Finding Jesus by David Gibson

Author:David Gibson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466877900
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

BACK TO THE GOSPELS … BACK TO THE FUTURE?

The Gospel of Mary was not part of the Nag Hammadi discoveries in 1945 but was instead excavated somewhere near the village of Akhmim, in Upper Egypt, a half century earlier. It first turns up in the official records when it was purchased in Cairo in 1896 by a German scholar, Carl Reinhardt, and then taken to Berlin. The Gospel of Mary was found together in a codex with two other important Gnostic papyri, the Apocryphon of John and the Sophia of Jesus Christ. They were probably copied and bound in the late fourth or early fifth century and are Coptic translations from Greek texts that scholars such as Karen King date to the second century. Together they are known as the Berlin Gnostic Codex.

While the Gospel of Mary was discovered decades before the Nag Hammadi finds, it wasn’t published until 1955, due to a series of misfortunes: A burst water pipe at a German publishing house in 1912 destroyed the entire edition as it was set to go to press. Then World War I erupted. Then the scholar trying to get out a definitive edition died in 1938, right on the eve of another global war that would devastate Europe and delay publication. Scholarly wheels grind slowly as well, and it wasn’t until 1955 that the Gospel of Mary was finally published. It took the renewed interest in Mary Magdalene and Christian feminism two decades later, and Elaine Pagels’s work on The Gnostic Gospels, to give this gospel the attention it deserves.

Yet for all its importance, the document has also suffered the vicissitudes of the centuries and contemporary antiquities wranglers. The text is missing pages 1 to 6 and pages 11 to 14, so we are left with chapters 4 and 5, and then chapters 8 and 9, where the gospel seems to end. It is a total of eight pages, about half the original.

Even with these gaps, the Gospel of Mary is one of the most important texts to emerge from the sands of Egypt, given the central role it gives to “Mary,” who is presumed by most experts to be Mary Magdalene (though some contend that this Mary could be Jesus’s mother). It is a thrilling document to see up close, with the clarity of the writing on the page. And it has such a provocative title: Mary Magdalene’s version of her relationship to the Savior.

The Gospel of Mary is simple to summarize: It picks up with a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, with the Savior delivering his wisdom about the fate of the material world and sin, and then exhorting them to “go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom,” and not to be legalistic about it. Then Jesus leaves. Yet the disciples are confused about what he has told them, and fearful that they will be persecuted. It is Mary Magdalene who bucks them up. “Do not weep and do not grieve nor be irresolute, for His grace will be entirely with you and will protect you.

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