Talk:Mary Magdalene

Gnosticism's elevation

While certainly worthy of mention and some discussion, does what "the Gnostic writings" (which?) say about Mary Magdalene rise to the importance of being the subject of one of the lead paragraph's two sentences? Given the vast amount of church tradition and other religious thought, historical and literary analysis, art, literature, debate, and general interest on this figure in the West through millennia, what "the Gnostic writings" had to say about Mary probably doesn't amount to 10 or 15 percent. Surely whoever added this believes this recent area of study and corpus is so dreadfully important as to raise it to the level of Magdalene's presence in Christianity at large... or maybe they just really, really want this to be more important than it is. At best, they are afflicted with recency bias. If it stays, more must go in.

Worse yet, the very first section after "Life" is... "Portrayal in Gnostic writings". Again, surely it's worthy of inclusion somewhere, but not before "Legacy" and "Religious views and veneration". Leaving this here in case anyone wants to take a stab at it, otherwise I will. Mercster (talk) 12:43, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree. She is a popular figure in Gnostic texts, but it does not merit such prominence. Hermeneutix (talk) 06:30, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

"Some secular historians agree ... But this is based only on"

The Life section opens: "Some secular historians agree that, like Jesus, Mary Magdalene was a real historical figure. But this is based only on the early accounts of the Bible, with no other contemporary accounts." Two concerns, both about fit with the cited sources (Casey 2010, p. 475; Maisch 1998, p. 9; Ehrman 2006, pp. 185-187): 1. "Some secular historians agree" reads as MOS:WEASEL and sits oddly with WP:YESPOV: the cited authors treat her existence as accepted. It is not as a position "some" hold. If the sources state it plainly, so should we. 2. "But this is based only on the early accounts of the Bible, with no other contemporary accounts" is editorial doubt (MOS:EDITORIAL). It is also redundant: the next sentences already say very little is known of her, she left no writings, and the epistles never mention her.

Proposed replacement for the two sentences: "Historians, secular and religious alike, generally accept that Mary Magdalene was a real historical figure." (same citations). Hermeneutix (talk) 06:50, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Fine with that. Johnbod (talk) 11:56, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Overlap between "Portrayal in Gnostic writings" and "Apocryphal early Christian writings"

These two sections cover the same five texts twice. "Portrayal in Gnostic writings" is a two-paragraph summary naming the Dialogue of the Saviour, the Pistis Sophia, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary; "Apocryphal early Christian writings" then treats the same five texts in its subsections. Three suggestions, to agree with Mercster above:

1. Merge them into a single section, "Gnostic writings", keeping the current subsections. Note that New Testament Apocrypha as wikilinked in this article, states that "The general term [Apocrypha] is usually applied to the books that were considered by the church as useful, but not divinely inspired. As such, to refer to Gnostic writings as "apocryphal" is misleading since they would not be classified in the same category by orthodox believers.". This could be WP:CIRCULAR, so I would not use it in the article itself, but it gives us a clue to the nomenclature.

2. "Some of these writings were cited as scripture by early Christians" is sourced to King 2003, pp. 3-12. I have that book to hand, but cannot tell from those pages which writings, or which early Christians, are meant. The statement is well-attested for other New Testament apocrypha (the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas both stand in Codex Sinaiticus, and Irenaeus cites Hermas in Against Heresies), but every subsection here is a Gnostic text (Dialogue of the Saviour, Pistis Sophia, Thomas, Philip, Mary, and the Borborite works), so a reader will naturally take the sentence to be about the Gnostic texts, which is a much stronger claim and in my view overreaching.

3. Dating in the same section: the Pistis Sophia is introduced as "possibly dating as early as the second century", cited to Hurtak & Hurtak 1999 (Academy for Future Science), which is not a reliable source for dating an ancient text. Standard reference works date it to the third century, possibly extending into the fourth (e.g. Pleše, "Pistis Sophia", in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2013). Also:

4. On the Gospel of Mary, the subsection currently gives only "probably written over a century after the historical Mary Magdalene's death" (Ehrman). The dating discussion could be strengthened from Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 139, who notes the text "contains a type of Gnostic mythologizing which is characteristic of the late second or early third century and suggests the influence of Valentinus", and p. 141 on why it was never a canon candidate. Karen King, whom the article cites, is herself uncertain about what the text can tell us of the historical Mary: she writes that it is "too difficult to imagine that Mary, a Jew, could have developed teachings so removed from any basis in Jewish theological tradition", and ascribes it to "popular philosophy steeped in the ideas of Platonism and Stoicism" (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, pp. 184, 96). She also describes the text in Meyer, ed., *The Nag Hammadi Scriptures* (2007), p. 737ff, as "a kind of Christianity that seems to have been formed in a largely gentile milieu that was permeated by popular forms of Greek philosophy, especially Platonizing cosmology and Stoic ethics concerning the passions." Using the term "Christianity" fairly loosely.

Therefore, the Gnostic texts do feature her prominently, but were mostly written centuries after the new testament documents. They are pseudepigraphical, not historical. Hermeneutix (talk) 13:26, 9 August 2026 (UTC)