confusedjw....References to Mary as a significant apostle, if not the apostle, as well as companion to Jesus, appear quite a bit in the gnostic literature, especially in the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary. Yet evidence of such a prominent role for a Mary appears also in early orthodox writings, especially that of Hippolytus. Although she is usually identified with Mary Magdalene, I am persuaded by a recent article by Stephen J. Shoemaker ("Rethinking the Gnostic 'Mary': Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala in Early Christian Tradition," Journal of Early Christian Studies 9:4 [2001]:555-595) that Mary is a composite figure, encompassing both mother and companion....this is most evident from the Gospel of Philip, but also throughout the Christian tradition (including biblical writings such as Revelation and John) does one find the mother parallled in the companion and vice versa. This is the case even in the textual tradition of John, where the "Mary Magdalene" of the common text of 20:1 becomes Mary of Nazareth in Tatian's Diatessaron. The Old Syriac version of the Johannine text, moreover, does not have the word "Magdalene" in ch. 20 and gives 20:18 as: "And Mary came and said to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord,' and she told them the things that he revealed to her". This suggests one of two things. Either the gospel originally made reference only to "Mary" and the word "Magdalene" was added later (likely on the basis of the synoptic text), or the Syrian gospel tradition itself tampered with the text and deleted the reference to "Magdalene" and, in the Diatessaron, outright identified this Mary with Jesus' mother. The other very interesting thing is that the Old Syriac wording, making clear reference to a revelation to Mary by Jesus, is exactly what is presupposed in the Gospel of Mary.
I have my own theory of what might underlie the Johannine text. It is based on the somewhat remarkable parallels between the relationship between Jesus and Mary in the gnostic tradition, and Simon and Helena in the gnostic Simonian tradition. Simon Magus according to patristic writings taught a gnostic system with clear links to the Johannine tradition. Simon hailed from Samaria, specifically from the town of Gitton which was located just outside ancient Shechem, and he represented himself to his countrymen as "the Father over all" but when he "appeared among the Jews" he referred to himself as the "Son" who descended from heaven to Samaria. He also claimed that he was a follower of John the Baptist, that he appeared to men as a man, though he was not really a man, and that when he was in Judea, he "suffered". Most importantly, he claimed that "men are saved through his grace and not on account of their own righteous actions" (Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 1:26; Irenaeus, Adverses Haereses 1.23.1-4; Ps.-Clem. Homilies, 2:13). All of this strongly resembles Johannine christology. Yet it is in Simon's courtship of Helena where the parallels with John and gnostic tradition are clearest. Simon left his native land and went to Syro-Phoenicia where he met in Tyre a "former prostitute" named Helena. According to Irenaeus, Simon instantly recognized who she really was and told her that she was his "first thought," i.e. Logos or Wisdom personified, and that she created the angels and archangels for him but they became jealous and persecuted her, finally shutting her up "in a human body and for ages passed in succession from one female body to another, as from vessel to vessel". She was his close companion and Simon "was in the habit of carrying her about with him, declaring that this woman ... was the mother of all" (Adversus Haereses 1.23.2). Now, in John 4, Jesus journeyed to a foreign land and came to a town just outside of Shechem in Samaria.....practically the SAME locality that Simon Magus hailed from. There he met a woman of ill repute, "living with a man who is not [her] husband" (John 4:18). And like Jesus, Simon came to have "divine knowledge" of this woman's past history. Jesus tells her that he has already had five husbands (v. 18), knowledge of her prior life that startled the woman. It is unlikely that this woman was already widowed or divorced five times in her adult life; there might be an echo here of the Simon legend in the woman having already had a succession of past lives, or the intended meaning might be that she has had a habit of having illicit relationships (as Charles H. Giblin, NTS 45 [1999] suggests). The meeting of this woman at the well is also literarily a courtship scene, as the actual phrasing and description of the episode is borrowed from the courtship of Isaac (Genesis 24:11, 15-19, 45-46, 62-67) and Moses (Exodus 2:15-17, 21 ). The courtship between Jesus and the Samaritan woman compares with the courtship between the Samaritan Simon and Helena. The conclusion of the episode in John 4 is the conversion of the whole town to the faith of Jesus, and this is also strikingly reminiscent of the account of Simon Magus in Acts 8:
Acts 8:9-10: "A man called Simon had practised magic arts in the town and astounded the Samaritan people; he had suggested that he was someone momentous, and everyone believed what he said, eminent citizens and ordinary people alike declared, 'He is the divine Power that is called Great.' "
John 4:39-42: "Many Samaritans of that town believed in him ... [saying], 'We have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the Savior of the world.' "
What is most interesting in the above is the fact that Simon, according to this tradition, referred to Helena as "Mother of All". If the gnostic Jesus tradition was in any way similar in this regard, we may here have the origin of the idea that Mary, the companion of Jesus, was also his mother. That is, Jesus would have referred to his companion Mary as "Mother" or "Mother of All" in the early gnostic tradition and when the nascent proto-orthodoxy needed to historicize Jesus as a non-docetic human-born person, "Mother" Mary was recruited as Jesus' human mother while Mary was still retained as disciple, so that an original Mary was split into two or three (e.g. Mary of Bethany) personages. The epithet "Mother of All" moreover is derivable from Genesis 3:20, and christologies which designated Jesus as the "New Adam" would have naturally identified the companion Mary with the "New Eve" (i.e. Eve was the companion of Adam), and yet in early proto-orthodox literature we find that the maternal Mary of Nazareth was designated as the New Eve:
"Christ became man by the virgin that the disobedience which issued from the serpent might be destroyed in the same way it originated. Eve was still an undefiled virgin when she conceived the word of the serpent and brought forth disobedience and death . But the virgin received faith and joy, at the announcement of the angel Gabriel, and she replied, 'Be it done to me according you your word'. So through the mediation of the virgin he came into the world, through whom God would crush the serpent." (Justin Martyr, Apology, 100).
"The seduction of a fallen angel drew Eve, a virgin espoused to a man, while the glad tidings of the holy angel drew Mary, a virgin already espoused , to begin the plan which would dissolve the bonds of that first snare... For as the former was lead astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had disobeyed his word, so did the latter, by and angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should bear God, and obeyed his word. If the former disobeyed God, the latter obeyed, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve . Thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience is balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.23.4)
Yet Hippolytus designates Mary Magdalene in this role. The same problem occurs in Revelation. In ch. 12, "a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet" gives birth to the Messiah (v. 1-2), and it is through the "blood of the Lamb" (v. 11) that the saints overcome the Dragon. The woman symbolizes the saints persecuted by the Dragon (cf. 12:13, "When the dragon was that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child"), and the same saints comprise the bride of the Lamb in heaven (cf. 19:8). Yet the woman is also explicitly designated as the mother of the Messiah "male child", i.e. Mary. And the "woman" (gune) of Revelation 12:1 is clearly derivative of the story of Eve in Genesis 3: both are called "woman" and not by their names (cf. also John 2:4, where Jesus calls his mother "woman"), the mention of labor pains (cf. 12:2 = Genesis 3:16), the foe being the "serpent of old" who is enemies with the woman and her offspring (cf. 12:9, 13, 17 = Genesis 3:14-15), and the serpent being a deceiver (cf. 12:9 = Genesis 3:13). The mother of Jesus is thus cast in the role of Eve, just as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus claimed. My solution to the whole thorny problem is that the Son's female companion was called "Mother" (just as in the case of Simon and Helena) which implied not the Son's own maternity but her maternity over all the Powers that the Son had come to release the world from. Then when the proto-orthodoxy wanted to demythologize the descent legend of the Son, the Mary figure was literalized into Jesus' own biological mother. Even John is rather ambivilent about Jesus' own origin, and in several cases implies that the Son descended from heaven in a manner reminiscent of that claimed by Simon (cf. ch. 6).
I have earlier posted in this forum on the possibility of Jesus being the bridegroom in John 2 (especially in view of John 3:28-29; cf. Mark 2:18-22), with the bride being at one level Mary and at another level the Church (compare with Revelation 12, 19).
PP....I'm not entirely clear on what makes the canonical account in John 13 nonsensical. The Greek word translated "beckoning" in John 13:24 is neuei which distinctly refers to nonverbal communication, specifically nodding. The nodding was moreover done "(in the direction) to this one" (touto:), that is, nodding at the Beloved Disciple. It didn't matter that one was lying on the chest of the other, if Jesus' head was turned away or his eyes were closed, it would certainly be conceivable that he would not notice the nonverbal motioning. What would be wrong with a more minimal reconstruction as follows:
21 When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and
testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you
shall betray me.
22 Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake.
23 Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom
Jesus loved [i.e. Mary].
24 Simon Peter therefore beckoned to her, that she should ask who it
should be of whom he spake.
25 She then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?
26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have
dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas
Iscariot, the son of Simon.
I am somewhat relunctant to propose a more extreme reconstruction without any manuscript or other textual evidence to support it and the advantage of the above is that it restores a conversation between Peter and Mary and this is a pairing that occurs widely in the gnostic literature, usually to the detriment of Peter. It also retains the figure of Judas Iscariot as the betrayer, as this text is dependent on Mark (cf. John 13:21 = Mark 14:18) where Judas again appears as the betrayer, and I see no convincing evidence that Judas was a later insertion into the text of John (and assuming that John, except for the Semeia Gospel passages, dates later than Mark). Since the name of Judas (cf. "Judah" and "Judah Issachar") is original to several of the OT texts that furnished the betrayal story (cf. especially Genesis 37:26-28 which has Judah and his brothers selling Joseph for twenty pieces of silver, and Deuteronomy 27:12, 25 which juxtaposes the names "Judah Issachar" and then says "Cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent man"), I believe the name is original to the betrayal narrative as it is in Mark and utilized in John. It is possible tho that a pre-Johannine gospel in the same tradition may have posited Peter as the betrayer (considering the antipathy towards Peter in later gnostic tradition), but since the antipathy towards Peter reflected a reaction towards the early orthodoxy, this might be anachronistic for such an early proto-gospel as what is being surmised here.
I agree that there is quite a bit of evidence within John that suggests that Mary may have been the Beloved Disciple (cf. this webpage which discusses the issue), but I do not think the matter is conclusive. In favor of a male Beloved Disciple, there is the example of Lazarus who is described as the "one whom you [Jesus] love" in John 11:3 (compare 11:36, where the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"). In the close parallel in Secret Mark, the rich young man who had been resurrected, naked but for wearing a linen garment, was similarly said to have "looked at him and loved him" and in the parallel in Mark 10:21, Jesus is said to have "looked at him [the young man] and loved him", and similar "young men" who were wearing only a linen garment also appear enigmatically in Mark 14:51-52 and Mark 16:5. Since there is a connection with John through the Lazarus story, I'm not sure what to make of it except to say that the backstory is more complex than it first appears.
I also concur, as stated before, that ch. 21 is a later addition to the book, and the purpose is to support Petrine pastoralism of the orthodoxy and secure apostolic authority for the book as the product of an eyewitness (especially in 21:23-24 and the interpolation in 19:35).
