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The Gospel of Mary has been promoted in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. This is a Gnostic
Gospel of the second century. A key point of Brown’s proposed theory is found in the Gospel of
Mary. This has to do with Jesus’ favoritism toward her. The text seems to reflect a conflict where
Peter was challenging the role of Mary as a recipient of a special revelation from Jesus. Mary
was distraught about Peter’s challenge. The implication here is that Jesus knew Mary well
enough to consider her worthy to be the recipient of special revelation.
The term "Gnostic" derives from "gnosis," which means "knowledge" in Greek. The Gnostics
believed that they were privy to a secret knowledge about the divine, hence the name. The
Gnostic gospels, then, concern themselves with the way to achieve divine knowledge, which is
through completely human means. The early church declared these writings uninspired, and thus,
did not canonize them into the Holy Bible. Because they were written so far after Jesus’ life, and
because they disagree with the accepted inspired Scriptures, these writings should not be
considered biblical.
The main passage that Brown uses as support actually comes from one of these Gnostic writings
(Gospel of Philip 63:32-64:10). This text describes Mary Magdalene as a “companion” of Jesus.
History tells us that this text from the Gospel of Philip, as well as other Gnostic texts, was
composed in the second half of the third century. This is a full two hundred years after the life of
Jesus. (The four Christian gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- were written and being
circulated within the first 90 years of the time of Christ.) The passage that Brown uses as his
premise has many missing elements.
Note that although the Gospel of Mary is not considered to be inspired, Brown interprets the text
with his own twists. In fact, there was no mention of Jesus being married to Mary or of them
having an intimate relationship. This text simply says that Jesus appeared to her alone. This is not
against the Holy Bible’s story of Jesus revealing Himself to Mary after His resurrection. Where
Brown escapes fact is when he begins filling in words randomly, all the while having the reader
believe them to be true, verifiable fact.
The Gospel of Mary, because only one copy was recovered, will likely never be a complete and
historically verifiable document. The canonized Scriptures are based on multiple copies passed
down through the generations and discovered in various locations. If we offer up the Gospel of
Mary to be anything other than literary fiction, historians would require there to be factual
evidence to support such a claim, not only the opinion of Dan Brown, a fiction novel writer.
Why is the Gospel of Mary not in the Bible?
The text in the box was from http://reluctant-messenger.com/gospel-magdalene.htm
Another portion of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene describes a soul's journey after death and the
challenges it overcomes. These passages are much like The Tibetan Book of the Dead which
reveals the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities a soul encounters during its journey after it has
separated from the body at death.
This is very similar to this portion of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, " When the soul had
overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, (which) took seven
forms. The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the
excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of
flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven {powers} of wrath."
These teachings are not consistent with the church practice and tradition, one reason why the
Gospel of Mary was not included in the New Testament. One might argue that the Gospel of
Mary was excluded because of the discrimination and oppression toward women. I begged to
differ. If that were the case, then the account of women being the last to leave Jesus and the first
to see the risen Christ should also have been removed. But the account of these faithful women is
in the Bible. The Gospel of Mary was not in the Bible solely because of its content.
For more information on how books were selected to be in the Bible, please check out Chapter 2-
How We Got the Bible-from Josh McDowell’s New Evidence that Demand a Verdict
Note: Square brackets in the translation indicate that a gap exists in the manuscript where
writing once existed; the text within the brackets has been restored by scholars.