In the latest edition of the Skeptical Inquirer journalist Massimo Polidoro explores some of the fringe speculation about Mary Magdalene that grew up in the wake the Da Vinci Code hysteria of the early 2000s, mostly by asking whether a Templar church painting of the Madonna’s soul rising to the heaven in the form of a baby is really Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ child (it’s not). In so doing, Polidoro interviews Mario Arturo Iannaccone, an Italian historian who wrote a book a decade ago about Mary Magdalene called (in Italian) Mary Magdalene and the Shadow Goddess: The Sacred Feminine, the Spirituality of the Goddess, and the Contemporary Imagination. Iannaccone has some interesting things to say about Mary Magdalene, and his book reinforces much of what I and other who have looked at fringe claims about her have concluded. In his book, Iannaccone argues that the Mary Magdalene of fringe history—the hidden goddess, the wife of Christ, the Bloodline Mother, the vessel of the sacred feminine, the matriarchal queen, etc.—is entirely a modern invention. In reviewing literature about the Magdalene, he finds no trace of this modern Magdalene in any of the works written between the apocryphal Gospels and the Enlightenment. It is remarkable, he says, that if there were a conspiracy about a Bloodline and wife that it “has not affected the atheists or those highly critical of orthodox Christianity, like the humanist (Pietro) Pomponazzi, or the Swiss Anabaptists and the reformer (Lucillio) Vanini, who denied the divinity of Jesus, not to mention Giordano Bruno, who treats Jesus as a fraud but says nothing of the Magdalene.” In other words, the people we’d expect to have revealed or at least hinted at the conspiracy remain maddeningly silent where they should have been vocal. The conclusion Iannaccone draws is that the Magdalene as fringe historians know her is a product of the rise of feminism and freethought in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and especially twentieth centuries. In his book, he said that no atheist, anti-Catholic, or feminist considered the Magdalene to be the bride of Christ before 1970. We know this is wrong because our dear friend Louis Martin, the Freemason, wrote his Gospels without God in France in 1886 and in that book declared Mary Magdalene to be the wife of Christ and the mother of Jesus’ son, Maximin. (This Louis Martin shouldn’t be confused, as I apparently confused him, with Leon Aubry, who wrote anti-Masonic and anti-Semitic books under the name Louis Martin and got himself sued as a result.) In an interview with Polidoro, Iannaccone says that the bride of Christ myth emerged in nineteenth century France among freethinkers trying to get a rise out of the Church, which was then closely aligned with the French state. It’s an idea born in the Parisian ‘counterculture’ at the end of the nineteenth century, developed by artists that were protestors and often involved in the occult, who wanted to shake up the conventions. […] For example, in 1888, an opera titled The Lover of Christ was performed in Paris. It was written by Darzens and the lover was, obviously, Mary Magdalene. It seems Iannaccone hasn’t come across Louis Martin’s book, which is to my knowledge the oldest “wife of Christ” claim in existence. (The Cathars alleged her to be the concubine of an evil duplicate of Christ, but that wasn’t really the same thing.) It’s also odd that Iannaccone used word-for-word identical phrasing speaking with Polidoro as he did speaking with Diva e donna magazine in 2006, where he again cited Darzens as the source of the myth. The more I looked at what Polidoro described as a “personal interview,” the more I found that it was word-for-word identical to Italian-language interviews reprinted on Iannaccone’s own website. I have no idea how that occurred, but there would seem to be only two possibilities: Either the “personal interview” wasn’t with Polidori, or Iannaccone is extraordinarily consistent over a decade. Since Polidori’s account contains additional material not found in the newspaper interview from 2006, the latter must be the case… But to be word for word the same seven years apart! My word!
I guessed that “Darzens” refers to Rodolphe Darzens (1865-1938), the French poet, though he’d have been pretty young at the time. I had to look up the Anthologie des poètes français du XIXème siècle to discover that he is indeed the correct author. Published in Paris in late 1888, his one-act verse play L’Amante du Christ had been performed a few weeks earlier at the Théâtre Libre, on October 19. However, it was not, as Iannaccone implies, an explicit acknowledgement of the marriage of Christ, or even an opera. Instead, it was one of many pieces of its era that highlighted the erotic in the scene where the Magdalene washes Jesus’ feet. While there is the implication of love, there is neither marriage, nor sex, nor children described. In fact, the American reviewer for the New York Herald most enjoyed the fact that Jesus appeared as a blond, Aryan stud! “The play is one of the most daring pieces of realism ever put on the French stage. The Saviour appears in flesh and blood, with long flaxen locks flowing over his shoulders and white raiment.” But the love of Christ and the Magdalene was the main focus: “Christ and the Magdalene are represented as loving each other, in an ultra Parisian way and with all the realism which Zola, for instance, might throw into such a situation.” I have no idea if Darzens was aware of the Gospels without God controversy, though the timing would have been about right. All in all, I had really hoped that one of the world’s leading experts on Mary Magdalene in modern culture would have had more enlightening information. I guess it may well be the case that Martin’s Gospels without God is so obscure—only a few hundred copies were printed—that the modern version of the Magdalene-Jesus marriage myth arose independently. It feels to me like it shouldn’t be the case, and that some of the earlier Holy Bloodline speculators must have come across references to the Gospels without God controversy, if only in secondary sources (just like I did), but I have no way of proving it.
67 Comments
Time Machine
2/21/2016 09:54:23 am
>>>has not affected the atheists<<<
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 10:00:21 am
Iannacone's book "Maria Maddalena e la dea dell'ombra. Il sacro femminile, la spiritualità della dea e l'immaginario contemporaneo" was published in 2006. The information about Louis Martin was first published in one of Christian Doumergue's books, well after 2006.
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 10:12:23 am
Christian Doumergue also drew attention to the 1897 article by in the French magazine "L’Initiation" by Dr Fugairon, who claimed that the grave of Jesus was in the South of France.
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 10:16:29 am
Just seen this 2/21/2016 11:53:19 am
I had meant that if Iannaccone was looking in French sources from the 19th century about Mary Magdalene, he might have stumbled on Louis Martin's idea since it was talked about in a number of publications. He was looking in the right place and the right time period but seems to have missed it, as most people did until recently.
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 03:38:38 pm
Iannaccone, according to Polidoro's article has confused "The Risen" by D. H. Lawrence (correct title "The Risen Lord", a 1929 poem) with "The Escaped Cock" (a 1929 short story).
Ph
2/21/2016 11:00:14 am
I'm still find the connection between Jesus and Maria Magdalene interesting for the following (facts?)
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 11:40:35 am
The Gnostics accepted both males and females and the special role assigned to Mary Magdalene would have been for that reason, a role model to represent women within Gnosticism.
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Ph
2/21/2016 02:01:14 pm
I was not aware that Gnostics were already assigning special roles in the time that the Book of Mary was written.
Time Machine
2/21/2016 02:52:13 pm
I am sure Karen King said something similar.
Time Machine
2/21/2016 02:59:24 pm
Jane Schaberg, "The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament" (2004)
Ph
2/21/2016 04:57:46 pm
Thanks for that reference, i see now what you mean.
Time Machine
2/22/2016 08:47:14 am
>>>For me the mystery is still open, and my bias is towards a consort that did (some) wifely duties<<<
Ph
2/22/2016 11:30:09 am
"Alas, there is no historical evidence for the existence of either Jesus Christ or Mary Magdalene"
Time Machine
2/22/2016 01:54:35 pm
>>>biblical) proportions<<<
Time Machine
2/22/2016 02:00:00 pm
Doesn't refer to the washing of Solomon's feet, but it's the equivalent:
DaveR
2/22/2016 09:15:57 am
"...divinely inspired..."
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V
2/21/2016 11:47:49 am
>>But to be word for word the same seven years apart! My word!
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David Bradbury
2/21/2016 11:53:26 am
Louis Martin update: I'm hoping to get sight of a copy of "The Gospels Without God" in three weeks' time. Meanwhile, I've found that in the 1890s he was an anarchist and a member of two philosophical groups, the "Harmoniens" and the "Naturiens", living in the Montmartre area of Paris.
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 12:47:10 pm
Sure this wasn't Louis-Aimé Martin
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David Bradbury
2/21/2016 02:08:28 pm
Certainly not the Louis-Aimé Martin who died in 1847 !
anon
2/22/2016 07:00:03 pm
"the "Naturiens", living in the Montmartre area of Paris."
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David Bradbury
2/23/2016 03:23:49 am
Naturism in its original sense, of "back to nature", following the philosophy of Émile Gravelle; but yes, that did include nudism.
Juan
2/21/2016 11:57:40 am
"In fact, the American reviewer for the New York Herald most enjoyed the fact that Jesus appeared as a blond, Aryan stud! "
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Cesar
2/21/2016 03:03:09 pm
“It was one of many pieces of its era that highlighted the erotic in the scene where the Magdalene washes Jesus’ feet”.
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Time Machine
2/21/2016 03:23:20 pm
The initiated would know that the washing of Jesus' feet is the symbolical equivalent of the women going to Jesus' tomb with spices to anoint his' body.
Reply
2/21/2016 04:44:17 pm
At the time, the various women of the Gospels were conflated as part of the Catholic claim that the Magdalene was a prostitute and sinner. Darzens and his audience would have thought of the sinful woman as the Magdalene even though she is not so named.
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Juan
2/22/2016 11:52:13 am
Let's not forget that, as Bart Ehrman has shown, the "woman taken in adultery" was a later scribal addition, not found in earliest mss.
Time Machine
2/22/2016 01:49:50 pm
The earliest mss are not that ancient
David Bradbury
2/22/2016 02:50:52 pm
As a percentage of the time between the prefecture of Pontius Pilate and the present day, the earliest MSs of John which ought to contain that passage but don't, are around 83% ancient. Could be a lot worse!
Time Machine
2/22/2016 08:13:43 pm
But the mss do not date from the first century, the all-important time period when surviving witnesses would have still been alive, assuming the Gospels are works of historical fact, and they could be works of literalised myth. The original stories may have been actual myths that were later transformed into historical fact by later generations. And this belief kick-started the popularity of Christianity.
David Bradbury
2/23/2016 03:31:51 am
Clearly there is a good deal of mythology in the stories of Jesus Christ, but that does not rule him out as being the particular Christ whose followers were becoming troublesome to Roman officials in the later part of the 1st century.
Only Me
2/23/2016 05:06:00 am
>>>But the mss do not date from the first century<<<
Time Machine
2/23/2016 06:35:06 am
>>>does not rule him out as being the particular Christ whose followers<<<
Time Machine
2/23/2016 06:45:34 am
>>> The autographs are believed to have long disappeared<<<
David Bradbury
2/23/2016 02:15:27 pm
"There was no incorporeal Napoleon Bonaparte or incorporeal Winston Churchill."
Only Me
2/23/2016 06:39:17 pm
>>> The Gospels of the New Testament would have been automatically mentioned during the first century had they existed during that period of time.<<<
Time Machine
2/23/2016 11:12:57 pm
1 Clement did not mention the existence of Gospels.
Time Machine
2/23/2016 11:27:27 pm
>>>, it's difficult to imagine Ignatius could reference six Pauline epistles in 110CE if they were all written in the second century.<<<
Only Me
2/24/2016 03:08:26 am
Clement doesn't explicitly refer to his NT sources as "Scripture"; he saves that distinction for the OT. Still, he's mentioning or alluding to NT material at around 96CE.
Time Machine
2/24/2016 09:00:52 am
1. If the letters of Paul were tampered with by later Christians then they would have made sure that the earlier versions would have all been destroyed, wouldn't they...
Only Me
2/24/2016 07:29:38 pm
1. Assumption.
Time Machine
2/24/2016 08:38:21 pm
>>>He wouldn't need to repeat Jesus' history if the canonical Gospels were written for that purpose<<<
Only Me
2/24/2016 10:16:00 pm
I understand.
Only Me
2/24/2016 11:09:02 pm
I just realized my last comment contradicts the statement you were addressing. I was thinking Paul had died at a later date when I made that statement. My mistake.
Time Machine
2/25/2016 05:30:49 am
Those estimates are without any basis.
Ph
2/21/2016 06:25:12 pm
Worldcat lists 'Essai sur la vie de Jésus' with a cover title of 'Les Évangiles sans Dieu.'
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Time Machine
2/22/2016 10:26:07 am
Gerald Sinclair has been thrown out of a Sinclair discussion list by Rory Sinclair for using the term Jewish Piano (cash register).
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Time Machine
2/22/2016 10:28:23 am
Correction, Gerald Sinclair was thrown out the discussion list by Gary M. Sinclair, not Rory Sinclair
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Kal
2/22/2016 05:38:26 pm
One of the posters is partly correct. The adulterous woman story was added later and is not mentioned by name.
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Kal
2/22/2016 05:42:13 pm
It seems someone (the author of the story that JC mentions) recently has seen 'The Last Temptation of Christ' one too many times, and possibly 'The Da Vinci Code'.
Reply
2/22/2016 05:52:30 pm
Oh, please: Every group has its imagined ties to greatness. The British Israelists declared the Anglo-Saxons God's Chosen People, and some American Evangelical Christians argue that America is God's Chosen Land. Humility isn't in the vocabulary of pretenders to glory.
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anon
2/22/2016 06:42:37 pm
"It’s an idea born in the Parisian ‘counterculture’ at the end of the nineteenth century, developed by artists that were protestors and often involved in the occult, who wanted to shake up the conventions. "
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Time Machine
2/23/2016 06:33:27 am
>>>does not rule him out as being the particular Christ whose followers<<<
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David Bradbury
2/23/2016 02:19:03 pm
See my cheeky response to the other version of this message, upthread. You're creating a straw man.
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Time Machine
2/23/2016 11:15:35 pm
There was no such thing as one version of Christianity during the first three centuries. You are overlooking this and imagining that Christianity was only that as given in the Gospel accounts.
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David Bradbury
2/24/2016 03:39:47 am
No- your second sentence creates another straw man. My original point was that you were claiming my "particular Christ whose followers ..." was "the corporeal Christ" [definite article] as opposed to "an incorporeal Christ". In reality, given that the term "Christ" is a pre-Christian title rather than a name, there is no justification for such a definitive split. Any sect which made use of either the apparent biography or the collected sayings which are now found in one or more of the canonical Gospels was, in effect, based on the Christ of the Gospels- even if different sects might have regarded each others' use of the common material as heretical. Per my original point, some sects calling themselves followers of Christ might have had no connection with the Christ of the Gospels at all (but realistically, sects which had spread to distant parts of the Roman Empire by the early 2nd century probably did).
Time Machine
2/24/2016 08:53:57 am
You seem to indicate that the gospels existed during the first century. No evidence for that.
Time Machine
2/24/2016 09:10:25 am
We know that Christianity existed before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD because of the letters of Paul. And what a big difference in Christianity between the letters of Paul and what is claimed in the Acts of the Apostles.
David Bradbury
2/25/2016 03:37:41 am
"We know that Christianity existed before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD because of the letters of Paul. "
Time Machine
2/25/2016 05:27:22 am
The point is that Paul never mentioned the gospels, as neither did Peter, Jude and James. Echoes begin to appear within I Clement, Ignatius, Barabbas and Papias, but these references are not identical to gospel material and resemble trial spins about the life of the historical Jesus that never found their way into the gospels. These references are the strongest evidence that the gospels did not exist before they were first mentioned by Justin Martyr.
David Bradbury
2/25/2016 09:02:23 am
But if Paul/Saul really did write the epistles of Paul, and nobody these days seriously claims that any of the Gospels as we now know them existed during his lifetime, why would anybody seriously expect him to refer to them?
Time Machine
2/25/2016 09:44:23 am
That's it. The earliest references to the "life" of Jesus began to appear towards the end of the first century, none of which tallied with the accounts in the gospels. And these references to the "life" of Jesus appeared within the context of squabbles within Christianity over the incorporeal and corporeal Christ.
David Bradbury
2/25/2016 02:57:52 pm
I think you may have an over-rigid definition of "tallied". What is notable about early non-Gospel references to Jesus/Christ is more what they omit than what they include which contradicts the Gospel accounts.
Time Machine
2/25/2016 03:13:58 pm
Accounts that waged war against the incorporeal Jesus. 2/23/2016 02:36:33 pm
You seem to have overlooked the Mormon claim of Jesus having 3 wives and children form whom came the ancestor of Joseph Smith.
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Time Machine
2/23/2016 11:18:16 pm
This was discussed weeks ago. The Mormons would have claimed Jesus was married with several wives because Mormons practiced polygamy.
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