Mary Magdalene: Her History and Myths Revealed

Mary Magdalene perhaps the Bible's most controversial character has fired the imagination of artists, writers, and historians for two millennia. Now Karen Ralls beautifully illustrated book takes the reader though the gospels of the New Testament to the Gnostic Gospels and Nag Hammadi texts in an attempt to uncover the truth about this mysterious female disciple.

The author considers both theories of Mary Magdalene s later life: an escape to France with her brother Lazarus and sister Martha, and the Eastern tradition, in which she ends up as a hermit in present-day Turkey. In the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene s importance to medieval pilgrims and her association with the cult of the Black Madonna made her venerated by many but she has been long castigated by the Catholic Church. At last she is being reinstated to a position of reverence and acknowledged by many as the disciple closest to Jesus -- and the person he had specially appointed to carry his message into the world.