The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
by Jean-Yves Leloup
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Book Reviews of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
Book Review: The Truth Within
Summary: 5 Stars
The Gospel of Mary MagdaleneI think this book reveals the true teaching of Jesus that being we find God within and that sin is created through our own corrupt activities.
The book also demonstrates how the male perspective of religion absolutely rules and it time for all women to gather around Mary Magdalene and what she heard and what she believed. She provides a Spiritual Doctrine and not a Religious Doctrine.
In my mind I ask the question, why is God defined as He. Men are not as powerful as women, we take in their seed and through our bodies we bring forth life, we nuture life, it is through our bodies that the future is created. With all that why is He not She given all the reverence and worship. This book reveals the power of Mary which is the power of all women and at the very least the reverance and worship needs to be shared.
It makes perfect sense to me that Jesus, a man was more able to open his heart and share his ideas with Mary, a woman in a deeper way then he could with the men traveling and working with him.
The book also demonstrates how the male perspective of religion absolutely rules and it time for all women to gather around Mary Magdalene and what she heard and what she believed. Another thing I thought was interesting in reading this was the sense of competition among the men travelling with Jesus. Again it makes more sense that he would be more intimate with a woman.
More wars have been created in the name of the Male God. I wonder how that would change if we took the Book of Mary into our hearts and truly studied what she was saying and begin to see that God if found by looking within and not outside of oursevles through priests, bibles etc.
This book is worth reading for those of us who are seeking not only the truth but how to live that truth.
Book Review: Truth Revealed
Summary: 5 Stars
As a previous reviewer stated better than I can, many questions about the source of the King James' bible remain unanswered. Why were many books discarded in the formation of the Gospel, leaving us with the four we are familiar with? As a curious Christian I cannot but wonder abut the messages concerning my faith that certain church bodies and governing powers have tried to exclude from my scrutiny. After finding the Book of Thomas on the Internet and learning that I could approach God directly, without having to go through the Pope, my interest in these controversial "lost" Gospels was piqued. Later my wife introduced me to the theory of the Priori Scion, that I believe Brown also discusses in his "Da Vinci Code" which basically states members of the Priori Scion are keepers of the blood of Christ-that is, descendants of Christ. If this is the case, who bore a child from Christ? The Gospel of Mary Magdalene sheds light on this question.
Another similar concept concerns the Holy Grail, which most of us believe refers to a cup that held the wine used in The Last Supper. While visiting the original painting of the Last Supper, I noticed the grail is not depicted in Da Vinci's famous painting, however a V, which refers to a female, is depicted in the painting, and suggests Mary Magdalene is the cup (meaning holder) of the blood of Christ. Also, Mary's uterus is referred to as the "cup."
This book reveals a side of Christ from Mary Magdalen's perspective, free of papal revisionism. I highly recommend this book for any scholar or casual inquirer of the truth. In my opinion, the information in this book strengthened my faith, rather than threatened it.
Book Review: A Different Gospel Is Not the Gospel
Summary: 1 Stars
If these weren't spiritual matters it would blow me away that the authors of these Mary Magdalene books can so easily create doctrines and write off the Gospel of the New Testament based on obscure and questionable documents that only recently "surfaced." While writing off the faith of the historical and majority of Christiandom which is based on the Bible, they set forth a gospel of their own, decrying Biblical Christianity as ignorance while projecting their own views as "educated" and "scholarly". Their Gospel is definately different than that declared by Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and other in the New Testament. The Gospel of the New Testament has the power to save. Jesus came to earth to die in the place sinful humanity so that whoever would put his only hope of being made right before God (justification) can have eternal life through Christ taking our punishment on himself. Paul has something to say about this sort of thing in his letter to the Galatians: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (Galatians 1:6-9)"Book Review: Gnostic Gospels -- the very opposite of "feminist"!
Summary: 2 Stars
It's bizarre that so many people claim the Gnostic texts are "feminist" when they say such awful things about women.
The Gospel of Mary (5:1-7 = 9:5-20) and the Gospel of Thomas (114) both say that women must "become male" to be truly alive.
Redegg, in a review below, claims this is a mistranslation of the Greek word "anthropos." But the Greek versions of Gospel of Mary are very fragmentary; the only complete copy is in Coptic. Same with the Gospel of Thomas. And the the Coptic versions of _both_ these documents use a word which means "male", not "human". If this saying just means that Mary has to become "fully human", then why are the male disciples in Gnostic texts never required to become "fully human"? When Leloup translates this as "human" I think it's his biases creeping in -- he wants to believe this is a feminist text.
Sophia of Jesus Christ (118:3-15) says that women must become part of "the masculine multitude."
Dialogue of the Savior (37-39 = 144:11-146:7) has Jesus tell his disciples to "pray in the place where there is no woman" and to destroy the works of womanhood.
The canonical Gospels record that Jesus reached out to women even when it was countercultural. But humans are sinners, so many Christians since then have treated women badly. Just think how much worse it would have been if the Christian canon had included these Gnostic Gospels, and misogynists were given "proof" that Jesus was on their side!
Book Review: Lots of Philosophy/Little History
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a very interesting book. It differs from similar books in this area (e.g., Meyers, Pagels) in that it is high on philosophy, weak on history, and includes line by line copies of the coptic text along with English translations along with commentary. As such it goes beyond Pagels and Meyers as a useful resource for people interested in primary sources, but it may not be as helpful to people looking for historical commentary.
One of the problems with the commentary is that given Leloup's penchant for philosophy over history, the commentary is highly skewed. I suspect that some people will find it very insightful and others will consider it pure nonsense. Generally speaking my own preferences lean toward the historical, and that's especially true when the philosophy has European overtones.
Another problem with this book is that there is very little discussion of what the Gospel of Mary tells us about Mary. Rather the focus is on what the Gospel tells us about Jesus and his teaching. Fair enough, that's an important topic and it is covered thoroughly. But I think most readers are looking for more information about Mary per se, in addition to the broader issues.
If your interests lie in seeing how the gnostic Gospel of Mary adds to our knowledge of Jesus' teaching, then this is a good book for you. But if you are wondering what the Gospel of Mary tells us about the life of Mary, you should go looking elsewhere.