Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Robert Murray on the Fusion of Mary the Mother of Jesus with Mary Magdalene in the Syriac Fathers

  

One of the most curious features of Ephrem’s doctrine concerning Mary as type of the Church is found in passages where he speaks of the appearance of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalen; in this context he often regards it as not the Magdalen but the Virgin to whom Christ appeared in the garden, while several times he seems to confuse them, or rather deliberately run them into one, both Maries acting together as type of the Church. This ‘fusion’ is not a peculiarity of Ephrem but is found in other Syrian witnesses, which can therefore help us to trace relationships between Ephrem and other traditions; since, however, this phenomenon concerns us here only in so far as it expresses something about the Church, the main evidence is reserved for review in Part II. At present the reader is asked only to bear in mind that four times in the Diatessaron commentary Ephrem represents Jesus’ Mother as taking the place of Magdalen in the garden, while in the hymns preserved in Armenian the two Maries are fused together by allusion to scenes involving them separately.

 

It is against this background that we must interpret HCrucif. 4, 17, though this does not clearly refer to the Virgin as opposed to Magdalen:

 

Mary who saw him

is a type of the Church, which first

is to see the sign of his coming.

 

Similar to this, but involving an undeniable ‘fusion’ of the Virgin and Magdalen, is a passage in the memre for Holy Week (which, even if we follow Dom Beck in his reserves, are certainly close to Ephrem and belong to the scope of the present work):

 

He drew Mary Magdalen

to come and see his resurrection.

And why was it first to a woman

that he showed his resurrection, and not to men?

Here he showed us a mystery

concerning his Church and his mother.

At the beginning of his coming to earth

a virgin was first to receive him,

and at his raising-up from the grave

to a woman he showed his resurrection.

In his beginning and in his fulfilment

the name of his mother cries out and is present.

Mary received him by conception

and saw an angel before her;

and Mary received him in life

and saw angels at his grave.

Again, Mary is like the Church,

the Virgin, who has borne the first-fruits by the Gospel.

In the place of the Church, Mary saw him.

Blessed be he who gladdened the Church and Mary!

Let us call the Church itself ‘Mary’,

for it befits her to have two names.

For to Simon, the Foundation,

Mary was first to run,

and like the Church, brought him the good news

and told him what she had seen

that our Lord had risen and was raised up.

Fittingly did she come to Simon

and bring him the good news that the Son was risen,

For he was the Rock and Foundation

of the Church of the Gentiles, the elect.

And again, a little later:

But Mary, type of the Church

looked into the sepulchre.

 

This extended passage in the memra for the night of the Resurrection offers us, in its exposition of the status as type of the Church shared by Christ’s mother and Mary Magdalen, a satisfying explanation of the other, more obscure, texts in Ephrem. Whatever may have been the original cause of this confusion or deliberate fusion, Ephrem (or a close disciple of his) sees it as justified by the name ‘Maryam’; belonging as it does to the Virgin, type of the Church as mother of Christ’s members, and to Magdalen, type of the Church as spouse of Christ and proclaimer of the Gospel, ‘Mary’ can serve almost as a functional title, just as ‘Kepha’ (Peter) in Syriac tradition is a functional title of Simon bar-Zebedee rather than a mere second name (as we shall see in chapter VI). If this Syrian tradition which was determined to bring Christ’s mother into the garden of the Resurrection seems unwarranted to us, it may be admitted that the theological use to which Ephrem puts it is not far from common patristic tradition, nor even, perhaps, from the intention of the fourth Evangelist himself. (Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study of Early Syriac Tradition [London: T&T Clark, 1975], 146-48)

 

 

To consider further evidence in Ephrem first, in EC 2, 17 the ‘sword’ in Mary’s heart, foretold by Simeon, is interpreted as doubt that Mary would undergo, and this is explained by Magdalen’s thinking that Christ was a gardener.3 On Christ’s words at Cana, ‘My time is not yet come’, Ephrem sees that ‘time’ as the reunion of Christ with his mother in the garden: ‘thus after his victory over Sheol, when his mother saw him, like a mother she wanted to caress him’. In the comment on John 20:11–17 Ephrem repeats his interpretation of the sword in Mary’s heart as her doubts in the garden; as for why Jesus would not let Mary touch him, Ephrem suggests: ‘Perhaps because he had delivered her to John in his place: “Woman, behold thy Son”. And yet not without her was the first sign, and not without her were the first fruits from Sheol. And so, even if she did not touch him, she was strengthened by him.’

 

There is an even more complex fusion of ‘Maries’ in the hymns preserved in Armenian, in one of the ‘dialogues of Virginity and (married) Continence’:

 

It is clear that Virginity is greater

and nobler than ‘Holiness’,

for it was she who bore the Son

and gave him milk from her breast;

it was she who sat at his feet

and did him service by washing;

At the cross she was beside him,

and in the resurrection she saw him.

 

These quotations will serve to introduce our problem. If we survey Syrian tradition (in Greek or Syriac) more widely, we find two lines on the Maries at the tomb. Both make the mother of Jesus present, but one (represented by Ephrem) substitutes her for Magdalen. It is notorious that the early Christian world was in a state of inextricable confusion on the subject of the Maries in the gospels. One element in this may have been a desire, springing from devotion, to find an appearance of Christ to his Mother.5 The natural place to slip her in would be as the ‘other Mary’ in Matt. 28:1; this is the probable reason for the inversion in the Syriac Didascalia, ‘Mary and the other Mary, Magdalen’, which Dom Connolly unjustifiably supposed to be a mere error. Chrysostom, In Matt., Hom. 88, 2–3, says: ‘Who were they?—His Mother (for it was she whom he calls “of James”) and the others.’ The next witness is Severus of Antioch (512–18), true author of a homily falsely ascribed to Gregory of Nyssa.sa. He argues that the ‘other Mary’ was the Mother of God2 and discusses the identity of the Maries at length, needless to say without throwing much light on the matter. Incidentally, and more interestingly, he sees Christ in the garden as the Second Adam, but without any remarks on Mary Magdalen as an antitype. (We shall return to this point.)

 

A generation after Severus’ death, this tradition receives classic pictorial expression in the Syriac Gospel Codex of Rabbula, dated 586. On fol. 13r, above, is the crucifixion with Christ’s mother on the left, in violet with aureole, hiding her face in sorrow. Below are the women at the sepulchre; Mary, depicted in identical manner with aureole, as her companion is not, approaches from the left carrying a vessel like a censer. No figure identifies itself particularly as Mary Magdalen. Our Lady appears again represented the same way in the Ascension scene (fol. 13v) and that of Pentecost (14v).

 

The other tradition, which makes Christ’s mother the ‘Mary’ in John 20:11–17, is represented by Ephrem and also by Theodoret in the Quaestiones et responsiones ad Orthodoxos, 48, which was long ascribed to Justin. At least two of the three principal mss. read, not, as do our printed texts, ‘Why did the Lord say to Mary, Do not touch me?’ but ‘to his mother Mary’ (πρὸς τὴν μητέρα Μαρίαν). The situation is badly confused by editors who have presumed to ‘correct’ the mss., and have not always even told us they have done so.

 

Jacob of Serug apparently follows this tradition, and R. H. Connolly, discussing Jacob’s text, argues that the Diatessaron was responsible, by omitting ‘Magdalene’. Cecchelli and Furlani, commenting on the scene in the Rabbula Gospels, even suggest that the Diatessaron made the Virgin present; but our existing quotations are too incomplete to prove it, while the extant complete harmonies which reflect the Diatessaron here, as so often, almost all follow the common text in their respective languages. The exception is the Arabic, which does not identify the Mary in John 20:2 or 11; then, after John 20:17, it places Mark 16:9b which names Mary Magdalen as if she is a different person. Even if such a solution is correct, however, it does not solve the main problems, which are: did Ephrem really think it was in fact Christ’s mother in John 20:11–17?—and the same question for Tatian; and if he did think so, why?

 

These questions take us back once again into the earlier Judaeo-Christian and Gnostic fields, where we find a mysterious figure called Mariam (in Greek, Mariamme or Mariamne; in Coptic, Mariham), of uncertain identity. First we may note that in the Babylonian Talmud there are many garbled references to Jesus and his mother, in which the most coherent features are the name Miriam, the profession of megaddelâ nāŝāyâ, ‘women’s hairdresser’ and her unfaithfulness. It is generally taken that this tradition confused Jesus’ mother and Magdalen, whose name is betrayed in megadde. In any case the tradition is late and too badly garbled to tell us more than that Jews as well as Christians were confused on this subject.

 

Second, and much more significant, we may consider the Mariamme or Mariamne of the Naassenes, of whom we read in Hippolytus’ Philosophoumena. She was supposed to have been an intermediary for secret revelations by James, the brother of the Lord, a belief which seems to be illustrated on a sarcophagus which Wilpert interprets as depicting Christ with James on his left and Mariamme on his right.5 Origen mentions Gnostics who claimed to depend on her, and she is no doubt the central figure in the Coptic Gospel of Mariham, whom the Lord is said to have loved especially, and who knows secret words which the Apostles do not. She appears in a favoured relationship to Christ in the Gospel of Thomas2 and in other Gnostic works, such as Pistis Sophia, but especially in the Gospel of Philip, 32 and 55, where she is called the Lord’s partner (κοινωνός) .

 

All this agrees best with Mary Magdalen, and she is explicitly identified as the latter in the Gospel of Philip. But her significance for Gnostics, or some of them, seems to transcend the historical person of Magdalen. It looks as if she is the Μαριὰμ ζητουμένη in Hippolytus, who is very reminiscent of the ‘lost sheep’ which Simon Magus is supposed to have identified with his Helen, a cosmic figure incarnate.6 At the same time, in the eyes of some Gnostics, especially the Valentinians, she seems partially identical with, or inadequately distinct from, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and seen as the incarnation on earth of the divine Sophia, herself identified with the Holy Spirit. Again, in the Manichaean Psalms we read: ‘He chose Mariam, the spirit of wisdom [sophia]’ (p. 194.19); in another psalm in the same collection there is a regular meditation on John 20:11–17, stressing Mariam’s position as mediatress of revelation to the Apostles (p. 187). This will be the key to the identity of the Mary very frequently named in doxologies in these psalms, e.g. ‘Glory [or victory] to the soul of Mary.’ But she can also be prayed for: ‘May the soul of Mary have access to thy mercy, My Lord’ (p. g. 1).

 

In the Gospel of Philip, 32, we read: ‘There were three who walked with the Lord at all times, Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene, whom they called his consort [κοινωνός]. For Mary was his sister and his mother and his consort.’ Here at first seems a clear distinction, but with the last sentence we are set wandering again. Is ‘Mary’ a mystery with several modes of existence, corresponding first to the cosmic Sophia, then to ‘the sought one’, reunited to Christ and the prototype of all who through asceticism seek final union with him in the heavenly wedding-chamber?9 I am inclined to look for a solution on these lines, and to suppose that Tatian, by his order of pericopes, gave an impression favouring this fusion. Then, I suggest very tentatively, Syrian tradition (which never mentions Tatian by name till very late) reflects various reactions to this element:

 

(1) The tradition that takes the ‘Mary’ of John 20:11–17 as Christ’s mother is a reaction against the idea of Magdalen having come so close to Christ as the Gospel of Philip describes. Ephrem follows this tradition (though not necessarily through this apologetic preoccupation) in the Diatessaron commentary, and works it out even to the extent of making it determine earlier episodes, such as the prophecy of Simeon.

 

(2) The Antiochene tradition (Didascalia, Chrysostom), using the separate gospels but aware of a belief that Christ’s mother was there, simply finds a neat way to put her in as ‘the other Mary’ in Matt. 28:1, but not the Mary of John 20:11–17.

 

(3) Ephrem in HArm. 5, and the author of SHebSanc. (whom I take to be at least someone very close to Ephrem), actually combine or ‘superimpose’ Christ’s mother and Magdalen, by referring clearly to their respective functions, as mother and witness, at the same time. The latter passage is primarily interested, it seems, in the name Mary as type of the Church. The Virgin Mary is, of course, a traditional type of the Church, while Magdalen is introduced as a representative of the Church, coming to faith in the risen Christ and witnessing to him. The same assimilation is suggested typologically by Severus, who sees Christ, taken for the gardener, as the second Adam. He only hints at what this entails, that Magdalen is shown as the second Eve. It has been suggested by several scholars that the mysterious appellation ‘Woman’ used by Christ to his mother at Cana and on Calvary (and not really explainable by idiom or custom) hints at her as the ‘prophetic woman’ of Gen. 3 and various shadowy passages in the Prophets. The appellation comes again here, soon after the Calvary pericope, but now used by Christ to Magdalen. E. C. Hoskyns, in a suggestive article, well before the work of either Gaechter or Braun, suggested that John sees Magdalen also as exemplifying the prophetic Woman, sharing in her motherhood of the New Israel. At least, we can now say, this interpretation is implicit in the SHebSanc. and in Severus.

 

To sum up: I suggest that Syriac tradition, starting from Judaeo-Christian ideas, many of which received unacceptable expression at the hands of the Gnostics, gradually purified its beliefs with the help of typology, till the sharing of the name of Mary by our Lady and Magdalen came to have a purely symbolic significance and to be quite innocent. In the SHebSanc. the name Mary thus becomes virtually a shared ‘functional title’ symbolizing the Church, as we have seen that the name Kepha was a functional title. (Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study of Early Syriac Tradition [London: T&T Clark, 1975], 1329-35)

 

 

 

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