Imagining Mary Magdalene
The Discourse of Hidden Wisdom in American Popular Culture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v7i1.1Keywords:
Mary Magdalene, Bible, popular culture, North AmericaAbstract
In this article I analyze how Americans draw upon the authority of both ancient, so-called “hidden” texts and the authority of scholarly discourse, even overtly fictional scholarly discourse, in their imaginings of the “re-discovered” figure of Mary Magdalene. Reading recent treatments of Mary Magdalene provides me with an entrance onto three topics: how Americans see and use the past, how Americans understand knowledge itself, and how Americans construct “religion” and “spirituality.” I do so through close studies of contemporary websites of communities that focus on Mary Magdalene, as well as examinations of relevant books, historical novels, reader reviews, and comic books. Focusing on Mary Magdalene alongside tropes of wisdom also uncovers the gendered dynamics at play in constructions of antiquity, knowledge, and religious accessibility.
References
Amazon.com. 2010. “Customer Reviews: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.” http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Mary-Magdalene-Jean-Yves-Leloup/dp/0892819111/sr=8-1/qid=1162174727/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0219376- 7801620?ie=UTF8&s=books. Accessed 7 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Customer Reviews: The Gospel of Mary of Magdala.” http://www.amazon.com/review/R25JF8EPHRVDFE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8ASIN=0892819111&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=. Accessed 7 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Customer Reviews: The Magdalene Diaries: A Novel.” http://www.amazon.com/Magdalene-Diaries-Robert-J-Grant/product-reviews/0876045042/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending. Accessed 9 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Listmania: So You’d Like to…Mary Magdalene, Goddess.” http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/W9ZFG91BLCY0/ ref=cm_sylt_byauthor_title_full_1. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Basher, Brenda. 2004. Give Me That Online Religion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Black, Fiona. 2000. “Lost Prophecies! Scholars Amazed! Weekly World News and the Bible.” In Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible, edited by George Aichele, 20–43. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Brown, Dan. 2003. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Anchor.
CafePress. 2010. Magdalene.org. http://www.cafepress.com/magdalene1.8506500. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Camp, Claudia. 2000. Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Chen, Marcia. 2002. The Magdalena: Blood Divine. Illustrated by Joe Benitez. Orange, CA: Image Comics.
Clapp, Rodney. 2006. “Dan Brown’s truthiness.” The Christian Century 16 (May): 22–25.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. 2000. Messianic Judaism. New York: Continuum.
Colbert, Stephen, producer. 2005. “The Colbert Report.” Episode 1.1. Original air¬date October 17.
Covington, Richard. 2005. “A Long Miscast Outcast.” US News and World Report. December 27.
De Vries, Hent and Samuel Weber, ed. 2001. Religion and Media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ecclesia Pistis Sophia: Sophia Fellowship. 2013. “Christian Gnosticism.” http://www.sophian.org/christian_gnosticism.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
———. 2013. “The Gnostic Path.” http://www.sophian.org/gnostic_path.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
———. 2013. “Sophia Fellowship.” http://www.sophian.org/index.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
———. 2013. “Tau Malachi.” http://www.sophian.org/about_tau_malachi.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
Fernback, Jan. 2002. “Internet Ritual: A Case Study of the Construction of Computer-Mediated Neopagan Religious Meaning.” In Practicing Religion in the Age of Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 254–275. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. 1994. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad.
Foucault, Michel and Colin Gordon, ed. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon.
Grant, Robert J. 2005. The Magdalene Diaries. Virginia Beach, VA: A.R.E. Press.
Grimes, Ronald L. 2002. “Ritual and the Media.” In Practicing Religion in the Age of Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 219–234. New York: Columbia University Press.
Internet Movie Database. 2010. “The Da Vinci Code (2006): Taglines.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/taglines. Accessed 9 April 2010.
Jacobs, Andrew S. 2005. “‘Gospel Thrillers.’” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts in Contemporary Worlds 1(1): 125–142.
Jackson, Rosemary. 1981. Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion. New York: Routledge. Kindle Reader e-book. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203328446
Jenkins, Philip. 2001. Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. New York: Oxford University Press.
King, Karen. 1994. “Translating History: Reframing Gnosticism in Postmodernity.” In Tradition und Translation: Zum Problem der interkultureller Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Phänomene. Festschrift für Carsten Colpe zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Christoph Elsas, 264–277. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110864694.264
———. 2003. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press.
King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and the “Mystic East.” New York: Routledge.
Leloup, Jean-Yves. “Site Officiel.” http://www.jeanyvesleloup.com/ag/biogra¬phie.php. Accessed 26 September 2010.
Magdalene Circle. 2010. “Mystic and Gnostic Christian Church: Austin, Texas.” http://www.magdalene-circle.org/index.html (accessed 8 April 2010).
———. 2010. “Beliefs.” http://www.magdalene-circle.org/believe.html. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Magdalene.org. 2010. http://www.magdalene.org/ (accessed 8 April 2010).
Malachi, Tau. 2006. St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Neal, Lynn S. 2006. Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Order of Mary the Magdala. 2008. http://www.northernway.org/school/omm. shtml. Accessed 4 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Yeshua, the Master Teacher.” http://www.northernway.org/god.html. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2010. “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey.” http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious- Knowledge-Survey.aspx. Accessed 2 October 2010.
———. 2010. “Internet User Profiles Reloaded: Updated Demographics for Internet, Broadband and Wireless Users.” http://pewresearch.org/ pubs/1454/demographic-profiles-internet-broadband-cell-phone-wire¬less-users. Accessed 7 April 2010.
Plumer, Eric. 2009. The Catholic Church and American Culture: Why the Claims of Dan Brown Strike a Chord. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press.
Radway, Janice. 1991. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Roof, Wade Clark. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rosen, Jonathan. 2000. The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Rosenzweig, Roy and David Thelen. 2000. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schaberg, Jane. 2002. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament. New York: Continuum.
Schmidt, Lauri L. Amazon.com. 2010. “Profile for Lauri L. Schmidt: Reviews.” http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1Q2VM65HJTAED/ref=cm_cr_auth/002-0219376-7801620. Accessed 5 April 2010.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Starbird, Margaret. 1993. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Rochester, VT: Bear and Company.
Todorov, Tzetvan. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Travis, Trysh. 2007. “‘It Will Change the World if Everybody Reads This Book’: New Thought Religion and Oprah’s Book Club.” American Quarterly 59: 1017– 1041. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0071
Tweed, Thomas. 1991. The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Vara, Richard and Tara Dooley. 2006. “Mystical Christian Writings: Gnostic Gospels One Key to Da Vinci Code Origins.” The Houston Chronicle. May 22. Page 1. [electronic resource]
Winslade, J. Lawton. 2000. “Techno-Kabbalah: The Performative Language of Magick and the Production of Occult Knowledge.” The Drama Review 44(2): 84–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/10542040051058717
———. 2010. “Customer Reviews: The Gospel of Mary of Magdala.” http://www.amazon.com/review/R25JF8EPHRVDFE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8ASIN=0892819111&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=. Accessed 7 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Customer Reviews: The Magdalene Diaries: A Novel.” http://www.amazon.com/Magdalene-Diaries-Robert-J-Grant/product-reviews/0876045042/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending. Accessed 9 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Listmania: So You’d Like to…Mary Magdalene, Goddess.” http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/W9ZFG91BLCY0/ ref=cm_sylt_byauthor_title_full_1. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Basher, Brenda. 2004. Give Me That Online Religion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Black, Fiona. 2000. “Lost Prophecies! Scholars Amazed! Weekly World News and the Bible.” In Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible, edited by George Aichele, 20–43. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Brown, Dan. 2003. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Anchor.
CafePress. 2010. Magdalene.org. http://www.cafepress.com/magdalene1.8506500. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Camp, Claudia. 2000. Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Chen, Marcia. 2002. The Magdalena: Blood Divine. Illustrated by Joe Benitez. Orange, CA: Image Comics.
Clapp, Rodney. 2006. “Dan Brown’s truthiness.” The Christian Century 16 (May): 22–25.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. 2000. Messianic Judaism. New York: Continuum.
Colbert, Stephen, producer. 2005. “The Colbert Report.” Episode 1.1. Original air¬date October 17.
Covington, Richard. 2005. “A Long Miscast Outcast.” US News and World Report. December 27.
De Vries, Hent and Samuel Weber, ed. 2001. Religion and Media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ecclesia Pistis Sophia: Sophia Fellowship. 2013. “Christian Gnosticism.” http://www.sophian.org/christian_gnosticism.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
———. 2013. “The Gnostic Path.” http://www.sophian.org/gnostic_path.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
———. 2013. “Sophia Fellowship.” http://www.sophian.org/index.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
———. 2013. “Tau Malachi.” http://www.sophian.org/about_tau_malachi.html. Accessed 16 September 2013.
Fernback, Jan. 2002. “Internet Ritual: A Case Study of the Construction of Computer-Mediated Neopagan Religious Meaning.” In Practicing Religion in the Age of Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 254–275. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. 1994. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad.
Foucault, Michel and Colin Gordon, ed. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon.
Grant, Robert J. 2005. The Magdalene Diaries. Virginia Beach, VA: A.R.E. Press.
Grimes, Ronald L. 2002. “Ritual and the Media.” In Practicing Religion in the Age of Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 219–234. New York: Columbia University Press.
Internet Movie Database. 2010. “The Da Vinci Code (2006): Taglines.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/taglines. Accessed 9 April 2010.
Jacobs, Andrew S. 2005. “‘Gospel Thrillers.’” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts in Contemporary Worlds 1(1): 125–142.
Jackson, Rosemary. 1981. Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion. New York: Routledge. Kindle Reader e-book. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203328446
Jenkins, Philip. 2001. Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. New York: Oxford University Press.
King, Karen. 1994. “Translating History: Reframing Gnosticism in Postmodernity.” In Tradition und Translation: Zum Problem der interkultureller Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Phänomene. Festschrift für Carsten Colpe zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Christoph Elsas, 264–277. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110864694.264
———. 2003. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press.
King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and the “Mystic East.” New York: Routledge.
Leloup, Jean-Yves. “Site Officiel.” http://www.jeanyvesleloup.com/ag/biogra¬phie.php. Accessed 26 September 2010.
Magdalene Circle. 2010. “Mystic and Gnostic Christian Church: Austin, Texas.” http://www.magdalene-circle.org/index.html (accessed 8 April 2010).
———. 2010. “Beliefs.” http://www.magdalene-circle.org/believe.html. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Magdalene.org. 2010. http://www.magdalene.org/ (accessed 8 April 2010).
Malachi, Tau. 2006. St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Neal, Lynn S. 2006. Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Order of Mary the Magdala. 2008. http://www.northernway.org/school/omm. shtml. Accessed 4 April 2010.
———. 2010. “Yeshua, the Master Teacher.” http://www.northernway.org/god.html. Accessed 8 April 2010.
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2010. “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey.” http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious- Knowledge-Survey.aspx. Accessed 2 October 2010.
———. 2010. “Internet User Profiles Reloaded: Updated Demographics for Internet, Broadband and Wireless Users.” http://pewresearch.org/ pubs/1454/demographic-profiles-internet-broadband-cell-phone-wire¬less-users. Accessed 7 April 2010.
Plumer, Eric. 2009. The Catholic Church and American Culture: Why the Claims of Dan Brown Strike a Chord. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press.
Radway, Janice. 1991. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Roof, Wade Clark. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rosen, Jonathan. 2000. The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Rosenzweig, Roy and David Thelen. 2000. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schaberg, Jane. 2002. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament. New York: Continuum.
Schmidt, Lauri L. Amazon.com. 2010. “Profile for Lauri L. Schmidt: Reviews.” http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1Q2VM65HJTAED/ref=cm_cr_auth/002-0219376-7801620. Accessed 5 April 2010.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Starbird, Margaret. 1993. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Rochester, VT: Bear and Company.
Todorov, Tzetvan. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Travis, Trysh. 2007. “‘It Will Change the World if Everybody Reads This Book’: New Thought Religion and Oprah’s Book Club.” American Quarterly 59: 1017– 1041. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0071
Tweed, Thomas. 1991. The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Vara, Richard and Tara Dooley. 2006. “Mystical Christian Writings: Gnostic Gospels One Key to Da Vinci Code Origins.” The Houston Chronicle. May 22. Page 1. [electronic resource]
Winslade, J. Lawton. 2000. “Techno-Kabbalah: The Performative Language of Magick and the Production of Occult Knowledge.” The Drama Review 44(2): 84–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/10542040051058717
Published
2014-01-13
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Eichler-Levine, J. (2014). Imagining Mary Magdalene: The Discourse of Hidden Wisdom in American Popular Culture. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 7(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v7i1.1
