Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess » (Reprint)

Tradition and history have made of her “the other Mary.” Even in the New Testament Mary Magdalene stands among women second only to Mary the Mother, albeit she has been reduced by the biblical Gospels to little more than a fallen woman redeemed by Jesus. In the Gnostic Gospels, however, Magdalene figures almost as significantly as Christ, who names her “the woman who knows all.” The conflicting accounts of Mary Magdalene have sent best-selling author Lynn Picknett on a quest for the truth that has led her to the thirteenth-century cult of the Black Madonna, then back to Christianity’s beginnings and earlier. Tracing Mary’s name to Magdala in Egypt, Picknett learns that the term Magdal-eder means “tower of the flock,” or Good Shepherd, a title also given to Jesus Christ. Based on her explorations into new scholarship on recently discovered Gnostic texts, Picknett finds a vital partnership between Jesus and Mary that synthesized Eastern and Egyptian mysticism and that promulgated gender equality, anointing rites, and sexual rituals. In that relationship, she discovers an alliance that Christ’s Apostles and, later, the Catholic Church strove ardently to suppress. Picknett’s revelations rarely fail to provoke at least a reconsideration of long-accepted church doctrine.

Publishers Weekly

While conventional wisdom sees Mary Magdalene as a trollop-turned-saint, recent scholars and popular biographers (including evangelical funny lady Liz Curtis Higgs) have quite convincingly argued that there's no credible evidence that this close disciple of Jesus was ever a lady of the night. Revisionist history, though, takes a turn for the improbable with Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess, Lynn Picknett's overly speculative account of Mary as the "secret" goddess of the New Testament and early church. Drawing on several Gnostic texts, Picknett offers both well-worn and new arguments about Mary, who Picknett claims Jesus designated as his true successor. Where some Gnostic texts suggest a sexual relationship between Mary and Jesus, Picknett sees full-blown sexual rituals as de rigueur in the esoteric early church, though they were later suppressed. And while some fanciful (and relatively late) church legends have Mary Magdalene fleeing to "France" after Jesus' resurrection, Picknett offers a detailed chapter claiming that this "French connection" was not legend but fact. This reformist take on the much-maligned Mary Magdalene is sometimes fascinating, but conjectural and prone to hasty theorizing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.