The Common Good
May-June 1997

Magdalene in Her Own Voice

by Lorna Diggle | May-June 1997

I WAS DISMAYED to learn that in serious studies of Mary
Magdalene written in the ’90s the gospel according to
Mary would have to be "fictionalized"
...

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I WAS DISMAYED to learn that in serious studies of Mary Magdalene written in the ’90s the gospel according to Mary would have to be "fictionalized" ("Revisioning Mary Magdalene," by Kimberly Burge, March-April 1997).

According to Riane Eisler in The Chalice and The Blade, among 52 Gnostic gospels discovered in Egypt in 1945 is one called The Gospel of Mary. Elaine Pagels, a religious studies professor at Princeton, has studied these gospels and publicized their existence in a book called The Gnostic Gospels, which contains some quotes from Mary’s gospels and others.

Fifty years after their discovery, why have full translations for these gospels not been made available to the general public? Power somewhere must feel threatened. I’m sure that Kimberly Burge would like to read an unedited, accurate translation of this ancient, close-to-the-source version of Mary’s gospel, and so would I. Does anybody who might read this know if such translations exist and where we could get them? After all, this is supposed to be a continent where religious freedom is respected. We are not mushrooms that have to be kept in the dark and fed.

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