Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess

by Lynn Picknett (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $5.54

  Tradition and history have made of her the other Mary. Even in the New Testament Mary Magdalene stands among women second only to Mary the Mother, albeit she has been reduced by the biblical Gospels to little more than a fallen woman redeemed by Jesus. In the Gnostic Gospels, however, Magdalene figures almost as significantly as Christ, who names her the woman who knows all. The conflicting accounts of Mary Magdalene have sent best-selling author Lynn Picknett on a quest for the truth that has led her to the thirteenth-century cult of the Black Madonna, then back to Christianity's beginnings and earlier. Tracing Mary's name to Magdala in Egypt, Picknett learns that the term Magdal-eder means tower of the flock, or Good Shepherd, a title also given to Jesus Christ. Based on her explorations into new scholarship on recently discovered Gnostic texts, Picknett finds a vital partnership between Jesus and Mary that synthesized Eastern and Egyptian mysticism and that promulgated gender equality, anointing rites, and sexual rituals. In that relationship, she discovers an alliance that Christ's Apostles and, later, the Catholic Church strove ardently to suppress. Picknett's revelations rarely fail to provoke at least a reconsideration of long-accepted church doctrine.

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $15.28

  Are the roots of Christianity partly based on spin and propaganda? Acting as a historical detective, the author strips away the layers of deception and propaganda that surround the Christian story in a quest to find the real Mary Magdalene, asking these questions: was she a reformed prostitute who spent the rest of her life in penitence, as the Church has claimed? Was she merely one of the women who followed Jesus, at a respectful distance, and of no real account compared to the male disciples? Was she even a Jewish woman from the shore of lake Galilee? Using both scholastic and heretical sources - and a very heavy dose of common sense - the author discovers that virtually everything that the Church has ever led us to believe about Magdalene is not only wrong, but part of a deliberate conspiracy to cover up some uncomfortable facts. From the scriptures - both biblical and non-canonical, besides other historical traditions such as the secret inner circle of the Knights Templar - a very different Magdalene emerges: not only was she Jesus' sexual companion, but also the Apostle of the Apostles , and his true successor. And far from being Galilean, she was probably a black woman from Ethiopia, who bore Jesus' mixed race child. Yet the story does not stop there: was Jesus really a Son of God or even the epitome of goodness - or, as the evidence strongly suggests - did he have a dark side that proved fatal to John the Baptist?