Mary Magdalene ... The Gospel of the `Beloved Disciple' has been modified ... in order to turn the `Beloved Disciple' Mary into the male figure of John, who was more acceptable to misogynist Literalists.70
Taken in this context - however speculative - the following passage describing the biblical Last Supper after Jesus announces that one of his followers will betray him has a particular significance, if `Mary' is substituted for `the disciple whom Jesus loved':
One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, `Ask him which one he means.'
Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him: `Lord, who is it?''
It is interesting to note that Peter tacitly admits the status of the Beloved by asking him/her to ask Jesus for information - recall how Mary hogged the floor during the question-and-answer session reported in the Pistis Sophia, and how she and Jesus clearly enjoyed their mutual and no doubt intimate secrets. And in this version of the verses the Beloved is leaning familiarly against Christ at the dinner table. (However, if this really were the Magdalene, such a flaunting of her intimacy with Jesus would have flown totally in the face of what was considered decent behaviour in that time and place. Far from cuddling up to Jesus in front of all his male colleagues, even a legal wife would have kept her distance and modestly supervized the preparation of the meal in the kitchens.)
The originator of this intriguing hypothesis, Ramon K. Jusino, (largely based on the research of Raymond E. Brown,72 although the controversial conclusion is Jusino's own) argues that as `there was a concerted effort on the part of the male leadership of the early church to suppress the knowledge of any major contributions made by female disciples' . . . `much of Mary Magdalene's legacy fell victim to this suppression', ascribing the Fourth Gospel's alleged authorship to John the Evangelist to the crafty work of an early `redactor' (or editor) who basically wrote her out, changing the grammatical gender. He comments that `there is more evidence pointing to her authorship of the Fourth Gospel than there ever was pointing to authorship by John' .73
Jusino cites certain tantalizing structural inconsistences in St John's Gospel as evidence of reworking to an anti-Magdalene agenda. Arguably the most convincing example is the following passage, which has Mary and the anonymous male Beloved Disciple together at the foot of the cross: `Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said ...'
Suddenly there is the mysterious Beloved, although he is not listed with the Marys by the cross, implying that `he' is actually one of them. American biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown, while not agreeing with Jusino's radical conclusion, does admit that the mother of Jesus `was specifically mentioned in the tradition that came to the evangelist [John] ... but the reference to the Beloved Disciple . . . is a supplement to the tradition', adding that the `Beloved Disciple' appears strangely incongruous in this setting.'
Perhaps more excitingly, following Jusino's line of evidence, we can now compare certain passages in the Gospel of St John that depict a distinct sense of `one-upmanship' between Peter and Mary with those already discussed above from the Gnostic Gospels. As we have seen in the Gospel of Mary, Peter is jealous of Mary's vision of Jesus, claiming that she fabricated it;76 in the Gospel of Thomas he demands of Jesus `Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life';' and in the Gospel of Philip the close relationship between the Magdalene and Jesus is compared to his relationship with the other disciples - to their detriment.78 Jusino lists five episodes in St John's Gospel that match the Gnostic passages. As we have seen, `the Beloved Disciple leans against Jesus' chest while Peter has to petition the Disciple to ask Jesus a question for him';79 `the Beloved Disciple has access to the high priest's palace while Peter does not';'' `the Beloved Disciple immediately believes in the Resurrection while Peter and the rest of the disciples do not understand';S1 `the Beloved Disciple is the only one who recognizes the Risen Christ while he speaks from the shore to the disciples in their fishing boat',A2 and `Peter jealously asks Jesus about the fate of the Beloved Disciple'.83
However, while acknowledging that of course there was a conspiracy to marginalize the Magdalene on the part of the Gospel writers, even to the open-minded there must remain objections to Jusino's theory. As we have noted, if Mary were indeed the `Beloved' disciple who leant against Jesus at the Last Supper, her behaviour was extraordinarily provocative, even for an Egypttrained priestess of particularly assertive character! (And although she is present at Jesus' side in Leonardo's great work, she is actually leaning as far away from him as possible - although this may be simply a composition-driven necessity, to create the clue of the `M' shape.) Then again, even in the Gnostic texts, where one might expect the biblical censorship to have considerably less influence, there are references to `the youth whom Jesus loved' - Lazarus, Mary of Bethany/Mary Magdalene's brother - about whom the offending Mar Saba verses concerning some kind of sexual initia tion with Jesus appear to have been written. Clearly there was something about both siblings that the Gospel writers perceived as so distasteful that whenever they could they reduced them as much as possible to vague and dismissive phrases such as `a certain woman', `an unnamed sinner', `the youth whom Jesus loved'. But in Leonardo's painting it is John and Mary who are wrought as one, not Lazarus and the Magdalene, almost as if both were somehow equally Jesus' `other half' in The Last Supper.
The answer could be simply that, as far as Leonardo was concerned, this was literally so: the Magdalene and young Saint John both participated in secret sacred sex rites with Jesus, from which the other disciples were barred and perhaps of which they only had the faintest notion. One can imagine that they knew something sexual went on behind closed doors with the favoured two, and deep down, hated it, but their respect and love for the obviously charismatic guru meant they were willing to put up with it, if only on the surface. We know what the men - especially Peter - thought of the Magdalene, and in the Gospel of John he also extends that irritation or downright enmity to young John. Although once again Lazarus is not apparently in the frame, the situation begins to make more sense when it is realized that there is evidence that John and Lazarus were in fact one and the same ...
In fact, `Lazarus' is Greek for `Eliezer',84 a version of `Elijah' or `Elias', the Old Testament prophet strongly associated in Judaea of that time with John the Baptist - indeed, many ordinary people thought he was Elijah/Elias reincarnated. In this context, Lazarus is essentially called `John' twice over by the Gospel writers, although they are careful to obscure his real relationship to Jesus. `John' was often taken as a baptismal name to honour the Baptist, and usually denoted one of his disciples: one of the women who followed Jesus was Joanna, wife of Herod's steward, who was probably originally a `Johannite' - a devotee of John the Baptist: `Johannine' more usually being a follower of John the Evangelist.
Then there is the evidence of another Mar Saba verse, from the Secret Gospel of Mark that Clement referred to in his outraged letter about the wicked Carpocratians, a passage that apparently caused grave displeasure among the Church fathers because, for some reason, it excited enormous interest in that disgraceful cult. Yet superficially it seems totally innocuous, even pointless, although it does provide the missing link between two apparently unconnected but chronological passages in the canonical Gospel according to St Mark, which read: `Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus ... was sitting by the roadside begging ...'85 The passage seems utterly futile - Jesus goes to Jericho but then suddenly leaves: clearly something interesting must have happened in between, something that the heretical Carpocratians found especially intriguing. Yet the missing episode simply reads: `And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.' At first glance this passage may seem rather dull - hardly worth the build-up - but it contains implications of the most tantalizing sort. For it suggests by inference that Lazarus was Jesus' male `Beloved', and therefore that he was also John. Note, too, that here `Salome', like the Magdalene, is not defined by her relationship to a man, as wife, daughter or sister. Why? Is it because she was also too well known, or that her status was too impressive for the writer to need to explain her in any detail? We will return later to the vexed question of Salome.
But if Lazarus was the youth whom Jesus loved, and his sister Mary was the woman he loved, and they both lived at Bethany with their sister Martha, why was everything about that place hedged around with obfuscation and deceit by the New Testament writers? Was it the association of sex rites, which the other disciples must have been reluctant even to consider, either from a sense of offended morality or just a confused sense of jealousy at not being one of the lucky inner circle?
St Luke's version of the anointing stands out from the other three New Testament gospels for several compelling reasons. Unlike the accounts in Matthew, Mark and John's Gospels, his is set in Capernaum, not Bethany, and at the start, not the end, of Jesus' mission. The woman remains anonymous, unimportant. The incident seems to have been included only to emphasize Christ's power to forgive sinners, as in his defence of the anointress to the householder, Simon:
`Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my
