Beloved Disciple The Misunderstood Legacy of Mary Magdalene, the Woman Closest to Jesus

Here, Griffith-Jones (Master of the Temple Church, London; The Four Witnesses: The Rebel, the Rabbi, the Chronicler, and the Mystic) takes a trendy Da Vinci Code topic and provides the scriptural and historical background that gave writers like Dan Brown license to cast Mary Magadalene as Jesus's presumed wife. Following a Gospel survey paying special attention to John's treatment of Mary, Griffith-Jones turns his focus to Gnostic works of the second and third centuries, and herein lies the work's primary strength. Unlike Susan Haskin in the impressive cultural history Mary Magdalene: Truth and Myth, Griffith-Jones here situates Mary in the canonical Christian scripture and then demonstrates Gnosticism's imaginative use of Mary as a site of incarnational theology, sexual dimorphism, and Sophia/Wisdom in creation. In the last chapter, he considers her evolution in aesthetic and cultural terms, with illustrations charting her evolution from repentant prostitute into an eroticized sexual figure embodying physical intimacy with the risen Christ. In Mary, claims Griffith-Jones, we glimpse our fundamental striving to understand what it means to be an embodied human being. An accessible read whose greatest usefulness is its Gnostic analysis; recommended.--Sandra Collins, Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.