Aurelio Porfiri
Not long ago, I have received a very interesting book by Carocci, an Italian publisher. The book is called Una sposa per Gesù. Maria Maddalena fra antichità e postmoderno. Being part of the generation that was under the influence of the Da Vinci Code (already dismantled in all its accusations against Opus Dei, the Catholic Church, Jesus, Mary Magdalene herself, etc.) I wanted to look more carefully into the book that is indeed a scholarly research on Saint Mary Magdalene from many and interesting points of view (some more interesting than others, of course).
The editor of the book (soon available in English) is Dr Edmondo Lupieri, an Italian Early Christianity Scholar and Theology Professor at the Loyola University in Chicago. I looked up Professor Lupieri and had a very nice and cordial conversation with him in Skype, where we talked about our ideas on the current situation of the Catholic Church (we have dissimilar ideas about this) and then we discussed Mary Magdalene and I was fascinated by some of his perspectives on this topic. So, here it is the reason for my many questions to him about this.
You are an Italian, like me. What is the reason you are living in the US? Can you give us some background about yourself?
I had spent all of my academic career in Italy, as a historian in Early Christianity (with a background in Classics), in the Italian Public University System, but also three sabbatical years (and various shorter periods) in Princeton, NJ, at the Princeton Theological Seminary and at the Center for Theological Inquiry. I must say that it was there that I began to appreciate the theological implications (in a broad sense) of my research. Therefore, when Loyola University Chicago offered me an endowed chair in Theology with a professorship in New Testament and Early Christianity, exactly my field, that offer was simply irresistible. I must candidly confess, though, that the present socio-political situation in the US is not what I was expecting – but this is another story.
Why your fascination with Mary Magdalene?
Like all human figures mentioned in the Gospel narratives (or in the New Testament in general), Mary Magdalene is wrapped in many veils of mystery. Beginning with her name, which seems to refer to some village in Galilee where there was some “tower” (this is the meaning of the toponym migdal/migdol, but we are not sure anymore where it was), most about her is uncertain. Apparently, she followed Jesus from the beginning, as a female disciple, and she must have been relatively well off, if she was one of those women who financially supported Jesus and his group. Ancient writers almost never talk about women, if not for exceptional reasons, but we must think that a group of people like that of Jesus, his male disciples, the women (and children?), travelling around Palestine, must have needed money for survival. How many of them were there? Where did they sleep? When and where could they eat? Who would have hosted such a group of people, arriving in a new village? They needed money. Luke mentions the women who supported Jesus and his male disciples. Not only could these women use their resources, but did so because they had been healed by Jesus (it seems that Luke needs to justify the presence of women who were not all relatives or wives of Jesus or the male disciples). So, he says that “seven devils” had “come out” of her. This is not exactly a compliment. And why seven? Had they counted them, or seen them when they had “come out”?.
The mystery deepens …
So, Mary Magdalene is a former demoniac, who is rich enough to follow Jesus and support the early movement with her belongings. But she, like the other women in the group, is silent (that is, the evangelists do not tell us anything else about them) throughout the whole story and the travels through Galilee, Samaria, Judaea, Greek areas, until the end in Jerusalem.
How many times did Jesus and his group go to Jerusalem? Once, as told in the Synoptics, or many, as told in John? In the general incertitude of the last hours of Jesus, given the different stories narrated by the Evangelists, one thing seems quite probable: Jesus’ male disciples fled and he died alone on that cross [sic]. Only women were looking from some distance. Among them, Mary Magdalene. And she, the former demoniac, apparently with other women, on the day after Sabbath, which is for us now Easter Sunday, went to the sepulcher, with her ointments and the idea of anointing the tortured body of their executed leader, to discover an empty tomb. And in doing so, she became a key witness, almost the first originator of something that slowly became what we now call “Christianity.”
Can you tell us something more about what appear in the Gospels about these events?
The details in the canonical narratives are different. According to Mark, the women see a young man in the empty tomb, but do not do what he tells them to do (to tell the male disciples); they run away, instead, and don’t tell anything to anyone, because they were too afraid. How on earth did Mark know, then, if they did not tell anything? According to Luke, they saw two men in brilliant garments (later explained as angels), and they do tell the other disciples, but are not believed. According to Matthew, they first see an angel, and then they meet the resurrected Lord – and apparently do what they are told to do, and are believed, given the rest of the narrative. In John, Mary is alone, she discovers the empty tomb, she tells Peter and the beloved Disciple that the tomb is empty, and finally she, alone, meets with the resurrected Lord, whom she first mistakes for a gardener. The scene of the Noli me tangere, with all its mystery, is famous.
So, who was Mary Magdalene?
Ancient narratives are like films projected on a screen: the screen allows us to see, but is also an obstacle to the real event. If we rip the screen, though, what do we find? Can we reach to the events? Can we reasonably try to go back two millennia in order to reach people and events, to get an idea of what did happen? This is why I am fascinated with Mary Magdalene and with the whole story surrounding the origins of Christianity.
How did the project of your book start?
It started with a series of university courses on Mary Magdalene, first in Italy, at Udine, and then in the US, at Loyola Chicago. I was very unhappy with the many (too many?) books on her, especially the popular ones, where history and stories are fused and confused without distinction. I grew up academically working with the historical-critical methodology for the study of the New Testament, which has been not only fully accepted by the Catholic Church, but it is actually “requested” (see The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, presented on March 18, 1994, at point I A), and therefore I was very skeptical and perplexed with the results I read in various publications.
As a first step, back in 2011 I published a long article in Italian, where I analyze the formation and the transformations of the figure of Mary Magdalene, from the New Testament to New Age, with particular attention to ancient Gnostic traditions and their heritage today. This is for me some sort of a backbone for the whole project. This has since grown and developed, bringing together twenty scholars, from different venues in Italy and the US, but most of them young enthusiastic American students of mine. The book we are talking about here is the first of three. For the Italian market we reorganized the collected material to get two tomes, the first of which is out and the second should be published before the end of the year, while for the Anglo-American market we kept all twenty contributions together, for a larger book, which will also hopefully be out before the end of 2018.
According to a certain tradition (quite popular in medieval times), she was a prostitute before converting. But recent studies have said that this is not true. Why?
Very little can be said with certainty about the historical figure of Mary Magdalene, the real-life woman from first century Galilee. Her figure, though, soon became the object of discussions, both among early Christian scholars, and their opponents. Greek philosophers, indeed, objected to the Christian faithful: How can you, Christians, found your beliefs on the words of some hallucinating hysterical women, whom even you think were possessed?.
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