the King James Version as well and did not find any correlation between the word “prostitute,” either sacred or profane, and Mary Magdalene. In fact, when she is first mentioned in the Gospel According to Luke, she is described as a woman who possibly provided for Jesus and his disciples:
Soon afterward he went on through the cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means. (Luke 8:00)
Mary Magdalene may have been a powerful disciple of Jesus, who had a voice. Jane Schaberg, in her book The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, discusses a gnostic writing named the Pistis Sophia which describes Magdalene as the disciple who truly comprehends Jesus’ teachings:
“My Lord, this is the interpretation of the mystery of the repentance of the Pistis Sophia” (I, 34). She is called “the beautiful in her speech” (I, 24,2), “thou [who] dost seek everything with certainty and with accuracy” (I, 25, 2-3) [...] She can, that is, follow the radical gnostic reinterpretation and root it in the older traditions.” (Schaberg 142)
In fact, Jesus may be thought of as a re-interpreter of myth and perhaps he was impressed that Mary Magdalene could also make the same interpretive leaps. In the Gospel According to Thomas, Magdalene appears to be the more wise of all the disciples, and may even symbolize, Wisdom, herself. The goddess Sophia, whose name means “wisdom” in Greek, is often named as the female consort or feminine counterpart of God in the Jewish mystical tradition, Kabbalah.
Elaine Pagels’ book, The Gnostic Gospels, gives a well-written overview of the content contained in the codices discovered at Nag Hammadi as well as other gnostic texts found earlier. One of these earlier texts, the Gospel of Mary, shows Mary Magdalene having a visionary experience, communicating with Jesus through thoughtful and insightful questions: “How does he who sees the vision see it? [Through] the soul, [or] through the spirit?” He answered that the visionary perceives through the mind” (Pagels, Gnostic 11). In this particular version of gnosticism, the feminine is the intelligence of God, not just a representation of it, and the mind is the mediating force.
However, as pointed out by Pagels, in Valentinian gnosticism and many gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, power is only given to women, such as Mary Magdalene, because they become more like men.
But they were grieved. They wept greatly, saying,
“How shall we go to the Gentiles and preach the
gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man? If they
did not spare Him, how will they spare us?”
Then Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to
her brethren, “Do not weep and do not grieve nor be
irresolute, for His grace will be entirely with you
and will protect you.
But rather, let us praise His greatness, for He has
prepared us and made us into Men.” (The Gnostic Society Library Online).
So perhaps, to become a religious leader after Jesus’ death, Magdalene had to emphasize more of the so-called “masculine” traits in order to be accepted by the other apostles and the society at large. It seems, through her portrayal in these Early Christian, gnostic texts and the Christian testament, that she was not successful in becoming an accepted public leader.
Women, such as Miriam and Mary Magdalene, in the time of the Second Temple enjoyed more rights because of the Pharisees, who put in place laws to protect women and the family itself: women were encouraged to stay in the home after childbirth, instead of having to stay outside of the family because of their unclean state; the Pharisees also introduced the marriage document, Ketubah, in order to protect wives from the caprice of their husbands (Kohler). Women could also be involved in the Temple as readers, but stayed within women’s groups kept separate from men. A woman could not be a “rabbi” in the traditional sense of the word. Women were also believed to be co-creators with Yahweh, but in a private, personal and family way, not in a public capacity.
A woman’s voice is a powerful metaphor for her capacity to contribute to her community, her family, her nation. My adulteress Miriam only wished for her voice to be heard, that it may reach out and spread the Divine Wisdom that was imparted to her by Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Miriam’s wish is that her song will bring souls closer to God because she knows the human voice is the co-creative element that works through and with divine will.
Works Cited
Bloch, Ariel and Chana Bloch. The Song of Songs. Afterward by Robert Alter. New York: Random House, 1995.
Buber, Martin. “Myth in Judaism.” On Judaism. New York: Schocken, 1972. 95-2107.
Cohen, Francis L. “Sagerin.” Jewish Encyclopedia.com. 28 Dec. 2004.
Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martins Press, 1997.
Downing, Christine. “How Little it Resembles Memory: The Book of Ruth––Its Biblical Context, Its Contemporary Meanings.” The Luxury of Afterwards: The Christine Downing Lectures At San Diego State University 1995-2004. New York, Lincoln, Shanghai: iUniverse, Inc., 2004. 14-31.
Jaspers, Karl. “Myth and Religion.” Myth and Christianity: An Inquiry into the Possibility of Religion Without Myth. New York: The Noonday Press, Inc., 1958.
Kohler, Kaufmann. “Pharisees.” Jewish Encyclopedia.com. 28 Dec. 2004.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1989 & 1979.
---. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003.
Phillips, John A. Eve: The History of an Idea. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984.
Redmond, Layne. When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997.
Schaberg, Jane. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, And the Christian Testament. New York & London: Continuum, 2002.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “Mythologies and Realities in the Study of Jewish Music.” Ed.
Lawrence E Sullivan. Enchanting Powers: Music in the World’s Religions.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. 299-315.
Starbird, Margaret. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail. Santa Fe: Bear & Company Publishing, 1993.
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Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford UP, 1973, 1977.
“The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene.” The Gnostic Society Library Online. 10 Dec. 2004.
