MARY MAGDALENE AND MARY OF BETHANY

Are Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany one and the same person?   This is not a new idea, and it has a perfectly respectable pedigree: it was first mooted by Pope Gregory 1.  It becomes problematic only when it gets into books like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.   Then we get something like this.

            Christ married at the age of about sixteen.  He married Mary Magdalene/Mary of Bethany – take your pick, they’re one and the same person – at the wedding at Cana.  Barabbas was an early son.  At the crucifixion, the crowd called for Barabbas so that the son could be preserved, even if the father had to die.  In fact, Christ was given opium on a sponge: fooling the Romans into thinking he was dead.  Pregnant Mary Magdalene was then smuggled across to France by Joseph of Arimathea and Lazarus:  the “beloved disciple” and Christ’s brother-in-law.   Christ may have joined Mary in France and fathered more children.   And so on.   The rest we know from The da Vinci Code.

 Readers seeking a balanced interpretation of the evidence would do well to try John Wenham’s little gem of a book, Easter Enigma.  This makes a convincing case for the extra-biblical Western tradition that Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany were, indeed, one and the same person.  Here is a brief summary; although no substitute for the book itself.

            Mary, leaving Bethany, became a courtesan in Magdala.  Spiritually rescued by Christ (the “seven devils”), she wept at his feet.  Luke does not mention her by name, since the Gospel writers are reticent about dwelling on the past sins of believers.  She returned to Bethany, and later anointed Christ with oil in a re-enactment of the earlier event.

            That is the only support that Wenham’s work lends to the theories of Baigent  and Co.  Mary, for Wenham, witnessed the Crucifixion and the Resurrection: as befitted one of the most devoted of Christ’s followers.  After the Mother of our Lord, she is the most favoured woman in the Bible who appears “as suddenly as a meteor, shines brightly for a moment, and then disappears forever.”  No more and no less.