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| "Noli mi tangere" |
From the few mentions of Mary Magdalene in the New Testament, it would seem that she is a minor character. However, the stories in which she is mentioned show that she is a significant character. And when the Nag Hammadi scriptures were found, some of them mentioned her—and in a way that showed her to be even more significant in the story of Christianity than previously thought. Her words show her as a woman of great intelligence and depth, able to discern deep and different levels of meaning in what Jesus taught. She is mentioned in the Gospel of Philip, the Dialogue of the Savior, and among those ancient scriptures was a fragment of a“gospel” seeming written by Mary Magdalene herself, now referred to as the Gospel of Mary.
Given her deep understanding of the teachings of Jesus, it would appear that Magdalene was not only very wise and intelligent but that she also may have had some previous exposure to the concepts of what he was teaching to the other apostles and disciples.
After thinking about and researching this idea for many years, I have concluded to my own satisfaction that she did actually have such an education – and perhaps in more than one place. The most likely place might be with the Essene community at Lake Mareotis near Alexandria, Egypt, though possibly at other locations as well. Unlike many other Essene communities that were strictly male, the community at Mareotis had both men and women as members.
Can I prove this with historical documents? Not really, but my research, thoughts, and intuition have led me to this tentative conclusion.
In De Vita Contemplativa, first century philosopher Philo of Alexandria tells us that the Therapeutae of the Essene Community at Lake Mareotis devoted their time to prayer and study, including the study of allegorical methods of interpreting Holy Scripture – believing that the words of scriptural texts were mostly likely not to be taken literally, but were, in fact, symbols of things hidden. The Therapeutae were also said to be healers of both body and soul.
Ancient Alexandria was a busy and cosmopolitan city 2000 years ago, just as it is now today. Peoplefrom many nations found a home there. Located on the tip of the northern Delta region of Africa, it was not terribly far from Palestine, and was indeed, a crossroads where many cultures met and mingled, and ideas were exchanged. Two thousand years ago there was Jewish quarter in the northeastern part of the city. At that time there were, in fact, several Jewish settlements in Egypt.
Lake Mareotis was a bit south of Alexandria, and 2000 years ago, the lake stretched north from Taposiris at in the south, and paralleled the Mediterranean coast toward Alexandria, Canopus, and Menouthis. As it did so, it widened out to both east and south and into a much larger body of water than it is currently. The Essene Therapeutae community was located somewhere on the shore of this lake, though its actual site is now unknown and may have been in the areas which have since dried out or have been submerged in the Mediterranean due to earthquakes.
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| https://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-block/UsefulDownloads_Download/AE0682121F8D43D89D42CD69AFEDFA4A/mareotis.pdf |
Where else might a young Mary Magdalene have received the education that made her such a wise, well-educated, and discerning disciple of Jesus?
Not terribly far from the Jewish quarter of Alexandria was the Serapeum – a temple to the god Serapis & the goddess Isis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serapeum_of_Alexandria Located quite close to the famous Library of Alexandria, it was considered a sort of “daughter temple” of the Library. It was known to be not just a religious temple but also had a school of philosophers, and was a place of both learning and healing. Since such places practiced and taught some very advanced healing techniques, it’s quite possible that Mary Magdalene could have received some of her training there as well as with the Therapeutae of Lake Mareotis. And perhaps some of the healers of Mareotis may have received their training there as well.
It should be noted that the Serapeum of Alexandria had a sister-facility a few
miles away in the city of Canopus, a school well known for its teachings
of both medicine and magic.
There were, of course, many temples in Egypt, especially in its northern Delta region, but in other areas as well, including further down the Nile River. These temples, dedicated to Osiris, Isis, and other deities, often had schools attached to them – schools where students were educated in the mysteries of both nature and spirituality; schools devoted specifically to knowledge of the healing arts (and which often actually served as hospitals) were known as Per Anhks – meaning “Houses of Life.”
Though there has certainly been a lot of speculation, we know nothing of Mary Magdalene aside from when she shows up in the gospel stories, and of course more recently, in the Nag Hammadi scriptures. Who knows where she was previously, what she was doing, or what her life was like? She was certainly not the repentant prostitute that the 6th century Pope Gregory the Great mistakenly proclaimed her to be. Thankfully, in 1969, Pope Paul removed this demeaning and incorrect classification.
When I consider the whole Northern Delta area of Egypt, with its Jewish settlements, Essene communities, the Leontopolis Jewish Temple near Heliopolis, and the Egyptian Per Anhks - Houses of Life - many of whom had schools attached, I realized that there were many places where Mary Magdalene may have gone to learn the healing wisdom needed for both bodies and souls.
As continuing archeological research unearths more history, objects, and documents of the Egyptian past, perhaps we will find evidence of a young Jewish female student named Miriam, who was a student of one of the many Egyptian schools of philosophy and healing arts a couple millennia ago.
Notes:
The Leontopolis Temple (near modern-day Tel Basta), often referred to as the Onias Temple after its founder, Onias IV, was a valid Jewish Temple with a valid Zadok priesthood. It had been established sometime between 300-200 B.C. It was located approximately 80 miles to the northeast of Cairo, on a site that had previously been a temple of the Egyptian feline goddess Bubastis, daughter of the goddess Bast. From what I have been able to discover, it seems likely that the Leontopolis temple – since it may have been in essence, an Essene Temple with regard to at least some of its beliefs.
