Mary Magdalene Christianity's Hidden Goddess

A startling revelation of the millennia-long conspiracy to deny Mary Magdalene's rightful place in Christianity's history as Jesus' priestess, catechizer, leading apostle--and lover, What is the truth about the "other Mary"--one of the most important female figures of the New Testament, second only to Mary the Mother? Although nearly written out of the Biblical Gospels as merely a redeemed "fallen woman, " Mary Magdalene is the secret Gnostic Gospels' major character after Jesus himself. The Gnostic Gospel of Mary, for example, states that after the crucifixion, the apostles were rallied with an impassioned and enlightened sermon given by Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel of Thomas relates that Jesus called her "The Woman Who Knows All." Best-selling author Lynn Picknett suggests that the truth behind these conflicting accounts extends from the thirteenth-century Church's genocidal crusade against the Cathar sect in France and the cult of the Black Madonna back to Christianity's beginnings and before. He traces Mary's name to Magdala in Egypt, where John the Baptist originated a syncretic Hebrew-Egyptian sect, and follows up her Ethopian links. Likewise, the term "Magdaleder" means "tower of the flock, " i.e., Good Shepherd, a title given to the Egyptian goddess Isis as well. Employing contemporary scholarship on the recently discovered Gnostic texts, Picknett hypothesizes Jesus and Mary's partnership in a synthesis of Eastern and Egyptian mysticism, which included gender equality, anointing rites, and sexual rituals. He also unravels the attempts of the apostles and later the Catholic Church to suppress both these aspects of their teachings and the Magdalene's origins and relationship withJesus. Undoing centuries of confusion and cover-up, Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess will startle even contemporary Christians who have used her example to argue for the ordination of women and New Age believers who hail her as a feminine archetype of the "goddess."