Mary Magdalene was reincarnated on Five last week during their prime-time documentary Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner? As if the whole subject of who she was had not been done to death by Dan Brown and Ron Howard, CTVC (who specialise in religious and other documentaries) had another go.
Unfortunately, the otherwise well-put together programme made a lot of common mistakes. Featuring an ‘authoritative’ voiceover passing off opinion as fact was one; providing free advertising for whacky scholars was another. Reheating old controversies, a third blunder. I’ve got no problem with documentaries subjecting the Bible and its characters to forensic criticism. In fairness, however, a bit more homework - and more balance - would have helped.
The documentary did its level best to promote the idea that the real Mary Magdalene had been deliberately obscured by the Church to hide the truth about the resurrection of Jesus. Apparently, Mary was an influential figure in the 'Jesus movement' (a very dated term now) who had a vision of Jesus after he had died. As a woman, however, her testimony was not particularly believable. Therefore, to give it clout, the male followers of Jesus all started to have similar 'visions' and the idea that Jesus had literally stood up out of the grave and come to life was born. At this point, Mary's story of a vision, rather than an experience of a flesh-and-blood Jesus, had to be downplayed. So along came the Gospel writers and then later Pope Gregory the Great to reduce her significance and rebrand her as a prostitute.
If ever there was a case of 2+2=9, then this is it. But let's take some of these points one by one. The programme got a lot of its ideas about the 'real' significance of Mary Magdalene from the Gnostic Gospels of Mary and Philip. It placed them on the same level as the gospels included in the Bible, in terms of historical accuracy (never mind that there were actually written around 100 years after those included in the New Testament and for purely ideological reasons). This was schoolboy error number one.
Number two was blaming Pope Gregory the Great for deliberately smearing Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Whether Mary was - or was not - a woman of ill-fame is a matter of debate on biblical grounds. But the idea that this might have been a mix-up rather than a targeted smear campaign seems to have been lost on the programme-makers. And in medieval times, Mary Magdalene was not actually looked down on as a worthless prostitute. In fact, she was revered as a beata peccatrix, which means 'blessed sinner'. Rather than looking on her in disgust, people could actually relate to her as a flawed person who had managed to turn her life around.
The major problem with the documentary, however, was the promotion of idea that what Mary saw wasn't actually real, but a vision. I've no problem with this being discussed, but there was no presentation of the other side of the argument (e.g. how Mary could have tried to touch Jesus if it was just a vision - John 20.17). If the evidence for such a controversial theory is so strong, why not let those who oppose it speak up?
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