Customer Reviews:
 The Gospel of Mary of Magdala August 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As with anything Karen L. King has written about Mary, it is a great read. Opens up a whole different scenario for women in the church.
Must reading for scholars of early Christianity June 18, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is fascinating reading which will causes us to probe the boundaries of what is known about the Gospel and the early Christians (i.e., the Gnostics). Some cautionary notes that I would add are that we don't know how many people read the Gnostic gospels, who might have been influenced by them, or even why they were written in the first place.
Good presentation April 5, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The actual Gospel is rather short, but Karen took it apart and did a fine job of explaining each facet that the gospel touched on. The role of women, the Apostles' roles, and again showed proof (without stating it) that Jesus himself set us all up for the conflicts that followed his faithful. Namely that He preached one thing to the masses, and let others in on secrets. Thus setting up conflict between those that understood, and those who thought they understood.(The Gnostics versus the Orthodox).
Paul
Totally an eye opener July 5, 2006
25 out of 26 found this review helpful
I love reading this book as it shows the mindset of christianity in its early stages. It is interesting after reading several gospels the irenias declared as heriesies you have to ask who qualified him to choose what gospels were right for the rest of us and which were not. Overall this book rocks and is very informative. If you as a christian who just likes to go to church and are not interested in where christianinty was then you will not like this book as it clearly goes against the version we grew up to believe is true. However if you want to know what the compitition was and a fresh glimplse in what the roman church tried to surpress in the few decades after the beath if Jesus then this book will be very intriging. I appoligize for my spelling.
 Few facts; mostly spin. June 16, 2006
31 out of 60 found this review helpful
At first, I felt some hope in this book. King admits plainly that the "Gospel" of Mary "offers no new information about the historical Jesus." Rather, this text "reflects concerns that make sense in a Gentile context," in particular, this Jesus tale derives from Platonic and Stoic thought. Aside from admitting these obvious facts (which does not always happen when the subject is Gnostic texts), King remains a careful scholar, and some of the connections she draws are good.
But like so many others, she hypes her text by claiming it changes our understanding of early Christianity. Here her argument becomes not only illogical, but repetitious, agenda driven, and, finally, tiresome.
Let me begin with the quote above. Mary "offers no new information about the historical Jesus." No honest historian would disagree. Yet again and again, King emphasizes how radically Mary, and the Nag Hammadi texts, supposedly change the history and meaning of Christian origins. She calls early Christians who follow the canonical story the "proto-orthodox." Like Pagels, she imagines them weaving all kinds of political webs to create a canon and a creed that exclude works like this one. Even such radical critics as Morton Smith, Robert Funk and John Crossan (not to mention more balanced historians) find tons of historical information about Jesus in the canonical Gospels, while King admits she finds none in Mary. Yet not once does she consider the possibility that early Christians selected the Gospels they did because of this superiority.
Why should a historian berate early Christians for selecting texts that give factual historical information, and rejecting those that don't? I kept waiting for her to consider this question, but she was too busy alleging dark political schemes to even bring it up, let alone answer it.
But evidence that the "proto-orthodox" cared about historical truth is before her eyes. King emphasizes the contrast between Mary, the "model disciple," conduit for Jesus' secret (Gnostic, though she dislikes the term) teachings, and Peter, her "hot-headed" proto-orthodox foil. King goes on and on about how wonderful Mary is -- "It is no accident that the Savior loved her more than the others," a love "based on his sure knowledge" of this "unflinching and steadfast disciple." But tempestuous Peter is no Gnostic invention. The canonical Gospels vividly portray his flaws -- and the leadership Jesus gave him. What this points to is how dramatically different the canonical texts are -- the frank realism with which they depict Jesus, his disciples, the crowds, and his enemies, which has led many skeptics to conclude that the stories they relate are true. But King is enthralled with her simple, black-hat / white-hat text, and never drops a hint that the richly ambiguous canonical texts might, for a historian, offer advantages.
And on it goes. Following Koester, King equates Thomas and Q. (In my book, Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, I show the two are radically different.) She exagerates the gap between Jesus and the writing of the Gospels. (A period of that might take a witness from youth to middle age.) She overlooks the fact that the four Gospels were already accepted as authoritative (for good reason) early in the 2nd Century.
Pagels has argued that John invented the figure of "doubting Thomas" to undermine the "Thomas tradition." In one of the most absurd passages of this book, King applies the same argument to Mary. "Mary's status is diminished in the Gospel of John in that she at first mistakes him for the gardener, and then when she does recognize his voice, she addresses him as 'Teacher' . . a relatively low standing on the hierarchical scale of Johannine Christological titles . . . The whole scene works to subordinate Mary's authority as a resurrection witness to that of the male disciples . . . "
What hooey. John "disses" all the male disciples much worse than that. Thomas doubts. Peter denies. Judas betrays. All the rest desert. Unlike Mary, John doesn't pretty up his favored disciples for the press. And if he did want to undermine Mary, why did he make her the first witness to the resurrected Jesus?
And why, if the early Christians were so set on misogeny, or indifferent to the facts, do the Gospels they selected show Jesus (as Walter Wink points out) transcending the boundaries of gender roles in every single encounter with women in the canonical Gospels? Such facts should force feminist scholars to admit the Gospel authors (and selectors) were either proto-feminists, or honest enough to present Jesus as he was, including (as Dan Brown put it!) as the original feminist. But it is not King's purpose to affirm orthodoxy, and so she ignores evidence of this sort.
Some parts of this book are well-done. The comparisons with other Gnostic literature and with Greek thought are interesting.
But I am tired of this over-clever deconstructionistic mumbo-jumbo. I rue the day the academy decided history could be done by such methods, as subjective as divination by tortoise shell, as easy (because impossible to disprove) as reading the mind of a person dead two thousand years. If you want a serious reconstruction of early Christian history, avoid American profs entirely, and read N. T. Wright.
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