Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss Mary Magdalene and how narratives about women have been decentered and obscured by those who benefit from an imbalance of power.
Transcript
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Rev. Deborah Duguid-May (DDM) [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe (MET) [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action. So today we are going to be speaking about Mary Magdalene and I’m sure some of you may be thinking why on earth are we doing a podcast on Mary Magdalene? Well, at Trinity and our Bible study evenings, we decided a little while ago to look at the gospel of Mary Magdalene. Now, let me start off by saying that when I studied theology, I had no idea that there were more gospels than the four that we have in our Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
DDM [01:09] I don’t know about you, Elizabeth. I mean, growing up, were you aware that there were other gospels out there?
MET [01:14] I didn’t know that until, so I don’t know if you knew this, I minored in theology in college, and I didn’t know that until I started taking like history of church stuff in college. And I was like, wait, this is not, this does not compute for me.
DDM [01:28] There we go. Yeah. There was no, when I was studying theology, there was no mention of any other gospels like the gospel of Peter or the gospel of Thomas or the gospel of Mary Magdalene. In fact, there are so many other gospels, but they were simply never spoken of, let alone studied. And to be fair, many of these have been more recent archaeological finds and therefore there isn’t as much translation and scholarship work that’s been done on these. But when I say that, there’s still kind of many of them in this last century. And they were around when I studied theology and yet no mention was made of them.
DDM [02:09] These Gospels I find are fascinating because they are written at a time when there were many different voices and understandings of who Jesus was and is. And we forget that Christian thought has not always been as decided and systematized as it is today. And so in that early period of early Christianity, these gospels show us the many and the varied ways in which the life of Jesus was seen, understood, and recorded. But also it’s important because we have the voice of this solitary woman emerging, Mary Magdalene. She’s the lone female voice amongst all the voices of men.
DDM [02:56] And so for this reason alone, her understanding and the lens that she brings to the life of Jesus is so important. In fact, archaeologists have discovered multiple fragments of her gospel, which at a time when papyrus was so expensive and the skill of reading and writing not so common, these multiple recopied manuscripts tell us the very high regard this gospel held in the early Christian communities. And so we can tell that this gospel was loved, it was valued, and it was being respected and read by the earliest church. That’s interesting.
MET [03:35] That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about it that way.
DDM [03:35] Yeah, it is.
MET [03:37] Yeah, I like that.
DDM [03:37] However, scholars who’ve made this area of scholarship their speciality, They document how the authority of Mary Magdalene, who was the first, we’re told, to begin to baptize Christian converts, her voice in early Christian texts becomes slowly reduced over time as Peter takes up authority. And in fact, there’s evidence that certain texts were actually rewritten and the role of Mary Magdalene was deliberately written out. In particular Mary Magdalene’s early status as an apostle is written out which later on goes to have serious implications for the ordination and the position of women in the church. For example in the Acts of Philip Mary Magdalene is shown as exercising apostolic leadership in the earlier Greek text that we have, and then her character is directly and completely replaced by Peter in the later Coptic rewriting of that same gospel.
DDM [04:43] Isn’t that incredible?
MET [04:44] What? A man got credit for a woman’s work? Oh my gosh, that never happens.
DDM [04:51] There we go, there we go. And other researchers documented so many examples where Mary Magdalene was completely edited out by scribes when they were copying some of the earlier editions. So today in the Christian church, we have four gospels written by men with no mention of any others, let alone the one written by a woman. We have some churches not allowing any female leadership and authority based on a, you can’t see this, but I’m doing fake quote unquote biblical perspective that is
DDM [05:23] not actually engaging with historical fact. And we have this view that Christianity is one thing, one perspective, when in fact there are multiple ways of understanding and seeing the life of Christ.
MET [05:37] OK, so I am going to just piggyback right off of you.
DDM [05:41] All right.
MET [05:41] But of course, I’m also going to talk about something completely different. But I think this is going to be great because we’re just going to weave some themes right in and out of each other. Nice, nice. I
DDM [05:51] Nice, nice, I like that.
MET [05:53] There is this concept in certain branches of communication or even other fields that I want to talk about. It’s called public memory. And it is a lot like what it sounds, right? It is what we as the public remember. And on the one hand, it is what we remember about the public. And on the other hand, it is what we as a group remember about each other. The reason I bring this up is because public memory is actually pretty applicable to the life of the faith. But let me give you a secular example to help you make sense of this.
MET [06:34] In America, sometimes you hear people talk about the good old days. On an individual level, the good old days tend to be just whenever you were young and more carefree. Some people say their high school and college days often, although I don’t trust anybody who says their best days were in high school. If you peaked at 17, then I have nothing in common with you. But as a nation, we have this weird hang up about things when things were good. And for a lot of people, that is the glorious black and white times of the 1950s and 60s.
MET [07:10] I mean, the Trump campaign literally sailed in on a slogan of, “Make America great again.” And that is 100% a throwback to the 50s when things were, quote, unquote, I’m doing the thing now, right? Yes. Quote, unquote, simpler. And maybe the 80s when Reagan was in charge and Republicans had the nation well under their thumb. But the whole point is that there was some time in the past when things were better. It is really important to believe that things were better in the past, because if you believe that things were better in the past, then when somebody promises they can make it that way again, there is hope.
MET [07:53] We need to believe things were better once so we can believe they can be better again. And I have to add, this is premised on the notion that things are really terrible now, and sometimes that’s as much a rhetorical construction as anything else. But for many people, especially older people, the 50s and 60s were our best years. We have to address that for just a minute. These were the days of segregation. It was legal to beat your wife. Women couldn’t own businesses, get loans, or have credit cards. They were completely dependent on their husbands. If a woman got pregnant out of wedlock, she basically had no choices.
MET [08:36] She was sent away. There were unions, but they really only helped white men. Children were basically property, and masculinity was basically a matter of providing a check being as distant as possible, right? Things were messed up. And do not let anybody fool you into thinking this was a time of elevated morals or ethics. We have such a ridiculous idea of what the 50s and 60s were like. The 50s and 60s were a time of sexual and recreational awakening in the U.S. People my grandparents’ age love to moon over a time when people were more moral, and that meant uptight or reserved, but that is 100% a fabrication.
MET [09:25] The 50s and 60s brought us birth control, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and the explosion of marijuana and LSD. Now, to be honest, these last two have been around for a while. They just went more mainstream in the early years of the Cold War. But the 50s and 60s were a time of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yes, those were the good old days. And people like to think that this was an era of Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed, but Jane Mansfield was out there doing her best to seduce all the men. If the 50s and 60s were the good old days, then the good old days were a very sexy time.
MET [10:07] But we don’t remember it that way. That’s what public memory is. We remember these years as a wholesome time. Nuclear family, picket fences, Kids were safe. But none of that is true. These were alcohol-saturated, drug-infused, sexually-charged, violent years.
DDM [10:30] So interesting, hey?
MET [10:31] But I mean, like, I say that, and you’re like, oh, that’s obviously true.
DDM [10:34] Yeah.
MET [10:35] Like, we don’t remember it that way. Yeah, no, but you wouldn’t know it for how people say it. But as soon as I say that, you’re like, oh, yeah, that is true. I know that to be true. Now, put that in the context of the Cold War. It’s honestly a miracle our parents and grandparents turned out as well as they did. And we know they did not turn out well. Some of their coping mechanisms are just the complete denial of the environment in which they grew up. Public memory gives us something to agree on. These were the good times.
MET [11:05] It gives us something to look forward to again, even if that never existed. And the reason I think this is an interesting concept to bring up in terms of Mary Magdalene is because we have very specific memories of Mary Magdalene and many of the women in the Bible. We remember Mary Magdalene as a sex worker, and we hardly remember most of the other women at all. Most people don’t know there are women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Do you know how important a statement that is? And one of the women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy is a prostitute.
DDM [11:45] I know. I know. People have no idea of how the genealogy of Jesus is revolutionary.
MET [11:50] Yes. We choose not to remember these things.
DDM [11:53] Or even see them. Or even see them.
MET [11:55] Yes.
DDM [11:55] Because when we read, we just gloss over it. It’s like it doesn’t compute.
MET [11:59] As a culture, we remember that David slew Goliath, but not that Jael slew Sisera. The thing is, our memories have been guided. They have been shepherded. These examples that I’m using are not haphazard. One of the things I tell my students is that if somebody doesn’t want you to know something, it is absolutely incumbent upon you to ask why. These examples of how we remember things are examples par excellence of that. We remember our history, be it religious or historical, in certain ways. Some things are highlighted and some things are left out. Our memories are not full and complete.
MET [12:38] They are curated. They are a narrative. So the question is, who benefits from you remembering things this way?
DDM [12:47] That’s a good question.
MET [12:48] There are certain people who gain a lot from you thinking that a time when very few people had any kind of equal voting or financial rights were the best times we ever had. Just as there are people who benefit from you thinking that Jesus’s most personal confidant was a sex worker, that Jesus had allowed to be in his presence as a sign of his mercy, and women’s only roles in the Bible were wives, consorts, and handmaidens. Somebody benefits from you thinking that.
DDM [13:19] Absolutely. And in fact, as you say, those public memories are in fact more often than not, absolutely not true. Mary Magdalene was not a sex worker, a prostitute. In fact, if you look at it, there is no biblical evidence or historical evidence for this lie at all. But it’s interesting that when a woman is powerful or has authority, the quickest way to disparage a woman is to give her a sordid past, even if it is nothing but lies. And so Mary Magdalene, of all the women in the gospel, is given the sex life that is nothing but the overactive imagination of clerical men.
DDM [13:59] And as her authority is written out of history, this fake sexual life is written in. I mean, it’s really shocking if you think about it. And yes, biblical understanding has, of course, been completely curated, guided by clerical powerful men. So the irony is that many of these texts came from the stories of men and women, people oppressed by a Roman Empire. These stories in much of biblical theology emerges from grassroots people under oppression in times of suffering. and yet our understanding of them and interpretation of them has pulled them out of that grassroots context of oppression and actually made or co-opted them as a tool of the empire for holding on to power and choosing who is excluded and who is included.
DDM [14:50] And again, once again, this is kind of the central thesis when we look at our episode on Christian nationalism. So how Christianity has survived this brutal assault on its core being is nothing short, I think, of a miracle. And as a priest, I am always so moved and grateful for the real experience of ordinary people of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the core of the gospel, of how God continues to work in ordinary people’s lives. But it is often despite the shocking misuse of scripture and the power games of some of our church leaders and nowadays, politicians.
MET [15:28] Yeah, 100%. OK, I want to tell you about somebody completely different that comes up in my classes a lot. But I think you’re going to find this really interesting. And I think we can make some connections here. My students really get into conversations about this person. So I hope that energy carries over. I am going to tell you about a woman named Aspasia. Of course we can’t know anything about a woman without understanding her in relationship to men. Please understand I say that ironically. I don’t really believe that. But I will give you a little bit of context.
MET [16:15] Very little is known about Aspasia’s life for certain, but what we do know is that she is or was one of the most important women in ancient Greece. Interestingly enough, she is most often portrayed as either a madam or a teacher And often both.
DDM [16:39] When you say a madam, you mean? A high courtesan kind of thing.
MET [16:45] Yes, a woman who is in charge of other prostitutes.
DDM [16:49] Ah, okay.
MET [16:50] All right.
DDM [16:50] Thank you.
MET [16:53] Yes, not just a prostitute, but a woman who runs the bordello, I guess. The establishment, yeah. Aspasia is often cast as Pericles’ courtesan. And I’m not going to go into like, oh, Pericles was leader. I’m not going to give you the Greek history. But this is significant because Pericles was supposedly one of the greatest speakers of his day. And Aspasia was his teacher. So the clincher of all this is that supposedly Pericles was only that good because of Aspasia’s tutelage. Aspasia is also, by some people’s estimation, Socrates’ teacher.
DDM [17:41] Oh, that’s fascinating.
MET [17:42] Yeah. To the point that some scholars and historians think she was the one who taught Socrates the Socratic method. And if you aren’t familiar with what that means, it has been the gold standard in teaching, wisdom searching, and knowledge exploration for a few thousand years. So let me put a few things together for you. Aspasia is noted as being the greatest or at least one of the greatest rhetoric teachers of her time. And you know, it’s ancient Greece, so that’s a pretty big deal. But she is also maligned in poetry and drama as being a sex worker.
MET [18:19] So she is associated with something that brings her into proximity to power in a few ways. She is near powerful men. We know she is working with people like Pericles and Socrates. And she is persuasive to these men. So here’s where things get a little dicey. The question is, was Aspasia a prostitute or a madam? Or was she just really good at being persuasive? Was she just a powerful woman, so people associated her with sex? And that’s a double-barrelled question, too.
DDM [18:55] So interesting.
MET [18:57] Right. Did they associate her with sex because she was persuasive, and there is a seductive element to that? Or is there an attempt to diminish her in the public eye because people were afraid of a woman with that much influence? And then there is just the issue of Aspasia’s renown. Lots of people know who Socrates was, right? He shows up in pop culture all the time. Occasionally, in very witty movies or plays, you’ll get a reference to Pericles’ oration. But you never hear about Aspasia. She has been written out of history. But by all accounts, she is incredibly important.
MET [19:38] She showed up in plays and writings from major thinkers of the day, but she is almost completely absent from cultural memory now. And the reason I bring her up now is because I see some commonality between her story and the story we are telling about Mary Magdalene and many of the stories of women in the Bible. These are smart, powerful, influential women, women who made a difference in the world around them. But the stories about them were reduced to sex. So we remember them as just that, sexual objects, wives, prostitutes, courtesans, whatever. And in some ways, this works in the opposite direction, too.
MET [20:19] When we put women on a pedestal for their virginity, we’re just doing the same thing, reducing them to sex or age. And if their value begins and ends with how they relate to men, then there is no value there. And these stories have guided our narratives since time immemorial, and really even our memories for all this time.
DDM [20:43] And you know, can I just interject with that last bit that you said? It’s interesting that to be a virgin in scripture was never about whether one had had sex or not. Did you know that? The word used for virgin in biblical languages simply meant either a young girl or a woman who was not under the authority of a man. So virginity was really about being a woman who was outside of patriarchal power. And I think if virginity is understood in this way, as it was for many in the religious life movement, when a woman is no longer just simply under her father or her husband, That gave women a space in society and the freedom to live together as women, to pursue music, education, writing, reading, scholarship, and often exercise a lot of power.
DDM [21:43] But of course, the church would continue to focus on a sexual understanding of virginity until today. We’ve largely lost this biblical understanding of the Hebraic words for virgin.
MET [21:57] That’s really interesting. Yeah. Wow. I was talking to our pastoral assistant the other day, and I was telling him that in the last year or two, I have realized just how much of an agenda there was in the religious narrative I was brought up with. I do not know much about the women in the Bible. They were just not part of the scripture I learned about. And you know from past episodes how obsessive I was about scripture. But I never heard about Deborah. I wasn’t taught that Esther did anything other than really say hi to her husband.
DDM [22:38] And Mary was just the mother of Jesus, right?
MET [22:41] Yeah. I hear a lot about Eve, but only that she was the worst. All the women mentioned in the New Testament as disciples and leaders in the new church, no idea who they were. the women of the Bible were specifically left out of my faith, and that’s not accidental. I was raised in a denomination that has, in its official set of doctrines, that women have to submit to men. Specifically, wives have to submit to their husbands. Women shouldn’t speak in church. So these stories of women who made a difference powerful and influential women who bucked the system, they didn’t have a place in my faith.
MET [23:32] And so I didn’t really start to learn about them, honestly, until pretty recently. And what I need you to understand, you must understand, is that this is on purpose. There are people who do and have for generations benefit from me and you, not knowing that the Bible acknowledges the abilities, strength, and faith of women. And it is very hard to get out from underneath that shadow.
DDM [24:07] Absolutely, absolutely. And that is why I think it is so important for us as communities to study the writings of, say, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, to read Scripture for ourselves and learn about these incredible, strong, faithful, powerful women. For those of us who teach, to actually teach them from the pulpit, because it’s all there. But we almost have to rediscover it, to dig, to find it, and to find spaces that teach and celebrate the power of woman. I really think, Liz, one day we should do an episode on Mary, the mother of God.
MET [24:47] So I want to leave you with a few closing thoughts and questions. When you think of Mary Magdalene, do you think of a sexualized person? Why? Who told you that? Why do you think you learned that? What other women do you think have been shunted aside in history as just a sexual figure because they were powerful, persuasive, influential, or wise? If you can’t answer that question, do you think it is because there aren’t any or because that is an intentional gap in your education? And who benefits from the answers to any of these questions? Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof.
MET [25:31] Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM [25:58] Music by Audionautix.com
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